Jordan Spieth returns to the scene of his first ever PGA Tour victory this week, with his win at the 2013 John Deere Classic making him the first teenager to clinch a title in 82 years.
You would have to go back to Ralph Guldahl for the last teenager to secure what is now recognised as a PGA Tour victory, with the fellow Texan winning the Santa Monica Open in 1931.
Guldahl’s story is a remarkable one. While he won three major titles, he had essentially retired from the game at the highest level little more than a decade after his maiden victory as a professional.
It was not the first time that he had walked away from playing full-time.
The story of Ralph Guldahl, the last teenage winner on the PGA Tour before Jordan Spieth
Guldahl won the Santa Monica Open in his first season as a professional. He did not turn 20 until later in the year.
His first flirtation with winning a major came at the US Open in 1933. Guldahl had begun the final round at North Shore six shots adrift of amateur Johnny Goodman. Goodman was the only player still under par for the tournament at that stage.
Incredibly, Guldahl went on a run of 11 holes where he made up nine shots on the leader. Ultimately, he needed to make a four-foot putt for par on the last to force a playoff between the pair.
Unfortunately, he missed to hand Goodman the title. Goodman remains the last amateur to win the US Open.
According to Golf Compendium, Guldahl only played a handful of events in 1935, briefly leaving the tour to sell cars. His son had been born that year and he wanted to spend more time at home.
His willingness to stay away from the game was something of a sign of what was to come.
Guldahl won the US Open in 1937 and 1938, while he won The Masters in 1939. Sam Snead finished second to Guldahl for two of his three major victories.
He also managed to win the Western Open three years in a row between 1936 and 1938. At the time, the event was considered one of the most prestigious and important on the schedule.
With that, it has always intrigued golfing historians that Guldahl would not win another professional event after 1940.
The curious and misunderstood decline of Ralph Guldahl
As noted by Golf Compendium, there was speculation that his game went into a rapid decline after he wrote a book about the sport. The theory was that Guldahl had never gone into such detail with his own swing and ran into issues as he began to overanalyse it for the book.
However, that is far from true, with Guldahl continuing to register a number of top 10 finishes in the early 1940s.
Indeed, the World Golf Hall of Fame article on Guldahl claims that he ‘suddenly’ lost his game.
But Guldahl insisted in an interview with the New York Times in 1979 that the rumour about the book killing his career was ‘nonsense’.
Instead, Guldahl explained that he began to lose his desire to compete after just over a decade in the professional game.
The 1949 US Open would prove to be his final major appearance until The Masters in 1964.
He would continue playing at Augusta National as a past champion until 1973.
It would be another 40 years before the PGA Tour would have another teenage winner, with fellow Texan Jordan Spieth emerging victorious at TPC Deere Run.
