Jay Sigel, Amateur Golfer Who Played Like a Pro, Dies at 81

Jay Sigel went to Wake Forest University in 1962 with a golf scholarship called by Arnold Palmer. He won an individual title of the Atlantic Coast Conference and became a second All-American team. He would later tell friends and journalists that he went to university to play golf, not to study, and that he thought more about becoming a professional than to graduate.

But his plans were deferred after a serious accident. Sigel, who died at April 81 at Boca Mouse, Florida, did not become professional for almost three decades, until he became eligible for the Senior PGA tour at age 50.

In the intermediate years, he was widely seen as perhaps the greatest amateur golfer of the Era after World War II in the United States.

In Wake Forest, Sigel inadvertently put his left hand through a glass panel in the summer of 1963 while trying to prevent the closure. The accident cut a tendon, and the wound, near its veil, required more than 70 points of suture. He remained hospitalized for nine days.

He took months to recover something similar to the integrity of his skills. His left little finger remained hooked, and did not recover the complete feeling in his hand, what he cooled, said his wife, Betty Sigel. (He confirmed death, in a hospital. He said the cause were complications of pancreatic cancer).

But the injury altered the arc of Sigel’s career and his life in a way that came to see as lucky and providential.

Sigel remained in Wake Forest, received a title in Sociology in 1967, married Betty Wing in 1968, began a family, worked as an insurance agent and then opened his own insurance company in the Philadelphia area, where he grew up. And he recovered sufficiently his injury to win fans of the United States in 1982 and 1983; The British fan title in 1979; and titles of the United States fans, for golfists, 25 years or more, in 1983, 1985 and 1987.

He participated in a record of nine Walker Cup for fans of the United States, Great Britain and Ireland. And shot the lowest score fans in the Masters tournament in 1980, 1981 and 1988; The British Open in 1980; And the US Open in 1984.

“I always thought things happened for a reason,” Sigel told USGA.com, the United States Golf Association website, in 2024. “The hand injury was the best thing that happened to me.”

Many considered that Sigel was the best American amateur from Bobby Jones, who won the US Open four times, the British opened three times and the United States amateur championship five times, all in a luminous period between 1923 and 1930.

The game of the duration of the steel composure, in which the golfers compete in front of an opponent, became a distinctive seal or the Sigel game. And he was an excellent ball striker, with power emanating from his frame of 6 feet and 1½ to his size of 13 feet.

“He was a really hard game player; hey, he doesn’t feel he was going to lose,” said Jeff Kiddie, Aronyink Golf Club’s main professional in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, to which Sigel belonged for more than 50 years, in the interview. “And I would say that I could hit the ball as far as I wanted to hit it.”

If Sigel had left the University’s professional, Lee Trevino told the New York Times in 1994: “Hello, it could have been a great” on the PGA tour. But, said his wife in an interview, Sigel had some concern about whether his hand could resist the weekly gravel of the tour.

He remained an amateur until he joined the senior tour somewhat more relaxed, now called PGA Tour Champions, in 1993, when he turned 50. He won eight tournaments and more than $ 9 million in profits. And it seemed not to regret it.

“I would change anything, particularly the career of fans,” Sigel told Philadelphia Inquirer in 2009. Betty Sigel said “he loved the fact that he could marry, have a job and have a family, and even for playing golf.”

Robert Jay Sigel was born on November 13, 1943 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in the main line of Philadelphia, and grew in the Narberth district. His father, Robert Jacob Sigel, began an engineering company. His mother, Elizabeth (Kriebel) Sigel, directed the house. His two parents played golf.

Jay begged his father for his father when he was 10 years old. At 11, he realized that he would prefer to use the clubs to carry them.

In addition to his wife, three daughters survive, Jennifer Sigel, Amy Sigel Melconian and Megan Sigel Yates; A sister, Carolyn Sigel Nusbickel; and six granddaughters. He and his wife lived in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, and also had a home in Boynton Beach, Fla.

After being named the best Junior golfer of the nation, while in Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia suburbs, Sigel Letterly attended the University of Houston before transferring to Wake Forest. When he woke up after surgery in his hand, he told Daily News of Philadelphia in 1983, doctors told him that he would never play golf again.

In the apogee of Sigel’s fans career, another group of doctors told him that they could repair his hand more with the latest surgical techniques, said Betty Sigel. He declined.

“We are not brass with that,” he replied. “It is working.”