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Ben Crenshaw    

Former Professional PGA Golfer

Ben Crenshaw is a retired professional golfer who has won 19 events on the PGA Tour, including two major championships: the Masters Tournament in 1984 and 1995. He is nicknamed Gentle Ben. Crenshaw attended and played golf at Austin High School and the University of Texas, where he won three NCAA Championships from 1971 to 1973. He was also a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He turned professional in 1973.

In 1973, Crenshaw became the second player in Tour history to win the first event of his career: the 1979 Walt Disney World National Team Championship in Orlando. Following five runner-up finishes in major championships without a victory, including losing a sudden-death playoff for the 1979 PGA Championship, he won the Masters Tournament in 1984. In the mid-1980s, he suffered from Graves' disease, a disease of the thyroid, but he continued to accumulate victories, finishing with 19 on the PGA Tour, including an emotional second Masters victory in 1995, which came a week after the death of his mentor Harvey Penick.

Crenshaw won several professional events outside the PGA Tour, including individual and team titles in the World Cup of Golf in 1988. He was among the top ten on McCormack's World Golf Rankings from 1976 to 1981 inclusive, and returned to spend 80 weeks in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Ranking from 1987 to 1989. In 1987, he became one of the few players in history to finish in the top ten of all four major championships in the same season without winning any of them.

Despite playing mainly in the United States, Crenshaw had a number of top performances in international events in his career. He won the 1976 Irish Open and then finished runner-up to compatriot Hubert Green the next year. He also finished runner-up at two events on the Australasian Tour, at the 1978 Australian Open and the 1982 Australian PGA Championship. And he famously had two runner-ups at The Open Championship.

Crenshaw is widely regarded as one of the best putters in golf history. In winning the Masters in 1995, "Gentle Ben" did not record a single three-putt during the tournament. Since 1986, Crenshaw has been a partner with Bill Coore in Coore & Crenshaw, a golf course design firm. The 2015 Masters Tournament was the 44th and final for Crenshaw.

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