Dale Douglass, a former PGA Tour winner who found his greatest success after 50, is dead at 86

Dale Douglass, a former PGA Tour winner and U.S. Senior Open champion, died in Scottsdale, Ariz., after a long illness on July 6, according to the University of Colorado Sports Information Department; he was 86.

Douglass won three times on the PGA Tour (with three playoff losses), represented the U.S. at the 1969 Ryder Cup and was one of the early players to have great success on the Senior Tour (since renamed the PGA Tour Champions). He won 11 times on that circuit, including one major, as he defeated Gary Player by one stroke in the 1986 U.S. Senior Open in Columbus, Ohio.

Born Dale Dwight Douglass on March 5, 1936 in Wewoka, Okla., he grew up in Fort Morgan, Colo., where he graduated high school before enrolling at Colorado in the fall of 1955. Douglass was a three-time, first-team all-conference performer, in the Big Seven in 1956 and the Big Eight in 1958 and 1959.  He was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010, the second golfer to do so after Hale Irwin.

“Dale was so very proud of being from Fort Morgan and the University of Colorado,” Irwin said. “He wore the school colors proudly…Dale was like my big brother, and I was like his bratty little brother. We throw the word mentor around a lot, but in Dale’s case, I can elevate the word mentor to friend. I’ll miss him.”

Douglass became the first University of Colorado golfer to play on the PGA Tour, and went on to become just the fifth player in history to play in 500 tournaments when he reached the mark in 2003. He earned more than $9 million as a professional after turning pro in 1960 and earning his PGA Tour card in 1963.

“I was 27 years,” Douglass told Golfweek in 2010. “I was an assistant pro in Wyoming. I was a Monday qualifier. It was kind of fun, and yet we hated it. You wouldn’t do anything else. If you wanted to play golf, that’s what you did. Monday qualifying was a difficult way to do things. It allowed you to make the team every week rather than if you missed at the Q-school you’re out for the year.”

Irwin was in Charlotte at the 1969 Kemper Open and watched Douglass wrap up a four-stroke win over Charles Coody, his second Tour win at the time. In 1974, when Irwin won his first of three U.S. Opens at Winged Foot (Mamaroneck, N.Y.), both Irwin, Douglass (who tied for 18th) and their wives (Sally and Joyce, respectively) celebrated that evening with room service, one of countless dinners the couples had together.

Douglass joined the Senior Tour in 1986, where he would become a fixture for more than 20 years, playing in exactly 600 Senior/Champions Tour events through 2011, with 26 runner-up finishes and 151 top-10 finishes to go with his 11 victories.

“I had lost my game in the middle 1970s,” Douglass told Golfweek. “Playing the Senior Tour seemed like I had gone to heaven.”

He was preceded in death by his wife, Joyce. Services are pending but will be held in Colorado Springs.

“Golf has lost a real gentleman and a man who really championed golf throughout the country,” Irwin said. “He did so much for a lot of people, particularly in Colorado. There was never a bad word you heard from anyone about Dale Douglass.”