Rives McBee: Record Round in 1960s, Senior Success in 1990s
Rives McBee was a professional golfer who played on the PGA Tour in the 1960s and 1970s. He made a big splash in golf before reaching the tour, and he had multiple second-place finishes on tour. But McBee didn't actually win until he reached the Champions Tour, then he won multiple times.
Full name: Rives Russell McBee
Date of birth: October 31, 1938
Place of birth: Denton, Texas
Date and place of death: October 4, 2023, in Dallas, Texas
His Biggest Wins
McBee had no wins on the regular PGA Tour. He had three wins on the Champions Tour:- 1989 RJR Bank One Classic
- 1990 Showdown Classic
- 1990 Vantage Bank One Classic
In the Majors (and U.S. Open Record)
McBee played in 13 majors, first in the 1966 U.S. Open and last in the 1986 PGA Championship. It was in that first appearance that McBee, unknown to the wider golf world at the time, first gained notice.In that 1966 U.S. Open at Olympic Club, McBee opened with a 76. But in the second round, the then-assistant pro from a club in Midland, Texas, shocked the field with a score of 64, tying the U.S. Open's 18-hole scoring record. It was just the third 64 in the tournament's history to that point (and the first 63 didn't happen until 1973).
The record round shot McBee up the leaderboard into a tie for third place. The New York Times headline said that McBee went "from obscurity to golfing fame in 64 strokes."
McBee scored 74 in the third round and was in sixth place. A 78 in the final round knocked him out of the Top 10. But he still finished tied 13th, making a name for himself in the golf world.
And that finish remained his career-best in any major. McBee made the cut the first five times he played in a major, but missed the cut the remaining eight times. His 64 in the 1966 U.S. Open was the only score lower than 72 he ever recorded in a major.
More About Rives McBee
Rives McBee grew up in Denton, Texas, the home of North Texas State University. NTSU (today named the University of North Texas) had a nationally prominent golf program at the time. Around the time McBee was 11 years old (the age at which he started playing golf), the NTSU golf team included future PGA Tour winners Don January and Billy Maxwell.And McBee followed in their footsteps, becoming an NTSU golf star and then moving on to the PGA Tour (although McBee never won the PGA Tour). He was the No. 1 golfer on the NTSU squad from 1959-62, winning 16 college tournaments and finishing third in the national championship in his final season.
He turned pro in 1965 and made it through the PGA Tour's Fall Qualifying School in 1966. His rookie year on the PGA Tour was 1967.
McBee had the first of his four career second-place finishes on tour in that rookie season, at the 500 Festival Open Invitation. In 1968, he was runner-up in the PGA National Team Championship, partnered by Monty Kaser behind winners George Archer/Bobby Nichols. But that was not an official PGA Tour event in 1968.
So his other three second-place finishes were the three he recorded in 1970, in the Florida Citrus Open (later known as the Arnold Palmer Invitational), Tallahassee Open and Kiwanis Peninsula Open. Despite those three high finishes, McBee finished only 89th on the season-ending money list for 1970, because all three of those tournaments were opposite-field events, with much lower purses than the bigger events the same week.
His closest brush with victory was in the 1970 Tallahassee Open, where Harold Henning pipped McBee by finishing birdie-eagle-birdie. McBee was down to just eight starts on tour in 1971. But he did have another second in the Yuma Open. That was a "second tour" (played by golfers who failed to get through Monday qualifying) tournament, though, rather than an official PGA Tour start.
McBee left the PGA Tour after 1971, although he made one or two starts a year until 1986. For his PGA Tour career, McBee made 139 starts in official tournaments. He had nine total Top 10 finishes.
McBee turned to the club pro life after 1971, first taking a job as head professional at Las Colinas Country Club in the Dallas area. He would also work at Las Colinas Sports Club and Hyatt Bear Creek Resort, both in the Dallas area, over the years.
But he still played tournament golf. In 1973, McBee earned his biggest pre-senior victory in the PGA Club Professional Championship. He was also a three-time section champion in the North Texas PGA. And McBee represented Team USA four times (1973, 1974, 1976, 1978) in the PGA Cup, a Ryder Cup-style competition between American and British club pros.
McBee turned 50 late in 1988 and in 1989 began trying to Monday qualify for Champions Tour tournaments. At the 1989 RJR Bank One Classic, McBee not only got into the field, he won the tournament, beating Henning by two strokes. He was just the third golfer in Senior PGA Tour history to win after Monday qualifying.
Later that year McBee finished second to Gary Player in the RJR Championship. He ended his first senior tour season at 18th on the money list.
The year 1990 was his best: He won twice on the Senior Tour and finished 10th on the money list. McBee first took the Showdown Classic by one stroke over runners-up Lee Trevino and Don Dies, a wire-to-wire victory. Just a couple weeks later, he beat second-place Mike Hill by four strokes in the Vantage Bank One Classic.
McBee fell off after that, but continued playing the renamed Champions Tour through 1998. He finished in the 40s on the money list each year from 1991-93, then slipped into the 50s in 1994. His last shot at victory was in the 1995 Franklin Quest Championship (the same event, under a different name, as the Showdown Classic he won in 1990), in which he finished second.
On the Champions Tour, McBee made 264 career starts. In addition to his three wins, he finished second three times and had 27 total Top 10 finishes.
McBee is a member of the North Texas Athletics Hall of Fame.
Sources:
Brenner, Morgan. The Majors of Golf (affiliate link), Volume 3, 2009, McFarland and Company.
Livsey, Laura. "Three-time PGA Tour Champions winner Rives McBee dies at age 84," PGA Tour, October 5, 2023, https://www.pgatour.com/pgatour-champions/article/news/latest/2023/10/05/former-pga-tour-member-and-three-time-pga-tour-champions-winner-rives-mcbee-dies-at-age-84.
The New York Times. "Rives McBee: From Obscurity To Golfing Fame in 64 Strokes," June 18, 1966, https://www.nytimes.com/1966/06/18/archives/rives-mcbee-from-obscurity-to-golfing-fame-in-64-strokes.html.
North Texas Athletics Hall of Fame. Honors, Rives McBee, https://meangreensports.com/honors/north-texas-athletics-hall-of-fame/rives-mcbee/233.
PGA of America. Tournament Players Division, The Tour Book 1971, Player Biographies and Tournament Summaries.
PGA of America. Tournament Players Division, The Tour Book 1972, Player Biographies and Tournament Summaries.
PGA Tour. Players, Rives McBee, Career, https://www.pgatour.com/player/01769/rives-mcbee/overview.
PGA Tour. 1995 Senior PGA Tour Official Media Guide, Player Biographies, Rives McBee.
PGA Tour. 1998 Senior PGA Tour Official Media Guide, Tournament Summaries.
Sherrington, Kevin. "Rives McBee, former North Texas golf standout and longtime pro, dies at 84," Dallas Morning News, October 6, 2023, https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/golf/2023/10/06/rives-mcbee-former-north-texas-golf-standout-and-longtime-pro-dies-at-84/.
