Marietta’s Larry Nelson has won the 2011 PGA Distinguished Service Award.
The honor comes on the 30th anniversary of Nelson’s win in the PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club, which will again host golf’s last major this summer.
“It’s quite an honor and I’m very humbled by it,” Nelson said in a statement. “I have been very blessed in my career, and have been fortunate that golf has allowed me to meet many people around the world, develop special friendships and serve others. I am very proud that the PGA of America would honor me with this award.”
The award is given to “outstanding individuals who display leadership and humanitarian qualities, including integrity, sportsmanship and enthusiasm for the game of golf.”
Nelson will be honored Aug. 10 at The Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. The 93rd PGA Championship will begin Aug. 11.
Nelson used a pair of 66s in the second and third rounds to defeat Fuzzy Zoeller and win the PGA Championship by four strokes in Atlanta in 1981. He added the U.S. Open in 1983 at Oakmont, in which he rallied from seven strokes back after two rounds to defeat Tom Watson.
He won the PGA again in 1987 at PGA National, when he defeated Lanny Wadkins in a playoff. Those were three of his 10 victories on the PGA Tour. He also won 19 tournaments on the Champions Tour and was voted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2006.
Not bad for a man who didn’t start playing golf until he was 21 years old because he considered it to be a “sissy sport” while growing up in Fort Payne, Ala. However, Nelson changed his mind and took up golf in 1968 after returning from a two-year term with the army in Vietnam. He taught himself by reading Ben Hogan’s “The Five Fundamentals of Golf.”
Within nine months he was breaking 70.
“I put in a lot of work, got great advice from now a PGA professional Bert Seagraves, who came out to watch me swing,” he said. “I spent six years working hard on my game, and two years as an assistant to Bert.”
He attended Kennesaw Junior College, now Kennesaw State, and declared himself a pro in 1970. He earned his PGA Tour card by advancing through qualifying school in 1973. His first win came six years later at the Jackie Gleason-Inverrary Classic. His last win on the PGA Tour came at the Georgia-Pacific Atlanta Golf Classic in 1988.
Nelson also was a dominating force in the Ryder Cup, going 9-3-1 while playing in 1979, ’81 and ’87. As a rookie he went 5-0 at The Greenbrier in West Virginia.
He also enriched lives on and off the course. He and Joe Inman, now the coach at Georgia State, helped develop The First Tee program, which helps youths lead enriched lives through golf, in College Park.
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