Tommy Bolt

Sport: Golf

Induction Year: 1974

Induction Year: 1974

Tommy Bolt, professional golf’s last angry man, grew up in Shreveport, La., during the Great Depression, dropped out of Byrd High School as a sophomore and won nine tournaments on the Professional Golf Association tour.

One of them was the 1958 U.S. Open, played in scorching heat of the Southern Hills course in Tulsa , Okla.

The first two times he took a shot at pro golf, Bolt didn’t make it. He would sell his clubs at one tournament, borrow at the next and buy a new set when he finished in the money.

Nobody had Lear jets in those days. When Bolt went on the tour again, he started with $100 and a used automobile. He knew that if he didn’t finish in the money in his first tournament—at St. Paul , Minn. —his career would be over. So he finished in the money.

“I don’t have a baby face,” he said. “My face has been through some hazards. These kids now, they’re all college graduates with millionaires backing them. They don’t have any pressure on them. I had to produce. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t eat.”

He was the guy form the wrong side of the tracks who beat the country club set at their own game, and he didn’t mind rubbing their noses in it.

Sports writers dubbed him “Thunder” Bolt, automatically preceding his name with such adjectives as “Tempestuous” and “Terrible-tempered” because of his reputation for throwing clubs, wrapping them around trees and insulting people. Bolt was an eccentric man with a vile temper, but was one of the game’s finest ball strikers. After the first round of the 1955 U.S. Open at the Lakeside course of the Olympic Club in San Francisco , he had a three-stroke lead with 11 one-putt greens and a total of only 25 putts. Ben Hogan and Jack Fleck, who trailed Bolt by one stroke after the second rounds eventually wound up in a playoff and Fleck won.

That was the last time Hogan came close to winning a major title, but the tips he gave Bolt that summer helped him become one of the best players on the tour.

The 1958 U.S. Open was played on a cutthroat Southern Hills course in 96 degree temperature. “The fairways were 30 yards wide,” Bolt recalled. “We almost had to walk single file.”

Hogan suggested that a protest committee be formed. Gene Sarazen called the course “ridiculous.” But for Bolt, who learned to play the game on the nine-hole Lakeside Municipal Course in Shreveport, it was a piece of cake.

He birdied the first hole with a 15-foot putt. “The instant it fell in the cup,” he recalled, “ I knew those other guys were all playing for second place. It just felt that way. All I had to do was keep the clubs in my hand and finish.”

Nobody else made it through the tournament without at least one 75 round. Bolt’s highest round was 72—and he didn’t go that high until a double bogey on the final hole. By that time, it was over. He beat runner-up Gary Player, who was in his first U.S. Open, by four strokes.

When the gallery cheered the native son (Bolt was born in Haworth , Okla. , but moved to Shreveport after his mother died when he was two years old), he doffed his brown straw hat and announced, “I am a man of peace.”

Then he went to the press tent and blasted a writer who had reported his age as 49. Bolt was 40 years old, but had listed his age as 39.

He proclaimed himself a new man, but two weeks later he stepped off a plane in New York and abused Frank Shields, the former Davis Cup tennis player who had arranged to fly in 10 golfers for the Pepsi Tournament on Long Island . Then he quit after nine holes of the pro-am and walked off the course after nine holes of the Pepsi event. Once again, he was fined for conduct that the PGA considered detrimental to the game.

The only time Bolt came close to winning a major title after was the 1961 Masters, and he needed a 68 on the final round to finish third in that one—five strokes behind Player. When he defended his Open title at Winged Foot, he finished 38th.

He set a PGA record of 60 at Harford, and set another by playing 72 holes without a five on his card. He was twice selected to the Ryder Cup team, and on the senior tour he won the “Grand Slam” (PGA, Open and World tournaments) and seven others.

But he would be remembered primarily for his conniption fits. Bolt considered himself more of a club breaker than a club thrower. He was especially tough on putters, and had to finish several tournaments putting with other clubs because the rules did not allow him to replace damaged clubs. Once, he stomped a driver so hard that the club head stuck to his spikes and a member of the next group had to remove it for him.

In 1957, the PGA adopted the “Tommy Bolt rule” prohibiting the throwing of clubs. The day after it was passed, Bolt tossed a putter because he wanted to be the first one fined for breaking “his” rule.

When he wasn’t breaking clubs, Bolt was getting in trouble with the PGA for breaking wind. He did it in the 1959 Memphis Open, when an opponent was addressing a putt. It caused quite a stir in the gallery, and when spectators turned him in Bolt received a $250 fine from Bob Rosburg, who was chairman of the player’s committee.

The PGA doesn’t keep records in this category, but Bolt is believed to be the only golfer ever fined for farting.