Five-time PGA winner, lauded instructor Rodgers dies at 80

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[June 28, 2018]    Former PGA Tour player and renowned golf instructor Phil Rodgers died Tuesday morning at his home near San Diego after a long battle with leukemia. He was 80.

 

A five-time winner on Tour who was the 1963 British Open runner-up in a playoff, Rodgers was best known for his work as an instructor, including helping Jack Nicklaus produce a late-career resurgence.

Nicklaus posted a lengthy tribute to Rodgers on Instagram, writing Wednesday, "Today we lost one of golf's greats, one of its most colorful individuals, and one of my dearest friends."

Nicklaus went on to detail some of the pair's history playing against each other and together, and credited Rodgers for helping him win the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in 1980 by improving his short game.

At the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont, Rodgers made three bogeys in his final six holes to finish two strokes out of a playoff with Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. Nicklaus ultimately prevailed to win his first major, 18 years before the pair of majors Nicklaus credits Rodgers with helping him win.

Rodgers' closest call in a major came in the 1963 British Open, when Bob Charles beat him in a playoff at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

Rodgers retired from competition in 1977 and became an instructor, earning praise for decades as one of the best in the world.

Nicklaus said he and Rodgers saw each other at the PGA Tour Champions' Insperity Invitational in Houston this spring.

"He was struggling greatly, but it meant the world to me to see him, even if it was briefly," Nicklaus wrote.

--Field Level Media

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