Golf: Goalby played the break just right at the Masters

Bob Goalby says he has been getting lots of phone calls the last few weeks.

"Happens every 10 years," he says. "You guys still remember."

He's at Augusta National this week. The first time he played in the most revered event in golf was 1960. Now, he is there to see old friends and play some hit-and-giggle golf before the tournament starts Thursday. He'll probably score well for a guy who turned 79 three weeks ago.

Inevitably, the subject of what happened 40 years will come up. For the first couple of years after he won the 1968 Masters when Argentine Roberto de Vicenzo signed an incorrect scorecard after the last round, the subject was a sore one for Goalby.

It was a cheap win, some wrote. Others labeled him Lucky Bob.

But now, these many years later, all that has mellowed with time and Goalby doesn't mind talking about it at all. He is, after all, a Masters champion. Can't take that away from him.

He hit some great shots on that final Sunday. Sank a knee-buckling par putt on No. 18 that turned out to be the winning stroke. Finished the round at 66, still one of the best finishing scores in a pressure-cooker event that leaves the best golfers with quivering hands.

"I have a letter from Bobby Jones," Goalby says. "It's hanging on my wall at home in Belleville, Ill. It says the shot I played at No. 15 that day was one of the finest shots he'd ever seen."

Because the Masters was his only major title, people forget that he was not an unlikely champion.

He was an all-state quarterback from Belleville. He went to the University of Illinois on a football scholarship, then lost his eligibility when he played a few varsity baseball games for Southern Illinois. That prompted him to quit school, find his way into golf -- he grew up 100 yards from the St. Clair Country Club in Belleville and started working as a caddie when he was 8 -- and get himself on the tour by 1957.

By the time he stood over his four-footer on 18 on that fateful Sunday in Augusta, 40 years ago, he had already won seven tour events -- including the 1961 L.A. Open -- and been runner up in both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.

"I'd been working on something in my game in the winter of '67," Goalby says, beginning the story, "but I missed the cut at Greensboro in '68, so I got to Augusta early. Practiced on Monday and shot 67."

He shot 70-70-71 in the first three rounds but was only part of the horse race come Sunday. De Vicenzo had shot 69-73-70 and was a shot behind.

"When I got to the 10th tee," Goalby says, "there were still 13 guys with a chance to win."

On the par-five 15th, after making birdies on 13 and 14, he hit a three-iron six feet from the hole and made the eagle putt. It is a shot that, in addition to Jones' written praise, remains perhaps his best and most important ever.

"The greens were hard as rock," he says. "You couldn't fire at the pins like they do now. In those days, all of us were constantly hitting shots that rolled through the greens. So to get a three-iron to stop that close was unbelievable."

While Goalby was making the eagle at 15, De Vicenzo was making birdie at 17, the same hole that Goalby would bogey minutes later.

"My only three-putt all week," he says.

But Goalby got back even with the Argentine when De Vicenzo bogeyed the 18th hole to finish with a 65. Goalby now knew that a par four on No. 18 would get him a 66 and a place in the 18-hole playoff the next day, a format replaced now at the Masters by an immediate playoff.

"On 18, I hit a three-wood off the tee, backed off it a little," Goalby says.