Sports lost one of the last of the good guys on Thursday when former Duke All-American golfer and PGA Tour star Mike Souchak died at his home on Belleair, Fla. The Duke Hall of Famer was 81 years old. 

Souchak wasn’t someone the casual fan knew, primarily because he played the tour from 1955 to 1966 when three guys named Palmer, Player and Nicklaus sucked all the air out of the game. But the big North Carolinian won 15 times on tour, and was the first real power-player in the game. Golf always had long hitters going back to Old Tom Morris who could crank a feathery farther than anybody, but Souchak, who started his career as an assistant pro at Winged Foot, was one of the first to successfully hit the ball high and hard with straight as a secondary concern, a model that would be followed successfully by guys named Nicklaus, Norman, and now Woods. 

“Mike never got the credit he deserved for being a player,” said long-time friend Butch Harmon. “He was a great human being, one of the last of that generation who were really genuinely great guys, accommodating, always loved people and loved the game. But people overlooked him because he never won a major. They talk about the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills where he was leading after 54 holes and lost to Arnold Palmer, but that’s golf: that stuff happens. The guy held the scoring record forever, so he could play. More than anything, though, he was a great human being.” 

The record Harmon mentioned was the PGA Tour scoring record that Souchak set in the 1955 Texas Open. In addition to being the first man to shoot 60 in a sanctioned event, Souchak’s four-day total of 257 remained in the record books for the better part of 50 years. Mark Calcavecchia finally broke it in 2001 when he shot 256 in the Phoenix Open, but even Calc acknowledged the difference.

“The fact that the record stood for that long is a testament to Mike,” Calcavecchia said at the time. “With the equipment of that day, 257 was…well, it was a record that lasted 46 years.”