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best U.S. Ryder Cup team ever assembled. Playing a first-round match with Lee Trevino, Nelson birdied the last two holes to lift the Americans from a 1-down deficit against Bernhard Langer and Miguel Piñero with two holes to play to a stunning turnaround victory.
“I made a 2-footer that felt like a 20-footer at 17,” Nelson said. “At 18, I sank about a 50-footer for the win. I never saw Trevino get really excited about anything, but when I made that putt, he got really excited.”
Nelson won two more matches with Tom Kite as a partner and another singles match, but U.S. captain Dave Marr held Nelson out of the Friday afternoon session, which kept him from a chance at another 5-0 week. Four decades later, the 75-year-old Nelson is still mildly annoyed by that, to be honest, but he is overwhelmingly grateful to have been a part of a team with 10 of its 12 members destined for the Hall of Fame.
“Larry was a great Ryder Cup player when the event wasn’t as highly watched,” said long-time TOUR player Mark McCumber. “If he’d done what he did in the ’90s, he would’ve been known as the Ryder Cup killer.”
There was some irony in 1987 when Nelson rejuvenated his game thanks to a serious workout regimen and beat Wadkins, his old Ryder Cup partner, on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to win his second PGA Championship at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The championship was played in August in searing heat, and Nelson and Wadkins, at 1-under 287, were the only players to break par on the Champion Course.
“If there were world rankings [back then], there was a time when Larry would’ve been top four in the world,” said two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North. “When you consider that he didn’t play golf until his early 20s, what he accomplished was magnificent.”
IT IS NOT LARRY NELSON’S fault he is golf’s Invisible Man. No three-time major champion and Ryder Cup star has accrued less attention.
How is that possible? Two of his major wins were PGA Championships in August, a time when TV golf ratings dipped, and golf might not make the sports section’s front page. His ’81 PGA win was a stellar performance but without drama, and