BMW Championship: Memorable moments

Lee Trevino and Jerry Heard were sitting under an umbrella near the 13th hole at Butler National during a suspension of play in the second round when both were struck by lightning. A second bolt struck Bobby Nichols and a standard bearer. The lightning left burn marks on the backs of Trevino and Heard, where it exited. Both subsequently underwent back surgery.

Jim Furyk buried a 3-foot birdie putt on his final hole to become the sixth player to shoot 59 on the PGA Tour. In windy conditions, Furyk hit every fairway and all but one green in regulation. “There’s not much I could have improved on today,” he said, something you NEVER hear a golfer say.

One of the top players of the early part of the 20th century, Walter Hagen amassed 11 “major” victories – five PGA Championships, four wins in The Open, two U.S. Opens. He also had five wins in a tournament that was considered to be one of the most important of the era – the Western Open. His 1932 win – by one shot over Olin Dutra – came a year after he finished second to Ed Dudley.

Tiger Woods notched his second BMW Championship win in 2009, finishing eight shots ahead of Jim Furyk and Marc Leishman. It was Woods’ fifth win in the tournament, counting Western Opens, equaling the record of Walter Hagen. It was also Woods’ last pre-fire hydrant win.

Remember the old adage that one of the toughest things in golf is to follow a really low round with another one? Jason Day apparently didn’t get the memo, at least not in time for the 2015 BMW Championship. He opened with 61-63, adding his name to the list of players who have shot the lowest back-to-back rounds in Tour history. Then he went on to win, easily, and ascend for the first time to the No. 1 ranking.

In the 1963 U.S. Open, Julius Boros defeated Arnold Palmer in a playoff. At the end of regulation in the Western Open, Boros and Palmer found themselves in another playoff, this time joined by Jack Nicklaus. And this time Palmer prevailed.

Scott Verplank was an amateur and a member of the Oklahoma State golf team when he won the 1985 Western Open, beating Jim Dent in a playoff. Verplank became the first amateur to win on Tour since Doug Sanders in 1956.

Quick, who is the only player to win the first PGA Tour-sanctioned event he played in? Why, it’s Jim Benepe, a then-25-year-old pro from Wyoming who won the Western Open in 1988. He won with a big assist from Peter Jacobsen, who double bogeyed the last hole to lose by one shot. It was Benepe’s only career PGA Tour title.

Ralph Guldahl had quite a run between 1936 and 1938. He won five tournaments: three Western Opens and two U.S. Opens. He added a Masters title in 1939 and was offered a contract to write an instruction book. He won twice more in 1940, but retired shortly after, the victim, many believed, of destroying his swing by over-analyzing it.

That’s how runner-up Paul Casey described Dustin Johnson after the latter set a 72-hole tournament scoring record at 23 under par. DJ beat Casey by three shots and earned his third victory in his last eight starts, dating back to his maiden major title at the U.S. Open.