Ken Venturi, the principled and plainspoken CBS Sports golf analyst who commented on the game for a broadcast-record 35 years until his retirement in 2002, has died. He was 82.

Venturi was born May 15, 1931, in San Francisco, and he developed his game at Harding Park Golf Course. During his playing career, Venturi nearly won the 1956 Masters as a 24-year-old amateur (he shot an 80 in the final round and lost by a shot) and went on to capture 14 PGA Tour events, including, most memorably, the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club outside Washington.

Venturi died 11 days after he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. His stammering problem is what led him to golf.“When I was 13 years old, the teacher told my mother, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Venturi, but your son will never be able to speak. He’s an incurable stammerer,’” Venturi said in 2011. “My mother asked me what I planned to do. I said, ‘I’m taking up the loneliest sport I know,’ and picked up a set of hickory shaft across the street from a man and went to Harding Park and played my first round of golf.”