Jim Colbert, renowned for wearing his bucket hat while winning eight times on the PGA Tour and 20 times on the PGA Tour Champions, has died, the PGA Tour announced. He was 85.
Colbert died on Sunday. The tour did not list a cause of death.
Colbert was a teenager playing a tournament in Kansas when he nearly collapsed from sunstroke, leading doctors to insist he start wearing a hat to protect himself. He chose a bucket hat, which became his trademark during his PGA Tour career.
Born in New Jersey, Colbert went to Kansas State on a football scholarship. He turned all his attention to golf after an injury and was runner-up in the NCAA Championship in 1964, and two years later was on the PGA Tour.
He won the first of his eight PGA Tour titles in the 1969 Monsanto Invitational Open. He had a pair of top 5s in the majors in 1974, a tie for fourth in the Masters and tied for fifth in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.
His best season on the PGA Tour was in 1983 when he won twice and was 15th on the money list.
Colbert was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, had surgery to remove his prostate and was back on the course two years later, winning The Transamerica.
He also was active in business. According to the PGA Tour, he bought his first golf course in Las Vegas in 1980. Jim Colbert Golf grew to own 23 golf courses, had 700 employees and gross revenue of $50 million.
Colbert, who lived the latter part of his life in Las Vegas, kept ties to Kansas State. The men’s and women’s golf teams play at Colbert Hills Golf Club in Manhattan, Kansas, which he helped design and opened in 2000.
Colbert was inducted into the Kansas State Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Las Vegas Golf Hall of Fame in 2019.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
FILE - Golfer Jim Colbert during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Manhattan, Kan., Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner,File)
FILE - Jim Colbert watches his drive on the tenth hole during the opening round of the 2006 U.S. Senior Open Championship golf tournament at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kan., July 6, 2006. (AP Photo/Larry Smith,File)
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The last remaining passengers on a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak disembarked Monday and boarded flights to more than 20 countries to enter quarantine. A French woman was the latest to be confirmed as infected, while an American was suspected of infection after initial testing.
Passengers began flying home aboard military and government planes Sunday after the MV Hondius anchored in the Canary Islands. Personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks escorted the travelers from ship to shore in Tenerife, an effort that concluded Monday.
“If they stayed longer on the ship, the situation could have been difficult,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. He said citizens of the countries passengers are returning to should know “there is nothing to fear, the risk is low, this is not another COVID.”
Three cruise ship passengers have died, and six people with confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus are being quarantined, according to the WHO. The lab results of the American who tested positive were inconclusive, WHO spokesperson Sarah Tyler said Monday.
Health authorities say it's the first hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. While there is no cure or vaccine for hantavirus, the WHO says early detection and treatment improves survival rates.
The ship's captain, Jan Dobrogowski, issued a video message Monday praising passengers and crew for their courage and perseverance, and he called for respect for their privacy.
“I could not imagine sailing through these circumstances with a better group of people, guests and crew alike,” he said.
The French woman who tested positive for the hantavirus was in intensive care in stable condition at a Paris hospital, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Monday. He said four French passengers who returned Sunday tested negative but remained in isolation at the same hospital.
One of 18 evacuated passengers flown to the U.S. also tested positive for the hantavirus but was not showing symptoms, while another had mild symptoms, U.S. health officials said.
After landing early Monday, 16 American passengers — one of them a British-U.S. dual citizen — were taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which has a federally funded quarantine facility and a biocontainment unit for treating people with highly infectious diseases. They were being assessed to determine if they had close contact with any symptomatic people and their risk levels for spreading the virus.
An American who tested positive for hantavirus on the cruise ship was taken to the Omaha campus' biocontainment unit and will be tested again. The passenger “is doing well and not having symptoms at this time,” said Dr. Angela Hewlett, the unit's medical director.
The others taken to Nebraska will be monitored in quarantine for several days. They arrived “in good shape, good spirits,” said Dr. Michael Wadman, the quarantine unit's medical director.
Two additional American passengers, a couple, arrived Monday at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. One of them had mild symptoms and will be tested for hantavirus.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean, just because someone has symptoms, that they’re going to end up having this illness,” said Dr. Brendan Jackson of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some public health experts have accused the U.S. government of being slow to respond to the hantavirus outbreak. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rejected the notion that cuts at his agency had left the U.S. less prepared.
“We have this under control," Kennedy said Monday, “and we’re not worried about it.”
Oceanwide Expeditions, which owns and operates the cruise ship, said 25 crew and two medical professionals remained on board Monday as the Hondius departed the Canary Islands. It was expected to arrive in Rotterdam on Sunday.
The Hondius left the southern Argentine port of Ushuaia on April 1 and a Dutch passenger died on board April 11. It wasn’t until early May that the WHO said it was reacting to a suspected hantavirus outbreak on the ship, which by that time was off the West African island nation of Cape Verde.
South African health authorities said on Monday that the condition of a British man admitted to a hospital in Johannesburg and being treated for hantavirus was gradually improving. He was evacuated from the ship on April 27 after becoming ill.
The Dutch couple who presented the first two cases had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before boarding the ship, the WHO said. They visited sites where the species of rat known to carry Andes virus was present.
Hantavirus usually spreads from rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms — which can include fever, chills and muscle aches — usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
Tedros of the WHO advised that returning passengers should stay in quarantine, either in their homes or in other facilities, for 42 days. He added that WHO cannot enforce its guidance, and that different countries may handle monitoring of passengers without symptoms in different ways.
Numerous countries have said their people will be quarantined or hospitalized for observation.
This story has been corrected to show that it is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
Corder reported from the Hague, Netherlands. AP journalists Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Mike Stobbe in New York; Collin Binkley in Washington and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.
Nebraska Medicine's Davis Global Center is seen on Sunday, May 10,2026 in Omaha, Neb. where American passengers from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship will quarantine. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Passengers leave a plane at Manchester Airport, after being repatriated to the United Kingdom from the MV Hondius cruise ship, which was hit by hantavirus, Sunday, May 10, 2026, in Manchester, England. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)
Passengers are sprayed with disinfectant by Spanish government officials before boarding a plane after disembarking from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at Tenerife airport in the Canary Islands, Spain, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez)
Ambulances carrying patients evacuated from the MV Hondius cruise ship with suspected hantavirus infection, leave the Bourget airport, north of Paris, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
A plane carrying patients evacuated from the MV Hondius cruise ship with suspected hantavirus infection, lands at the Bourget airport, north of Paris, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
