Landscape Idea_v6

Harbert Inverness 49
PGA Doug Ford Trophy
Harbert 54 PGA
54 MCO Middlecoff
But we must backtrack. In 1952, Meadowbrook
pro Chick Harbert reached the final of the
(then matchplay) PGA Championship, but two
years later, as mentioned above, he went one
better and won the title. By glorious coincidence,
the course selected to hold the 1955 PGA was
Meadowbrook, so Harbert had the glory of
returning as defending champion to his own
club!
Doug Ford took medalist honors, with an
impressive 36 hole score of 135, before the
championship went into the matchplay rounds
which then decided the winner (it is worth
noting that the Meadowbrook event was among
the last matchplay PGAs – the event went to
its current, 72-hole strokeplay, format in 1958).
Chick Harbert put up a stout defense of his title,
qualifying for the matchplay section well, but in
the second round of matchplay, he was defeated
by North Carolina pro Johnny Palmer by one hole.
Ford continued to dominate the event, winning
his quarter-final by 5&4 and his semifinal by 4&3.
In the final, he came up against Cary Middlecoff,
something of an irony, as the great golf writer
Herbert Warren Wind pointed out in his report of
the championship: “Ford... is certainly the fastest
golfer in captivity today, and may be the fastest
ever to have won a major golf title....
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