Lionel Hebert

Sport: Golf

Induction Year: 1982

University: UL-Lafayette

Induction Year: 1982

It took Lionel Hebert a few years to decide whether he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Harry James or Bobby Jones.

When he was an eight-year-old boy in Lafayette, Hebert took the first steps in both directions when he got his first trumpet and started following older brother Jay Hebert to the Municipal Golf Course, Conveniently located near their home on Mudd Avenue.

Six years later, Lionel was playing the trumpet in the Lafayette High School Band and winning the high school golf championship at the age of 14.

After a stint in the service at the end of World War II, he went to LSU as a music major. He didn’t try out for the Tigers’ golf team, which included Jay Hebert and Gardner Dickinson, but he improved his game playing with the members of the team.

A year later, the only thing he settled was that his future wasn’t in music. He went back to Lafayette and took a bookkeeping course at Southwestern Louisiana Institute.

Although Lionel’s amateur career wasn’t especially distinguished (he was second in the Louisiana Amateur), Jay persuaded his brother to follow him into a pro career in 1950. Lionel spent the next seven years as a club pro in Pennsylvania—four at Westmoreland Country Club in Pittsburgh and three at the Kahkwa club in Erie.

As a part-time tournament player, Lionel was encouraged by a first-place tie at St. Petersburg, Fl., in 1956. That fall, he told his wife he thought he could make it on the Professional Golf Association tournament tour.

Once again, he was following his older brother—who went on the tour the previous year.

The highlight of Lionel’s first year on the tour was the PGA championship at Miami Valley Country Club in Dayton, Ohio.

It was the last time the PGA championship was decided by match play—a format that wasn’t suited for television coverage—and for a while it appeared that the Hebert brothers might be going head-to-head in the semifinals.

In the fourth round, Lionel advanced with a 2-1 victory over big Mike Souchak and Jay chalked up a 3-2 win over Doug Ford, the 1955 PGA champion and leading money-winner on the tour in 1957. Since they were in the same half of the bracket, they were one round away from an all-Hebert semifinal.

Lionel did his part with a 2-1 victory over Claude Harmon a few hours after Harmon knocked Tommy Bolt out of the tournament, but Walter Burkemo didn’t cooperate. He eliminated Jay 3-2.

The semifinals and finals were 36-hole marathons with a lunch break (Imagine trying to sell that to a TV network), and Lionel fell two holes behind Burkemo in the middle of their match when he (1) got into the rough and took a bogey five on the final hole of the morning round and (2) called a one-shot penalty against himself as he was about to address a putt on the first hole of the afternoon session.

He said the ball moved, but nobody else saw it and Burkemo insisted that they get a ruling from a PGA official before they continued. The official said Hebert was correct in calling the penalty.

Hebert took the lead with a barraged of birdies. Burkemo, a match play bulldog who had been in the finals in three of the previous six PGA championships, was gracious in defeat. As he congratulated the winner after the 17th hole, he said, “Well, I can beat one of the Heberts, but I can’t beat them both.”

In the championship match, Hebert was going against Ohio native Dow Finsterwald, who had eliminated co-favorite Sammy Snead. The chunky (5-8, 190 pound) Cajun took the lead with three straight birdies, but Finsterwald pulled even at the 30th hole. Hebert responded by rolling in a long birdie put at No. 31—the first of three straight birdies that wrapped up the championship in his third major tournament.

The victory was worth $8,000, and vaulted Lionel from 49th to 15th on the list of 1957 money-winners with a total of 10,968. It also clinched “Rookie of the Year” honors for the 29-year-old golfer whose primary claim to fame before that tournament was being Jay Hebert’s younger brother.

The PGA victory also qualified Hebert for a berth on the 1957 Ryder Cup team. But Kenneth Bousfield scored a 4-3 victory over Lionel in the matches played at Lindrick, England, as the team from Great Britain and Ireland (including Peter Aliss, better known later as a television commentator) defeated the Yanks 7-4 for their first victory since 1933.

The PGA was his only major championship, but Lionel Hebert won four other pro tournaments—including one, the Cajun Classic, played in his hometown.

In the 1960 Cajun Classic at Oakbourne Country Club, he shot a 12-under-par 272 for a two-stroke margin over Shreveport’s Johnny Pott and John Gustin.

Between those victories, he won the Tucson Open in 1958 when he passed Don January on the first two holes of the final round and played conservative golf to protect his lead. His 265 at El Rio Country Club was two strokes better than January, who held on for second place.

Lionel Hebert also won the Memphis Classic in 1962 and the Florida Citrus tournament at Orlando in 1966. He teamed with his brother to finish second in the 1965 National PGA Four-Ball.

Later, Lionel was one of a group of 10 golfers who started the senior tour. He was chairman of the PGA tournament committee in 1962-63 and 1972-73.

Despite their extraordinary success on the PGA tour, golf wasn’t a family affair when Jay and Lionel were growing up.

“My dad never saw me hit a golf ball,” said Lionel Hebert.

Gaston Hebert, who served as sheriff of Lafayette Parish for eight years, died in 1955—two years before the first of his son’s PGA championships.