Billy Joe Patton: Popular Amateur Who Nearly Won Masters
Billy Joe Patton was a lifelong amateur golfer who never came close to winning either of the two biggest amateur tournaments. But he did come close to winning a professional major, The Masters, and had multiple Top 10 finishes in both The Masters and U.S. Open. Patton was a big-bombing country boy who captured the imagination of golf fans in the 1950s and 1960s.
Full name: William Joseph Patton
Date of birth: April 19, 1922
Place of birth: Morganton, North Carolina
Date and place of death: January 1, 2011, in Morganton, North Carolina
His Biggest Wins
Professional tournaments (playing as an amateur):- 1951 Carolinas Open
- 1952 Carolinas Open (tie with Bobby Locke)
- 1947 Carolinas Amateur
- 1954 North and South Amateur
- 1958 Carolinas Amateur
- 1961 Southern Amateur
- 1961 Azalea Invitational
- 1961 Carolinas Amateur
- 1962 North and South Amateur
- 1963 North and South Amateur
- 1964 North Carolina Amateur
- 1965 Southern Amateur
- 1979 Carolinas Senior Amateur
- 1981 Carolinas Senior Amateur
Patton's Near-Miss In The Masters
What Billy Joe Patton was most-famous for in his own time, and what he remains most-famous for today, is a tournament he did not win: the 1954 Masters.Patton was 32 years old at the time, a relatively little-known amateur. But with big, wild drives and a witty personality, he caught the imagination of the golfing public by almost winning The Masters. In some ways, he caught the public imagination just as big-hitting country-boy John Daly did at the 1991 PGA Championship.
Patton's week at Augusta National started with a win in the pre-Masters long-drive contest. Patton's winning drive was 338 yards.
His score of 70 in Round 1 of the 1954 Masters tied (with Dutch Harrison) for the lead. He took the solo lead after a second-round 74, one stroke ahead of Ben Hogan. But a 75 in Round 3 knocked him down to third place. He was five shots off Hogan's lead, three strokes behind second-place Sam Snead.
No amateur had ever won The Masters, and still hasn't. But when Patton scored an ace on the sixth hole in the final round, suddenly he was in contention.
Playing with Hogan, he then birdied the eighth and ninth holes for a 32 (tying The Masters' 9-hole record for amateurs) on the front nine. He was tied with Hogan for the lead, and after the 11th he was in the lead by himself by one shot.
Patton parred the 12th, then hit another booming drive on the par-5 No. 13. He debated whether to go for the green or lay up short of the creek in front of the green. Then he did what big hitters usually do: He went for it.
Patton's ball wound up in the creek, and he completed the hole with a double bogey 7. He birdied No. 14, but then put another ball into the water on the par-5 15th. In the end, he scored 39 on the back nine for a 71 total, and despite those two water balls wound up finishing just one stroke out of a Hogan-Snead playoff. (Snead won that playoff and the title.)
Receiving condolences and well-wishes after coming up just short, Patton brushed off the bad feelings, saying, "Hell, it ain't like losing a leg."
And Patton never regretted, at least not publicly, his decisions to go for the green on the 13th and 15th holes. Years later, he told the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper:
"It wasn't choking and it wasn't pressure. I got birdies going for the pins, and I got the '6' and '7' going for the pins. I came down from Morganton with the intention of going for the pins for 72 holes. No regrets, no alibis."Patton played The Masters many times after and was low amateur a couple more times. He later served as a rules official during the tournament, and eventually became a member of Augusta National.
But the story of Billy Joe Patton in the 1954 Masters didn't really end until 30 years later, with Ben Crenshaw in the 1984 Masters. Crenshaw was looking for his first major championship victory, and was in position to grab it when he reached the 13th hole in the final round.
After a great drive, Crenshaw stood in the 13th fairway debating whether to go for the green or lay up short of the creek, just as Patton had 30 years earlier.
As he stood there in the 13th fairway, Crenshaw looked around and clearly spotted Patton standing in the gallery. A great student of golf history, Crenshaw recognized Patton immediately, and knew all about Patton's story.
That's a sign, Crenshaw thought to himself, not to go for the green. Seeing Patton spurred him to make the decision to lay up. And that's what Crenshaw did: He laid up and made par. And then Crenshaw went on to a two-stroke victory.
The twist to the story? Billy Joe Patton was not in attendance at the 1984 Masters.
More About Billy Joe Patton
The 1954 Masters wasn't Patton's only high finish in one of the professional majors. After finishing third and earning low amateur at Augusta National, he was the first-round leader in the 1954 U.S. Open. He finished as the low amateur, tied for sixth place.Patton was also the low amateur in The Masters in 1958 (eighth place) and 1960 (tied 13th), and low amateur in the U.S. Open in 1957 (tied eighth after sharing the second-round lead). He also tied for eighth in the 1959 Masters, tied 12th in the 1956 Masters, and finished 13th in the 1956 U.S. Open.
Patton's game was marked by long but often wild drives (produced by a "lightning-fast swing"), great recoveries and good putting.
Peter Alliss wrote of Patton the he was "indeed a long hitter, and wild with it, so that his spectacular recoveries were much relished by onlookers." The editors of a 1970s golf encyclopedia wrote that Patton had "one of the fastest swings in first-class golf," and continued: "At the address Patton's whole powerful frame was tensed as though against some explosion, and he used a waggle that gave full notice of what was to come."
With his homemade, ultra-fast swing and bombs-away attitude, Patton, the sportswriter Charles Price once wrote, "looked like a drunk at a driving range."
Longtime North Carolina golf writer Ron Green Sr. cited Patton's "witty and entertaining personality," and called him "the most endearing and colorful golf star to ever come smiling and slashing out of North Carolina."
In his obituary of Patton, Green continued:
"Billy Joe played swashbuckling golf, happy golf, golf that was splendid only in its result. He played golf that substituted soul for mechanism, golf that always had a dramatic uncertainty to it, golf that had a joy to it that we don't often see anymore among the best players."Patton himself once called the way he played the game, "Full bore, full guts."
Patton was born in and grew up in Morganton, North Carolina, and he lived there and died there. By age five he had taken up the game and through childhood practiced and played at Mimosa Hills Golf and Country Club in Morganton.
He played college golf at Wake Forest University, the school whose golf team later produced Arnold Palmer, Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Jay Haas, Darren Clarke and Webb Simpson, among many others. But Patton, who graduated in 1943, was the first Wake Forest golfer to gain national prominence.
After leaving college, Patton spent three years in U.S. Navy. Then he returned to North Carolina to embark on his lifelong job selling lumber. As a career amateur with a busy job, Patton was really only ever a part-time golfer.
The oddity about Patton's golf career is that he came closer to winning professional majors than he ever did to winning either of the amateur majors, the U.S. and British amateur championships.
In the U.S. Amateur, which he played a total of 19 times, Patton made it as far as the Round of 16 only twice: semifinals in 1962, and Round of 16 in 1964. In the 1962 U.S. Amateur, Patton beat Jim Gabrielsen, 7 and 6, in the quarterfinals, setting a tournament record for largest winning margin in an 18-hole quarterfinal. But he lost in the semifinals to the eventual champ, Labron Harris Jr. He also tied for eighth place in the 1968 U.S. Am, one of the years it was stroke play.
He played the British Amateur only three times, twice getting knocked out very early. But in 1955 Patton reached the quarterfinals before falling to Philip Scrutton.
But while Patton never won the two biggest amateur events, he did win multiple other impressive amateur tournaments. Those included three victories (1954, 1962, 1963) in the North and South Amateur at Pinehurst. He lost in the North and South title match in 1951 to Hobart Manley, then beat Manley in the final to win in 1962.
Patton had two wins in the Southern Amateur, in 1961 and 1965. In 1961 he won the title match by a 10-and-9 score. The 1965 victory, when he was 43 years old, has been called his "last significant victory."
Patton won the Carolinas Amateur in 1947, 1958 and 1961, and was runner-up in 1959. He won the North Carolina Amateur in 1964 after being runner-up in 1962.
And he won two Carolina Opens against fields that included some top pros, including a tie for the trophy with soon-to-be-legend Bobby Locke in 1952.
Patton was a five-time member of Team USA in the USA vs. Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup:
- 1955 Walker Cup: Won foursomes with partner Dick Yost; beat Philip Scrutton, 2 and 1, in singles.
- 1957 Walker Cup: Won foursomes with partner Rex Baxter. In singles, Patton was 5-down to Reid Jack after the morning 18. But in the afternoon 18, Patton kept making spectacular recoveries from wayward drives to halve or win holes he probably should have lost. He wound up winning the match 1-up.
- 1959 Walker Cup: Partnered with player-captain Charles Coe to win a foursomes match 9 and 8. In singles, though, Patton lost a rematch with Jack, 5 and 3.
- 1963 Walker Cup: Split two foursomes matches, losing with partner R.H. Sikes on Day 1, but winning on Day 2. In singles, Patton was the only American winner on Day 1, 3 and 2 over Martin Christmas. On Day 2, he defeated Stuart Murray, 3 and 2.
- 1965 Walker Cup: In foursomes, Patton and partner Ed Tutwiler split two matches. In singles, he lost on Day 1 to Peter Townsend, 3 and 2; and on Day 2 defeated Michael Lunt, 4 and 2, as the anchor player in what turned out to be an 11-11 tie between the teams.
The PGA Tour credits Patton with 25 starts in tour tournaments over the years, all but three of them either The Masters or the U.S. Open. His five Top 10 finishes in PGA Tour starts were all in majors and are mentioned above.
Patton was involved in golf adminstration later on (while continuing as a lumber salesman, and also winning Carolinas Senior Amateur titles in 1979 and 1981). He served on the USGA Executive Committee, and for many years was a rules official at The Masters.
In 1982, the USGA awarded Patton its top honor, the Bob Jones Award.
Today Patton is a member of the North Carolina Golfers Hall of Fame, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame, Southern Golf Association Hall of Fame, Carolinas Golf Association Golf Hall of Fame, and Burke County Sports Hall of Fame.
Sources:
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
Alliss, Peter. The Who's Who of Golf, 1983, Orbis Publishing.
Elliott, Len, and Kelly, Barbara. Who's Who in Golf, 1976, Arlington House Publishers.
Gibson, Nevin H. The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1964, A.S. Barnes and Company.
Green, Ron Sr. "Billy Joe Patton nearly won '54 Masters, undoubtedly won hearts," The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, January 2, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20110112113907/https://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/01/02/1949543/billy-joe-patton-nearly-won-54.html.
PGA Tour. Players, Billy Patton, https://www.pgatour.com/player/17658/billy-patton.
The R&A. Royal and Ancient Championship Records 1860-1980, Peter Ryde editor, 1981, Royal and Ancient Golf Club St. Andrews.
Rubenstein, Lorne, and Neuman, Jeff. A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, McLelland & Stewart, 2006.
Shefter, David. "Legendary Amateur Billy Joe Patton Dies At 88," USGA.com, January 1, 2011, https://www.usga.org/articles/2011/01/legendary-amateur-billy-joe-patton-dies-at-88-2147491650.html.
Steel, Donald, and Ryde, Peter. The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1975, The Viking Press.
United States Golf Association. Official USGA Record Book, 1895-1990, Triumph Books, 1992.
United States Golf Association. U.S. Amateur Records, https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/media/online-media-center/usga-records/u-s--amateur-records.html.
Wake Forest University. Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame, Billy Joe Patton, https://godeacs.com/honors/wake-forest-sports-hall-of-fame/billy-joe-patton/10.
