The Seattle Open Invitational was a professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

tournament on the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also ...

in the northwest

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, in the greater Seattle area. It was played eight times over three decades under five names at three locations.

History

The first Seattle Open was held in 1936 at

Inglewood Golf Club Inglewood Golf Club is a private golf club in the northwest United States in Kenmore, Washington. Founded in 1919 and opened for play in July 1921, it is located at the north end of Lake Washington, northeast of Seattle. Inglewood was designed by ...

in Kenmore in early August. Macdonald Smith won an playoff with a course record 65 (–8), six strokes ahead of runner-up

Ralph Guldahl Ralph J. Guldahl (November 22, 1911 – June 11, 1987) was an American professional golfer, one of the top five players in the sport from 1936 to 1940. He won sixteen PGA Tour-sanctioned tournaments, including three majors (two U.S. Opens and one ...

, who won the next two U.S Opens and the Masters in 1939. The next Seattle Open was played nine years later in October 1945 at

Broadmoor Golf Club The Broadmoor Golf Club is a pair of golf courses, located on the grounds of The Broadmoor, a historic hotel and resort Colorado Springs, Colorado. Originally opened in 1918 and designed by Donald Ross, the course format was expanded in 1965 ...

in Seattle and won by

Byron Nelson John Byron Nelson Jr. (February 4, 1912 – September 26, 2006) was an American professional golfer between 1935 and 1946, widely considered one of the greatest golfers of all time. Nelson and two other legendary champions of the time, Ben Hoga ...

, with a world record 259 (–21) and a victory margin of 13 strokes. He won a record eighteen tournaments in 1945, including eleven consecutive. Sixteen years later, the tour returned to Seattle in 1961 at Broadmoor in mid-September with the Greater Seattle Open Invitational. won in a sudden-death playoff, over Bob Rosburg and

Jacky Cupit Jackie or Jacky may refer to: People and fictional characters * Jackie (given name), a list of people and fictional characters named Jackie or Jacky ** Jackie, current ring name of female professional wrestler Jacqueline Moore ** Jackie Lee ( ...

; Marr shot a final round 63 (–7) and birdied the first extra hole In 1962, it was renamed the Seattle World's Fair Open Invitational as part of the region's celebration of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. The victor by two strokes was a 22-year-old rookie from

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

named Jack Nicklaus. It was his second tour win and first non- major, following a playoff victory over

Arnold Palmer Arnold Daniel Palmer (September 10, 1929 – September 25, 2016) was an American professional golfer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most charismatic players in the sport's history. Dating back to 1955, he won numerous ev ...

in June at the U.S. Open at Oakmont. Nicklaus had won $50,000 in the exhibition

World Series of Golf The World Series of Golf was a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour, played at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. From its inception in 1962 through 1975, it was an unofficial 36-hole event matching the winners of the four major champi ...

the week before, and won in Portland the following week for his third tour title. The last event in 1966, the Greater Seattle-Everett Classic, was held at the Everett Golf & Country Club. It was won by

Homero Blancas Homero Blancas, Jr. (born March 7, 1938) is an American professional golfer who has played on both the PGA Tour and the Senior PGA Tour (now known as the Champions Tour). Amateur career Blancas, who is of Mexican American descent, was born in ...

, one stroke ahead of Cupit, a two-time runner-up. Inglewood later hosted the

GTE Northwest Classic The GTE Northwest Classic was a professional golf tournament in the Seattle area on the Senior PGA Tour. Played for ten seasons, from 1986 Senior PGA Tour, 1986 through 1995 Senior PGA Tour, 1995, its inaugural event was at Sahalee Country Club ( ...

on the Senior PGA Tour, from

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, ...

through

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...

Venues

Winners

Playoffs

*1936: 18-hole playoff, Smith 65 (–8), Guldahl 71 (–2). *1961: Marr sank a birdie putt on the first playoff hole, a par-5, for the win. *1965: Brewer had a tap-in par on the first playoff hole, a par-4, and Sanders bogeyed.

Notes

References

External links

Broadmoor Golf ClubInglewood Golf ClubEverett Golf & Country Club
{{Former PGA Tour Events Former PGA Tour events Golf in Washington (state)