The 2020-21 PGA Tour season will conclude over Labor Day weekend with the Tour Championship at historic East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, its home since 2002. The 30 players who qualify will compete for $46,000,000 in prize money.
By contrast, in the 1960s the PGA Tour season ended ingloriously in late November at the Cajun Classic, played in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of the bayou. The off-the-beaten-path tournament was a throwback to the tour’s hardscrabble origins. Today it is hardly remembered. Other than being the scene of a less-than-epic showdown between Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus when both were at the top of their games (more later), it was typically ignored by the sporting press and fans who were more focused on football and the Thanksgiving holiday.
A tournament was first played in Lafayette in April 1958, the same week as the Tournament of Champions. The site was Oakbourne Country Club, a course opened in 1955. Fittingly for its subsequent obscurity, it was originally an alternate event for the non-winning pros who were ineligible for the TOC, before being moved to November the following year, in theory as a “full-field” event. Its unofficial hosts were Jay and Lionel Hebert (pronounced “A-bear”), brothers from Lafayette, each of whom won a PGA Championship (Jay in 1960, Lionel in 1957). Jay won the original Lafayette Open Invitational in 1958; Jay won it in 1960 after it changed its name to Cajun Classic. In 1963, the Cajun Classic became the tour’s anchor, a position it held until its demise in 1969.
Even by the standards of the day, the Cajun Classic was bush league – played for a miniscule purse, on a below-grade track and at times in horrible weather (Lafayette in late November may not be North Dakota, but it’s not south Florida, either). A Sports Illustrated article about the 1964 edition, “A Matter of Pride at Endsville,” told of a tournament official who was asked during the pro-am why there were no road signs leading to the Oakbourne Country Club. “Signs for who?” the official replied, noting only about 100 spectators were in attendance. “The crowd they’ve got here now is as big as they usually get for a final round. Anyone who wants to come knows where it is.”
According to former tour pro Ron Cerrudo, 76, who twice played in the event and remains active as a teaching professional at the Daniel Island Club in South Carolina, the genial Hebert brothers were responsible for the few top names who showed up in Lafayette. “Lionel talked all the time,” Cerrudo recalled. “Jay was more subdued.”
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