Phil Lyne

Phil Lyne was born on 18 January 1947 in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up on his family's ranch in South Texas. His father taught him to rope, while friends taught him to ride bulls. He entered his first rodeo when he was four years old and went on to win many youth competitions.

In high school he won the 1965 Texas Youth Rodeo Association finals, finished second in the National High School Rodeo all-around standings and won the national high school title in tie-down roping. He paid his tuition at Southwest Texas Junior College with rodeo scholarships. At the 1967 College National Finals Rodeo he was second in ribbon roping, and in 1968 he was named the national intercollegiate all-around champion and won the tie-down roping title. In 1969, as a student at Sam Houston State University, he won both titles again. He turned professional before completing his degree.

Lyne joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association in 1969 and was named its Rookie of the Year. In 1970 he finished third in the all-around standings.

In 1971 he earned prize money in every discipline, competing at 112 rodeos before the National Finals Rodeo, sometimes entering three or four in a week. At the NFR he set a record by roping a calf in 8.5 seconds and won the world all-around and tie-down roping championships. He told Sports Illustrated he planned to stick with rodeo "a couple, three years and then go back to ranching."

In 1972 he entered 126 rodeos, won $60,852, a single-season record for the association, and repeated as world all-around and tie-down roping champion. His contest that year with Larry Mahan was documented in The Great American Cowboy, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. At the 1972 Finals he led the average in tie-down roping and bull riding, rode nine of his ten bulls, and became one of very few riders to stay on V-61, a bull ridden only five times in 930 attempts.

He considered tie-down roping his strongest event and bull riding his favourite, and he also competed in saddle bronc riding and steer wrestling. He did not own the horses he roped on and used more than 90 different horses in one season. Mahan said of him: "he fools you because, without any showmanship, he just plain gets the job done."

Lyne retired after the 1972 season. He returned part time in 1979, won the steer roping average at the National Finals Steer Roping in 1983 and 1986, and in 1990 won the world steer roping championship, his fifth world title.

Lyne gave up full-time rodeo at the height of his success to raise his daughters on the family ranch in Texas. He was married to Sarah, and they lived in Cotulla, Texas. They had two daughters, Amanda and Samantha. Samantha Lyne became a barrel racer who qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in 2014, and she is married to the two-time Professional Bull Riders world champion J.B. Mauney.

Phil Lyne died on 14 August 2026 in Cotulla, Texas, at the age of 79. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association announced his death on 15 August, describing him as a legendary ProRodeo Hall of Famer. A cause of death was not made public in those reports.

Tributes spread quickly across the rodeo world. Writing for Rodeo On SI, Laura Lambert noted that he was often called the greatest cowboy of all time and that one line ran through the many posts in his memory: "There will never be another Phil Lyne."

Lyne is remembered as one of the most complete cowboys in rodeo history, a champion at both ends of the arena who won money in bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, bull riding, tie-down roping and steer wrestling. He was the first cowboy to finish first in NFR average earnings in three different events over his career, a feat matched only by Trevor Brazile in 2012.

He won the Linderman Award, given to the best all-around cowboy across roping and rough stock, in 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1976. His honours included the Rodeo Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (1971), the inaugural class of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame (1979), the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame (2000), the Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame (2004), the Pendleton Round-Up Hall of Fame and the PBR Ring of Honor (2007), the Texas Trail of Fame (2011), the PBR Ty Murray Top Hand Award (2019) and the Bull Riding Hall of Fame (2021).