Renowned golf star Jim Colbert, known as much for the fun spirit he brought when wearing his bucket hat on the field of play as for winning eight PGA Tour tournaments and 20 times while playing in PGA Tour Championships, has passed away at the age of 85. His passing came on Sunday, May 10, though the cause of death was not disclosed.
For those who don’t watch much golf, Colbert became a legend not just by winning tournaments, but by making his bucket hat a distinctive and trademark part of his look. That look came out of necessity, stemming from an incident that came when he was just a teenager playing golf at a tournament in Kansas, where the blazing sun got to him and he collapsed with sunstroke.
In the wake of that incident, doctors told him to stick with a bucket hat for a bit more protection from the sun, and he stuck with that bucket hat for the rest of his career. That career ended up starting sooner than he might have predicted, as he was injured when on the football team at Kansas State, far away from his home state of New Jersey, a school he was attending on a football scholarship.
After the debilitating injury, he was essentially unable to keep playing football, and so was pushed toward playing more golf. He was as talented at that as football, if not more so, and so quickly became a top golfer at Kansas State and ended up finishing the 1964 season as the runner-up in the NCAA Championship.
Just two years later, he joined the PGA Tour, and his career was off to a fast start. His first victory came in 1969, when he won the Monsanto Invitational Open. Then, in the wake of that major victory, he went on to win eight tour victories.
But that wasn’t all. In addition to winning on and playing on the tour, Colbert scored some serious wins in the majors, and placed quite well as well. In fact, he recorded two top-five finishes in 1974, tying for fourth at the Masters and tying for fifth at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Then, in 1983, he had the best year of his career, winning twice and coming in 15th on the PGA money list.
His career didn’t end there. After he turned 50, he started playing on the senior circuit, and won 20 times while on the PGA Tour Champions. Even cancer couldn’t stop him: he underwent prostate cancer surgery in 1996, and then returned to competition and won The Transamerica.
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And he was successful in business as well as touring. That started in 1980, when he bought his first Las Vegas course and started Jim Colbert Golf, which eventually owned almost two dozen courses. Those 23 courses brought in about $50 million per year in revenue and employed 700 people.
The PGA, wrapping up its post on his career, said, “Colbert made 1,091 combined starts across the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions. Even though golf wasn’t in his original career plans, he made it his life’s work.”
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