By John Egnot
Manager of Media Relations

Some athletes are just difficult to figure out. Every once in a while, you’ll have a great one come along that seems to fade into obscurity when it seems as if they are in the prime of their career. Look at what Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders did. Seemingly destined to break the all-time NFL rushing record, Sanders simply decided to hang it up at an early age.

Jerry Travers

In golf, one tremendous player who fits into this category is Jerry Travers. Born May 19, 1887 in New York, Travers would go on to win four U.S. Amateurs, five Metropolitan Amateurs and a U.S. Open. Only the great Bobby Jones, generally regarded as the best amateur to ever play the game, won more U.S. Amateur titles.

However, Travers never became a household name in American golf, mainly because of the way his career ended. He stopped playing competitively at age 28, and even during the “prime” of his career, Travers didn’t bother to enter the U.S. Amateur. Even more peculiar was the fact that after Travers never entered the U.S. Open again after winning it in 1915.

It is thought that Travers’ competitive career ended so abruptly because of his life off the golf course. He was not a very outgoing person and didn’t have any type of steadying influence in his life.

Regardless of how short his career was, many of Travers’ peers held him in a very high regard. Chick Evans once called him the “coldest, hardest golfer he ever knew.” Francis Ouimet one said that he was the best match player in the U.S.

Alex Smith, Travers’ teacher, called Jerry “the greatest competitor I have ever known.”