In '61, Jerry Barber had some tricks up his sleeve.

Byline: Ed Sherman

You can't play defense in golf.

Don January could only watch helplessly as he witnessed Jerry Barber hole three putts of legendary proportion en route to winning the 1961 PGA Championship at Olympia Fields.

"There is not a thing you can do," said January, who lost to Barber in an 18-hole playoff the day after Barber tied him with his long-distance putting exhibition. "The hardest part is trying to not let it bother you. It wasn't just those last three holes. It happened all day long. ... All you can do is tell yourself, `It happened. Forget it and take care of your own business.' That's what I tried to do. Sometimes you wonder if destiny has a part in it."

The 45-year-old Barber, who stood just 5-foot-5, holed putts of 20, 40 and 60 feet on the final three holes of regulation in one of the most electrifying stretches of major tournament golf history to earn his spot in the playoff.

"This bare recital of the facts, however, does not contain the three successively stunning putts of 20, 40 and 60 feet on the 70th, 71st and 72nd green by which the indomitable Barber wrested the tie from certain defeat," wrote Chicago Tribune golf editor Charles Bartlett.

The next day, Barber's hot putting continued. He defeated January by a shot with a 67.

January eventually bounced back to win the 1967 PGA in Denver, played on two Ryder Cup teams and won the Vardon Trophy at 46. He was one of the founders of the PGA's Champions Tour. Barber, who was then the oldest player to win a major, won seven PGA Tour events and played the Ryder Cup team as the result of his victory at Olympia Fields. Both players played on the Senior PGA Tour but didn't talk about what happened at Olympia Fields.

The third round had been rained out on Saturday, so the field had to play 36 holes on the final day. January took the 54-hole lead by two shots over Barber with a 67 at 5-under 205. The 31-year-old Texan birdied the first hole of the final round to go three up on Barber, a native of Woodson, Ill.

Barber appeared to be crumbling under the final-round pressure. On the classic third hole, which will be the 12th for the 2003 U.S. Open, Barber drove into trees and had to reverse a wedge to dislodge his ball from a tree root. His third shot was a 4-wood that was 50 yards short of the green. His pitch shot landed about 4 feet short of the flag and rolled into the hole. Destiny, anyone?

"From there on," Bartlett quoted Barber, who died in 1994, "I kept going back to that hole and telling myself, `If you can get a break like that when you're three shots down, you've got a chance to catch him yet.'"

Barber fell four back with a bogey on the fifth, but he birdied Nos. 7 and 9 to get back within two.

Destiny again came into the picture on the 10th, which Bartlett described as "appalling." Barber double-bogeyed the hole after a 90-yard tee shot found the water. He saved a 6 with an 18-foot putt, but was again four shots behind.

"With a four-shot lead," January recalled, "I thought there was no way he was going to get me. But sure enough, there was a way."

A January bogey and Barber's 20-foot birdie putt on the 16th cut the lead to two. Barber chunked another tee shot on the 17th but bailed himself out with his 40-footer for par.

Standing on the 18th with a two-shot lead, January drove into a fairway bunker and needed two more shots to reach the green. Barber hit a good tee shot and a 3-iron to 60 feet to set the stage for history. He rolled in the cross-country putt, which some paced off as "only" 52 feet, to put the pressure on January.

January missed a 12-footer for par and was forced into the playoff.

"You don't try to pay much attention to it while it's happening," January said. "Afterward, you get to recounting it and you think, `My goodness! What went on?'"

The next day Barber twice came back from two-shot deficits and birdied three of the last six holes to win 67-68. January, who was bothered by Barber's slow play during the five-hour round, bogeyed the 18th.

After the playoff, January and his wife Patricia, who was eight months pregnant, and their two children drove straight through to their Dallas home. It was a long ride and an even longer recovery period for January.

"It took a while," January said. "It doesn't creep up during your play. It creeps up off the course. I think that affects the way you play. I guess it's like getting paint on your hands if you don't have turpentine to get it off. If you use enough soap and water, it comes off a month later.

"I didn't sleep much for quite a while. It just bothers you. You just think, `Golly, what in the world did I do to warrant all of that?' The answer is I did nothing. I could have stopped it if I had just made a par, but he could have stopped it if I had missed one of those long putts."

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(c) 2003, Chicago Tribune.

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