Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame

Effortless swing paid dividends for Julius Boros

BY HOWARD WARD

Julius Boros, the big, easygoing winner of two U.S. Opens, a PGA Championship and 15 other PGA Tour events, has been elected into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame. He and golf course architect Dan Maples will be inducted into the hall in January.

Boros, who died in 1994, was a native of Fairfield, Conn., but he came to the Sandhills when a friend purchased Southern Pines Country Club in 1946. Boros was an accountant by trade and his friend brought him south to help operate the golf course, keep the books and give the friend’s wife golf lessons.

The move worked out well for Boros, who was able to hone his own game year round in the warm climate and also met his future wife, Ann “Buttons” Cosgrove, whose family owned Mid Pines Golf Club in Southern Pines.

Buttons Cosgrove was a good amateur player who won the Massachusetts state championship and the Charlotte Open, and she and Jay, as she and other friends called Boros, hit it off quickly.

Peggy Kirk Bell, whose family now owns and operates both Pine Needles and Mid Pines Resorts, had become friends with Buttons while playing on the amateur circuit and frequently visited her in Southern Pines.

“We were all into golf and Southern Pines wasn’t exactly a big town,” Bell recalls. “Jay was a shy person, very quiet, but Buttons fell in love with him.”

The courtship led to marriage and marriage led to Boros going to work at Mid Pines. He gave up his amateur status in 1949 and he and Buttons were married the next year.

Turning professional wasn’t an easy decision for Boros. He was working at Mid Pines and the PGA Tour was not the rich playground that it is today. But his fiancé, Buttons, urged him to take the gamble.

Boros proved he could compete with the best players in the world when he shot 64 and beat Ben Hogan and Sam Snead in a pro-am at Mid Pines. He also finished second in the North and South Open, then a professional event, in 1948.

Known for a smooth, effortless swing and the slogan “Swing easy, hit it hard,’ he won 18 titles on the PGA Tour and was the leading money-winner twice, in 1952 and 1955.

Boros prided himself on the smooth, easy swing that was his trademark and once said, “If I tried to muscle the ball like Palmer and Nicklaus do, I’d be home for most of the year.”

Boros did not come from a wealthy family and didn’t take up golf until he was in his 20s. He once qualified for the U.S. Amateur, but was unable to participate because he couldn’t afford the travel expenses to California where the championship was being held.

When his wife died in 1951, Boros immersed himself in golf and had one of his finest years on Tour. He won the U.S. Open in Dallas, opening with a pair of 71s, and was four shots behind defending champion Hogan when the 36-hole finale began on Saturday. He shot 68-71 and won by four strokes over Porky Oliver and five over Hogan.

Boros was 43 years old when he won his second U.S. Open title at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., in 1963, in a playoff over Jacky Cupit and Arnold Palmer.

Boros was packing to go home when he discovered that Cupit had run into trouble on the closing holes and the three were tied at 293. In the Monday playoff, Boros shot 70 with Cupit posting 73 and Palmer 76.

Boros won the 1968 PGA Championship at the age of 48, making it a dramatic victory by getting up and down for par on the final hole to beat Palmer and left-hander Bob Charles by a shot.

His career was highlighted by four Ryder Cup Team appearances and he was elected into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1982.

Boros remained active until his death sitting in a golf cart on a Florida course in 1994.

When talk of retirement came up, he would smile and say, “Retire from what? All I do is play golf and fish.”