A crowd favorite. A charming personality. A good sense of humor. A major champion whose life ended tragically in a plane crash.

It was Payne Stewart in 1999. But 40 years ago today, it was Tony Lema.

Generations have passed, and golf has joined other sports in a multimedia explosion of coverage. Mention golf in the 1960s, and the names of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer — the Big Three — easily come to mind.

But at one time, the Big Three nearly had to make room for a fourth.

“I’d like to make the Big Three the Big Two, Three and Four,” said Lema, who died at the age of 32 along with his pregnant wife Betty when their charter plane crashed on its way from Akron, Ohio, to an exhibition in Joliet, Ill. The plane crashed on the seventh hole of a golf course in Lansing, Ill.

To many, Lema was on his way to doing just what he talked about — joining Nicklaus, Palmer and Player.

“I really liked him very much,” Player says. “He was a colorful guy for our tour. You need people like that.”

“I always thought he was destined to be one of the top level players of the game,” says Doc Giffin, the tour’s press secretary at the time who has been Palmer’s longtime public relations man. “He was at that point, I thought, when the accident happened.”

The Mackle brothers, owners of Deltona Corporation, had picked up on Lema’s rise. The Marco Island developers named Lema the first professional at Marco Island Golf & Country Club in 1965. He planned to build his home there.

Lema earned the nickname “Champagne Tony” for toasting his victories with champagne. But Lema was more than a gimmick. He won 12 tour events, including four in six weeks in 1964. That included his most prominent win, the British Open at St. Andrews. He beat Nicklaus — who edged Lema out of the 1963 Masters title — by five shots. Lema also lost only match in two Ryder Cup appearances.

No one could predict Lema would be in that kind of position considering his beginnings. Born in San Leandro, Calif., near Oakland, Lema’s father died of double pneumonia when Lema was 3. After falling in love with golf as a youngster, Lema joined the Marines at 19 and spent nearly a year in Korea.

According to Sports Illustrated’s Barry McDermott, who wrote a piece for the 1973 Marco Islander magazine, Lema’s foray into golf for an occupation came at a breakneck speed.

“... he was spinning along at 70 miles an hour in a 50 MPH speed zone when he heard a police car siren. It turned out that the officer was an old golfing buddy of his who told him about an assistant pro job open at the San Francisco Golf Club,” McDermott wrote.

Lema’s golf game would begin being shaped by the head pro, John Geersten. Venturi, who would later move to Marco Island in 1976 and live there until 2002, and Harvie Ward, who later also became a renowned teacher, were also around.

“When Byron Nelson took me under his wing, that was 1952, while I was practicing, I’d say aloud what Nelson was telling me,” Venturi says in a 2004 Golf World article. “He would pick my brains on what to do.”

Lema’s zest for life, which included gambling and partying, prevented his tour life from taking off. Lema also was known for his temper on the course.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of money to play for,” says Fort Myers resident Bobby Nichols, the 1964 PGA Championship winner and a friend of Lema’s. “You had a little fun along the way.”

In 1957, Lema won the Imperial Valley Open, a small non-tour event, for his first professional victory. He made it out full-time on the PGA Tour the next year and was solid, finishing second once and in the top 10 two other times. That trend continued for the next three years.

Then Lema got married to a former flight attendant named Betty. It was not only his personal life that would change.

“I think he settled down when he married Betty,” Giffin said. “I felt that was probably as much responsible as anything else.”

From 1962 through his death in 1966, Lema would win 11 PGA Tour events.

In 1962, Lema was leading the Orange County Open, a small tournament late in the season. There was only a handful of media covering the tournament, so small a group that the media room was set up in the card room of the locker area.

“There was a cooler with some pop and beer in it,” Giffin says. “Tony had a beer while we were doing the interview. When he got up to leave, he said ‘I tell you one thing, fellas, if I win tomorrow, there’s going to be champagne in here.’¥”

Giffin alertly got in touch with the club manager. And when Lema beat Bob Rosburg on the third playoff hole, it was champagne all around. “A couple of guys used that ‘Champagne Tony’ idea there,” Giffin says. “I always thought it might well have died on the vine.”

When the 1963 season rolled around, and Giffin knew reporters would be looking for stories early in the season, he told them about “Champagne Tony.” Lema only won once in 1963, but he was getting closer; he finished second six times. The Moët champagne company took notice and aligned itself with Lema.

“They used to show up anytime Tony had a chance to win the tournament,” Giffin says. “If he won, they broke it out. If he didn’t, it disappeared.”

It nearly was broken out at the 1963 Masters. Lema birdied the final hole and was whisked away to Cliff Roberts’ private office to sit with Palmer and Bob Jones in the Augusta National clubhouse. Jack Nicklaus, at 23, made pars on the final two holes to win his second major by a shot.

“Tony was always a force to be reckoned with,” Nicklaus tells writer/director Clark Bingham, who is working on a feature film, “Champagne Tony,” about Lema.

The Moët people had plenty of reason to be around in 1964. Lema won the Big Crosby National Pro-Am, the Thunderbird Classic, the Buick Open Invitational and the Cleveland Open. The British Open was coming up, but Lema wasn’t planning on going.

Palmer, who had won the Open in 1961 and 1962, wasn’t going to play. But he was set on sending Lema, who had never played at St. Andrews, let alone in the British Open. “You need to play in the tournament,” Palmer told him.

Palmer had a putter that Lema had been bugging him to borrow. That, and the offer to set up Lema with Palmer’s caddie, Tip Anderson, was enough to sway him.

“He told him ‘Just hit it where I tell you to hit it and you’ll do well,’¥” Player says.

Lema withstood a charge from Nicklaus during a 36-hole final round, but Lema made a 30-footer for birdie on his last morning hole, and eventually pulled away. “I asked him how he did it and he said ‘Everything the caddie told me to do, I did,’¥” Player says. “It was one of the best victories I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Lema’s celebrity made it to television. He appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show’’ and had a small guest role on “Hazel,’’ a popular show at the time.

Lema won twice more in 1965 and was second on the money list behind Nicklaus. His last win came in May 1966 in Oklahoma City. Two months later, Lema had finished playing in the PGA Championship at Firestone in Akron. Many of the golfers were going to play in Nicklaus’ pro-am in nearby Columbus the next day, according to Nichols and Giffin. That apparently was Lema’s original plan, too. But it changed into the flight for an exhibition in Chicago.

“He said ‘I’m going where the money is,’” Venturi says in the 2004 GolfWorld article. “I said ‘I don’t want to talk about it again. The worst thing you can do is break your word.’ The last words I ever said to Tony Lema were: ‘You will live to regret what you’re doing tonight.’

“I was staying at the Akron Towers. I went to a dinner and then off to a show, and when I got back the desk clerk said ‘Isn’t it terrible about the golfer that got killed tonight?’ I didn’t have to ask. It was spooky.”

A ceremony was held during Nicklaus’ pro-am the next day. At the next tour stop in Indianapolis later in the week, golfers wore black ribbons. At noon on the first day, play was halted and taps sounded on the loud speaker system. A chaplain gave a brief memorial prayer. Two minutes of silence were observed, and a flare was set off.

Lema and his wife had been scheduled to fly to Marco Island that next weekend for dedication of the club’s final nine holes. The ceremonies were canceled.

“No one could carry the same image as Lema, or do the job he could,” M.R. “Bus” Mathews of the Marco Island Development Corporation told the Collier County News.

•••

Among the former champions of the Tony Lema Memorial Tournament were: Buddy Allin, Bruce Devlin, Raymond Floyd, Rod Funseth, Hubert Green, Jim Jamieson, Wayne Levi, Bobby Nichols, Greg Powers, J.C. Snead, Larry Ziegler.

Others who played included Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, as well as Frank Beard, Bruce Lietzke, Dow Finsterwald, Gibby Gilbert and Dave Hill. Gene Sarazen and Ken Venturi also were heavily involved in the tournament

Among the celebrities who played or participated in the Tony Lema Memorial Tournament were: Jackie Gleason, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, James Garner, Perry Como, Joe Garagiola, Jimmy Dean, Evel Knievel, Bob Griese, Bob Kuechenberg, Glenn Campbell, Terry Bradshaw, Vin Scully, Dick Anderson, Ara Parseghian, Mike Phipps, Tim Foley, Sammy Kaye, Jack Whitaker, Don Sutton, Tommy John, Jimmy Demaret, Joe Namath, Al Kaline, Bear Bryant, and Don McNeill

Tony Lema Career Record

1956 — 2 events Top 25 (1), $385 (147th)

1957 — 3 events, 1 Top 10, 1 Top 25, $725 (123rd)

1958 — 31 events, 1 2nd, 3 Top 10s, 15 Top 25s, $10,282 (36th)

1959 — 28 events, 2 Top 10s, 10 Top 25s, $5,932 (55th)

1960 — 25 events, 9 Top 25s, $3,061 (77th)

1961 — 26 events, 4 Top 10s, 16 Top 25s, $11,506 (43rd)

1962 — 29 events, 2 wins, 2 2nds, 1 3rd, 9 Top 10s, 21 Top 25s, $28,924 (15th)

1963 — 25 events, 1 win, 6 2nds, 1 3rd, 16 Top 10s, 21 Top 25s, $67,113 (4th)

1964 — 21 events, 5 wins, 1 2nd, 12 Top 10s, 20 Top 25s, $74,130 (4th)

1965 — 20 events, 2 wins, 1 2nd, 1 3rd, 10 Top 10s, 17 Top 25s, $101,817 (2nd)

1966 — 16 events, 1 win, 2 3rds, 8 Top 10s, 12 Top 25s, 17th ($48,221)

Victories — PGA Tour (12): 1962 — Sahara Invitational, Orange County Open, Mobile Sertoma Open Invitational; 1963 — Memphis Open Invitational; 1964 — Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, Thunderbird Classic, Buick Open Invitational, Cleveland Open, British Open; 1965 — Buick Open Invitational, Carling World Open; 1966 — Oklahoma City Open Invitational; Other wins (4): 1957 — Imperial Valley Open; 1961 — Hesperia Invitational Open, Mexican Open; 1962 — Mexican Open

Results in Major Championships

The Masters: 1963 — 2; 1964 — T9; 1965 — T21; 1966 — T22

U.S. Open: 1956 — 50th; 1962 — CUT; 1963 — T5; 1964 — 20th; 1965 — T8; 1966 — T4

British Open: 1964 — 1; 1965 — T5; 1966 — T30

PGA Championship: 1962 — WD; 1963 — T13; 1964 — T9; 1965 — T61; 1966 — T34

Ryder Cups

1963

East Lake Country Club, Atlanta

U.S. 23, Great Britain 9

U.S. captain, Arnold Palmer

Foursomes (morning): Lema/Boros vs. Coles/Hunt, halved

Foursomes (afternoon): Lema/Boros d. Haliburton/B.J. Hunt, 1-up

Fourballs (morning): DNP

Fourballs (afternoon): Lema/Pott d. Alliss/B.J. Hunt, 1-up

Singles (morning): Lema d. G.M. Hunt, 5 and 3

Singles (afternoon): Lema vs. Allis, halved

1965

Royal Birkdale Golf Club, Southport, England

U.S. 19½, Great Britain 12½

U.S. captain, Byron Nelson

Foursomes (morning): Lema/Boros d. Platts/Butler, 1-up

Foursomes (afternoon): Lema/Boros d. Martin/Hitchcock, 5 and 4

Fourball (morning): B.J. Hunt/Coles d. Lema/Boros, 1-up

Fourball (afternoon): Lema/Venturi d. B.J. Hunt/Coles, 1-up

Singles (morning): Lema d. Butler, 1-up

Singles (afternoon): Lema d. O'Connor, 6 and 4