It was the summer of 1972, the summer before my senior year at Archbishop Carroll.
Merion Golf Club, where I had been a regular caddy for the last few summers, was going to be hosting a local U.S. Amateur qualifier, 18 at the iconic East Course and 18 at nearby Llanerch Country Club.
Players could come on a Monday and get in a practice round. There were no guarantees that there would be any loops to be had, but caddies were told they could come and make themselves available.
When the caddiemaster asked if I wanted to take a single bag with Mr. Sigel and he would have a playing partner who would be carrying his own bag, I said sure.
That’s how it came to be that a dorky high school kid, decked in out in garish red and yellow shorts and the red side of his reversible Carroll gym class shirt, got to spend an afternoon on the East Course with Jay Sigel and Buddy Marucci, two of America’s finest amateur golfers of the 53 years that have passed since then.
Sigel died last weekend at the age of 81 and, as you would expect, the memories of that day and the next day when I carried for Sigel in the Merion half of the qualifier came flooding back.
I was vaguely aware that Sigel was one of the top amateur players in Pennsylvania and that he had already won multiple state amateur titles.
At some point during that practice round, Sigel asked me if I wanted to carry his bag the next day. I told him there were many better regular Merion loopers than me, but he said, “you’re fine.” I took it as a compliment and happily accepted the offer.
There were no rangefinders in 1972, kids. We had yardages measured from the bottoms and tops of bunkers, from that big tree along the side of the hole. Scientific, it was not.
By the end of that practice round, though, I had a renewed confidence in my numbers. Caddying for Jay Sigel was like being out there with “Iron Byron,” the robot that mimicked the swing of the great Byron Nelson in the testing of clubs.
If you told him it was 132 yards, it mattered because he could hit it 132 yards. He was that precise all day.
I’m sure some found Sigel almost humorless on the golf course. I saw it as a focus, as pure as focus as I’ve ever seen from a golfer.
Marucci was carrying his Maryland bag that day, his college career either recently ended or maybe with one year remaining. He had grown up on Golf View Road with the seventh hole literally in his backyard. I grew up in the same neighborhood on Shawnee Road, about four blocks down Darby Road.
As we stood on the tee at the par-3 ninth hole in the practice round, Marucci said to Sigel, “You know how many times I’ve played these three holes, seven, eight and nine? Probably a thousand times.”
Sigel said nothing. He was focused on the next shot, just like always.
Didn’t matter to Marucci. If he had been looking for mentor, Marucci couldn’t have chosen more wisely than Sigel. Not only could Sigel teach him some things about golf, Sigel could teach him how to act.
When we arrived on the tee at the tough par-3 third hole the next day in the actual qualifier, Sigel asked, quite succinctly, “4 or 5?” Even though I had only watched him play 20 holes, I was pretty certain. “5,” I responded.
Sigel’s stuck it to five feet from the sucker pin on the left side of the green. “Good call,” he said as he handed the club back to me. That’s all and that’s all I needed to hear.
Sigel qualified for the U.S. Amateur that day. Not sure where it was, but, needless to say, I started to pay much closer attention to his amateur career that was just starting to take off.
Sigel would win 11 Pennsylvania Amateur titles, including five straight from 1972 to 1976. Heard a guy once say, “Sigel can only play stroke play. Can’t play match play.”
When Sigel won The Amateur Championship, beating Scott Hoch in the final in 1979 at Hillsdale Golf Club, that theory went out the window in a big way. Only one American has won the Royal & Ancient’s Amateur Championship since.
Sigel would go on to win U.S. Amateur crowns in back-to-back years in 1982 and ’83.
In 1983 he added a victory in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship, an event still in its infancy. Sigel is the only player to win the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Mid-Am in the same year. He would add two more U.S. Mid-Am titles in 1985 and ’87.
Then there’s the Walker Cup. Sigel played on the United States side nine times between 1977 and 1987 and his 19 match wins are the most by an American. It just might be one of those unbreakable records.
Sigel was the playing captain in his last two appearances, including a quite memorable renewal of the biennial series held at Pine Valley Golf Club, widely considered the best American golf course, in the New Jersey pine barrens, in 1985. Captain Sigel and his U.S. team pulled out a 13-11 victory.
If you’ve ever had a chance to watch a Walker Cup or a Curtis Cup Match, you understand the bond that forms among teammates and between a captain and his or her team. A whole generation of players experienced a Walker Cup with Sigel. I suspect there is nothing but respect for the man who was their teammate and, in the case of those last two teams, their teammate and captain.
Sigel made 11 straight Masters appearances from 1978 to 1988, getting to participate in the Butler Cabin ceremony three times as low amateur.
When Sigel turned 50, he turned pro and joined what was then known as the PGA Senior Tour. He was the Senior Tour’s Rookie of the Year in 1994 and had already won four times on the senior circuit when he arrived at Hartefeld National Golf Club in New Garden Township, Chester County for the 1998 Bell Atlantic Classic.
The dorky caddy who had carried Sigel’s bag 26 years earlier was now a full-fledged sportswriter at the Delaware County Daily Times. I was an editor, a desk guy in the parlance of the biz, but they knew I had some golf knowledge and let me out of the office for a mental-health break to cover the Philadelphia area’s Senior Tour stop, an event that had spent most of its early years at Chester Valley Golf Club.
Sigel was in hunt going into Saturday’s round 3. He was already on the golf course when I arrived. What greeted me on the press room leaderboard made my jaw drop.
Sigel had parred the first hole, then made eagle at the par-5 second. Then he made birdie at the third hole, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh and the eighth. I hustled out to the ninth green – I think it was a par-3, but I’m not certain – just in time to see him hit it close.
The math was almost incomprehensible. Thinking out loud, I said “he needs to make this for 27.”
That drew a couple of “whats?” “no ways” and “20-whats?” from the crowd that was three or four deep behind the green.
I guess when you see seven straight putts go in, the hole looks as big as a peach basket. Sigel made it. His 27 for nine holes has been matched a couple of times, but still stands as a PGA Tour Champions – as it is now known – record.
A legitimate 59 watch was on, so much so that almost the entire group of Philadelphia area golf scribes got their butts out of the press room and followed Sigel around the back nine, maybe as impressive a feat as the front-nine 27.
Sigel cooled off on the incoming nine and ended up with only a 62. He would capture his fifth Senior Tour victory the following day in a playoff over Spaniard Jose Maria Canizares.
Somewhere in a library in Delco on microfilm, you could find my account of that epic round by Sigel. I can guarantee you it does not match the brilliance of the golf Sigel unleashed on Hartefeld National that day.
It has been well-chronicled that Sigel’s hopes for a career on the PGA Tour had been dashed when he accidentally put his hand through the glass on a sliding door and suffered injuries that a doctor told him would end his golf career.
Sigel had been a standout at Wake Forest, where he was the first recipient of the Arnold Palmer Scholarship.
Sigel went home and got into the insurance business, eventually staring his own agency. He did, however, recover from the injuries to his hand and returned to playing at a high level. With a business and a family, he didn’t try to make it in professional golf. He would be an amateur golfer and what an amateur golfer he would become.
Sigel would win eight times on the senior circuit and bank more $9 million. He didn’t need the money. He just wanted to let followers of the game know that he would have been competitive on the PGA Tour if that path had not been altered.
Sigel was always giving back to the game. He got involved with First Tee Greater Philadelphia from Day 1, from the ground floor.
No matter where the game of golf took him, Sigel proudly carried his affiliation with Aronimink Golf Club, the Donald Ross masterpiece in Newtown Square that will host the PGA Championship in 2026.
The guy who couldn’t play match play has his name on the Pennsylvania Golf Association match-play championship, the R. Jay Sigel Match Play Championship. In recent years, Sigel would be on hand at the award ceremony to present the trophy to the winner, who always said what an honor it was to receive the trophy from Jay.
Six times that winner has been Nathan Smith, a Pittsburgh guy who will be following in the footsteps of Sigel and Buddy Marucci as the captain of the U.S. team in the Walker Cup Match at the iconic Cypress Point Club on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula.
Smith topped Sigel’s record by winning the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship four times. He played on three U.S. Walker Cup teams, including under Marucci in 2009 at Merion.
It had been Sigel who showed the way for guys like Marucci and Smith and three-time BMW Philadelphia Amateur champion Michael McDermott. You have to work some things out at your place of business, but amateur golf can take you to some great places in the game of golf.
I suspect Smith will invoke Jay Sigel in his opening remarks at Cypress Point this summer.
I would run into Sigel one more time. He was sitting next to Marucci in a press day for the 2009 Walker Cup at Merion.
I had done a lot of high school golf at the Daily Times. I was pretty sure Sigel had won a PIAA Championship at Lower Merion. Most of the formal parts of the press day were over and I found myself sitting across from Sigel.
“You won a state championship at Lower Merion, right?” I asked.
“Twice,” Sigel replied as economic with his words as ever. “Only one other play has won it twice. Arnold.” It is about as big a brag as you would ever hear from Sigel.
Gary Miles, once a sportswriter and now doing obituaries for the Philadelphia Inquirer, did his usual fine job in his story on Jay Sigel that appeared in Wednesday’s print edition.
Miles wisely rang up Joe Juliano, the retired golf writer at the Inky who probably watched Sigel play golf more than anybody.
“He was one of the over-50 tour’s best players, but he also was one of the true gentlemen of the game,” Juliano told Miles.
And to Sigel that would the highest compliment he could be paid. He grew up competing against Bill Hyndman and Gordon Brewer, actually beat Brewer in an all-Philadelphia 1985 U.S. Mid-Am final, among others. Great players, sure, but classy and dignified at all times. Sigel inherited that legacy and passed it on.
Golf is such a difficult game, even moreso at the highest levels. But Sigel figured out golf, especially in its most inscrutable format, match play. Sure, it’s physical, but golf is really about focus and Jay Sigel’s focus, like his golf journey, was unmatched.
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