Kent Myers, who collected 150 victories during a long amateur career that led to his induction into the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame, passed away on December 30, 2021. He had just finished hitting a bucket of balls on a driving range in Scottsdale, Ariz., and fell of a heart attack. He was 89.

A GOLFING WONDER
By Bob Robinson

I first met Kent Myers early in my golf writing career at The Oregonian. I was covering the 1965 Oregon Amateur at Portland Golf Club and Myers pulled off some hard-to-believe feats on his way to the championship.

"It was like hitting out of a daylight basement," he said of a recovery shot through fir tree limbs to the left of the 18th fairway in one match. Four down at one point in the scheduled 36-hole final against Portland State golfer Bob Smith, he clinched the first of his four Amateur titles with a 40-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff.

Recollections of that tournament so long ago came rushing back to me when I learned of Myers' death from a heart attack on Dec. 30, 2021 while, appropriately, he was on a driving range in Arizona. He was 90 and had begun shooting his age when he was 66.

As I got to know Myers well over the years, we became good friends and he gave me dozens of opportunities to write about him. He had a good all-around game but he specialized in recovery shots that were mind-boggling.

On one occasion when he came out of the rough and turned a potential bogey into a birdie, I said to him, "I think you could get a ball up and down from a phone booth." He grinned momentarily before replying, "I've hit balls into funny places but I've never hit one into a phone booth."

Myers, who grew up in Salem and went on to play golf at Willamette University, also did some cross country running in younger years. "Good conditioning for golf," he said.

His victories came in a steady stream. In addition to his Oregon Amateur titles in three decades, he also won a Pacific Northwest Senior Amateur in 1992 and a PNGA Master-40 crown in 1994. There also were several Illahe Hills Match Play championships and dozens of Hudson Cup appearances as an amateur player and eventually as a team captain in matches against the Northwest's leading club pros.

A member of the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame, he also was quite proud of a book he wrote giving history and other details about every golf course in Oregon.

Myers was a superb story-teller, too, and I enjoyed hearing many of them. My favorite involved his play in the 1956 U.S. Open at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y. He shot rounds of 80 and 81 and missed the 36-hole cut. A few days later, he returned to Salem Golf Club, his home course at the time, and was kidded by Gene (Bunny) Mason, then the SGC head pro, about his "mediocre" play at Oak Hill.

Myers bristled and said, "If you think I'm so bad, why don't you get your sticks and we'll go out and play?" Mason accepted the challenge and Myers made birdies on the first seven holes.

"Kent literally took the hide off of my wallet," Mason wrote in golf column he did briefly for the Oregon Statesman.

GOLF ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ACCOLADES

• Winner of 150 golf competitions
• Oregon Amateur – 4-time champion
• 1965, 1972, 1981, 1983
• Hudson Cup - 19-time team member
• 18-time team captain
• Senior Hudson Cup - 5-time team member
• Team Captain (1998)
• Hudson Cup Charles Congdon Award
• 1965, 1974, 1980
• USGA Championship Events (11)
• US Open – 1956
• US Senior Open – 1991
• US Amateur (3)
• US Senior Amateur (6)
• PNGA Senior Men’s Amateur Champion – 1982
• PNGA Men’s Master 40 Amateur Champion – 1984
• PNGA Amateur Championship Finalist – 1968 and 1987
• Member of PNGA Hall of Fame
• Member of Willamette University Sports Hall of Fame
• Featured in 1973 Golf Digest book entitled “All About Putting”
• Author of “Golf in Oregon”
   

PERSONAL HISTORY

• Born 07-31-32 Salem, Oregon
• Salem High School – 1950
• Willamette University – 1954 Masters Degree
• Stanford University – 1963 Doctorate in School Administration
• US Army – 1956 – 1958
• Married to Joan Marie Miller (1957)
• 4 daughters (Sally, Laura, Jill, Jane)
• 9 grandchildren, 8 great grandchildren
• Career School Administrator (Lake Oswego, Bend)
• Member of Oswego Lake Country Club