A five-time British Open champion, Senior Players ReUnion Pro-Am defending champion Peter Thomson was a globetrotter before Gary Player could tell the difference between first class and coach.
He left his native Australia in 1950 before he was 21, and promptly stacked his game against the likes of Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Jimmy Demaret. There was no “minor league” college golf for Thomson. No coalition of friends backing him. Just a simple, easy-to-use golf swing and a desire to see what was over the next horizon.
He won his only U.S. title in Dallas at the 1956 Texas International Open, held at the old Preston Hollow Country Club, and finished in the top 10 30 times in 90 appearances on the US. PGA Tour in the 1950s.
While that Dallas win was a rich one-$13,000 in Eisenhower-era dollars- Thomson was always a golfer who wanted to savor the very essence of life. If that included playing the golf courses of Europe, Asia and Africa while his contemporaries were traveling the U.S. Tour, then so be it.
Senior PGA Tour Tournament Director Brian Henning likes to promote the different personalities that make up the rapidly emerging Senior Tour, and none is more different than Thomson.
He was the leading money winner on the Senior PGA Tour last year with $386,724 and nine victories, both records, but if you were to ask him if he prefers playing the back nine at Pebble Beach or listening to the Radio Luxembourg Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in b minor, Opus 74, chances are he’ll opt for Peter Ilyich. His devotion to classical music is so great that he once carried a short-wave radio with him on his world travels so he could pick up the Royal London Philharmonic Saturday night concerts.
As his family, three daughters and a son, began to grow, Thomson stayed closer to home, dropping off the U.S. Tour in the 1960s and concentrating on developing golf in Australia. He found time to win three Australian Opens, nine New Zealand Opens and the championships of Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, India, Hong Kong and the Philippines. He was a major force in the establishment of the Far East Tour and designed more than 25 golf courses in Japan.
His record in the British Open is, perhaps, his greatest achievement. He won the title four times from 1952 through 1958, never finishing worse than second, and outdueled the late Tony Lema to capture the 1965 Open tide at Southport. During that same period, he teamed with Kel Nagle to win the World Cup (then the Canada Cup) in 1954 and 1959.
In 1985 he continued his winning ways with viaories in the MONY Syracuse Seniors Classic, the Du Maurier Champions, the United Virginia Bank Seniors and the Barnett Suntree Senior Classic.
Through early 1986, Thomson has been struggling with his putter. His compact swing that has stood the test of time is still splitting the fairways, but the putts are not dropping. Although winless on the Senior PGA Tour through the Legends of Golf, Thomson is beginning to show signs of his 1985 form. He reeled off seven birdies to card a final round 67 in defense of his Johnny Mathis tide, but ran afoul of red-hot Senior Tour rookie Dale Douglass’s tournament record play.
If his putter gets going, Thomson will be ready to defend in Dallas. After all, Dallas is the only U.S. city where he has won more than one title, and that is a record the globetrotting Australian wants to keep intact.
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