Seattle Open Invitational (Former PGA Tour Tournament)
First played: 1936
Last played: 1966
The Seattle Open Invitational was played over a 30-year span, yet took place only eight times. Six of those times were consecutively in the 1960s.
It was in 1962 that Jack Nicklaus won the tournament (then named Seattle World's Fair Open Invitational), his second career PGA Tour victory and first after winning the 1962 U.S. Open. Nicklaus won by two strokes over Tony Lema.
In 1945, Byron Nelson won a record 18 times on the PGA Tour, and his victory in this event was the 17th of those wins. His score of 259 was the first-ever sub-260 score posted anywhere in the world for a 72-hole professional golf tournament on a regulation golf course. Nelson's margin of victory was a tournament-record 13 strokes.
The tournament was first played in 1936 when Macdonald Smith won a playoff against Ralph Guldahl by firing a then-course record 65. That turned out to be the last of Smith's 25 career wins on the PGA Tour. His first win had been in 1912. That nearly 24-year-span was, at the time, the PGA Tour record for longest gap between first and last wins.
There were two other playoffs in tournament history, won by Dave Marr and Gay Brewer. Six of the tournament's eight winners were also major championship winners.
Also known as: In addition to Seattle Open and Seattle Open Invitational, the tournament's names included Greater Seattle Open Invitational, Seattle World's Fair Open Invitational and Greater Seattle-Everett Classic.
Winners of the Seattle Open
These are the winners during the second iteration of the tournament in the 1960s:
1961 — Dave Marr, 265 (def. Jacky Cupit and Bob Rosburg in playoff)
1962 — Jack Nicklaus, 265
1963 — Bobby Nichols, 272
1964 — Billy Casper, 265
1965 — Gay Brewer, 279 (def. Doug Sanders in playoff)
1966 — Homero Blancas, 266
These are the winners the first two times a Seattle Open was played in the 1930s and 1940s:
1936 — Macdonald Smith, 285 (def. Ralph Guldahl in playoff)
1945 — Byron Nelson, 259
Golf courses: Broadmoor Golf Club in Seattle was the tournament site four times, in 1945, 1961-62 and 1964. Inglewood Golf Club in Kenmore was the site three times (including the first in 1936) and Everett Golf & Country Club in Everett, Wash., was the golf course the last time the tournament was played, in 1966.
