He was born into a poor family in Cedartown, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta, where his father farmed and drove trucks.[2][3] Sanders was the fourth of five children and picked cotton as a teenager. The family home was near a nine-hole course and he was a self-taught golfer.[4]
Amateur career
Sanders accepted an athletic scholarship to the University of Florida in Gainesville,[4] where he played for the Gators golf team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competition in 1955.[5] In his single year as a Gator golfer, Sanders and the team won a Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship and earned a sixth-place finish at the NCAA championship tournament—the Gators' best national championship finish at that time.[5] Sanders won the 1956 Canadian Open as an amateur—the only amateur ever to do so—and turned professional shortly thereafter.[6] Sanders was the last amateur to win on the PGA Tour until Scott Verplank in 1985.
Professional career
Sanders had thirteen top-ten finishes in major championships, including four second-place finishes: 1959 PGA Championship, 1961 U.S. Open, 1966 and 1970 Opens. In 1966, he became one of the few players in history to finish in the top ten of all four major championships in a single season, despite winning none of them. He took four shots from just 74 yards as the leader playing the final hole of the 1970 Open Championship at St Andrews, missing a sidehill 3-foot (0.9 m) putt to win, then lost the resulting 18-hole playoff by a single stroke the next day to Jack Nicklaus.[7] His final victory on tour came in June 1972 at the Kemper Open, one stroke ahead of runner-up Lee Trevino.[8]
Sanders is remembered for an exceptionally short, flat golf swing — a consequence, it appears, of a painful neck condition that radically restricted his movements.[7]
Sanders was a stylish, flamboyant dresser on the golf course, which earned him the nickname "Peacock of the Fairways."[7]Esquire magazine named Sanders one of America's Ten Best Dressed Jocks in August 1972.[9]
Sanders identified himself as the lead character, a playboy PGA Tour golfer, in the golf novel Dead Solid Perfect, by Dan Jenkins.[10]
Sanders wrote a golf instruction book, "Compact Golf", published in 1964, the title of which linked to Sanders' short golf swing. His autobiography "Come swing with me" was published in 1974.[11]
In his autobiography, Sanders said he was invited and intended to accompany fellow pro golfer and 1964 Open winner Tony Lema on the flight in a private plane in 1966 that crashed with no survivors. Sanders changed his schedule at the last minute and did not join Lema on the flight.[11]
After retiring from competitive golf, Sanders was active in his own corporate golf entertainment company for nearly 20 years, and sponsored the Doug Sanders International Junior Golf Championship in Houston, Texas. From 1988 to 1994, he also sponsored the Doug Sanders Celebrity Classic.
Sanders died in his adopted hometown of Houston, Texas, on April 12, 2020, from natural causes.[12][13] He was 86.
^"Esquire names Frazier". The New Courier. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. September 2, 1972. p. 12 – via newspapers.com. ... Doug Sanders, a golf pro selected over the more publicized fashion plates of the game, complete the Esquire "10 Best-Dressed Jocks"
^Sampson, Curt (2000). The Eternal Summer: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Hogan in 1960, Golf's Golden Year. New York: Villard Publishing. ISBN978-0375753688.
^ abSanders, Doug; Sheehan, Larry (1974). Come Swing with Me by Doug Sanders. Doubleday. ISBN978-0385056311.
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