Payne at Pinehurst: A Legacy in Artifacts

By Lee Pace

The final day of the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 dawned unseasonably cool for the third week in June.

The temperature reached only 64 degrees. It was misty with a light rain here and there.

“I thought that atmosphere was almost ethereal — with the mist and the electricity of the day,” says Trey Holland, the 1999 USGA president. “It’s occurred to me it was like reading Golf in the Kingdom, trying to envision the setting of the book.”

Payne Stewart held a one-shot lead over Phil Mickelson entering Sunday’s round. Stewart was wearing navy plus-fours and a red-and-navy striped shirt for the final round and also donned a navy rain jacket.

But as he started warming up, the sleeves to the jacket felt uncomfortably restrictive. He noticed his friend and sports psychologist Dick Coop was wearing a sleeveless rain jacket. Coop offered to let Stewart have his large-sized jacket, but Stewart needed an extra-large. A clothing rep dashed off to his car parked some distance away to get a sleeveless extra-large for Stewart, but the golfer didn’t care to wait and instead walked into the Padgett Learning Center next door to the practice range.

Patty Thompson, a Pinehurst golf staff member stationed in the Learning Center, quickly noticed a more focused Stewart than she’d seen earlier in the week.

“He was a lot more serious that day,” she says. “He’d been laughing and cutting up all week. When he came in and asked for scissors, I said, ‘You want a haircut?’”

“Very funny,” Stewart replied.

He then proceeded to cut off the sleeves of his rain jacket and went out in the mist and shot a final-round 70 to edge Mickelson by one shot, nailing a 20-foot putt on the final shot of the competition to seal the deal.

It occurred to Thompson that it might be worth keeping those sleeves — not knowing of course of the drama to come that day or the fact that Stewart would perish in a plane crash four months later.

Those sleeves are on display in the USGA Experience and World Golf Hall of Fame in Pinehurst as part of a special array of memorabilia and artifacts entitled, “Style and Substance: The Life and Legacy of Payne Stewart.”

Stewart was renowned for more than two decades on the PGA Tour for his fluid swing, bright personality and a colorful wardrobe that ranged from representing NFL teams with their colors and logos to brandishing a throwback look of knickers, tall socks and a tam O’Shanter cap.

Caption: Payne Stewart U.S. Open Collection

The exhibit pays homage to his early life and career through his becoming a World Golf Hall of Fame member and being a two-time U.S. Open champion. The display was curated by Mike Trostel, the director of the World Golf Hall of Fame, with consultation and extensive loans of artifacts from the Stewart family.

The display includes the outfit and golf glove that Stewart wore and the putter and ball he used on No. 2 in winning in 1999. There is the shirt that he and his U.S. Ryder Cup teammates wore in winning the matches at Brookline that year. There are scorecards from various victories and trophies he collected.

Perhaps most fascinating is a case of items recovered from the Learjet 35 that took Stewart and five others to their deaths after the cabin lost pressure and the plane flew unattended into a crash in South Dakota. There is a set of clubheads, a harmonica, a What Would Jesus Do bracelet and a Rolex watch.

“The items recovered from the plane crash are both powerful and emotional,” Trostel says. “Because the cabin depressurized and the plane ran out of fuel, many of the objects onboard were damaged but not destroyed.

“The clubheads were the ones he used to win the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. Many of the other items in this case were from his golf bag, giving visitors a portal into Payne’s life. The Blockbuster video card transports you to a very specific moment in time.

Caption: World Golf Hall of Fame, courtesy of USGA Museum & Library

The Prayer Handbook and ‘WWJD’ bracelet given to Payne by his son, Aaron, speaks to Payne’s commitment to his faith later in his career. The pocketknife and its inscription — ‘I am a really good putter‘ — is a reminder of the power of positive thinking for golfers at any level.”The exhibit will be on display until September 13, 2026, at the USGA Experience & World Golf Hall of Fame facility near the golf clubhouses at Pinehurst Resort.

Lee Pace is a freelance golf writer who has written about Sandhills area golf for four decades and is the author of club histories about Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Forest Creek.

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