If Ben Hogan or Jack Nicklaus were the kinds of golfers we'd like to be, Tommy Bolt was the type of golfer we really are. Extremely talented but cursed with a volcanic temper that earned him the nickname "Thunder," Tommy Bolt passed away this weekend at the age of 92.

That picture there is an icon of golf frustration, isn't it? Taken at the 1960 U.S. Open at Denver's Cherry Hills Country Club, it caught Bolt in mid-toss after he put two straight balls into the water on the finishing hole. I think we've all been there. (The frustration, not the U.S. Open.)

"If we could’ve screwed another head on his shoulders," Hogan himself once said, "Tommy Bolt could have been the greatest who ever played."

In his later years, Bolt naturally calmed down, though he continued to play to the crowds with his club-tossing. "I launched far more (clubs) because they expected me to than I did because I was mad at anything that had gone wrong with my golf," he once said in an interview. "After a while, it became showmanship, plain and simple."

He also had a fine interview with Yahoo! Golf Editor Michael Arkush for Ark's book "My Greatest Shot"; click here to see the letter he wrote. (Be sure to scroll down to the interview, where Bolt tells Ark that today's players are "spoiled rotten.")

So, farewell, Tommy Bolt. Golf is a calmer and quieter game without you ... and that's a shame.