On July 28, 1956, a 16-year-old Jack Nicklaus played an exhibition match with PGA star Sam Snead at Urbana Country Club.

Rounding out the foursome that day was Urbana’s Dr. “Chick” Evans and Bob Ross of Springfield, who were both golf standouts on the local and state level.

Urbana industrialist Warren Grimes organized the event as a fund-raiser to build the pool at UCC.

On Saturday, July 30, 2016, Urbana Country Club will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the original Nicklaus-Snead match with a golf tournament – featuring 1964 Olympic gold medal-winning basketball player George Wilson – and a dinner.

In addition, Nicklaus has written a letter with his recollections of that day 60 years ago that will be read aloud, and he also sent a framed 16×20 autographed photo depicting his last putt at the British Open in 2005 which is being raffled off to benefit the United Way of Clark, Champaign and Madison Counties.

Raffle tickets are available at the Urbana Country Club pro shop for $1 each or 12 for $10. The winning ticket will be drawn during the event on July 30.

For more information, call the UCC pro shop at 303-0916.

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Nicklaus returned to Urbana Country Club on Labor Day of 1957 to play Snead again, this time joined by Ross and Pete Dye, an Urbana native who went on to become one of the world’s greatest golf course architects.

Dye and Nicklaus would later work together on designing The Golf Club in New Albany, Ohio, and Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

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Trivia Time – Athens, Ohio, native Dow Finsterwald was assessed a costly two-stroke penalty in the 1960 Masters for practice putting on the green following the conclusion of a hole. Finsterwald ended up losing the tournament by two strokes to Arnold Palmer.

This week’s question – How much money did Arnold Palmer make for winning the 1960 Masters?