Bob Charles

Lore & Background

Charles arrived on the PGA Tour in the early 1960s as a tall, lanky New Zealander with a swing that looked almost lazy and a head of hair that looked like a 1960s rock star had wandered onto a country-club fairway. In an age when the PGA Tour still frowned on long hair and unconventional dress, Charles simply ignored the dress code and let his hair hang past his ears, his moustache curl upward, and his collar stay open. He was, by every conventional measure, the odd one out — and it made him magnetic.

His 1964 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale remains one of the great underdog stories in golf. A Kiwi from nowhere, playing against the British establishment on home soil, Charles threaded his way through a field that included the greats of the era and lifted the Claret Jug in a performance that electrified a small but devoted New Zealand contingent in the stands. Two years later he added the PGA Championship to his cabinet, cementing his status as a major-championship winner and a genuine star of the game.

But the glove is the thread that ties his legacy to every single round of golf played since. Charles grew frustrated with the thin, slippery one-fingered wraps of the 1960s and began experimenting with a fuller, padded design that covered the whole hand, offered a secure grip without choking the fingers, and stayed dry in the rain. He wore it himself, his rivals noticed, and within a few seasons the modern golf glove had become not just an accessory but a necessity. It is the one piece of equipment in golf that carries a single inventor's name in the public imagination, and that inventor was a long-haired Kiwi who also happened to win two majors.

In Their Own Story

Royal Birkdale, 1964. The North Sea wind is coming off the rough in salt-sting sheets, and the gallery on the 18th has thinned to a few hundred shivering fans huddled under oilskin. Bob Charles lines up his approach from the fringe, his hair whipping across his face, and he tucks it behind his ear with the back of his gloved hand — the same padded, multi-fingered glove he's been wearing all week, the one that still looks a little strange in a field of bare-handed and one-fingered players. He swings. The ball tracks low and straight, landing just short of the green and bouncing up to within a foot of the flagstick. The New Zealanders in the crowd, maybe thirty of them, let out a roar that the wind almost steals back. Charles doesn't celebrate. He just adjusts his glove, taps the putter on the grass, and walks to the hole with that unhurried, almost bored stride that made people love him and drive the old guard slightly mad. He will sink the putt. He will win the Open. And somewhere in a locker room that night, a young American pro will pick up the glove from Charles's bag, try it on, and never go back to the old one-fingered wrap again.

Reader's Guide

The Long-Haired Kiwi. Bob Charles walked onto the PGA Tour in the early 1960s with hair that hung past his jaw, a moustache that defied every club dress code in the book, and a swing so relaxed it looked like he was throwing a ball to a dog. He was from New Zealand, a place that had never produced a major-championship winner, and the tour's establishment treated him as a curiosity. He treated the tour as a place to play golf, full stop.

His rise came in two sharp bursts. In 1964, at Royal Birkdale, he threaded a needle through the British Open field and hoisted the Claret Jug, becoming the first New Zealander to win The Open. The crowd was small, the wind was savage, and Charles simply out-thought and out-tempered the field. In 1967 he added the PGA Championship, and between those two crowns he collected five more PGA Tour victories, finishing his career with seven.

Charles was famously independent. He was not the type to lock into a single caddie for a decade or to worship a clubmaker's logo. He was a self-reliant player who trusted his own hands, his own feel, and — most importantly — the glove he had designed himself. That glove, a padded, breathable, full-fingered sleeve that replaced the thin leather wraps of the era, became the single most consequential piece of equipment he ever touched. He wore it, his rivals copied it, and within a few years it was universal.

His legacy stat is not a number on a leaderboard. It is the fact that every golfer on every tour, from the PGA to the local Tuesday league, pulls on a glove that looks the way Bob Charles said it should look. The moment that made him a household name was not a major win. It was the quiet Tuesday afternoon when a rival picked up his glove, tried it on, and said, "Why didn't anyone make these before?"

Did You Know?

• Bob Charles was the first New Zealander to win The Open Championship, achieving it at Royal Birkdale in 1964.
• His long, flowing hair was considered genuinely scandalous on the PGA Tour in the 1960s, an era when players were expected to look like accountants.
• The modern multi-finger golf glove he designed and popularised has become so universal that it is now taken for granted as a standard piece of golf equipment.
• Charles won both The Open and the PGA Championship, two of golf's four major titles, during a career that spanned the 1960s and 1970s.