On Sunday, June 5, 1966, Eugene Cernan stepped out of the Gemini 9A spacecraft orbiting the Earth. Strapped to his again was a Buck Rogers-like house pack. For the primary time, an astronaut would journey in house exterior of a capsule and untethered. Sadly, Cernan encountered problems, and his helmet visor fogged. Unable to see, he needed to return to the capsule with out carrying out that a part of the mission.
On Earth, 168 miles beneath, tens of millions watched the drama unfold on tv, amongst them Bert Yancey, a 27-year-old PGA Tour skilled. Six weeks earlier, Yancey had gained the Azalea Open in Wilmington, North Carolina, a small-purse PGA Tour occasion held reverse the Match of Champions. Though the Azalea had a modest discipline, it was his first win and proved he may compartmentalize his mental-health points – points about which few had been conscious – to play at a excessive stage.
Now, although, Yancey was watching the spacewalk in his room at a Ramada Inn in Memphis when he was speculated to be on the Colonial Nation Membership for the ultimate spherical of the Memphis Open, that includes luminaries corresponding to Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Gary Participant. Yancey had matched the course document with a first-round 63, and he trailed Gene Littler by one going into the final spherical.
Entranced by the spacewalk, Yancey was oblivious to his 11:20 a.m. tee time. Because it drew shut, tour officers contemplated sending out Bruce Devlin and Dale Douglass as a twosome with out him. Tour caddie Roy Stone knew the place Yancey was lodging. At 11:05 a.m. Stone known as the lodge and instructed him he had quarter-hour to get to the primary tee or be disqualified. Yancey, aghast, sprung into motion and sped to the course.
Along with his dash from the membership car parking zone to the primary tee serving as his solely warm-up, Yancey shot 66 to beat Littler by 5 strokes. “I used to be by no means so frightened,” Yancey stated after the spherical. “I simply knew I had blown the entire works.” Years later, he stated momentous information occasions may set off his episodes – psychological demons the severity of which went unknown for years.
These days, you’ve almost definitely learn a lot about skilled athletes and psychological well being, however there was little such dialogue within the public sphere till just lately, and appallingly little understanding of the topic a half century in the past. All of which makes the unusual life and memorable profession of Yancey price re-evaluation.
Yancey gained seven occasions on the PGA Tour between 1966 and 1972 and got here shut in a number of main championships earlier than his profession was derailed by psychological sickness. It was a profession he didn’t even need.
“He by no means aspired to be knowledgeable golfer,” Yancey’s son Scott stated in a current interview. “He wished to be a physician.”
Yancey instructed a Sports activities Illustrated author the identical factor in 1969 for a profile revealed earlier than the Masters, the place he was one of many pre-tournament favorites. “I wished to assist individuals,” he stated.
“He’s by no means obtained the popularity he deserves, significantly together with his private background,” Deane Beman instructed International Golf Put up. Beman knew Yancey not solely from their years enjoying the tour, but additionally from Beman’s tenure as tour commissioner, when he handled the fallout from Yancey’s sickness. Beman noticed that Yancey’s document earlier than sickness curtailed his profession was the equal of or higher than that of his good friend Tom Weiskopf, who’s within the World Golf Corridor of Fame.
Given how issues turned out for Yancey, with quite a few cases of weird conduct adopted by stays at psychiatric hospitals, being a doctor may need been unattainable. Nevertheless, he did assist individuals, significantly later in his life, when he spoke about his mental-health challenges.
A distinct time
The human mind has been known as the final frontier in drugs. It’s the organ integral to our being however distant when it comes to scientific understanding, and probably the most tough to deal with when it’s not working proper.
In 1974, veteran Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Tommy John underwent surgical procedure to reconstruct a torn ligament in his elbow, a situation beforehand thought-about career-ending. John returned to pitch 14 extra years within the main leagues, and since then numerous athletes have benefited from what’s now known as Tommy John surgical procedure. No such magic therapy has been developed for psychological sickness. Based on a number of research, deaths by suicide have continued to regularly enhance since 1974, even with antidepressants and suicide hotlines.
The travails of gymnast Simone Biles, swimmer Michael Phelps, Main League Baseball gamers Jarren Duran and Ketel Marte, and tennis participant Naomi Osaka have generated a principally sympathetic response. (A person who heckled Marte about his mom’s demise in a vehicular accident was completely barred from all MLB ballparks.)
Yancey tried to take his personal life in October 1974, foiled solely as a result of he couldn’t open a window in a high-rise lodge in Japan.
Star outfielder Jimmy Piersall – whose psychological sickness was the topic of the 1957 movie “Worry Strikes Out” – was an everyday goal of fan abuse. However the intersection between skilled sports activities and psychological well being goes again even additional, to the 1940 suicide demise of Cincinnati Reds backup catcher Willard Hershberger, who took his personal life in his lodge room at age 30.
Grayson Murray’s Might 25, 2024, suicide was equally tragic. As with Hershberger, issues had seemed to be going nicely for the 30-year-old PGA Tour professional. 4 months earlier, he gained the Sony Open in Hawaii, incomes practically $1.5 million, and spoke about his well-documented battle with despair and alcoholism. Such is the insidious nature of psychological sickness. Greater than 50 years in the past, when much less was identified in regards to the mind and therapy choices paled compared to as we speak, a number of information sources lined Yancey’s dizzying ups and downs, with lengthy options by, amongst others, the longtime golf author Dave Kindred and the journalist Mark Mulvoy earlier than he ran all of Sports activities Illustrated.
Yancey tried to take his personal life in October 1974, foiled solely as a result of he couldn’t open a window in a high-rise lodge in Japan. And this, too, occurred when issues seemed to be going nicely. He had simply earned the most important examine of his profession and had been elected by his friends to the distinguished PGA Tour Coverage Board.
Extra so than as we speak, psychological sickness then got here with a stigma, and nobody questioned the informal use of phrases like “loopy” or “deranged.” Odd conduct accompanied by disordered speech may lead to an involuntary keep at a psychiatric hospital. Yancey masked his situation nicely. He was well-liked amongst his colleagues and had shut friendships with some, who knew nothing in regards to the demons in his thoughts till they spilled out into his public life.
Change of plans
Albert Winsborough Yancey was born on August 6, 1938. He was raised in Tallahassee, one among 10 kids in a household of modest means. His father was a authorities employee whose purview was, amongst different issues, the Florida roads division.
Yancey was a strapping, good-looking youth with thick, straight blonde hair, giving him the looks of a surfer. He was well-rounded – an Eagle Scout, and terribly vibrant. At Leon Excessive Faculty, he was a member of the Nationwide Honor Society and a category officer along with being an excellent golfer. Upon commencement, Yancey stayed near dwelling as he enrolled at Florida State College. He additionally utilized for an appointment to the USA Army Academy and was placed on the ready listing.
Within the spring of 1957, Yancey was ineligible for varsity golf with the Seminoles, however he excelled on the freshman workforce. By then, he knew his days at Florida State had been numbered, as a result of he had been notified by the Military that there was a gap for him at West Level and he supposed to take it.
West Level is not any stepping stone to the PGA Tour, because it entails a number of years of service after commencement – proof that being a golf professional was not Yancey’s life plan. Although it meant he could be repeating his first yr of school, Yancey reported to West Level in July 1957. He deliberate to earn an officer’s fee, then go to medical faculty and serve his nation within the Military Medical Division. As a plebe, he performed on the golf workforce and made the dean’s listing. After his junior yr, he was elected captain. He was undefeated in match play all through his faculty profession.
“I used to be nonetheless doing issues that had no which means. In the future I simply began to stroll off in a straight line towards the sting of the Everglades. My brother stopped me simply in time.”
— Bert Yancey
When Yancey returned to West Level in the summertime of 1960 for his remaining yr, he skilled his first identified mental-health episode, as per Sports activities Illustrated. He was unable to sleep and commenced to rant nonsensically. Yancey lined up plebes within the incoming class and demanded they inform him the which means of reality, and the which means of affection. He was taken for examination by a psychiatrist, identified as having suffered a “nervous breakdown” and despatched to the Military hospital at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. After 9 months there, throughout which he acquired electroconvulsive remedy, Yancey took an honorable discharge from the Military on medical grounds.
His plan for an officer’s fee dashed, Yancey returned dwelling to Florida. He moved to Miami to work at a golf course the place his brother Jim was the greenkeeper, however he continued to battle. “It was apparent that I used to be not nicely even then,” Yancey stated within the 1969 Sports activities Illustrated profile. “I used to be nonetheless doing issues that had no which means. In the future I simply began to stroll off in a straight line towards the sting of the Everglades. My brother stopped me simply in time.”
In July 1961, Yancey determined to make a residing as knowledgeable golfer. He took a job as the pinnacle professional at Gaffney Nation Membership in South Carolina and performed the PGA winter tour with out cashing a single examine. He married and gained the 1962 South Carolina Open in November. He was 23, and located steadier employment as event director for the South Carolina PGA.
However quickly thereafter, Yancey abruptly left South Carolina and returned to Florida. He re-enrolled at Florida State to renew his medical research, however simply as rapidly, he dropped out. Yancey and his new bride separated and hurriedly divorced after he entered right into a relationship with the girl who would grow to be his second spouse and the mom of his 4 kids.
Throughout the summer time of 1963, Yancey visited a good friend in Philadelphia and located a job as an assistant professional at Inexperienced Valley Nation Membership, however he nonetheless wasn’t executed with event golf and the entire accompanying exhausting knocks. In August, he arrived on the remaining gap of the Philadelphia Open – a non-PGA Tour occasion – at Aronimink Golf Membership needing solely a bogey to win. As an alternative, he suffered a triple-bogey 7 and completed fourth. Nevertheless, the next week he rebounded and gained the Pennsylvania Open.
Emboldened by his success and resilience, in 1964 Yancey once more tried the PGA Tour with the sponsorship of a number of rich Philadelphians. He performed in 28 occasions (usually after going by means of Monday morning qualifying) and made 15 cuts, incomes $11,854, a good sum again then. He certified for the U.S. Open, however needed to withdraw after gashing his naked foot on a bit of damaged glass whereas hitting a shot from a water hazard. He did higher in 1965, incomes $22,285, together with a runner-up end on the Phoenix Open. For a lot of the subsequent decade, by all outward appearances, his psychological well being could be comparatively secure.
In September 1966, after his victories on the Azalea and Memphis opens, Yancey gained the Portland Open for his third victory of the yr. For 72 holes at Portland, he wanted solely 102 putts, a tour document that stood till 1977.
Main issue
Yancey had established himself as one among golf’s brightest younger stars, and his victories gave him entrée into his first Masters, in 1967. His opening spherical of 67 gave him a three-shot lead, and he contended till a final-round 73 left him in third place, 4 strokes behind winner Homosexual Brewer.
Profitable the Masters turned an obsession to Yancey. He created a topographically correct plaster mannequin of Augusta Nationwide the dimensions of a tabletop to assist in his preparation. He by no means gained the Masters, however twice extra was shut: in 1968, his final-round 65 gave him a backdoor third-place end, two photographs behind winner Bob Goalby (Yancey birdied the par-3 sixteenth gap all 4 rounds), and in 1970 he was tied for the lead after 36 holes earlier than fading to fourth behind Billy Casper.
Yancey had one other shut name on the 1968 U.S. Open at Oak Hill. His opening 67 put him within the lead by two photographs over Lee Trevino and Charles Coody. After a 68 on Friday, he remained two photographs away from Trevino.
Within the third spherical, Trevino and Yancey had been paired. On the eleventh inexperienced, Trevino requested Yancey to maneuver his coin marker. After Trevino putted, Yancey positioned his ball down, picked up his coin and ready to putt. Trevino stopped him: “Did you place your coin again?” Yancey had not and re-marked his ball to the right spot. The pair separated themselves from the sector, with Yancey taking pictures 70 to take a one-stroke lead over Trevino, who shot 69.
“One among nowadays I’m going to win a giant one,” Trevino stated after the spherical. “Possibly I’ll even win this one tomorrow, however I wouldn’t need it as a result of Bert needed to take a two-stroke penalty.”
Trevino did win, taking pictures a 69 whereas Yancey struggled to a 76 to complete third. Based on son Scott, Yancey’s failure at Oak Hill was the most important disappointment of his profession.
Blessed with a near-genius IQ, on airplane flights Yancey loved doing complicated math puzzles. “He was an important man, a superb man,” retired professional Frank Beard recalled in an interview. “He taught me to play bridge.”
Tony Jacklin might have been his greatest good friend on the tour. “Bert, Tom Weiskopf and I had been inseparable,” Jacklin stated. “It was dinner each night time and observe rounds the following day. We had been as shut as pals may be. He was a really deep thinker.”
Via Englishman Jacklin, Yancey developed a love of hyperlinks golf due to the strategic pondering required. The 2 stayed collectively when Jacklin gained the 1969 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes. “The night time earlier than the ultimate spherical, I took a sleeping tablet and fell asleep,” Jacklin remembered. “Bert guided me upstairs to my mattress.”
Few American execs ventured to the British Isles again then, however Yancey performed each Open Championship between 1967 and 1973, making the minimize every time and ending fifth in ’73. Ever since his “nervous breakdown” at West Level in 1960, he had saved his inner issues to himself. Neither Beard nor Jacklin knew their good friend suffered from psychological sickness.
Demons return
“His swing was a symphony, every motion majestic in its purity and ease,” Dave Kindred of The Washington Put up wrote of Yancey in 1978. “Placing, he was a thief working in daylight, stealing birdies from 20 ft when par was his due.” Amongst his friends, Yancey was admired as a lot for his sport as for his mind. “Bert had a easy, three-quarters swing, good tempo,” stated Jacklin.
“You could possibly inform he was army by the best way he walked down the green,” Trevino stated. “Like he was marching. He was a tall, handsome man, good, very quiet. He strutted when he went down the green. He may actually play. He had an exquisite golf swing.”
Followers acknowledged Yancey for his distinctive tempo and ever-present white visor. The final of his seven tour wins was on the 1972 American Golf Basic at Firestone. In 1974, he was second on the Bob Hope Desert Basic and joint third within the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, three strokes behind Hale Irwin.
4 months later, Yancey’s psychological well being deteriorated. Upon being elected to the PGA Tour Coverage Board in October 1974, he traveled to Japan, the place he completed second to Littler in a event however as soon as once more started to behave erratically. Unable to sleep in his Tokyo lodge room, he left at 3 a.m. to go to a Japanese non secular shrine. “I used to be a messiah rising out of the PGA,” Yancey stated later. “I used to be going to the Orient to carry an finish to the evil of communism and convey the religions of the Orient into line with Christianity.” As per the story by Kindred, Yancey occurred upon members of the Temptations singing group, who had been touring Japan, and in mild of the group’s identify, he believed they should be evil and picked a battle with one among its members. He was felled by a karate chop from one of many group’s entourage earlier than returning to his lodge.
Regardless of having simply earned $32,500, the biggest examine of his profession, Yancey, alone out of the country with solely his demons to maintain him firm, tried to flee the one manner that appeared obtainable to him. “The one factor that prevented me from leaping from the fortieth ground of the Tokyo Hilton was the protection latch on the window wouldn’t launch,” he stated in 1992. He was taken into custody by Japanese authorities.
From nightmare to stability
Deane Beman, 87, knew Yancey nicely and counted him as a good friend. The 2 had been born simply 4 months aside and bonded over skilled golf and different shared pursuits.
“We had an everyday bridge group,” Beman stated from a lodge close to his summer time dwelling in coastal Maine. “Labron Harris was one. Jimmy Colbert, Harold Henning. And naturally, Bert. Most of us had households that didn’t journey with us on tour. We performed bridge nearly each night time.” Like Beard and Jacklin, Beman had no concept his good friend suffered from psychological sickness.
On the time of Yancey’s episode in Tokyo, the PGA Tour had no participant help program, however in Beman, Yancey had the following neatest thing. Seven months earlier, Beman – retired as a participant – turned the second commissioner of the PGA Tour. And because it occurred, he had a brother who suffered from bipolar dysfunction.
“Once I turned commissioner of the tour, I used to be very a lot conscious of this sickness, and I used to be concerned with Bert as a good friend and as a commissioner in dealing with a few of the issues that he had,” Beman stated.
Based on Beman, Japan was not enlightened to psychological sickness. “I don’t understand how their angle is as we speak, but it surely was an issue to really get him out of the palms of the officers there,” Beman stated. Due to Yancey’s document of service within the Military, Beman was capable of organize for Yancey’s launch and to get him on a army airplane again to the USA. Yancey was hospitalized in Philadelphia for two-and-a-half months, and launched with no definitive prognosis and no follow-up plan. He returned to the tour in 1975 with no obvious in poor health results, ending second behind Nicklaus at Doral, and second at Tallahassee.
On reflection, this was a false daybreak, for in August, after the ultimate spherical of the Westchester Basic, performed in 100-degree warmth, there was one other incident, this time at LaGuardia Airport. As per Kindred, Yancey ordered a painter to get down from a ladder, which Yancey then climbed up earlier than launching right into a speech on the evils of racism. To a lot laughter, he directed Black passengers to maneuver to at least one aspect and white passengers to the opposite. He was taken into custody and transported to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in Manhattan.
Inside two days, Yancey was identified with manic-depressive sickness (bipolar dysfunction), a situation marked by alternating durations of despair and abnormally elevated moods. Throughout depressive durations, the sufferer is susceptible to suicidal ideas, as was the case for writer Ernest Hemingway in 1961 and Washington Put up writer Phil Graham in 1963, each of whom died by suicide. Yancey lastly knew what was incorrect.
Lithium, which the Meals and Drug Administration had authorized for therapy of bipolar dysfunction in 1970, stabilized his temper for durations. Nevertheless, with common utilization, lithium causes hand tremors. In 1976, Yancey (by then 37 years previous) gave it a strive, however in 12 PGA Tour occasions didn’t make a single minimize and had a scoring common of 79.77.
On the Heritage Basic, he was in a threesome with Nicklaus. Within the first spherical, he shot 90. His 12-year-old son Charles was within the gallery and heard a spectator say, “Yancey stinks. He shouldn’t be on the market with Nicklaus.” Charles hit the person over the pinnacle with a stick and ran off with the stick (based on Scott, thereafter his father displayed the stick on a desk at his dwelling). In July, Yancey was paired with Weiskopf for the primary two rounds at Westchester. Neither performed nicely (Yancey shot 80-81) and Weiskopf walked off the course in the course of the second spherical and was fined $3,000 by the PGA Tour. Weiskopf (who died in 2022) later gave a motive, saying his good friend was behaving erratically and disturbing him with verbal barbs.
As nightmarish as 1974 to 1976 had been, 1977 was even worse. Yancey retired from aggressive golf and established the Bert Yancey Classical Faculty of Golf at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. His second spouse filed for divorce and for custody of their 4 kids, and Yancey, who yearned to return to enjoying, stopped taking lithium.
As per a number of information accounts, on Oct. 31 at 1 a.m., the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Division acquired a name from a girl claiming there was a prowler exterior her dwelling, which was subsequent door to Yancey’s residence. Yancey – carrying a Robin Hood costume for Halloween – was seen by deputies peering right into a rear window and was apprehended. Within the patrol automobile, he turned violent and precipitated injury to the automobile’s inside. He was arrested and charged with violating the Peeping Tom legislation, indecent publicity, resisting arrest, and destruction of property. He was transferred to the state psychiatric hospital in Columbia in a straitjacket. In December, Yancey was launched when he voluntarily admitted himself to a personal facility. He admitted to being on a manic excessive however denied that he uncovered himself. The costs had been dropped, and he saved his place at Hilton Head.
Yancey started to talk about his psychological sickness, together with to Kindred, whose syndicated story was broadly distributed within the spring of 1978, and to NBC tv character Tom Snyder in a June 1978 phase titled “Escape from Insanity.”
Into the Nineteen Eighties, Yancey continued to work at Hilton Head. In March 1982, he supposed to play within the Heritage Basic on his dwelling course, however earlier than he was scheduled to tee off within the first spherical, he demonstrated erratic conduct and was escorted off the course into the care of his doctor and hospitalized. Lengthy durations of stability, with intermittent hospitalizations in between (roughly 20 in all), was Yancey’s new regular.
Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, Yancey’s docs switched him from lithium to Tegretol and Depakote. They had been efficient, and with out the tremor unwanted side effects. Within the fall of 1986, at 48, he performed a Florida mini-tour and entered the Tallahassee Open. After opening with 77, he shot 69 to make the minimize. He completed in a tie for 52nd and earned $468, his first tour paycheck since 1975.
In August 1988 – when Yancey turned 50 – he turned an enthusiastic member of the Senior PGA Tour (now PGA Tour Champions). He was not a star, however he earned a paycheck each week. His greatest yr was 1992, when he had 4 top-10 finishes and earned $118,844. (That eclipsed his greatest years on the PGA Tour, during which he by no means earned greater than $85,000.) Extra importantly, Yancey made time to talk to mental-health teams amid his busy enjoying schedule. “He would converse for 2 or three hours, and no person would go away,” son Scott recalled. “In some unspecified time in the future I spotted he was extra about setting a superb instance than profitable.” When Yancey spoke to teams, he would say, “It’s OK to be mentally in poor health.”
Admirable legacy
August 26, 1994, was a crystalline morning in Park Metropolis, Utah. Yancey, 56, was scheduled to tee off at 10:20 a.m. for the primary spherical of the Franklin Quest Championship when he noticed his good friend Weiskopf within the clubhouse at Park Meadows Nation Membership. “Play good, T,” he stated to Weiskopf, who would tee off within the threesome following Yancey’s. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
Yancey felt discomfort in his chest and arm as he warmed up and talked to paramedics stationed at an onsite ambulance by the vary. His blood strain was barely elevated, however he stated he felt higher, and he was reluctant to withdraw. He doubted there could be time for officers to summon an alternate to take his place within the discipline, and he felt an obligation to his enjoying companions, Rives McBee and Jim Albus, to keep away from having to play a gradual spherical as a twosome.
After returning to the observe vary, Yancey hit a number of balls earlier than realizing he couldn’t proceed. Instantly, he collapsed.
“I hope his legacy is that he tried to assist individuals.”
— Scott Yancey
In a 2022 article, Laury Livsey of PGA Tour Champions associated that, as paramedics had been putting Yancey on a stretcher, he grabbed the hand of guidelines official Bryan Naugle and requested, “Did the primary alternate get in?” These had been his final phrases; he went into cardiac arrest and efforts to revive him had been unsuccessful. Park Meadows head professional Mike Kutcher overheard the change between Yancey and Naugle. “The poor man is having a coronary heart assault,” Kutcher recalled, “and his greatest concern is getting the primary alternate into the sector.”
A grief-stricken Weiskopf wished to withdraw however soldiered on and gained. “It means a lot to me to win this trophy for Bert,” he stated. Jacklin additionally performed and completed seventh. The next yr earlier than the Franklin Quest Championship, a rock monument to Yancey was unveiled at Park Meadows Golf Membership. Jacklin attended the ceremony and went on to win.
Though it was a coronary heart assault, not psychological sickness, that ended Yancey’s life, his legacy is extra intently related to psychological well being than coronary heart illness or the rest. He by no means conquered psychological sickness, however in an period when it was nonetheless poorly understood, he refused to let it defeat him and died together with his golf spikes on. He based an advocacy group, Birdies, Bogeys & Bert, which held a event in Augusta, Georgia, to lift cash for mental-health organizations. The topsy-turvy lifetime of the gifted Bert Yancey is a sobering reminder of the previous noticed that it’s not a lot what you accomplish in life however what you overcome.
“I hope his legacy is that he tried to assist individuals,” son Scott stated. And certainly he did attempt to assist them, till his final breath – “Did the primary alternate get in?” – however solely after first serving to himself. That he was ready to take action was the best problem, and the best accomplishment, of his life.
If you’re fascinated by harming your self or trying suicide, inform somebody who might help instantly. Name 988 (the Suicide & Disaster Lifeline) 24 hours a day and you’ll discuss to someone inside minutes, or name 911 for emergency companies, or go to the closest emergency room.
Patrick Hand is a contract author and contributor to International Golf Put up, and is the writer of “The Age of Palmer: Professional Golf within the Sixties, Its Biggest Period” (Canoe Tree Press 2023).
Prime: Bert Yancey tees off on the eleventh gap in the course of the 1970 Masters. Augusta Nationwide, Getty Photos
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