Jim Colbert, 28-title winner, dies at 85
jim colbert, who won 28 combined titles across the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions, died on May 10 at age 85. His career stretched from a rookie season that produced $1,898 in earnings to a run of victories that made him one of the most accomplished players of his era.
Colbert’s Kansas State roots
Born March 9, 1941, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Colbert earned a football scholarship to Kansas State University and was runner-up in the individual portion of the 1964 NCAA Championship. An injury ended his football path and pushed him toward golf, where he began playing professionally on the PGA TOUR in 1966.
His first year offered little proof of what was coming. He earned $1,898 as a rookie, then followed with a 1967 season that produced $25,425, four top 10s and a tie for third at the Jacksonville Open, leaving him 46th on the money list. A year later, he missed 12 cuts and finished 104th on the earnings chart.
The 1969 Monsanto breakthrough
The turnaround arrived in 1969 at the Monsanto Open in Pensacola, Florida, where Colbert won his first PGA TOUR title. He finished one shot ahead of runner-up Deane Beman after a weather delay, and later recalled, “By the time we finished up, the only person around was the shoeshine guy, waiting for his tip.”
That win opened a stretch that defined the rest of his PGA TOUR career. He added the Greater Milwaukee Open in 1972, the Greater Jacksonville Open in 1973, the American Golf Classic in 1974 and the Walt Disney World National Team Championship with Dean Refram in 1975.
Colbert’s 1983 peak
Colbert’s biggest PGA TOUR year came in 1983, when he won the Texas Open with a 19-under 261 and took the Colonial National Invitation. He finished 15th on the PGA TOUR money list with $223,810, his best showing in earnings.
He also built a recognizable look that separated him from the field. After nearly collapsing from sunstroke in Kansas in 1957, he began wearing a bucket hat at a doctor’s insistence, and he later said, “Lee Trevino has his sombrero, Jack Nicklaus has the bear. I have my hat.” He wore a baseball cap for six months during the 1970 PGA TOUR season and found that nobody could recognize him.
His PGA TOUR career ended in 1987 because of back pain, but his reach on the game lasted well beyond that. Colbert won 20 PGA TOUR Champions titles, giving him 28 combined victories across both tours. For a player whose hat became part of his identity, the record that remained was the simpler one: wins.
