There is still magic in the number 59 for golfers.
Maybe not quite as much as there was. Breaking 60 in a PGA Tour event was an unimaginable happening until Al Geiberger did it in Memphis in 1977, hence his subsequent Mr. 59 nickname.
Now, multiple 59s happen every year around the world. Jake Knapp was the latest to record the feat with a hot opening round at the Cognizant Classic at PGA National last weekend. His was No. 60 on the Associated Press’ list of 59s posted on professional tours around the world, all but five of which have come in the 21st Century.
Does the ball go too far now? Nahh. Of course not. What gave you that idea?
There is no such thing as a bad 59 or a terrible 58. I’ve shot plenty of them myself. You can check my scorecards from a variety of 18-hole par-3 tracks around the Midwest. There are even some weak 54s, average 55s and ugly 56s in that collection. Go ahead and sneer but some of those courses were beasts of more than 1,800 yards.
Back in pro golf, shooting 59, 58 or even 57 is still rarefied air. All sub-60s scores are good, some are just better and more significant.
Here’s my list of the most notable official pro scores that start with a 5 (with Homero Blancas’ famous 55 not considered official)…
10) Chip Beck. There were six holes left in the second round of the 1991 Las Vegas Invitational on the PGA Tour when Chip Beck asked for a tour official. He wanted to know if Hilton, a PGA Tour partner, was still offering a $1 million bonus to any player who shot 59. Beck was in the midst of lighting up the Sunrise GC (6,914 yards, par 72) with three eagles and nine birdies. Spurred on, Beck birdied the final two holes (playing with amateurs in the tournament’s pro-am format by the way) to earn the money. He got only half of it, the other $500,000 was donated to charity. And the bonus was paid in annual $25,000 installments over 20 years, not exactly the bonanza it sounded like. According to Internet wizard Joe Bob Google, half a mill in ’91 would be equal to about $1.6 million in 2025 dollars.
9) Jason Bohn. The Canadian Tour’s 2001 Bayer Championship was anywhere near as lucrative for Jason Bohn as a hole-in-one contest he entered while a student at the University of Alabama. Bohn made an ace, won $1 million and used that to launch his pro golf career. At the Bayer Championship, Bohn, 28, became the first player to shoot 58, 13 under par, at a PGA Tour-sanctioned event. He finished two shots ahead of Jason Bugg, whose closing 62 at wasn’t good enough at Huron Oaks in Sarnia, Ont. Bohn made ten birdies, two eagles and a bogey and won all of $32,000 for his second tour win of the season. “The hole-in-one was just pot luck,” Bohn said. “The 58 was more exciting. I earned this.”
8) Stephan Jaeger. It would take something special for a Web.com Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) player to get a headline in 2016, what with the first rounds of the PGA Championship and Women’s British Open starting. But Jaeger did it by shooting a 12-under 58 at the 2016 Ellie Mae Classic (not to be confused with the Jethro Classic, Jed Clampett Classic or Mr. Drysdale Classic) at TPC Stonebrae in Hayward, Calif. Jaeger’s score was the first 58 on one of the big tours—PGA Tour, Web.com, European or PGA Tour Champions. Jaeger, from German, sank a 10-footer for birdie on the final green and went on to win, a victory he needed because he was 102nd on the Web.com money list at the time.
7) Bryson DeChambeau. Yes, the Old White Course at the famed Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia is semi-easy pickings for a long-hitting tour player. Stuart Appleby shot a closing 59 there to win a PGA Tour event in 2010. DeChambeau birdied the final four holes for 58, 12 under, to win his first LIV Golf title in 2023 and he did it stylishly, as you might have guessed. He poured in a 35-footer for birdie on the final green, jumped in the air and later called it “probably the greatest moment of my career.” Keep in mind that he had already won the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. DeChambeau, whose closing rounds were 61-58, won by six.
6) Jim Furyk. Three years after he posted a 59, Furyk went one better en route to winning the 2016 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands. He was 11 under par through 12 holes in the final round and at that point needed only to par in to break 60 at the par-70 course. Furyk stalled on the second nine but rallied late and narrowly missed a lengthy birdie putt on the final green that would’ve been for 57. How many players have posted 58 and 59 in competition? It’s a short list. Like, one.
5) Jim Furyk. When is a 58 better than a 59? When it’s… no, wait. It’s never better on a scorecard. But Furyk’s 59 came in the 2013 BMW Championship at Conway Farms near Chicago and was impressive because it was six shots better than the next lowest score and 12 strokes better than the field’s average. Also, Furyk had a three-putt in there. He knew where he stood on the last hole and stuck a wedge shot tight for the birdie to hit 59. Clutch. Furyk said he embraced the pressure by asking himself in that last fairway how many chances was he going to get to shoot a score like that? As you already know, at least one more.
4) Oliver Fisher. We all know one thing about international golf from the 1980s until today. The European team pretty much owns the United States team in the Ryder Cup. Save your arguments, the Americans have won only six of the last 19 Cups since 1985 and haven’t won a Cup in Europe in 32 years. Yet European golf has lagged the U.S. in 59-chasing. Geiberger got his 59 in 1977. It was 41 years until anyone shot that score in the European Tour. Fisher, an Englishman, finally did it in 2018 at the Portugal Masters. The weather? The conditions? The courses? Who knows? Fisher’s feat is little-known in America but first is first, it matters.
3) David Duval. A 320-yard drive in 1999 is probably equivalent to a 350-yard these days and Duval’s final hole is what made his landmark score so significant. He was in the 1999 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. (Bonus points if you remember Hope. Or Chrysler.) On the final hole, Duval launched the aforementioned bomb, nuclearified (a new word) a 5-iron shot from 218 yards to seven feet and made the eagle putt for the win AND 59. For stat geeks, Duval hit 17 of 18 greens in regulation and sank a total of 54 feet worth of putts in that classic round of ball-striking.
2) Annika Sorenstam. There is no battle of the sexes in golf but 24 years passed after Geiberger’s 59 until Annika became the first player LPGA player to match the feat. She did it in the 2001 Standard Register Ping Championship’s second round, a 13-under-par score at Moon Valley CC. How good was her Roger Bannister moment? No other woman has duplicated it on the LPGA Tour in the 24 years since, which is stunningly hard to believe.
1) Al Geiberger. Mr. 59 was the Roger Bannister of golf. Bannister was the first runner to break the supposedly impregnable four-minute mark in the mile run. That was in the old days before we invented things like jogging, training and Nike shoes.
Two funny things about Geiberger’s epic round, which lifted him to victory in the 1977 Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club, a par-72 track. Due to heavy rains, the Tour put lift-clean-and-place rules into effect. Years later, Geiberger couldn’t remember if he ever took advantage of that. The other thing was Geiberger was 39 at the time and used persimmon woods, balata balls and assorted antique irons. When I hosted a Q&A with him at a media event in Scottsdale once, he said he did take advantage of one thing that day—a parking-lot fire. Due to wet conditions, club officials dumped straw in the parking lots to help dry the fields and keep cars from getting stuck. As the sun heated things up, the straw dried and somehow, maybe a tossed cigarette butt, a fire started. Geiberger kept an eye on the smoke to determine the direction of the wind on the back nine as he played toward history. The first 59 is always going to be the best 59.
