John Harris, a standout player who won the U.S. Amateur, played in four Walker Cups and captured a PGA Tour Champions event after turning 50, died last Wednesday in his native Minnesota following a nearly two-year battle with acute myeloid leukemia. He was 73.
“Harris was a symbol of all that is good in sport,” observed his longtime friend, former USGA president Reed Mackenzie. “He was a tough competitor, but an honorable one.”
Added Jim Reinhart, a former USGA Executive Committee member and another longtime friend: “John was a classy, competitive, wonderful, sharing guy. He will be missed by a lot of people around the world.”
Harris was the last mid-amateur to win the U.S. Amateur, defeating Danny Ellis in the final at Champions Golf Club in Houston in 1993, when he was 41. That victory led to four Walker Cup appearances in 1993, ’95, ’97 and 2001. He posted a 10-4 record over those years and played on two winning teams.
The U.S. Amateur victory also earned him an invitation to the 1994 Masters, where he made the 36-hole cut. He later became a member at Augusta National Golf Club and served as an occasional marker to play alongside a Masters competitor if an odd number of players made the 36-hole cut.
“… it was how John carried himself and cared for others, on and off the golf course, which will live in our memory bank and remain with us for our lifetimes.”
Irv Fish, former USGA Executive Committee member
Harris excelled in two sports at the University of Minnesota. He was the second-leading scorer on the 1974 hockey team that won the national championship under legendary coach Herb Brooks. That same year, he won the Big Ten individual golf championship as well as the Minnesota State Amateur.
After a brief minor league hockey stint, he became a professional golfer for the first time in 1975, earning a PGA Tour card through Q-School. He did not enjoy much success; his best finish was T26 at the Hawaiian Open in 1976.
Harris left the pro game in 1979 to start an insurance agency and became a reinstated amateur in 1983. He quickly became a dominant player in Minnesota, winning the state amateur three more times and the Minnesota Open in 1994 and 1995. He was a five-time winner of the Minnesota Mid-Amateur, a 10-time Minnesota Golf Association Player of the Year and is a member the Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame along with his sister, Nancy Harris Blanchard.
During his most productive amateur years, he competed with the college set alongside his friend and mentor, the late Jay Sigel. He won the 1995 Sunnehanna Amateur, the 1997 Porter Cup and the 2002 Terra Cotta Invitational.
Harris embarked upon a second professional career when he turned 50 in 2002. His lone PGA Tour Champions victory came at the 2006 Commerce Bank Championship, which he dedicated to Brooks, his former coach who led the U.S. men’s hockey team to the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics and died in a 2003 auto accident. “I’m sure he’d be proud,” Harris said. “He instilled a lot of confidence in me, gave me an opportunity to excel”.
Writing in Sports Illustrated after the 1997 Walker Cup, Rick Lipsey observed that Harris “hits golf balls so straight and is so even tempered that fellow members at Edina Country Club call him ‘the reverend.’”
The stories and remembrances of Harris following his passing were numerous and heartwarming, among them the words of Irv Fish, another former USGA Executive Committee member:
“Patient. Upstanding. Respectful. Deferential. Caring. Grateful. A proud, devoted father, husband, and grandpa. We have learned so much, and benefited from, being in his good company. But it was how John carried himself and cared for others, on and off the golf course, which will live in our memory bank and remain with us for our lifetimes.”
Jim Nugent