Ed Updegraff, winner of a record 12 Tucson City Amateur golf championships and a man who played in six Masters tournaments, died Friday at his Saddlebrooke home. He was 100.
Updegraff, a urologist from Boone, Iowa, moved to Tucson in 1951 and became what many consider the greatest amateur golf in Arizona history. In 1999, Updegraff received the Bobby Jones Award by the USGA, considered the most prestigious off-course honor in American golf. It is an award presented to Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Nancy Lopez.
Rather than turn pro, Updegraff chose to work at his urology practice and remain an amateur golfer.
“I love to play golf,” he told the Star in 2017. “But I wasn’t a pro. I would’ve lost my appreciation of the game, and it would’ve taken all the fun out of it for me. My medical practice was different — there was a new challenge every day.”
Updegraff entered the 1951 Tucson City championships for the first time. He led by nine strokes after 36 holes and won easily. It wasn’t long that the golfers at Tucson’s three courses — El Rio, Randolph and the TCC — were talking about “Dr. Ed.”
Updegraff won 27 consecutive club championships at Tucson Country Club and finished fourth in the PGA Tour’s Tucson Open in 1962 and 1969. He captained the 1975 Walker Cup team. Updegraff won five Arizona Amateur titles, a record when he retired from competitive golf in the 1980s. Golf Digest magazine five times selected Updegraff as one of the top five amateur golfers in America.
Updegraff graduated from the University of Iowa in 1943 and enlisted in the Navy, becoming a urologist at a Naval hospital in Florida. He turned 100 in March.
