Evans, Chick (Charles Jr.)
Golf
b. July 18, 1890, Indianapolis, IN
d. Nov. 6, 1979
If Evans had mastered putting, there's no telling how many championships he might have won. But putting was such a problem for him that he often carried two putters in his golf bag and switched arbitrarily between them, hoping one of them would suddenly become a magic wand.
Evans won the Western Amateur in 1909 and went to the semi-finals of the U. S. Amateur. The following year, he won the Western Open. Still short of his twenty-first birthday, he went to England with his mother in 1911, reaching the fifth round of the British Amateur championship, then crossed the Channel and won the French Amateur.
His dream was to become the first amateur to win the U. S. Open, but Francis Ouimet beat him to it in 1913 and then amateur Jerry Travers won the 1915 Open. However, Evans did win both the Open and the U. S. Amateur in 1916, the first player ever to accomplish that. Evans had a one-shot lead in the Open when he hit a long drive on the 525-yard thirteenth hole. The green was protected by a creek that ran across the fairway, but Evans said to a friend, "I think I can afford to take a chance." He hit his second shot over the creek and onto the green, then two-putted for a birdie. His winning score of 286 was the Open record for twenty years.
Evans won the U. S. Amateur again in 1920. He also won four consecutive Western Amateurs, 1920 through 1923.