Bob Goalby, who died Wednesday at age 92, is remembered for his 1968 Masters win — not only his outstanding final round but the grace he displayed in the aftermath of a rules infraction that was not of his doing.
The episode yielded one of the most famous lines in golf: “What a stupid I am.”
Goalby’s death in his hometown of Belleville, Illinois, was confirmed by the PGA Tour and by Bill Haas, his great-nephew.
The Masters was among his 11 victories on the PGA Tour. “I never did get full credit for what I’d done,” he told Golf Digest in a 2018 interview. “I played damned well, especially the last day.”
But the spotlight that Sunday at Augusta National was grabbed by the error of a man who might have won.
After birdies on the 13th and 14th holes in the final round, Goalby had an eagle on the par-5 15th and closed with a 66. He assumed he would be going to a Monday playoff with Roberto De Vicenzo, who also had a four-round total of 277, finishing with 65.
But Tommy Aaron was keeping De Vicenzo’s card that day and put him down for a 4 on the 17th hole instead of the birdie 3 he had actually gotten. De Vicenzo signed the card, and under the Rules of Golf, had to accept the higher score.
That gave the Argentinian player 66 for the round — and 278 overall, one shot behind Goalby. Speaking to reporters, De Vicenzo put the blame on himself: “What a stupid I am.”
“The presentation ceremony wasn’t what it could have been,” Goalby told Golf Digest. “I sat next to Roberto and did what I could to console him. There’s video of me patting him on the leg. I felt no elation, nothing like you’d expect from winning the biggest tournament of your life. It was awkward. It was tragic for Roberto, but it was equally unfortunate for me.”
As notable as Goalby’s victories was the role he played in launching two tours.
He was among the players who boldly led the Tournament Players Division to break away from the PGA of America and become what now is the PGA Tour. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus delivered support that made it happen. Goalby was among those who initiated the move. Later, he joined Gardner Dickinson and Dan Sikes in 1980 to organize a tour for players 50 and older.
“He was never saying, ‘Here’s what I did.’ To the men of his era, Bob was a leader, but he had a lot of humility,” said Jay Haas, a nine-time PGA Tour winner, Presidents Cup captain and Goalby’s nephew.
Goalby was born March 14, 1929, in Belleville and was a multi-sport player through high school and college.
He went to Illinois on a football scholarship, then played baseball at Southern Illinois. He was drafted into the military during the Korean War and turned pro in 1952.
According to the PGA Tour, he worked as a club pro in Darien, Connecticut, but only until he shot 64 in the final round of the 1957 Mayfair Inn Open in Florida and earned $20 for finishing 30th.
“I called the shop at Darien and said, ‘Thank you very much, but I’m not coming back,’” Goalby told the tour’s website.
His first win was the 1958 Greater Greensboro Open. The last of his 11 PGA Tour titles was the Bahamas National Open in 1971. He played in one Ryder Cup, in 1963 at East Lake in Atlanta, with Arnold Palmer as the playing captain.
“In whatever Bob did, whether he was swinging a club, sitting in a board room making things better for the players, walking the fairways while holding a microphone or simply spending time with his family, he was a wonderful man … one of the greatest storytellers, and we will miss him,” former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said.
After the 1968 Masters, Goalby and De Vicenzo remained friends and were partners twice in a PGA Tour Champions event.
The late Dan Jenkins once wrote in Sports Illustrated, “Precisely because Bob Goalby is made up the way he is, which is tough and realistic, he has proved to be a lot less bothered by the Masters debacle than most people might think.”
Even so, Goalby received plenty of hate mail, even though there still would have been a playoff without the scorecard error.
“One guy wrote, ‘They ought to put you and Sonny Liston in a sack of concrete and dump you in the ocean.’ The negative-to-positive ratio was 10-to-1 negative,” Goalby said in the Golf Digest interview. “The letters piled up, and every one of them hurt. For some reason, I’ve kept that hate mail. I don’t know why. Maybe to one day explain to people what the experience was like.”
But there were positive memories, too, and he spoke to Golf Digest of a letter he received from Masters co-founder Bobby Jones. He framed the letter and kept it on a wall his Belleville home.
“There’s a part where he says, ‘I was particularly thrilled by your exquisite second shot to the 15th, which was the finest I have seen played to that hole.’ Jones was present when Gene Sarazen made his double eagle there in 1935, so that’s some high praise,” Goalby said.