Although he envied what Knudson had on the golf course, Carpenter became a teacher
Tiger Woods won the Accenture Match Play Championship on February 24 with an 8-and-7 win over Stewart Cink at beautiful Dove Mountain resort, just 15 miles north of Tucson.
But 40 years ago, about eight years before Woods was born, George Knudson won the event when it was still called the Tucson Open Invitational.
Knudson also won the Phoenix Open the week before, so the Tucson win made him the first Canadian to win back-to-back PGA tour events. He was the most successful golfer from Canada before Mike Weir.
No one remembers this feat like Gordy Carpenter does. Carpenter, who has been living in Rochester for 44 years, was a 20-year old caddy for Knudson’s first season in the winter of 1958-59. Carpenter caddied with Knudson when they were young while working at the St. Charles Golf and Country Club in their native Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
A caddy is usually unnoticed in the background, but Carpenter was recently quoted in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s second-largest newspaper, about Knudson.
“There’s a lot of stories,” Carpenter said of his friend.
He recalls when they gave false names to an old man they hit with a ball on a long par three, going to Las Vegas together, and driving 85-miles-an-hour through the Nevada desert in a car provided to them by the wealthy members of the golf club in St. Charles.
In 1968, Knudson was the leading money winner on the tour. He found being at the top lonely and started drinking. Other players on the tour would leave the bar for dinner, only to return three hours later to see Knudson in the same seat.
Knudson’s night life would catch up with him; he died due to complications with alcoholism and lung cancer in 1989. You can find more stories, both uplifting and tragic, in “The Lost Masters” by Curt Sampson.
But after that one season caddying for Knudson, Carpenter returned to Winnipeg.
“I wanted to golf but went to college instead,” Carpenter said.
Although he envied what Knudson had on the golf course, Carpenter became a teacher
Winnipeg Manitoba Canada Golf Golfing
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