Jack Burke Jr., a leading player on the PGA Tour in the postwar years who won two major golf championships in one season and then became a sought-after instructor to some of the game’s biggest stars, died Friday in Houston. He was 100 years old and the oldest living winner of the Masters and PGA Championships.
A spokesman for the Texas Athletic Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 1978, confirmed the death.
Burke’s banner year was 1956, when he won both the Masters and PGA titles and was named PGA Golfer of the Year.
His Masters victory surprised almost everyone.
Just weeks earlier, having failed to open Inverness in Ohio in 1953, Burke, who was 33, had announced that he was considering retirement. And going into the final round at Augusta National Golf Club, he was eight strokes behind Masters leader Ken Venturi and hadn’t attracted much attention.
All eyes were on Venturi, who at 24 was bidding to become the first amateur to win the Masters. But as Venturi faltered, Burke climbed the leaderboard, passing eight players to win by one stroke.
He had received some meteorological assistance.
“I had a downhill putt on the 17th hole that was lightning fast, and it got even faster because the 40-mile-per-hour wind had blown sand onto the green,” Burke told Golf Digest in 2004. “I just hit that putt and immediately I thought, “Oh no, I didn’t get it halfway through.” Then the wind grabbed that thing and kept blowing it down the hill until it sank dead in the middle of the hole. It was a miracle – the best break of my career.”
That June, Burke won the PGA Championship, defeating Ted Kroll at Blue Hill Country Club in Canton, Massachusetts, in a format of play based on holes won in a head-to-head match rather than the number of strokes . on a scorecard.
In all, Burke won 16 tournaments on the Professional Golfers’ Association of America tour, including four in four weeks in 1952.
The son of a Houston Golf Club professional, Burke turned pro at 17 and joined the tour at 23, being labeled as one of the most promising golfers of his generation.
In 1949, Burke, then living in Kiamesha Lake, Sullivan County, New York, recorded his first professional victory, in the Metropolitan Open at his hometown Metropolis Country Club in White Plains, defeating veteran Gene Sarazen. The victory came 24 years to the day Burke’s father defeated Sarazen in a tournament, as Sarazen sadly but good-naturedly pointed out to Jack Jr.
In 1952, after his four consecutive tour wins and second-place finish at the Masters behind Sam Snead, Burke was named “Golf’s New Hot-Shot” by Collier magazine. At 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, he could hit 265 yards off the tee and was an excellent putter. His boyish good looks only added to his appeal.
“His curly, light auburn hair, blue eyes and occasional shy smile have made him a favorite of female links addicts,” the magazine wrote, identifying Burke as “one of golf’s most eligible bachelors.”
In 1957, Burke joined his mentor, Jimmy Demaret, the first three-time Masters champion, in founding the Champions Golf Club in Houston. Demaret has been assistant pro under Burke’s father since Jack Jr. he was 10 years old.
Burke and Demaret established a membership policy — which is still in effect — that only handicap golfers 14 and under are accepted. “I liken us to Stanford University or Yale or Harvard,” Burke told Golf Digest. “They don’t accept D students academically and we don’t accept people with D averages in golf.”
The club hosted the 1969 United States Open and the 2020 US Women’s Open Championship, among other tournaments.
Burke earned distinction as the longtime instructor of Phil Mickelson, Hal Sutton, Steve Elkington and other professionals. At 70, Arnold Palmer stopped by for a lesson.
Jack Nicklaus once said of Burke, “I can’t tell you how many times we were playing golf and he would say, ‘Jack, how are you going to play from that position?’
John Joseph Burke Jr. was born on January 29, 1923 in Fort Worth, the oldest of eight siblings, one of whom died young. He grew up in Houston, where his father, who had tied for second in the 1920 US Open, was the pro at River Oaks Country Club.
Jack Jr. first played golf at age 6. At 12, he shot a 69 on a tough par-71 course. At 16, he qualified for the US Open. But at 17, at his mother’s insistence, he entered the Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston. He left before completing his first year, however, and became the head pro at Galveston Country Club.
When World War II broke out, Burke joined the Marine Corps and taught combat training, including judo. He joined the PGA Tour after the war (it officially became the PGA Tour in 1968), moved to New York State and also taught golf at clubs in New Jersey and New York.
He first gained much attention in 1951 when he recorded two commanding victories in that year’s Ryder Cup competition. This led to his selection in four more Ryder Cup events in the 1950s, in which he compiled a 7-1 match record against his European competition. He was a two-time Ryder Cup captain, losing in 1957 and winning in 1973.
In 1952, he won the Vardon Trophy, given to the captain of the trip in scoring average. (His was 70.54.) When Burke was 81, Hal Sutton, the 2004 United States Ryder Cup captain, named him assistant captain.
Burke was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2003, he was voted the recipient of the PGA Tour’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the United States Golf Association’s Bob Jones Award. In 2007, he received the PGA Distinguished Service Award.
Burke married Ielene Lang in 1952. She died in the mid-1980s. He was in his 60s when, in 1984, he met Robin Moran, a freshman golfer at the University of Texas, on the golf course at Champions Golf Club, where the her father had sent her for golf lessons, according to PGA historian Bob. Denny. The couple married in 1987. She was a finalist in the 1997 United States Women’s Amateur Championship and was also inducted into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame. She survives him.
Burke had a daughter with his second wife and five children with his first, including a son, John J. Burke III, who died in 2017. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.
Burke entered the elite by winning two majors in one season, but by his own choice he would never have had a shot at a grand slam as it is perceived today, winning all four, either in one season or in a career. He missed the cut at the 1956 US Open, at Oak Hill Country Club outside Rochester, and never played in the British Open.
Frank Litsky, a longtime Times sportswriter, died in 2018. William McDonald and Sofia Poznansky contributed reporting.
