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Ken Venturi, U.S. Open Golf Champion and Broadcaster, Dies at 82

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN


Ken Venturi making the final putt while nearing collapse from heat exhaustion in his victory in the 1964 United States Open.


Ken Venturi, who won the 1964 United States Open while nearing collapse from heat exhaustion and who was later the longtime chief golf analyst for CBS Sports, died Friday afternoon. He was 82.

Venturi’s son, Matt, told The Associated Press that his father died in a hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and that he had been hospitalized the last two months for a spinal infection, pneumonia and an intestinal infection.

Venturi had a five-way heart bypass surgery and valve repair in December 2006.

Venturi, who had recently been elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame, won 14 tournaments between 1957 and 1966 in a career cut short by circulatory problems in his hands.

He first gained notice in 1956 as an amateur when he led the Masters by four shots entering the final round, only to shoot an 80, losing to Jack Burke Jr. by a stroke. He was the runner-up at the Masters again in 1960, a shot behind Arnold Palmer, who birdied the final two holes.

But Venturi’s signature moment came at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., on a Sunday in June 1964. Temperatures were approaching 100 degrees, and the humidity seemed unconquerable as the players struggled to play 36 holes, the last time the Open staged its final two rounds on a single day.

Venturi had not won since the 1960 Milwaukee Open, had considering quitting and had been required to participate in two qualifying events before being allowed into the Open. He almost collapsed from the heat on the 17th green of his morning round but carded a remarkable 66.

Going into the final 18 holes, Venturi was two shots behind the leader, Tommy Jacobs. After a 45-minute break, Venturi virtually staggered through the final round, trailed by Dr. John Everett, who was monitoring the players and who had warned him against continuing out of fear he would die from heat prostration.

Everett gave Venturi ice cubes, iced tea and salt pills as he played on, instinct triumphing over the pressure and the exhaustion. Venturi overtook Jacobs and sank a 10-foot putt on the final hole to close out a 70, besting Jacobs by four shots.

“I dropped my putter and I raised my arms up to the sky,” Venturi told The A.P. in 1997. “I said, ‘My God, I’ve won the Open.’ The applause was deafening. It was like thunder coming out there.”

Venturi was so weak that he could not reach into the hole to get his ball, so Raymond Floyd, his playing partner, did it for him.

“I felt this hand on me, and it was Raymond Floyd handing me the ball,” Venturi remembered. “I looked at him, and he had tears streaming down his face.”

As Floyd later told The A.P.: “He was running on fumes. If you had asked him his name, he could not have told you. It is one of the most heroic things I have ever seen.”

Venturi was helped off the green by the United States Golf Association official Joe Dye and was so woozy that he could not read his scorecard. Dye assured him that it was correct and that he could sign it.

Venturi was named PGA player of the year for 1964 and was selected for the 1965 Ryder Cup team. By then, he had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and had surgery, hoping to relieve cold and numbness in his hands. But he never regained his form and soon retired.

He overcame a stammering problem as a child and was hired by CBS to provide commentary on the PGA Tour; he remained with the network for 35 years, retiring in 2002.

“With that exhausting, emotional victory, Venturi established a bond with viewers,” Peter McCleery wrote in Golf Digest in 2002, recalling Venturi’s triumph in the Open. “His strength as an analyst has been the passion and conviction he brought to the booth. He said things with such authority and in such absolute terms that you believed him, or wanted to.”

Venturi was born and reared in San Francisco, where his father, Fred, a skilled workman on the docks, ran the golf shop at the Harding Park municipal golf course. He began playing as a youngster and honed his game by playing repeated fade and draw shots in solitary drills.

Venturi became the San Francisco interscholastic golf champion, and he played at San Jose State University, where he received a degree in physical education. Byron Nelson, whom Venturi idolized as a youngster, later tutored him.

He is survived by his third wife, Kathleen, and two sons, Matthew and Tim, according to The Associated Press.

Venturi engaged in many charitable endeavors while working as a broadcaster, most notably the Guiding Eyes Classic, an event in New York that included blind golfers and raised more than $6 million to provide dogs for the blind.

He told Golf Digest in 2004 how a guide dog from the program saved his owner, a man named Omar Rivera, in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, leading him down 71 floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

As Venturi recalled it: “At a Guiding Eyes gala at Rockefeller Plaza, Omar came forward and told his story. Toward the end, he said, ‘This dog came from Ken Venturi.’ I cry easily enough as it is, but I cried buckets that day.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/sports/golf/ken-venturi-us-open-golf-champion-and-broadcaster-dies-at-82.html?ref=sports