I RECENTLY HAD CONTACT WITH TONY JACKLIN, who has been great to me in recent years. We first got acquainted beginning in 2012 and as I wrote DRAW IN THE DUNES about him and Jack Nicklaus at the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale.
I was searching for something when I ran across the above oddity in Jacklin's breakout 1969 season, during which he won the Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.
As you'll hear in the clip, Walter Hagen and Jack Nicklaus also drove golf balls across the Thames.
Reporting in January on "An Evening with Tony Jacklin," the Bradenton Herald wrote: "[T]he video showed him ripping a drive 356 yards from the top of a building in England across the Thames River.