Waco Turner Open

The Waco Turner Open was a PGA Tour event that was played in Burneyville, Oklahoma in the early 1960s.

The founder of the tournament, Waco Turner, was a millionaire Oklahoma oilman with a passion for golf. He started Turner's Lodge, a golf resort on what he hoped would flourish into a 2,700-acre grand development of 3,000 homes with a hotel, restaurants, tennis courts, swimming pools and an airstrip built around three lakes. The project ran into financial difficulties and the PGA left after the 1964 event.cite web | title=500 OK-based Falconhead Resort lots go on auction block | publisher=The Oklahoma City Journal Record | date=April 12, 2006 | url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20060412/ai_n16222655 | accessdate=2007-11-21]

The greatest claim to fame for the tournament is that in 1964 an African American golfer, Pete Brown, won an official PGA Tour event for the first time at this event. [cite web | title=The Year in Golf, 1964 | url=http://www.golf.about.com/cs/historyofgolf/p/timeline1964.htm | accessdate=2007-11-21] [cite web | title=Pete Brown the Facts! | url=http://www.afrogolf.com/PeteBrownFact's.html | accessdate=2007-11-21]

The development, now called Falconhead Resort, has changed hands repeatedly in the ensuing decades, and only about 400 homes have been built on the 3,000 home sites.

Winners

*1964 Pete Brown
*1963 Gay Brewer
*1962 Johnny Pott
*1961 Butch Baird

References