Tom Lehman

Thomas Edward Lehman, born March 7, 1959, in Austin, Minnesota, and raised in Alexandria, is an American professional golfer who once held the world number one ranking. His major championship victory came at the 1996 Open Championship, and he remains the only player to have been named Player of the Year on all three PGA Tours: the developmental Ben Hogan Tour, the main PGA Tour, and the senior PGA Tour Champions.

Lehman studied business and accounting at the University of Minnesota, playing college golf there before turning professional in 1982. His early years on the PGA Tour from 1983 to 1985 yielded little success, forcing him to compete on the Asia Golf Circuit, the Southern African Tour, and the second-tier Ben Hogan Tour for the next six seasons. He regained his PGA Tour card by topping the Ben Hogan Tour’s 1991 money list and held continuous membership from 1992 until shortly after joining the Champions Tour.

Between 1995 and 1997, Lehman led the U.S. Open after 54 holes three times but never won. He captured his only major, the 1996 Open Championship, and in April 1997 spent one week as the world’s top-ranked golfer. His five PGA Tour victories include the Tour Championship and the Memorial Tournament, and he has won at least nineteen professional events overall. Despite a modest win total, he was remarkably consistent, recording 19 runner-up finishes from 1992 to 2006.

Unusually for a prominent American golfer, Lehman won nearly as many regular tour events abroad as in the United States. Besides the 1996 Open in England, he won the 1993 Casio World Open on the Japan Golf Tour and the 1997 Gulfstream Loch Lomond World Invitational on the European Tour. He also finished second at the 1989 South African Open and the 2000 Scottish Open, the latter being a European Tour event he had won three years earlier.

Lehman captained the 2006 Ryder Cup team, which lost 18½ to 9½ to Europe at the K Club in Ireland. In April 2009, he became the 13th Champions Tour player to win his debut event, teaming with Bernhard Langer to take the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf in a playoff. He claimed his first senior major at the 2010 Senior PGA Championship, also in a playoff. In 2011, he topped the Champions Tour money list and was voted Player of the Year, becoming the first golfer to earn that honor on all three PGA Tours. He defended his title at the 2012 Regions Tradition for his third senior major, winning by two strokes, and finished runner-up at the Senior Players Championship that year.

Lehman and his wife Melissa have lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, for many years and have four children. A devout Christian, he also works as a golf course designer, collaborating with Arnold Palmer on TPC Twin Cities and redesigning Phoenix Country Club with John Fought. His most notable original design is the Dunes course at the Prairie Club in Nebraska, ranked among the top 50 public courses in the United States.

His amateur wins include the 1981 Minnesota State Amateur. His professional record totals 35 wins, with five on the PGA Tour, two on the European Tour, one on the Japan Golf Tour, four on the Ben Hogan Tour, one on the Tour de las Américas, ten other wins, twelve on the PGA Tour Champions, and two on the European Senior Tour. His awards include the 1991 Ben Hogan Tour Player of the Year and money list title; the 1996 PGA Tour Player of the Year, PGA of America Player of the Year, Byron Nelson Award, Vardon Trophy, and money list title; the 2010 Payne Stewart Award; and the 2011 and 2012 Champions Tour Player of the Year, money list titles, and Charles Schwab Cups.