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Bob Tway's 1986 PGA Championship
Bob Tway holing out for birdie from a greenside bunker on the 72nd hole of the 1986 PGA Championship at Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, remains one of golf’s most memorable shots. No small feat given how proudly the sport immerses itself in history.
Rarely is a major championship winner identified by a single swing of his club, but such is the case with Tway’s “Hole-y Toledo” moment that instantaneously and unceremoniously made Greg Norman a major runner-up (again).
Oklahoma golf also is saturated in history. The Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame, established in 2014, had an inaugural induction class that included Charlie Coe, Gil Morgan and architect Perry Maxwell, the man who happened to design revered Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, site of the forthcoming 104th PGA Championship (May 19-22).
A steady flow of worthy inductees has followed ever since and will continue to do so. Tway was a member of the 2017 class. Video of his captivating bunker shot, many more career highlights and his emotional acceptance speech are available at the Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame website, www.oklahomagolfhof.org. Also available is footage of more than 30 other HOF inductees.
Tway’s magnificence during the 1986 season included four victories, 13 top-10 and 21 top-25 finishes, which resulted in his peers selecting him PGA Tour Player of the Year.
Tway also excelled in other majors that year. He tied for eighth at the Masters, finishing five strokes behind a 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus when he captured his sixth Green Jacket. In that year’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills (N.Y.) Golf Club, Tway was the first-round leader and trailed by two strokes entering the final round. A double-bogey on the par-5 16th and a bogey on the 17th pushed him down into a tie for eighth, five strokes behind winner Raymond Floyd.
In just his second full season on the PGA Tour, a 27-year-old Tway already had collected a lifetime’s worth of achievements for many touring pros.
However, Tway struggled to accept his excellence. He strived for perfection and constantly tinkered with his swing. A frustrating dry spell ensued.
His first four victories on the PGA Tour came in a span of six months and 22 starts. His next four victories required 17 years and 468 starts. From 1992-94, Tway managed just two top-10 finishes and missed 37 cuts in 75 starts.
“At the time, you don’t realize it all, to tell you the truth,” Tway admitted. “I knew it was great to win a major and I was playing against all these great players, but I was still so young and naïve. I guess I didn’t know any better.”
Tway had good intentions and made no apologies for trying to improve his game.
“Even though I messed with my swing, I was always trying to get better, so I can’t fault myself for that,” Tway has said. “Obviously, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have messed with my swing because I would have known what to do. I guess that’s part of digging it out of the dirt, trying to figure it out.”
After collecting six career victories on the PGA Tour by 1990, Tway ended a five-year victory drought by capturing the 1995 MCI Classic at Hilton Head Island, S.C. He also had eight top-10 and 15 top-25 finishes in 27 starts that season. As a result, Tway was voted 1995 PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year.
Tway, who turns 63 on May 4, retired from competitive golf after suffering a detached retina in his right eye four years ago.
“It throws off my depth perception,” Tway said at the time. “I can’t tell a good lie from a bad lie. I can’t read the greens very well and it just makes things look strange. I look at straight lines and they’re wavy. It’s just a weird phenomenon. It doesn’t necessarily change your quality of life. I can get around fine. For golf, when you need to have your eyesight be a little bit better, it just makes it tough. It’s just one of those things. It’s no big deal. I’m glad it happened to me at (age) 58 as opposed to 35. That would have been a little disappointing. I can still play golf. I just won’t play as much.” Despite the debilitating setback,
Tway’s outlook and attitude remain impressively positive. Those eyes now focus on the potentially blossoming future of his touring son, Kevin. Bob and wife, Tammie, reside in Arizona. Daughter, Carly, is a jewelry designer living in San Clemente, Calif. Bob’s primary residence makes it easier to follow Kevin during the Tour’s West
Coast swing each January and February.
Other than that, Bob tries to see Kevin play in person once a month or so. A past All-American out of Oklahoma
State just like his father, the 33-yearold Kevin began April ranked 107th in championship points toward qualifying for the 156-player PGA Championship in May. The top 70 from the points list are exempt from qualifying. That number can grow, depending on the number of withdrawals due to injuries, etc.
Asked if he thought Kevin’s pro aspirations included repeating his father’s feat of winning a PGA Championship, Bob said, “Well, obviously he’d love to win a major. People ask him about it, but he wasn’t even born when I won. He’s not a big goal guy or whatever. Maybe quietly he is, but he doesn’t talk about it that much. I just think he concentrates on trying to get better and kind of whatever happens, happens, to tell you the truth.”
When Kevin captured the 2018 Safeway Open in a three-way playoff, he and Bob became the 10th father-son duo in history to win on the PGA Tour.
But imagine the symmetry if Kevin were to someday win the PGA Championship, particularly this May in his native state should he qualify. It would make Bob and Kevin the first father-son combination to win major championships on American soil. Willie Park and Willie Park Jr. won a combined six British Opens from 1860-89. Tom (Old Tom) Morris Sr. and Tom (Young Tom) Morris Jr. each won four British Open titles from 1861-72.
“Obviously, you want to play in all the majors,” Bob said. “Kevin likes Southern Hills, so he’d love to be back there. I’d like for him to get in it, too, because I’d love to go back to Oklahoma and watch.”
