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      George McGinnis Dies at 73; Powered His Way to Basketball Stardom

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      He won two titles with the Pacers of the A.B.A. before joining Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s 76ers, but it was 35 years before the Hall of Fame inducted him.George McGinnis, whose rare combination of size and agility made him a pillar of two early 1970s championship teams in the upstart American Basketball Association, but whose heralded pairing with Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers failed to fulfill expectations of a title, died on Thursday in Indianapolis. He was 73.The Indiana Pacers, the team with which he won his A.B.A. titles, said his death, in a hospital, resulted from complications of cardiac arrest, which he suffered last week at his home in Indianapolis. McGinnis had struggled to walk in recent years after undergoing multiple back surgeries because of a hereditary condition, the team said.McGinnis played at the high school, college and professional levels in basketball-obsessed Indiana, where he broke Oscar Robertson’s scholastic scoring records while leading Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 record and a championship in 1969.McGinnis led Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 title run in 1969.Frank Fisse/IndyStar, via ImagnAs a forward, he averaged 30 points and 14.7 rebounds in his one season at Indiana University before joining his hometown Indiana Pacers. The Pacers immediately won successive A.B.A. championships, though McGinnis, surrounded by the veterans Mel Daniels, Roger Brown and Bob Netolicky, was not the team’s unquestioned star until his second season, when he averaged 27.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game.At a chiseled 6 feet 8 inches, 235 pounds, McGinnis was a harbinger of basketball’s athletic revolution, featuring taller players who could be brawny around the basket but more agile away from it with each passing decade, navigating skillfully in open space.“Big guys in my era couldn’t handle the ball,” he said in an interview with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame before he was inducted into it in 2017, an honor that many believed was egregiously overdue 35 years after he retired. “But I could dribble with my left hand, my right hand and take guys outside.”He credited those skills to the coaching he had growing up in Indiana, where “fundamentals are well taught,” he said.Len Elmore, a Pacers teammate for one season — McGinnis’s last in Indiana before joining the 76ers in 1975 — said in a telephone interview that he harked back to McGinnis when LeBron James, slightly bigger at 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, entered the N.B.A. in 2003 with the Cleveland Cavaliers.“Similar size, strength, mobility,” Elmore said, “I remember saying it immediately — George was LeBron before LeBron. You couldn’t believe that with his body he could be that agile.”McGinnis during Game Two of the N.B.A. finals against the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977.James Drake/Sports Illustrated, via Getty ImagesOne distinctive part of McGinnis’s game was his midrange jumper, a right-handed shot-put-like release that made purists cringe. “It was different, but he made it work for him,” Elmore said.After leading the A.B.A. in scoring, averaging 29.8 points, and sharing the league’s 1974-75 Most Valuable Player Award with Erving, his future 76ers teammate, McGinnis left the cash-strapped Pacers, calling his departure “a dollars and cents thing.”In a challenge to the N.B.A.’s constitution, he tried to circumvent Philadelphia’s draft rights by signing with the New York Knicks. But when the league voided the deal, McGinnis joined the 76ers, accepting a six-year contract for $3.2 million (the equivalent of about $18.3 million today). It was one season before the team acquired Erving from the New York Nets as it entered the N.B.A. with three other A.B.A. teams, including the Pacers.“George was the turnaround factor in pro basketball in this town,” Pat Williams, the team’s general manager, told Sports Illustrated in 1982. “Julius put up the walls and a roof, but it was George who built the foundation.”The 76ers’ slogan for McGinnis’s first season in Philadelphia was “Let George Do It.” Led by McGinnis, who was voted to play in the first of his three N.B.A. All-Star games, the 76ers increased their win total to 46 from the previous season’s 34 but lost in the first round of the playoffs.Erving’s arrival electrified the sport, though questions abounded on whether the two prolific forwards could coexist. “It was inevitable that people would say we hated each other, but Julius and I knew it wasn’t true, and we were above it,” McGinnis said in the Sports Illustrated article.The 76ers were within two victories of fulfilling their supposed destiny, taking the first two games against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1976-77 league finals. But the Bill Walton-led Blazers won the next four. McGinnis struggled with his shot until the last game in Portland, when he scored 28 points.The Western Conference All-Stars in 1979. McGinnis is seated on the left, in the front row.NBAE, via Getty ImagesTrailing by two with one last possession in Game 6, the 76ers’ head coach, Gene Shue, called a play for McGinnis. Erving, who had already scored 40, was bewildered by Shue’s bypassing him and Doug Collins, the team’s best pure shooter.After another disheartening playoff exit the following season, the 76ers dealt McGinnis to the Denver Nuggets, landing Bobby Jones, whose staunch defense better complemented Erving and helped the 76ers win the title in 1983.McGinnis did not have a long career, especially compared with James’s 21st-century standard. His performance declined in Denver, in part because of an Achilles’ tendon injury. He returned to the Pacers during the 1979-80 season, finishing his 11th and final pro season, 1981-82, with an average of 4.7 points over 76 games.George F. McGinnis was born on Aug. 12, 1950, in Harpersville, Ala., about 30 miles southeast of Birmingham, the son of Burnie and Willie (Keith) McGinnis. His father was a carpenter. With a daughter, Bonnie, the family settled on the west side of Indianapolis.During McGinnis’s senior year of high school, his father died after falling off scaffolding at a construction site — days after watching George score 53 points and grab 30 rebounds in an All-Star game. McGinnis, who was also an all-state football player, said he left Indiana University early to help support his mother.He expressed regret that he had missed out on playing for the Indiana coach Bobby Knight by one season, speculating, “I think it would have given me different values.” (Knight died in November.)Many believed McGinnis’s induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 was egregiously overdue, coming 35 years after his professional retirement from the sport.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMcGinnis was married for 43 years to Lynda (Dotson) McGinnis, who had been a high school girlfriend. She died of cancer in 2019, not long after he underwent surgery to address a back issue, spinal stenosis, that forced him to walk stooped with a cane or walker. His survivors include his sister, Bonnie McGinnis.After his playing years, McGinnis worked as a broadcaster in Indianapolis, where he and his wife founded GM Supply Company, a provider of special tooling and abrasives to manufacturers, in 1991.McGinnis remained a popular fixture in the state’s basketball community, and in September was inducted into the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame.Twenty years earlier, he told The New York Times, “One of the great things about being a basketball player in Indiana is that they never forget you.”Alex Traub More

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      Johnny Green, Jumpin’ Knicks All-Star, Dies at 89

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      An All-Star forward — and an all-American at Michigan State — he was known as Jumpin’ Johnny, able to soar over taller opponents for 14 seasons in the N.B.A.Johnny Green, an All-Star forward for the Knicks in the 1960s who gained acclaim for his leaping ability and rebounding prowess through 14 National Basketball Association seasons, died on Thursday in Huntington, N.Y. He was 89.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Johnny Jr., who said his father had had heart and kidney problems for about a year.Jumpin’ Johnny, as he came to be known, was 6-foot-5 and about 200 pounds, but he often bested taller and huskier frontline opponents, snaring rebounds, blocking shots and hitting short-range baskets.He was durable as well; he avoided serious injuries and had some of his best seasons late in his career. He played in the N.B.A. until he was 39, retiring after the 1972-73 season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Gary Colson, Who Lobbied for 3-Point Shot in College Ball, Dies at 89

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      On a rules committee, he got fellow coaches to vote for the shot that changed the game. In 34 years as a college coach, he won 563 games with four teams.Gary Colson, who successfully lobbied to introduce the 3-point shot to college basketball during a 34-year coaching career that included stops at Fresno State, New Mexico and Pepperdine, died on Friday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 89.The cause was complications of lymphoma, said Bob Rose, a friend, who said he had been told of the death by Colson’s wife.Colson, who had a career win-loss record of 563-385, was a member of the N.C.A.A. rules committee in 1986 when he sought a straw vote from the members to see who was in favor of adding the 3-point shot.He said he was discouraged by a number of his fellow coaches from asking for a vote. But he did anyway, and the proposal passed.The rule, which originally awarded three points for baskets made from a distance of 19 feet 9 inches or more, had little effect at first. But the 3-point shot (the current distance is 22 feet 1¾ inches) has since become an important part of the game. It had been adopted by the National Basketball Association in 1979.Colson began his head coaching career at Valdosta State College (now Valdosta State University) in Georgia when he was only 24. He led the team to a 188-69 record from 1958 to 1968 and took it to two appearances in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’ national tournament.He next coached at Pepperdine, a small Christian school in Malibu, Calif., from 1968 to 1979, leading the team to the 1976 West Coast Athletic Conference title. The Waves went 153-137 and earned two N.C.A.A. tournament berths during his tenure.“Coach Colson put Pepperdine men’s basketball on the national college basketball map,” the school’s current athletic director, Steve Potts, said in a statement.Colson left Pepperdine in 1980 to take over at New Mexico, which was reeling after a gambling scandal that resulted in the firing of the head coach, Norm Ellenberger, and the program’s being placed on N.C.A.A. probation for three years.After probation ended in 1983, the Lobos averaged 21 wins over the next five seasons, qualifying for the National Invitational Tournament each of those years. Colson went 146-106 at New Mexico from 1980 to 1988 and was the Western Athletic Conference coach of the year in 1984.He was 76-73 at Fresno State from 1990 to 1995.Gary Colson was born in Logansport, Ind., on April 30, 1934. He graduated from David Lipscomb College (now Lipscomb University) in Nashville in 1956 and earned a master’s degree in education at Vanderbilt in 1958. He was an all-conference player at Lipscomb and was named the Volunteer State Athletic Conference M.V.P. as a senior.He later worked as assistant to the president of the Memphis Grizzlies.He is survived by wife, Mary Katherine; his sons, Rick and Wade; his daughter, Garianne; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. More

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      Walter Davis, Basketball Star With a Velvet Touch, Dies at 69

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      “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period,” one coach said of Davis, a standout in both college and the N.B.A. “Then he becomes a great shooter.”Walter Davis of the University of North Carolina in action against Duke in 1976. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons there.Harold Valentine/Associated PressWalter Davis, whose smooth shooting propelled him to basketball stardom with the University of North Carolina and the Phoenix Suns, but who late in his career struggled with drug addiction, died on Thursday while visiting family in Charlotte, N.C. He was 69.The university announced his death but did not specify a cause.Davis, a 6-foot-6 forward, played at North Carolina from 1973 to 1977 for Dean Smith, one of the most successful coaches in college history. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons on Tar Heels teams that also included Bobby Jones, Phil Ford and Mitch Kupchak.In one of Davis’s signature games, in March 1974, North Carolina was losing to Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds left. After North Carolina closed the deficit to two points with time expiring, Davis tied it with a shot from a distance estimated at between 30 and 35 feet. (The basket would have counted for three points and won the game today, but the three-point shot was not officially introduced by the N.C.A.A. until 1986.) North Carolina went on to win in overtime, 96-92.“I wasn’t trying to bank it in,” Davis, then a freshman, said afterward. “It wasn’t a desperation shot. I was just trying to do my part, that’s all. I didn’t allow myself to think about anything. I just told myself it could only do two things, go in or come back out.”In 1976 he was a member of the United States team, also coached by Dean Smith, that won a gold medal at the Olympics in Montreal. A year later, he led North Carolina with 20 points — and 10 of his team’s last 12 — when it lost to Marquette, 67-59, in the final game of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.He was twice selected for all-Atlantic Coast Conference teams.His nephew Hubert is currently the North Carolina coach.Walter Davis was born on Sept. 9, 1954, in Pineville, N.C. His high school in Charlotte won three state titles in basketball before he left to attend prep school in Delaware. He arrived at North Carolina in 1973.In 1977, Davis had surgery on a broken finger after North Carolina won the A.C.C. tournament in his senior year. “Before they put me out, I remember looking up and Coach Smith was right there,” he told Ken Rosenthal for his book “Dean Smith: A Tribute” (2001). “I remember seeing him and having the screws drilled into my finger.”Davis was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the 1977 N.B.A. draft. After averaging 24.2 points a game — the highest average of any season in his career — he was voted the league’s Rookie of the Year. He remained a steady performer throughout his 11 seasons with Phoenix, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Davis was a steady performer in his 11 seasons with the Phoenix Suns, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesDuring a game in 1983, he set a league record by scoring 34 points (on 15 field goals and four free throws) against Seattle before missing a shot.“I don’t remember a sweeter shot,” Alvan Adams, one of his teammates, told NBA.com in 2015. “He was a feared shooter. The other team knew it, too.”Chuck Daly, then the Detroit Pistons’ coach, told The New York Times in 1987: “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period. Then he becomes a great shooter.”Davis had two nicknames: Sweet D and Greyhound.In his later years in Phoenix, Davis dealt with drug problems. In 1986, he spent a month in a drug rehabilitation center to treat cocaine and alcohol dependency. Early the next year he told The Times, “The scariest part is knowing that it is a disease that I will have to work on for the rest of my life.”When he relapsed in 1987, Davis was suspended by the league and once again entered a drug rehabilitation facility. He also received immunity from prosecution when he agreed to testify against several current and former Suns teammates, who were indicted on drug charges.In his testimony, The Arizona Republic reported, Davis said that he had first used cocaine in his second season in the league after being introduced to it by a teammate, Gar Heard. When asked by a prosecutor who else was there, he said, “Pretty much the whole team.”Later that year, Davis said that prosecutors had forced him to testify against his teammates.“I had no choice,” he told Sports Illustrated. “The last thing I wanted to do was get my teammates and friends indicted. If I’d known I was going to do that, I’d have probably gone to jail instead.”Davis left the Suns in 1988 to sign as a free agent with the Denver Nuggets. He was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in 1991 and then re-signed with Denver, where he played in the 1991-92 season before retiring.Davis was honored by the Suns and the Black Chamber of Arizona during a Black History Month celebration in Phoenix in 2016. Barry Gossage/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDavis averaged 18.9 points a game for his career and played in six All-Star Games.After his retirement, he worked as an announcer and community ambassador for the Nuggets and a scout for the Washington Wizards.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Ivor Robson, Golf’s Celebrated Voice at British Open, Dies at 83

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      For four decades he announced the names of players — Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and more — before they teed off. He rarely took a break.At the British Open, a Scotsman named Ivor Robson became one of the most distinctive and revered voices in golf by saying little. Called a starter, he stood at a lectern near the first tee at each round of that major championship, where his job was simple: to introduce each player.“On the tee, from U.S.A., Jack Nicklaus,” he would say in his slightly high-pitched, singsong brogue.Or, “On the tee, from Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy.”Once he was at his post, around 6:30 in the morning, he didn’t leave until every golfer had teed off — 156 in all in each of the first two rounds. He did not eat or drink anything before he took his position or for the next nine or 10 hours.Nor would he take a bathroom break, at a “comfort station,” even if he had time between introductions.“No input,” he would say, “no output.”He explained his on-course restraint to Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated in 1999: “I don’t want cups of water spilling over. I don’t want food around. I don’t have time to excuse myself. There’s no time!”When he was done for the day and back at his hotel, he would call room service for his only meal of the day.Mr. Robson, who retired from starter work in 2015, died on Oct. 15. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, announced the death but did not give a cause or say where he died. He was 83 and lived in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, in Scotland.Mr. Robson, who was born in England in 1940, was a golfer himself, having competed on the Scottish pro tour in the 1960s and ’70s and worked as a club professional in Scotland.He began his four-decade run at the Open Championship, as the event is officially known, in 1975, at Carnoustie, Scotland, at the invitation of the golf shaft company that hired the tournament’s starters. He went on to perform the role at the other links courses where the Open is played, like St. Andrews, Turnberry, Royal Birkdale and Muirfield.“Nobody told me how to do it,” he told the golf website Bunkered this year. “I just had to work it out for myself when I started in 1975. ‘What do I do here?’ Just keep it simple, where are they from, the name of the player, and let them go.”Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain and said he did not eat, drink or take bathroom breaks while on the job as a starter.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesMr. Robson’s job was similar to that of public address announcers at baseball games. But they work from protected press boxes. Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain while always formally dressed in his blazer and tie. (A sought-after announcer for 41 years, he also played the starter role at other golf events, including the DP World Tour in Europe.)“That voice — that smile in his eyes and that lilt in his voice — was unmistakable,” Mike Tirico, an NBC sportscaster who anchored British Open coverage for ESPN and ABC, said in a phone interview. “If you mentioned his name to a player, they’d imitate how he pronounced their names, with his inflections.”Mr. Robson would often chat with players before they took their swings and witnessed them face pressure, especially in starting their final round on a Sunday.“You can see the tension,” he said in a video interview with Golfing World magazine in 2019. “They’re not listening to you. They’re speaking to you, but you know they’re not really sure what to say. The club head is shaking as they’re addressing the ball.”Tiger Woods was among the many famous golfers whose names Mr. Robson announced. “Thank you Ivor for making each one of my Open starts so memorable,” Woods wrote on social media.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesHis final British Open, in 2015 at St. Andrews, was also the final one for Tom Watson, who had won the tournament five times. “He gave me an 18th-green flag, which had a message on it,” Mr. Robson told Today’s Golfer magazine in 2022. “‘We have traveled this long road together. All the best in your retirement. Tom Watson.’”After Mr. Robson’s death, Tiger Woods wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Thank you Ivor making each one of my Open starts so memorable.” Woods won three British Open titles.Mr. Robson’s survivors include his wife, Lesley; his daughter, Julia; and his son, Philip.When the R&A chose Mr. Robson’s replacement, they picked two men: David Lancaster, to do most of the work, and a backup, Matt Corker, to fill in when Mr. Lancaster takes a break or two.“I believe the vocal cords need to be soothed by drinking water at some point,” Mr. Lancaster told The New York Times in 2016. “Fortunately, the R&A understood.” More

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      Terry Dischinger, College Basketball Star and Olympian, Dies at 82

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      An all-American at Purdue, he was the youngest member of the gold medal-winning 1960 U.S. Olympic team. He later became a top N.B.A. rookie.Terry Dischinger, one of the greatest players in Purdue University basketball history and the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal in Rome in 1960, died on Oct. 9 in Lake Oswego, Ore. He was 82.The cause of his death, at a memory care center, was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his son, Bill Dischinger.Dischinger (pronounced DISH-ing-er) was an undisputed star at Purdue, in West Lafayette, Ind. A 6-foot-7, 190-pound center, he led the Big Ten in scoring for three straight seasons; was a two-time first-team consensus all-American; and scored at least 40 points in a game nine times, still a Purdue record.After averaging 26.3 points in his sophomore season, Dischinger made the Olympic team, which included several future members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, among them Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Jerry Lucas and Walt Bellamy. The U.S. won all eight of its games, including the final against Brazil, to earn the gold medal. Dischinger averaged 11.8 points a game, fourth best on the team.Early the next year, when Dischinger was a junior, a short profile in Sports Illustrated described the skillful fakes, fast first steps and soft jump shots that made him a Big Ten star, and recalled a moment when he vexed Robertson during a practice at the Olympics.According to the profile, Robertson, whom Dischinger idolized, “ended one frustrating Olympic scrimmage in which he was trying to guard Dischinger by shouting, ‘Man, go ahead and score. Who cares!’ as Terry faked him out for the nth time.”Dischinger went on to play in the National Basketball Association, earning Rookie of the Year and All-Star honors. He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Dischinger was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019. He scored 40 points or more in nine games at Purdue University, setting a school record that still stands.Orlin Wagner/Associated PressTerry Gilbert Dischinger was born on Nov. 21, 1940, in Anderson, Ind. His father, Donas, was a high school teacher and football coach. His mother, Clara (Wood) Dischinger, was a physical education teacher.Dischinger was chosen by the Chicago Zephyrs in the first round of the 1962 N.B.A. draft and broke in with them as if he were still at Purdue. Converted to forward, he scored 25.5 points a game in the 1962-63 season, while playing only 57 games on a part-time contract that let him complete his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering.Despite not playing a full season, he was voted Rookie of the Year over other future Hall of Famers like Dave DeBusschere of the Detroit Pistons and John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics.Dischinger played on All-Star teams in his first three seasons.“He was a very smart player with a great shot,” Bill Bradley, the former New York Knicks forward and U.S. senator, who frequently played against Dischinger, said in a phone interview. “I remember him as much for the 1960 Olympics as for him playing in the N.B.A.”Dischinger remained with the Zephyrs when they relocated to Baltimore and were renamed the Bullets after his rookie year. He averaged 20.8 points a game in 1963-64. After one season in Baltimore, he was traded to Detroit, where he scored an average of 18.2 points a game. After two years of Army service, he returned to the Pistons in 1967.Having played on an Army basketball team, he told The Detroit Free Press in 1971, “I thought I could make the readjustment to the pros again pretty quickly.”But, he added, “it didn’t work out that way.”A knee injury reduced his playing time and his productivity. He never averaged more than 13.1 points a game in his last six seasons, five with the Pistons and his last with the Portland Trail Blazers.By the time his basketball career ended in 1973, he was already planning his next one. A friend in the Army had piqued his interest in a post-basketball career in dentistry, and he began studying at the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry in the summers between N.B.A. seasons.He completed his D.D.S. degree in 1974 and went on to earn a certificate in orthodontics in 1977 from the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center (now Oregon Health & Science University).He held several patents, including one for a version of an appliance to help an underdeveloped jaw grow. He taught orthodontics and had a practice in Lake Oswego, which Bill Dischinger joined 24 years ago and now runs.In addition to his son, Dischinger is survived by his wife, Mary (Dunn) Dischinger, whom he married in 1962; his daughter, Kelly Loomis; his sisters, Nancy Rudolph and Tommy Groth; and nine grandchildren. Another son, Terry, died in 2010.Heading into the final game of his college basketball career against the University of Michigan in March 1962, Dischinger was tied for the Big Ten scoring lead with Jimmy Rayl of Indiana University, which was playing Ohio State.Before the game, he received a telegram from two Ohio State players — Jerry Lucas, who had become a friend during the Olympics, and John Havlicek — “telling me not to worry — get my points and they’d shut down Rayl,” he told The Journal & Courier of Lafayette in 1980.Whatever they and their teammates did seemed to work.Dischinger won the title with 30 points. Rayl scored 25. More

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      Betsy Rawls, Winner of Eight Golf Majors, Dies at 95

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      With a strong short game, she won four Women’s opens and a total of 55 L.P.G.A. Tour events between 1951 and 1972. She also had leadership roles with the tour.Betsy Rawls, who won eight major golf championships, including four United States Women’s Opens, in the first two decades of the L.P.G.A. Tour, and as an executive and tournament director helped propel the arrival of the women’s pro circuit as a big-money attraction, died on Saturday at her home in Lewes, Del. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by the Ladies Professional Golf Association.Rawls was the first four-time Women’s Open champion, winning in 1951, 1953, 1957 and 1960, a record matched only by Mickey Wright, who captured her fourth Open in 1964. From 1951 to 1972, Rawls won a total of 55 events on the L.P.G.A. Tour, which was founded in 1950.Her other major victories came at the Women’s Western Open in 1952 and 1959 and the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in 1959 and 1969. She was a three-time runner-up during the 1950s in the other major tournament of her time, the Titleholders Championship, and was among the six original inductees into the L.P.G.A. Tour Hall of Fame in 1967. She was also inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.Rawls received the 1996 Bob Jones Award, the United States Golf Association’s highest honor, and the L.P.G.A.’s 50th Anniversary Commissioner’s Award in 2000 for her contributions to women’s golf. She was selected in 1980 as the first woman to serve on the rules committee for the men’s United States Open.Elizabeth Earle Rawls was born on May 4, 1928, in Spartanburg, in northern South Carolina, one of two children of Robert and Mary (Earle) Rawls. In the early 1940s, the family moved to Texas, where Betsy’s father worked as an engineer at an aircraft plant in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, during World War II.Robert Rawls, who had played golf as a young man in Indiana, hired Harvey Penick, one of the game’s most renowned teachers, to give Betsy her first lesson when she was 17. Penick charged $3 for that one-hour session at the Austin Country Club and remained her coach, free of charge, for her entire career.“He always brought me back to the basic mechanics on which a good swing is built,” Rawls recalled in “Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings From a Lifetime in Golf.”Her strong suit was the short game. “I had a reputation of being able to get the ball up and down out of a garbage can,” she told The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., in 2010. “The sand wedge, off the fairway or out of the rough, was my best club. I could get it down in two from almost any place. I was a good putter under pressure.”Rawls graduated from the University of Texas in 1950, earning a bachelor’s degree with concentrations in physics and mathematics. She also finished an astonishing second, behind Babe Zaharias, as an amateur in the Women’s Open in 1950, the L.P.G.A. Tour’s inaugural season.She turned pro in 1951 after Wilson sporting goods recruited her to join its staff of leading players who were giving clinics on its behalf around the country. That year Rawls bested Louise Suggs by five strokes to capture the Open.At the time, Wilson paid her expenses, along with a salary that she recalled was about $3,000 a year (around $35,000 in today’s dollars), since prize money at the time was meager.She led the tour in victories in 1952, 1957 and 1959, when she set single-season records with 10 wins (including two majors), $26,744 in earnings and the lowest scoring average per round, 74.03, bringing her the women’s Vare Trophy.She got a break in winning the 1957 Open, at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y.Rawls received the winner’s trophy at the 1957 Open. Jackie Pung, who was disqualified from the tournament for an incorrect scorecard, can be seen at left, with her head in her hand.Bettmann ArchiveJackie Pung of Hawaii finished with a four-round total of 298 to Rawls’s 299. But officials quickly noticed that Pung’s playing partner, Betty Jameson, who was keeping score for Pung, had listed a 5 on the fourth hole of the last round, though she had actually scored a 6. Pung had made the same error in keeping score for Jameson, who wasn’t in contention for the victory.Although Pung’s card showed a correct total score, she was disqualified, as was Jameson, the automatic penalty under golf’s rules for a player who hands in a card with an incorrect score on any hole.So the championship, along with $1,800 in prize money, went to Rawls.“It’s always great to win, I guess, but I sure hate to do it this way,” United Press International quoted Rawls as saying. “I feel sorry for Jackie.”But Pung wound up as the No. 1 money winner: Members of the Winged Foot Club, distressed over her losing the title on a technicality, raised about $3,000 to ease her loss.Rawls was the L.P.G.A.’s president in 1961 and 1962 and its tournament director for six years following her retirement from competition in 1975. After that, she was the executive director of the McDonald’s Championship, which was discontinued in 1994 when it became the longtime sponsor of the L.P.G.A. Championship. Continuing in her post with that major event, she helped raise millions of dollars for charity.Rawls in 2005. She helped raise millions of dollars for charity in her later years.Al Messerschmidt/Getty ImagesRawls was treated for breast cancer in 2000 but continued overseeing the L.P.G.A. event, held at the DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, Del. She retired from her executive director’s post in 2002 but stayed on as the tournament’s vice board chairman.Rawls’s brother, Robert Rawls Jr., died in 1992. She left no immediate survivors. Rawls earned $302,664 in her 25-year career on the pro tour, landing below the top 450 on the L.P.G.A.’s current earnings list.“Today I look at the money they play for with amazement, but not with envy or bitterness,” Rawls told The Philadelphia Inquirer shortly before receiving the Bob Jones Award. “In the beginning, we played for so little that money wasn’t the motivating factor. But when I won, it seemed like it was a lot of money at the time. I enjoyed winning when I did.” More

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      Bobby Charlton, an England Soccer World Cup and Manchester United Icon, Dies at 86

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      A mainstay of Manchester United and one of the game’s best-loved figures, he won the World Cup in 1966 and the European Cup in 1968. Bobby Charlton, one of soccer’s greatest players, who won the World Cup with England in 1966 in a dazzling career that was tinged by the tragedy of losing eight of his Manchester United teammates in a plane crash at the start of his playing days, died on Saturday. He was 86.His death was confirmed in a statement from Manchester United, which called him one of the club’s “greatest and most beloved players.” The statement did not say where he died or cite a cause. It was revealed in November 2020 that Charlton had dementia.Charlton was famed for his bullet shot and his relentless goal scoring, even though he did not play as a traditional striker. He was England’s top scorer, with 49 goals, for 45 years until Wayne Rooney beat the mark in September 2015. Charlton was also Manchester United’s top scorer for decades, with 249 goals in 758 appearances over 17 years, until Rooney surpassed that figure, too, in January 2017. In addition to his scoring feats, Charlton’s career was indelibly marked by a plane crash in 1958, shortly after he had become a professional player. Following a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade, the plane on which the Manchester United team was traveling crashed in heavy snow during a refueling stop in Munich. Of the 23 who died, eight were players. Charlton, who was dragged from the wreckage by a teammate, was 21 years old at the time.Barely three weeks later, with the United manager, Matt Busby, still in a hospital in Germany, Charlton was back on the field. Because of his dignity in leading the Manchester United team through that dark period, his sportsmanship, and his central role in United’s revival and in his country’s sole success on the international stage, several commentators referred to him as the first gentleman of soccer.Charlton became a director and ambassador of Manchester United in 1984. A statue of Charlton, alongside his fabled teammates George Best and Denis Law — known as the United Trinity — was erected outside Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford, in 2008, and in 2016 the club renamed the south stand of the stadium in his honor. Charlton is also credited with giving Old Trafford its nickname, the Theater of Dreams.Robert Charlton was born on Oct. 11, 1937, in Ashington, Northumberland, in the north of England, to Robert and Elizabeth (Milburn) Charlton. His father was a miner, but the family had soccer in its genes. Four of his uncles were professional players, and his mother’s cousin Jackie Milburn was a legendary striker for Newcastle United; Bobby’s brother Jack became a professional player with Leeds and also represented England.“There was nothing else in life, it didn’t appear to me, except football,” Bobby Charlton said in a 2010 Sky Sports documentary.Charlton turned professional in 1954 and made his first appearance for Manchester United on Oct. 6, 1956, at age 18. When called up to the first team by Busby, he had to hide the fact that he had an injury.“I actually had a sprained ankle, but I wasn’t going to admit to it,” Charlton said in a 2011 BBC documentary. He scored twice in his debut.Manchester United won the league title in the 1956-57 season, with Charlton becoming a central player. The team was known as the Busby Babes after the manager, who had combed the playing fields of England to find the best young talent to fit his vision of soccer played with panache, pace and quick passing.Its league success earned Manchester United a place in the European Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League, the next season. After a 3-3 draw with Red Star secured a spot in the semifinals, the plane carrying the team home stopped to refuel in Munich. Amid terrible weather conditions, two attempts to take off were aborted. On the third, the plane crashed.Crawling to safety through a hole in the fuselage, the team’s goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, dragged Charlton and another teammate, Dennis Viollet, clear. “I left them there dead,” Gregg told the BBC in 2011. “The biggest shock I had was when I turned and there was Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet staring at the rest of the plane exploding in the petrol dump. Just staring.”Charlton was 21 years old in 1958 when the plane carrying the Manchester United team crashed in a heavy snowfall. The crash killed 23, people including eight of his teammates.Allsport/Hulton ArchiveCharlton returned home to recover from his injuries, which were relatively minor. He also faced the psychological trauma of trying to return to the field of play without his lost teammates.But after watching a scratch United team featuring several youth-team players and loanees overcome Sheffield Wednesday in an F.A. Cup fixture soon after the accident, Charlton told the acting manager, Jimmy Murphy, that he would return. Many saw Charlton’s stoicism and refusal to give up as a ray of hope amid the tragedy.United rebuilt around Charlton. Busby recovered from his injuries, and through the course of the 1960s he set about creating a new team. By the middle of the decade, Charlton was a Manchester United mainstay and a linchpin of the England side as the country prepared to host the 1966 World Cup.England started the tournament slowly, but in the second game, against Mexico, Charlton provided the inspiration with a trademark goal. Advancing across the halfway line, he bore down on the opposition penalty area as the defender retreated, and he thumped a shot into the top corner of the net with such languid violence that the ball almost tore the goal posts out of the ground.“I hit it, and it was sweet as a nut,” Charlton said in 2011. “I thought, people will remember that, because I’ll remember it for a long time.”In the semifinal against Portugal, Charlton scored two more goals to put his team into the final against West Germany, thus setting up one of the most memorable games in World Cup history.Charlton was told by the England coach, Alf Ramsey, to shadow Germany’s best player, Franz Beckenbauer. Unknown to the English, Beckenbauer had been given the same instructions in reverse by his own coach.“He was so fit,” Beckenbauer later recalled. “He was running like a horse. It was very, very difficult to stop him. It was almost impossible.”Beckenbauer and Charlton largely canceled each other out, but the pulsating game went to extra time, when England took the lead, 3-2, with a disputed goal by Geoff Hurst. The shot hit the crossbar and bounced down, and the Russian linesman, Tofiq Bahramov, flagged for a goal. Whether the ball crossed the line is still a subject of dispute. Buoyed by the lead, England scored a fourth, with Hurst hitting his third of the match in the dying seconds. As Hurst lined up his shot and fired into the net, the BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered perhaps the most famous lines in English football: “Some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over. It is now! It’s four!”Charlton and his wife, Norma, were applauded after a stand was named in his honor in 2016 at the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester.Nigel Roddis/European Pressphoto AgencyWith the trophy won, Charlton and his teammates were feted as heroes. But the Charlton fairy tale had not yet turned the final page.Busby had added Law, a predatory Scottish striker, and Best, a willowy, mercurial genius from Northern Ireland, to his retooled Manchester United team, which still had Charlton as its fulcrum. In the 1967-68 season, a decade after the Munich disaster, Manchester United again qualified for the European Cup.The team overcame Real Madrid, then a six-time champion, in the semifinal, and went on to meet Benfica of Portugal in the final at Wembley Stadium in London. Flushed with the memories of the players lost a decade before, the occasion dripped with poignancy.“The most important thing leading right up to it was that we were going to win the match,” Charlton said. “There was no alternative. We had to win that match.”Charlton opened the scoring with a headed goal, but the match went to extra time. Drooping with exhaustion but fired with the determination to finally win the trophy that had cost the club so much, United’s players dug deep. Best put the team ahead, Brian Kidd scored a third, and Charlton added the coup de grâce with a fourth.“We’d done it,” Charlton recalled in 2011. “When the final whistle went, everybody dashed to Sir Matt. They were his players that got lost in Munich. They were his lads, his team, and everybody in the whole crowd, maybe even in the whole country, thought a little bit about Matt Busby’s feelings that night.”Charlton is survived by his wife, Norma, whom he married in 1961; two daughters, Suzanne and Andrea; and grandchildren.Charlton finished his career in 1973 with a playing record that bears comparison with the world’s greatest. In his later role as a Manchester United director, he provided an important link between the era of the Busby Babes and a new period of dominance forged by another Scottish manager, Alex Ferguson.“Unquestionably the best player of all time,” Ferguson said of Charlton in 2011. “He could float across the ground just like a piece of silver paper.”Beloved by Manchester United fans, Charlton was also lionized by supporters of all teams, not only at home but also throughout the world. He became the embodiment of the fabled, perhaps mythical, nobility of English soccer.Hurst, his England teammate, said that when talking to people who didn’t speak English, Charlton’s reach became clear. “There’s only one piece of English they can say,” Hurst explained. “And that’s ‘Bobby Charlton.’” More