It seems as though in most pro sports, there is a relatively common phenomenon where sons of former players will themselves rise to prominence with varying degrees of success. I’m thinking here of the Mannings, Griffeys, Bonds, Hulls, Sutters, Currys, etc. etc. It’s by no means a guarantee of course, but kids of former players seem to have a decent representation in the next generation of players. But I can’t for the life of me think of an example in golf where a son has risen to a high level of golf - what of Jack Nicklaus’ or Nick Faldo’s or Greg Norman’s or etc. etc. kids?
edit to say: Whoops, meant this to be in The Game Room.
There used to be in the old days of pro golf (Old/Young Tom Morris, for one.)
Off the top of my head, you have Kevin and Craig Stadler. Craig won a Masters and a bunch of other events and Kevin has at least one win on tour. They are father/son. Then you have Jay and Bill Haas. Father Jay won a bunch of events and Bill is one of the rising stars on tour, with a couple of wins under his belt. The Haas family has something like six PGA Tour pros in the last two generations.
Pat Bradley won a slew of LPGA events, like in the Top 10 all-time, and her nephew Keegan already has a Major, the PGA. There are also some brothers like the Molinari’s from Italy.
One of Nicklaus’s sons was on the PGA Tour and finished 2nd to Mickelson in the old Atlanta Tournament.
Many sons of the Greats tried to make it on Tour…but they were never quite good enough. Along with Jack, Gary Player, Johnny Miller, Lee Trevino, Ray Floyd all had sons that tried to make it.
Arnold Palmer only had daughters.
Whats funny to me is that no daughter of a great golfer ever really tried to make a career on the LPGA Tour.
I’ve pondered this before, and it might be sampling bias. There’s less than 100 actual golfers in the World Golf Hall of Fame, vs. over 200 in a typical team sport’s Hall of Fame, and many many more who were “stars” (led the league in this or that a few times, made some All-Star games), but weren’t quite good enough to be elected. This is probably reflective of the sizes of golf fields vs. the sizes of all of the rosters across a league; of the 125 or so which tee it up each weekend, only a relatively small handful have a realistic chance of winning anything, and when a true superstar is on his game (Arnie/Tiger/Jack), everybody else’s chances go down that much more. Just not enough chances in golf to make yourself stand out, not enough competitors to go around; you either win a lot, or you are forgotten.
I mean, how many immediate relatives (son/father/brother) have both made the Halls of the 4 major North American team sports? Paul and LLoyd Waner? [The latter was an arguably unsound choice too.] With the golf Hall being around half the size, shouldn’t be that surprising. My choice for the best relative pair, for baseball at least, would be the Griffey’s; Senior was a much better player than Lloyd Waner. The Sneads of golf would probably be a fairly close match for the Griffey’s, to be honest, even if the former weren’t immediate relations.
All that said, it is a bit of a puzzle in the end, since the young person in question would have a role model right there from childhood on from which he (she) could learn from; they also would have the opportunity and money needed as well, natch, along with the genes of course.
Using the Halls of Fame is not a good example. Baseball has dozens of father and son combinationswho played in the majors, and even some third generation players. There are fewer baseball players overall than touring pro golfers, though.
The PGA tour only became big in the 1950s, so there just wasn’t the time for a second or third generation to grow up. A better comparison would be the NBA, which has around 75 father-and-son combinations in about the same time frame (and with fewer players than baseball). The best list I can find only shows nine father-and-son tour winners, though there could be more where not both actually won a tournament.
Claude Harmon won the Masters many years ago. He has four sons who are Teaching Pros/Coaches most notably his son Claude Jr (Butch). Butch Harmon has coached Tiger, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, and Fred Couples (and many others).
Butch’s son Claude III, is also coaching some teaching pros.
Butch won a satellite PGA tournament about 40 years ago in Upstate NY.
Not sure how you figure that; sure, there is a large fringe group of golfers who move in and out from the regular PGA Tour to the various satellite tours, but they aren’t going to be winning anything. You do have the various international golf tours tho, for a sport which is much more cosmopolitan than baseball is, natch. Still, there are 750 active major leaguers at any one time, a number which dwarfs a typical PGA field.