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By Brett Avery
PGATOUR.COM Contributor

This was back in a time when kids rarely rode their bicycles out of their neighborhoods, let alone become a professional golfer and begin traveling the world.

The year was 1957 and the Canadian Open was being played at Westmount Golf and Country Club in Kitchener, Ontario, then more than an hour by car outside of Toronto.

In those days the tournament traversed the breadth of the continent -- British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec in the past few years, Alberta the site for 1958.

The Canadian Open also had an all-star cast of past champions since the 1904 inaugural: Leo Diegel, Macdonald Smith, Tommy Armour, Walter Hagen, Harry Cooper, Lawson Little, Sam Snead, Bobby Locke and Arnold Palmer among them.

The '57 field, heavy on touring and club professionals, included an amateur, Bob Panasik, who was the ripe old age of 15 years and eight months. And, surprise of surprises, he went out and made the cut, the youngest accomplishing that feat in PGA TOUR history.

Four of the 66 players who made the cut were amateurs with Jerry Magee taking the medal as the low shooter among them. Panasik wound up as the bottom line in the summary with 71-74-75-76. That was 25 shots behind

George Bayer, a first-time winner after four runner-up finishes earlier in the season.

Panasik, a native of Windsor, the city across the river from Detroit, was developing into a dominating competitor at that age. He started playing the game at age 8 and crisscrossed Ontario each summer to enter

tournaments. So it came as little surprise that he made the cut against a field of adults.

The week was not without its controversies. Bayer and several other players from both sides of the border made disparaging comments about the Westmount layout during the first part of the week.

That drew the ire of other players and officials of the Royal Canadian Golf Association, the group conducting the championship.

Said Jim Turnesa, "We're all playing the same course. If they don't want a crack at the $25,000 [purse] they should at least have the decency to keep their mouths shut."

Added Arnold Palmer, who had won the title in 1955, "Some of the fellows are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats."

Bayer had no complaints. He shot 64 in the third round gave him the course record and a three-shot edge over Billy Casper, Ed (Porky) Oliver and Henry Ransom.

The 6-foot-5, 240-pound former football player was drafted by the Washington Redskins and played six games, then took up golf at age 29. He tidied up the Canadian Open title with a closing 69, totaling 271 and staying two ahead of Bo Wininger.

His first pro title erased the stigma of withdrawing from the Inglewood, Calif., city amateur in 1953 despite leading by seven shots in order to play a round with Bob Hope. The comedian convinced Bayer to

turn pro and he initially struggled with his putting, although he earned wide attention for his booming drives.

Panasik, however, enjoyed a long and fruitful career. He won the 1958 Canadian Junior Boys title and turned pro the following year, still in his teens. He won the Canadian PGA twice, three Senior Canadian PGA titles, nine titles on the Canadian Tour and 15 assorted provincial crowns.

In 2005 he was enshrined in the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame yet he hasn't finished playing the game competitively. When Tadd Fujikawa made the cut in the Sony Open in Hawaii earlier this year, becoming the second-youngest player competing on the weekend in a TOUR event, plenty of calls went Panasik's way.

Which got Panasik to thinking: Why not try and become the oldest player to make a TOUR cut, too?

So he's biding his time, keeping his game and his body in shape waiting for January 2009. That's when he'll reach 67 years, 2 months and 22 days, a day older than Sam Snead was when he made the cut in the 1979 Manufacturers Hanover Westchester Classic, now known as the Barclays Classic.