Andy Bean: Biography of the Golfer

Andy Bean was a big golfer with a big personality who, from the late 1970s into the mid-late-1980s was one of the PGA Tour's top contenders. Bean recorded double-digit wins during that time, had multiple high money-list finishes, and was runner-up in three majors. And have you heard about the time he wrestled an alligator on a golf course?

Full name: Thomas Andrew Bean

Date of birth: March 13, 1953

Place of birth: LaFayette, Georgia

Date and place of death: October 14, 2023, in Lakeland, Florida

His Biggest Wins

Andy Bean had 11 career wins in official PGA Tour tournaments: He also won the Isuzu Kapalua International, a non-tour event, in 1986 and 1987. And Bean had these wins on other major tours:

Japan Tour

  • 1978 Dunlop Phoenix Tournament
  • 1987 ABC Japan-U.S. Match

Champions Tour

In the Majors

Bean never won one of the four major championships in men's professional golf. But he did finish second in these three majors:
  • 1980 PGA Championship: Bean was runner-up to Jack Nicklaus, although a distant seven strokes behind the Bear. (Nicklaus set the PGA Championship's then-record margin of victory.)
  • 1983 British Open: Bean had a great final-round with a 67, but wasn't able to chase down third-round leader (and winner) Tom Watson. Bean tied for second, one stroke behind.
  • 1989 PGA Championship: Bean scored 66 in the final round, the best score of the day, to charge up the leaderboard. He tied for second, one stroke off Payne Stewart's winning score.
Bean also tied for third in the 1985 PGA Championship. He had eight Top 10 finishes total in majors. Others were tied sixth in the 1978 U.S. Open and 1980 British Open; tied seventh in the 1978 PGA Championship; and tied 10th in the 1982 Masters.

Something very unusual happened to Andy Bean in the 1977 U.S. Open: He was the playing partner of a golfer against whom a death threat was placed. Following the third round, Bean was in second place, one stroke behind Hubert Green. Before they teed off as playing partners in the final round, someone called in a threat to shoot Green on the 15th hole during the final round.

Green was informed of the threat as he walked off the 14th green. He chose to continue playing, but, to keep his caddie, Bean and Bean's caddie safe, should the threat be carried out, he stayed clear of them as he played the 15th.

There was no shot, and Green went on to win. By the time Green was informed, though, Bean had aleady shot himself out of contention: He scored 79 and fell all the way to 23rd.

More About Andy Bean

At 6-foot-4 and, during his prime years, 220-230 pounds, Andy Bean was a big player for his time. In 1985 he led the tour in driving distance at 278.2 yards, but was also known for his accuracy off the tee. Putting wasn't among the things Bean ever led the tour in, but he could get hot with the flatstick, too. He completed the 1990 Heritage Classic taking only 95 putts total, at the time the third-lowest number of putts in a 72-hole tournament ever recorded on the tour.

In the PGA Tour's 1987 media guide, the guide's profile of Bean stated, "He is one of the biggest men in the game and he has the personality and the heart to match his size. Wherever the game is played, he always is one of the more popular men in the field."

He was known as a very colorful player. One example: Bean would win bets by proving he could bite the cover off a golf ball. And he once did it on national television.

According to a legend that is sometimes still repeated as fact, Bean once stopped during a golf tournament in Florida to "wrestle" an alligator. The reality was less dramatic: During the 1975 Q-School final in Florida, playing with a golfer from California who, Bean reasoned, had probably never seen a gator in person before, Bean grabbed a sunning gator by the tail. The gator shot back into the water of the pond it had been sitting next to. But the story got more embellished each year until Bean set the record straight.

When he first arrived on tour, word got around that Bean had once, as a child, kept a pet alligator. That, plus the gator-wrestling legend, led to his new PGA Tour brethren calling him "Alligator Andy" for a time.

Bean was born into a golfing family. His father was a pro and superintendent. Bean spent his earliest years on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where his father worked at a course. Little Andy began playing golf at age three.

When he was 15, his father bought a golf course in Florida. Bean spent the rest of his life based in that state. Bean once explained to the tour that, "I've been lucky because my parents never made me do much work around the course. They let me go play."

Bean played on the University of Florida golf team, where his teammates included fellow future PGA Tour pros Gary Koch, Woody Blackburn and Phil Hancock, and future Augusta National Golf Club chairman Fred Ridley. In 1973 that talent-packed squad won the NCAA team championship.

Bean won five NCAA tournaments during his time at Florida. He was named All-American in 1973, 1974 and 1975. And during his college years he also won several notable amateur victories: the 1974 Eastern Amateur and Falstaff Amateur; the 1975 Dixie Amateur and Western Amateur. He reached the semifinals of the 1975 U.S. Amateur Championship (won by his college teammate Ridley), his best showing in that tournament.

Bean graduated college in 1975 and turned pro that year, after making it through the PGA Tour's Fall Qualifying School. Not a lot happened for Bean during his rookie year of 1976, but that soon changed.

In his second year as a pro, Bean won the prestigious Doral-Eastern Open, beating runner-up David Graham by one stroke. And it was, literally, a great birthday present to himself: The final round was played on Bean's 24th birthday. It launched a 10-year run in which Bean was clearly one of the tour's top talents. From 1977-86, Bean never finished lower than 35th on the money list, was in the Top 7 five times, and won 11 times.

Three of those wins happened in 1978, and they were, like his first, wins in events that were considered upper-tier at the time: the Kemper Open, Danny Thomas Memphis Classic, and Western Open. Those three victories all happened within a 6-week stretch.

Those Memphis and Western wins came in playoffs, over Lee Trevino in Memphis and over Bill Rogers in the Western Open. Bean finished third on the season-ending PGA Tour money list, one of two years he reached that spot. He also notched the first of his two career wins in Japan in 1978.

In 1979 Bean won in the Atlanta Classic by eight strokes, the largest margin of victory on the tour that year. He got into a playoff at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, but fell to Lon Hinkle.

He won once each in 1980 and 1981 (in the 1981 Bay Hill Classic by seven shots over runner-up Tom Watson), and claimed the Doral for the second time in 1982.

The 1983 season was his first winless year since joining the tour. He was the 36-hole leader at the 1983 Canadian Open, but then scored 75 in Round 3. On the last green of that third round, Bean left a putt an inch or two short. Frustrated by his play that day, he turned his putter upside down. Holding the clubhead, he tapped the ball into the hole with the grip end. The tour assessed a 2-stroke penalty. You can probably guess what happened next: In the final round Bean shot 62 and finished second, two strokes out of a playoff.

The other year Bean finished third on the season money list was 1984. He won the Greater Greensboro Open that year, but also lost twice in playoffs among his three runner-up finishes. One of those playoff losses was to Bruce Lietzke in the Honda Classic. Then he took Jack Nicklaus to a third extra hole before Nicklaus finally won his own tournament, The Memorial. It was Nicklaus' second-to-last PGA Tour win.

Although his PGA Tour career stretched all the way to 2003, Bean's last two wins on the tour happened in 1986 when he was just 33 years old. Those victories were in the Doral-Eastern Open (his third) and the Byron Nelson Golf Classic. He was second in two other tournaments.

Bean's win total stood at 11, and he was the 58th player in PGA Tour history to win at least that many official tournaments. In the 1987 PGA Tour Book, the tour included cumulative stats for the seven-year period of 1980-86. Bean was all over those rankings: first in cumulative birdies, second in total par breakers, fourth in eagles and greens in regulation, tied fifth in scoring average, seventh in driving distance.

And at the end of that 1986 season, Bean was no. 8 on the tour's career money list. His season money-list finishes had included third in 1978 and 1984, fourth in 1980 and 1986, and seventh in 1979.

But aches and pains were starting to accumulate. Severe elbow tendinitis and a balky wrist badly hurt Bean's play in 1987, and he fell to 120th on money list at end of that season, even lower the next.

He rebounded with several runner-up finishes in 1989, including in the PGA championship, but then recurring injuries and new injuries kept coming and he never played that well again.

PGA Tour statistics show that Bean made 588 career starts, with 11 wins, 15 seconds, 8 thirds, 55 total Top 5 finishes and 103 total Top 10 finishes.

He also played on Team USA twice in the Ryder Cup. In the 1979 Ryder Cup, Bean went 2-1-0, splitting two foursomes matches before beating Michael King in singles. In the 1987 Ryder Cup, despite his poor form on tour that year, Bean again went 2-1-0. He split two fourball matches that time, then defeated Ian Woosnam in singles.

When Bean turned 50, he joined the Champions Tour in 2003. He his game started shaping up for him in his mid-50s. He had his first senior tour victory in 2006 and won twice more in 2008. He finished 12th on the money list in 2006, eighth in 2008, and seventh in 2009 (when he didn't win but had five second-place finishes).

Bean's best finish in a senior major was tied fourth in the 2004 Tradition. He tied for fifth place in the 2006 U.S. Senior Open.

Bean last played on the Champions Tour in 2014 at age 61, officially retiring at the end of that year. He made 233 career starts on the senior circuit, with three victories, eight seconds, five thirds, 22 Top 5 finishes, and 41 total Top 10 finishes.

In 2023, Bean contracted a severe case of COVID-19 that did so much damage to his lungs he underwent double lung transplant surgery. He died within a few months due to complications from that surgery. He was 70 years old.

Bean is a member of the Florida Sports Hall of Fame, University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame, Florida State Golf Association Hall of Fame, and the Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame.

Sources:
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
Alliss, Peter. The Who's Who of Golf, 1983, Orbis Publishing.
Carter, Scott. "Carter's Corner: Remembering Colorful Gators, PGA Tour Veteran Andy Bean," October 19, 2023, https://floridagators.com/news/2023/10/18/mens-golf-carters-corner-remembering-colorful-gators-pga-golfer-andy-bean.
Champions Tour. Official 2012 Guide, Andy Bean, Career Summary.
Conner, Floyd. Golf's Most Wanted, 2001, Brassey's Inc.
Florida High School Athletic Association. Hall of Fame, Members, Andy Bean, https://fhsaa.com/hof.aspx?hof=40.
Florida Sports Hall of Fame. Members, Andy Bean, https://flasportshof.org/fshofmember/andy-bean/.
Golf Channel. "Andy Bean, 11-time PGA Tour winner, dies after recent lung replacement surgery," NBCSports.com, October 14, 2023, https://www.nbcsports.com/golf/news/andy-bean-11-time-pga-tour-winner-dies-after-recent-lung-replacement-surgery.
Livsey, Laura. "Eleven-time PGA Tour winner Andy Bean dies at 70," PGATour.com, October 14, 2023, https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2023/10/14/eleven-time-pga-tour-winner-andy-bean-dies-at-70-obituary.
PGA Tour. The Tour Book 1987, Official Media Guide of the PGA Tour.
PGA Tour. The Tour Book 1990, Official Media Guide of the PGA Tour.
PGA Tour. 1995 PGA Tour, Official Media Guide of the PGA Tour.
Sommers, Robert T. Golf Anecdotes, 1995, Oxford University Press.
Tournament Players Association. The PGA Tour Book 1976, Tournament Players Division of the PGA of America.

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