Keeping Up With Two-Time USGA Senior Amateur Champion Clarence Moore


March 17, 2005

Clarence Moore, the USGA Senior Amateur champion of both 1988 and '92, can be a tough man to track down. When he's not summering with his wife in her native Germany or wintering at their home in Florida, you'll probably find him on his farm in Winnsboro, S.C., a sleepy town 26 miles outside Columbia - if you can find the farm, that is.

"Even the Fed-Ex guy gets lost coming out here," jokes the 75-year-old Moore. After a 20-year career as a lawyer and lobbyist for the California law enforcement industry, he moved back to his native South Carolina in 1979, bought a cattle farm and began raising beef cattle.

"At heart, I always was a farmer," said Moore, who spent much of his childhood on his grandmother's farm. "I just always wanted to do that."

Moore didn't pick up golf until he was 32, but he improved quickly. Moore's 6-and-4 triumph over Robert Harris in the 1992 Senior Amateur final at The Loxahatchee Club in Jupiter, Fla., remains the second-largest margin of victory in any final of the event's history, bettered only by Joe Ungvary's 7-and-6 win over Jerry Nelson a year later.

While Moore, who defeated Bud Stevens 5 and 4 to win the 1988 title at Milwaukee (Wis.) Country Club, has cut back on his rounds today, he still plays a few events a year. "I still love to compete," he said.

Story written by Alan Bastable of Golf Magazine Properties.