Biography
Nagle was born in North Sydney. Although he had won over 30 tournaments in Australia, and had won the Canada Cup for Australia in partnership with five-time Open champion Peter Thomson in 1954 and 1959, Nagle was a shock winner of The Open, as he was 39 years old but had never finished in the top-10 at a major championship before. He beat the rising star of American golf Arnold Palmer into second place, and it was Palmer who deprived him of his title in 1961. Nagle never regained The Open title, but he put together a string of six further top-10 finishes between 1961 and 1969. His best result in a United States major was second in the 1965 U.S. Open, the year after he won the Canadian Open; he lost in an 18-hole playoff to Gary Player. As late as 1970, the year he turned 50, Nagle was ranked among the top ten players in the world on the McCormack's World Golf Rankings, the forerunner of the modern world ranking system.
Nagle won 61 times on the PGA Tour of Australasia, giving him the most wins all-time on that tour, ahead by 30 wins over Greg Norman, who has 31 wins in second place.
Nagle played on the Senior PGA Tour (now Champions Tour) in the U.S. in the 1980s when he was in his 60s. His best finished were a pair of T-3s: at the 1981 Eureka Federal Savings Classic and the 1982 Peter Jackson Champions.
In July 2007, Nagle was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame, and was inducted in November 2007.
Read more about this topic: Kel Nagle
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