Kermit Zarley

Biography

Zarley was born in Seattle, Washington. He graduated from the University of Houston and was a distinguished member of the golf team. He was the individual champion at the 1962 NCAA Division I Championships and also led his team to victory.

Zarley had three dozen top-10 finishes in PGA Tour events during his 18 years on Tour including three wins. Zarley had three top-10 finishes in major championships; his best was a solo 6th at the 1972 U.S. Open. Zarley won once on the Senior/Champions Tour. On both Tours, he finished second or tied for second seventeen times.

Due to his unusual name, Zarley was often called "the Pro from the Moon" or "Moon Man." It is because comedian Bob Hope once interviewed him on national television and remarked, "Kermit Zarley, with a name like that he must be the pro from the moon." In a Wayne and Shuster sketch about a golf tournament being held on the streets of Toronto, Johnny Wayne's character is named "Zarley Kermit, Jr."

In 1965, Zarley co-founded the PGA Tour Bible Study group with fellow PGA Tour players, Jim and Babe Hiskey. It still flourishes today and has proliferated throughout the world of professional golf. In the period between his careers on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour, he authored three books on religion and world affairs. He received an honorary doctorate degree in 2001 from Chicago's North Park University, which has a lecture series named for him. Zarley lived much of his adult life in the Houston metropolitan area, but now resides in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Controversial religious writings

In The Third Day Bible Code (2006), Zarley examined the relatively frequent occurrence of "third day" in the Bible. Applying the words "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day" (2 Peter 3:8), he offered the provocative interpretation that Jesus' expected second coming will occur during the early part of the third millennium following his departure, between the years 2070 and 2250.

The publication of his most recent book, The Restitution of Jesus Christ, was preceded by his usage of the pseudonym Servetus the Evangelical. His stated reasons for doing so were: "if my fellow Evangelicals ever knew about my christological beliefs they would not accept me as a genuine Christian and ostracize me from the Evangelical community." His book endorses a Unitarian viewpoint of christology, similar to the quasi-Unitarian position of Michael Servetus himself.

Amateur wins

PGA Tour wins

PGA Tour playoff record (0–1)

Other wins

Senior PGA Tour wins

Books