Don Cherry, singer and top amateur golfer, dies at 94

The golf world – and the music world – has learned that Don Cherry, a popular 1950s pop singer who spent his spare time honing his golf game, died on April 4 in hospice. He was 94.

Cherry music career began in his 20s, first as a big-band singer then in the recording studio, but his golf career began long before that. The New York Times reports that he received his first set of golf clubs from his mother when he was 8 years old.

Cherry competed mostly as an amateur, but turned professional in 1962, two years after a ninth-place finish at the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills near Denver. Highlights of his amateur career include winning the 1953 Canadian Amateur and also appearing on three victorious U.S. Walker Cup teams (1953, 1955 and 1961).

Throughout his golf career, Cherry played the U.S. Open and the Masters a number of times, but 1960 marked his best run.

Cherry’s New York Times obituary includes a story of Cherry being questioned for trying to overlap his two loves of golf and music. He sang in a nightclub in Augusta, Ga., while competing in the 1953 Masters. It resulted in an interesting conversation with Clifford Roberts, chairman of Augusta National Golf Club.

Cherry was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in January 1924.