Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Tim_Cronin on March 17, 2018, 01:17:12 PM
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Augusta National has just posted this trove of CBS final-round television broadcasts from 1968 forward.
The link to 1968 (a black-and-white kinescope of the original colorcast):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmdrWYSpVMs
And I was planning to do some work this afternoon.
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I have to check this out.... I guess my weekend plans have changed)
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Wow, this is incredible stuff. Good on ANGC for archiving these and making them so easily accessible.
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Fantastic! Crazy seeing Ray Floyd knowing that he'd still be putting himself in the same position 20 years later. Hearing Byron Nelson chiming in on the commentary also strange.
I like Goalby's action.
For the scorecard controversy, I never realized the order of how the events played out. Goalby thought he had to make his putt to get into a playoff, but it was for the win in hindsight. May have changed things in terms of pressure if he knew the actual situation.
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Wow,,,where to begin.
Must see TV for any fan of golf, history, sports and The Masters.
A treasure trove of players(Nicklaus, Player, Trevino, De Vincenzo, Floyd, Yancey, Devlin, Goalby, Aaron) golf course, and information on an event I was aware of, but had not seen play out in real time.
The ending-Talk about awkward...
The interview should be mandatory viewing for any young athlete.
Goalby looked FAR more distraught than De Vincenzo-what a shame for him as he was denied his chance to not have an asterisk by the win by not getting a playoff to win it outright.
De Vincenzo was 45 years old-I selfishly feel deprived of seeing him play as a past champion in his later years (my Masters memories began in 1975-though I may well have attended in 1968 as a 5 year old non golfing picnicer)
I hear all this talk about how "athletic" players are now.True players today don't have their manteets, but those guys had forearms born of hard work and knew how to create speed without looking like swimsuit models.
I'd like to see a player besides DJ that could take down De Vincenzo.
Watch Raymond Floyd rip at it and tell me they weren't able to swing hard at it because of small headed equipment.
The golf course looked so much better, and so much less contrived-noteably 17(Disneyland of fake looking pinebedded trees) and 18 (which is now an awkward unattractive claustrophic chute rather than the strategic decision it once was)
Also amazing how few putts are made when they have to carry speed to get to the hole-many more lipouts as the ball isn't crawling as it reaches the hole and gravity pulls it in.
I turned it off after a couple minutes though because the ball wasn't going far enough.
300 uphill on 17....booooring
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What would have happened if Goalby would have added a stroke to his score on the final hole in the scoring tent to force a playoff with Roberto?
Would that have been allowable or would they have caught him on some sort of spirit of the rules violation? Could have been a historic gesture and probably would have paid off for him whether he won or lost the next day. I guess that in a way, that would be insulting to Roberto though because it would look cheap if he did win after that.
One other thing that I didn't realize- 231 professional wins by De Vincenzo!!! I don't think I've even won that many games of cards in my life.
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Can't show the front 9 on television though :-\
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What would have happened if Goalby would have added a stroke to his score on the final hole in the scoring tent to force a playoff with Roberto?
He kinda answered that type of question in the Golf Magazine or Golf Digest for April. Said that would be putting himself above the rules of the game, because it wasn't playing by the rules per se, it was trying to "settle things" as a player deciding what was right, not the rules themselves.
It made sense the way he phrased it. I'm not claiming to have written it very accurately.
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Geez, this is so wonderful... hope it starts a flood of this kind of archival material from all walks of championship golf.
cheers
vk
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Thanks for this, these are incredible.
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Watch Raymond Floyd rip at it and tell me they weren't able to swing hard at it because of small headed equipment.
I had the same thought every time I saw Seve swing. Nothing left in reserve (maybe there was....but it surely didn't appear to be the case).
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No logos, shallow bunkers, mock turtle necks, brylcreem, sansabelts, metal spikes on leather shoes, wristy putting strokes, leggy swings, enjoying a Marlboro between shots, visors. Rock stars of a great generation.
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Well done for highlighting this Tim.
Are there links for the following years?
atb
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awesome, ANGC is forward thinking and this only helps folks connect with the game
well done ANGC (hope other leaders in sports do the same, eg. Olympics)
Thomas, they are all on youtube individually by year, 8)
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Well done for highlighting this Tim.
Are there links for the following years?
atb
https://www.youtube.com/user/masters/videos
That's the main page with links to each year's coverage.
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Geez, this is so wonderful... hope it starts a flood of this kind of archival material from all walks of championship golf.
cheers
vk
There are a bunch of U.S. Opens (and other majors) on YouTube, placed there by individuals, plus some other old tournaments. But it would be great if the R&A, USGA and PGA of America would follow Augusta's lead. And if Augusta goes back to 1957 eventually, which I believe is the earliest surviving final-round telecast (1956, the first airing, is unaccounted for).
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Which year did you watch first? Just finished watching 1998 as I loved watching Jack Nicklaus make another run at 58 and T6. During the broadcast he drove number 9 325 yards off the tee. They also noted that for the week he was #21 in driving distance in the field. He also was top 10 in putting halfway through the round, although he didn't make many coming in. Amazing performance.
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Watching 1972, which alas is incomplete but has the finish, Jack had a tougher putt to save par on 17 than he had to birdie in 1986. And after splashing out from a fried egg lie in the front bunker. This is great fun.
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I have been spending a lot of hours this weekend watching these. What a delight, and huge thank-yous to whomever at ANGC had the idea to put these online. I started with 1968 and have been working my way forward, up to 1977 so far. Some thoughts:
The '68 ending was fascinating. Pat Summerall got the word of a possible problem well after both De Vincenzo (obviously) and Goalby had finished, and by that time the Butler Cabin ceremony was almost ready to start. As @jeffwarne noted, Goalby looked very upset while Roberto was remarkably composed. Clifford Roberts and John Winters (filling in for Bob Jones) handled the very awkward situation as well as one could expect I suppose, with Roberts actually showing some compassion for De Vincenzo at the end by grasping his arm during their handshake and suggesting that somehow two winners could be acknowledged (though I'm not sure what, if anything, was ever done). Meanwhile, poor Vinny Giles as low amateur was thrust into the middle of all that during the ceremony. Just a remarkable piece of history I had never seen before.
Of course by going back so far into the archive, we get to see players who we have only heard of and never got to see play, which was fun. I was struck by how well they struck the ball given the equipment and conditions of the era, and the scores they were able to post. It was also interesting to see a much less well-manicured ANGC compared to today. In 1970 there was an area in play on the right fringe of 16 green that was completely dead grass, and in one of the 1970s broadcasts you could see that the grassy areas around the back bunkers on 13 were very spotty in terms of condition.
The Butler Cabin ceremonies were particularly interesting. My memory of those as a teenager watching on TV was they were very stilted and that that Clifford Roberts was a very old, stern, humorless man, which matches the image he always had and which may well be totally accurate. But there were flashes of dry wit and courtliness that he showed during those ceremonies and it really wasn't until the end in 1976 when perhaps due to both age and illness he began to look out of place. One of the funnier ones was in '72 when the interview portion seemed to go on for a long time and finally he interrupted and said it was time to stop because people were waiting outside, which seemed to cause people to jump. I had also forgotten that he had Frank Broyles, the Arkansas football coach and ANGC member, doing the player interviews during the early-mid '70s, who did a reasonably decent job of it.
I found watching the CBS broadcasts evolve to be fascinating. The broadcasts shown through 1971 are kinescopes which detracts from them, but even at that these ones appear to be not changed much from what had always been done, a rather short broadcast of just the last few holes with limited camera coverage. Some years have pieces missing, about the entire first hour of 1972, virtually all of 1973 except for the missed putt on 18 by JC Snead that would have meant a playoff, and about 30 minutes of 1977 in the middle of the back 9. Announcers included the superb Henry Longhurst on 16 (who disappeared after 1976 like Roberts), largely forgotten contributors like Jim Thacker and Frank Glieber, and Doc Middlecoff and Byron Nelson on the '60s broadcasts. Pat Summerall anchored on 18 a few times with Ray Scott (more famous as the voice of Green Bay Packers football, whose ponderous style did not translate well here IMO) preceding Vin Scully who began in '75 and then did '77 through the early '80s (not sure what happened to Vin in '76). Vinny did OK but IMO he should have stuck to baseball as the Summerall years on 18 were far superior. Jack Whitaker, banished from 18 after 1966, came back in '74 to fill in for an ailing Longhurst and stuck around for a while after that on a hole tower. For those that care about such things, these broadcasts will help resolve what announcers worked what Masters for CBS.
The '72 telecast is of remarkable picture quality given the age, and '77 looks even better. 1977 is the first "modern" production, with many significant changes happening that year. There were a bunch of new camera positions that are still used today, added coverage of #11 (with second shots available on 9 and 10), and even mobile cameras that got behind the player in the fairway. I don't know if that was all a result of Bill Lane taking over from Cliff Roberts but it really made a difference.
I am really enjoying these and they are a treasure to have available.
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The first year I watched was 1991. I wanted Tom Watson to win that year so much. He put his tee ball on 12 in the water, but then eagled 13 and 15 to tie Woosnam and Olazabal. But then it all came undone on 18.
That year also featured a great second round pairing of Watson and Nicklaus, and an amazing putt by Larry Mize on 14 in the third round.
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I read somewhere that de Vincenzo received a silver case that was generally only given to Masters champions: "Masters' chairman Clifford Roberts later sent De Vicenzo a sterling silver cigarette box engraved with the signatures of the previous winners (the only time during Roberts' time as chairman that it was sent to anyone other than the winner of the Masters)"
And it is interesting to notice that several of the players in 68, including Goalby and Player, wore the mock-turtleneck style collars. I have heard Tiger criticized for wearing these at the present time with folks saying that shirts like that don't belong on a golf pro. Player was the leader going into the final round in 68 but he shot 72 in the final round to finish well back. The winner's check in 1968 was $20,000!
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Most interesting to see the changes over the years especially the maintenance and presentation of the course. The first one I can recall is Charles Coody’s year.
Shame about poor Roberto DeV’. On his birthday as well :(
From their figures there don’t seem to be too many gym rats amongst the players (until recent times).
Atb
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Greg, a great post. I've always been interested in TV technology, and these telecasts, and earlier years CBS has shown portions of, tell a story of technical progress.
What there is of 1972 was interesting from several aspects.
1. The use of the Ampex video-replay disk, which could hold 30 seconds of video, for a replay of Jim Jamieson's approach on 17 – and freezing it with the ball in the air.
2. The use later of a hand-held camera for Nicklaus' approach – the cable is clearly shown for a moment – and that the big camera on a cart for tee-shot receive on the other side of Nicklaus was useless with the gallery in the way, as it was only a few feet off the ground.
3. The electronic graphics. CBS Labs was the leader in second-generation electronic titles to replace the cards used since the start of TV. The font was one of its early ones – CBS News and NBC, which contracted for a set, got the first two.
4. And the continuing use (and into the 1980s, I think, though I haven't gotten that far) of the master scoreboard in Butler Cabin, with everything put up by hand. It's on the 1968 telecast and all those after.
Note that Augusta has dropped the network intros after the first few (and the billboards for Travelers and Cadillac, and subsequent sponsors, for all) years. CBS has left those in on the Jim Nantz-hosted retrospectives.
Who will be the first of us to find which year CBS went from calling people fans and spectators and going to "patrons"?
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Apparently the Augusta song was first used in 1982. I could swear that they used to play a version with the lyrics - at least in the first year or two.
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By the way if you want to download these video rather than just stream them you can use a site called VDYouTube and change www.youtube.com to www.vdyoutube.com while keeping everything else the same.
For example, the URL for the 1969 Masters is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VEWab3mUKo . To download this as a video file use a URL of https://www.vdyoutube.com/watch?v=1VEWab3mUKo and then select the format that you want to use.
Why would you want to do this? A couple of reasons: (1) You will have your own archive and you don't lose access to these if ANGC decide to pull these files in the future, (2) you will be able to watch these videos when offline, and (3) this may be an easier way to watch these on a TV rather than a PC.
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Apparently the Augusta song was first used in 1982. I could swear that they used to play a version with the lyrics - at least in the first year or two.
I was watching 1981 earlier and heard it during that telecast.
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I will have to check it out - I was going from this website: https://thegolfnewsnet.com/lyrics-masters-theme-song-augusta-dave-loggins/
Songwriter Dave Loggins wrote the tune, simply called "Augusta," in 1981 after visiting Augusta National, the home of the Masters, for that April's tournament. Loggins says the lyrics came to him (http://deadspin.com/5899882/how-the-masters-theme-song-came-to-be-an-interview-with-the-third-cousin-of-kenny-loggins) on the par-4 14th hole. Later, in a meeting with legendary CBS Sports golf producer Frank Chirkinian, Loggins piqued Chirkinian's interest in a potential Masters theme song.The song debuted during the 1982 Masters and has been a part of the telecast ever since. However, it has been changed by Loggins over the years to include lines about Tiger Woods (http://golfnewsnet.wpengine.com/tigerwoods) and Phil Mickelson.
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8) Hard to watch 68 and RdV's "what a stupid I am.." experience, I remember watching it with my dad. However it did made me look at the rules, which still seem rather odd at times...
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I will have to check it out - I was going from this website: https://thegolfnewsnet.com/lyrics-masters-theme-song-augusta-dave-loggins/ (https://thegolfnewsnet.com/lyrics-masters-theme-song-augusta-dave-loggins/)
Songwriter Dave Loggins wrote the tune, simply called "Augusta," in 1981 after visiting Augusta National, the home of the Masters, for that April's tournament.Loggins says the lyrics came to him (http://deadspin.com/5899882/how-the-masters-theme-song-came-to-be-an-interview-with-the-third-cousin-of-kenny-loggins)on the par-4 14th hole. Later, in a meeting with legendary CBS Sports golf producer Frank Chirkinian, Loggins piqued Chirkinian's interest in a potential Masters theme song.The song debuted during the 1982 Masters and has been a part of the telecast ever since. However, it has been changed by Loggins over the years to include lines about Tiger Woods (http://golfnewsnet.wpengine.com/tigerwoods) and Phil Mickelson.
That's interesting. Maybe I didn't hear it?? I could have sworn I did. I can't imagine they would have gone back and added it to older telecasts though... I'll have to go check and see if I can find it.
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That's interesting. Maybe I didn't hear it?? I could have sworn I did. I can't imagine they would have gone back and added it to older telecasts though... I'll have to go check and see if I can find it.
It plays right when you start the 1981 coverage behind the commentator. Maybe Augusta added it to the background? Only thing that makes sense if the song wasn't even written until after that Masters.
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Here's another story, this one from Golf Magazine that has the same years - but perhaps they are sourcing each other. http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/masters-theme-song-music-masters
It is interesting to note that the song was written by Dave Loggins who is apparently a distant cousin of Kenny Loggins who wrote the "I'm Alright" song used in Caddyshack.
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I forgot that CBS had Vin Scully back then. What a treat. Plus Venturi and Summerall.
Seems like Watson, Seve, and Kite were in the top five every single year for a very long time.
I believe I had watched bits and pieces going back to 1982 or '83 when I was just a young kid. The first one I remember watching significant portions of was 1985. I know the first edition that I watched in its entirety, from start to finish, was the very next year. Of course, none since then have bettered it :)
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Greg, a great post. I've always been interested in TV technology, and these telecasts, and earlier years CBS has shown portions of, tell a story of technical progress.
What there is of 1972 was interesting from several aspects.
1. The use of the Ampex video-replay disk, which could hold 30 seconds of video, for a replay of Jim Jamieson's approach on 17 – and freezing it with the ball in the air.
2. The use later of a hand-held camera for Nicklaus' approach – the cable is clearly shown for a moment – and that the big camera on a cart for tee-shot receive on the other side of Nicklaus was useless with the gallery in the way, as it was only a few feet off the ground.
3. The electronic graphics. CBS Labs was the leader in second-generation electronic titles to replace the cards used since the start of TV. The font was one of its early ones – CBS News and NBC, which contracted for a set, got the first two.
4. And the continuing use (and into the 1980s, I think, though I haven't gotten that far) of the master scoreboard in Butler Cabin, with everything put up by hand. It's on the 1968 telecast and all those after.
Thanks, Tim. I've always had a bit of an obsession with The Masters telecasts (the first one I remember watching was Charlie Coody in '71 when I was 14) and by extension, CBS Golf, for reasons that aren't totally clear to me. I suppose some of the attraction was how the event signifies the coming of Spring and in the early years it offered a visual treat unlike anything else I'd ever seen. Plus here in my part of Canada this was the only CBS golf event we would receive all year (CBS didn't appear on our cable system here until the late '80s) so it was a treat in that respect too.
My viewing has now entered the '80s. I was very disappointed in the 1980 telecast as offered here, as it is severely limited. The first half has no CBS commentary or graphics at all, just ambient sound, seeming almost like an edited series of shots without a whole lot of continuity. No idea where that came from. The last half does have the commentary track and seems close to what aired, but there are occasional quick cuts of stuff that Chirkinian would never allow to be seen, like a handheld camera changing position so all you see is the turf and the cable as the operator walks it to the next shot. No Butler Cabin ceremony either with the infamous Hord Hardin question to Seve about how tall he is.
In the early 80s broadcasts the commentary team changed a bit, with Clive Clark coming on for a few years as another English voice, taking over from Jack Whitaker and doing a good job, Steve Melnyk starting his run with CBS, and Gary Bender, a CBS staff announcer, taking over from Jim Thacker. I had forgotten about Bender and thought he did a good job on golf, maybe better than on some of his other CBS assignments.
The technical progress is interesting to watch. The use of the Ampex disc seemed to be mostly in the early to mid-70s and for a while in those years they seemed in love with it, with lots of replays of shots ending in a sometimes awkward freeze-frame. In that same timeframe they liked to use a split-screen with a shot of the player on one side and a camera view following the shot on the other side. The electronic titles really changed a lot and fairly quickly, moving from the skinny dot matrix look of the early '70s to a more typeface font to the blocky font CBS News and Sports both used in the mid-70s. But in '78, CBS Golf used a very '70s-looking stylized font for that one year before changing again the next year to a straightforward wide sans-serif italic font that morphed by '82 to the slightly heavier multicolor version of it they used through the '80s. But I think the last year for the old manual leaderboard seemed to be '75 as in '76 they used an electronic leaderboard graphic and I don't recall seeing it since that telecast. Surprised it hung around that long.
The other thing that they did for a few years which I found bizarre and a bit annoying seemed to be a Chirkinian affectation. In the early/mid '70s when a player had a long putt that would require several seconds to get to the hole, he would rapidly switch a series of quick cuts from a close view of the ball moving, to the player's face, back and forth 4 or 5 times over the course of the putt. It was like an early version of an '80s music video without the music.
Speaking of music, the Loggins "Augusta" theme is indeed heard in the '81 telecast. By '82 they had also adopted the rather flowery-looking and very '80s-style"The Masters" logo on their graphics package to go along with it in place of the traditional AGNC map logo, which thankfully has returned for the last number of years. One of the telecasts, either '82 or '83, used the vocal version of Augusta over some beauty shots of the course to fill the time after the end of play and the start of the Butler Cabin ceremony. The version with vocals was not, IMO, an improvement.
Who will be the first of us to find which year CBS went from calling people fans and spectators and going to "patrons"?
Haven't heard that yet. Vin Scully did call them a "crowd" in the late '70s and surprisingly, he survived that faux pas.
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Wow Greg - that's interesting stuff. What part of Canada are you from?
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Wayne, I'm in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
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Great stuff Greg,
I'm almost always going off memory-will be great to see the telecasts.
I've only watched 1968 so far.
Wll be interesting to watch(and compare my rose colored memories of) the ones I worked(1978,79,80,81) and the events I attended (as a golfer -1975-2017)
with another snowstorm coming tomorrow...
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Wayne, I'm in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
And you guys didn't get CBS until then - wow. I guess I am lucky as I lived in Southern Ontario. Where I lived growing up we didn't have access to cable as it was semi-rural but we had a tall antenna and could receive all of the channels from Buffalo and Erie, PA.
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Wayne, I'm in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
And you guys didn't get CBS until then - wow. I guess I am lucky as I lived in Southern Ontario. Where I lived growing up we didn't have access to cable as it was semi-rural but we had a tall antenna and could receive all of the channels from Buffalo and Erie, PA.
Yes, those of us in the Maritimes were always envious of you folks in So. Ontario in that regard. Cable came here around 1970 and the early versions allowed 1 US commercial station plus PBS, out of Bangor, Me. A few years later the CRTC allowed a second US network station. For the rest of the '70s and into most of the '80s we got NBC, ABC and PBS. CBS was finally permitted to be added around '87 or '88 IIRC.
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I had mentioned earlier that these broadcasts would help resolve the issue of what announcers worked what years. My memory is that a now long-gone web forum site did a good job of documenting that but with its disappearance I was unable to find that info. But the CBS press office released this a few years ago:
https://www.cbspressexpress.com/cbs-sports/media-guides/masters-2013/download?id=84
I have no idea what sources they used but it must have been compiled by an intern on their last day on the job as it is wildly inaccurate for many of the years in the 1960s through the '80s at a minimum. It is actually quite remarkable that something issued by the company would be so wrong. At least now these years can be corrected.
Speaking of announcers, the 1978 broadcast showed Hubert Green on 18 green with a shortish putt to tie Gary Player and go to a playoff. After setting up to make the stroke he backed off, turned his back to the hole and gestured to someone off-camera to shush and be quiet. He then went on to miss the putt and finished second. In the subsequent Butler Cabin interview conducted by Arnold Palmer a bit later, he fingered Jim Kelly who was broadcasting the event for CBS Radio as the culprit who disturbed him. Kelly of course went to on to work the early years of the PGA Senior Tour as ESPN's anchorman on those broadcasts.
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It seems that in the past there were far more ex-jocks (excluding ex-golfers) as announcers. Gifford and Summerall are two examples, although I thought they both become excellent announcers capable of broadcasting a number of sports. I can't recall the current crop of announcers containing ex-football players.
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Here's the vocal of "Augusta," Dave Loggins himself in a live setting in 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huV53o7hKR8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huV53o7hKR8)
And the original vocal, which CBS used over the closing credits at least once:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_WB971gh-w
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Thanks Tim - I could swear that back in the 80s they occasionally used to use the vocal version when cutting to commercials or at other times during the broadcast.
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They might have. I recall once they played the instrumental at the wrong speed at the start of the closing credits, faded it down, and came back up at the proper speed. The magic of reel-to-reel!
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I think the first time they play the song with the lyrics is at the 2 hour 34 minute point of the 82 broadcast. Vin Scully introduces the song between the end of the playoff and the green jacket ceremony in Butler Cabin.
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Watching '84 right now. I believe this is the first year that ANGC caddies did not have to be used - I see Bruce Edwards on Tom Watson's bag. Man, I had forgotten how great Watson was in that period of mid-70s to mid-80s, just hitting the ball so solid all the time. CBS coverage went all the way back to the 5th hole which shocked me as I thought that did not happen until the '90s.
Odd things continue in the archive. Watson's '81 win was good quality with only a few anomalies until the very end. Nicklaus holed out on 18 with Watson waiting in the fairway, then after a quick cut the next thing we see is Watson suddenly hitting his second shot, immediately followed by him putting out on 18 for the win, all in about 30 seconds with a distorted, fuzzy picture. No Butler Cabin ceremony again. No idea what happened there.
It is interesting that given ANGC's interest in television going all the way back into the 1940s (see this excellent David Owen piece on Jones and Roberts: http://www.davidowen.net/files/the-men-who-made-the-masters-3-1999.pdf ) and Roberts' control over the telecast for so many years, that their archive of broadcasts in the '70s and '80s seems so spotty. Losing half of '72, all of '73, and having only the bizarre 1980 version seems rather odd. Maybe the fact that they produced an official film all those years was deemed an acceptable substitute.
One thing I've learned watching these: Tom Weiskopf probably should have won a Masters sometime in the '70s as he was always in the thick of things, and the same is true for Tom Kite in the '80s.
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The ending-Talk about awkward...
The interview should be mandatory viewing for any young athlete.
Goalby looked FAR more distraught than De Vincenzo-what a shame for him as he was denied his chance to not have an asterisk by the win by not getting a playoff to win it outright.
De Vincenzo was 45 years old-I selfishly feel deprived of seeing him play as a past champion in his later years (my Masters memories began in 1975-though I may well have attended in 1968 as a 5 year old non golfing picnicer)
I hear all this talk about how "athletic" players are now.True players today don't have their manteets, but those guys had forearms born of hard work and knew how to create speed without looking like swimsuit models.
I'd like to see a player besides DJ that could take down De Vincenzo.
50 years today.
It took Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts 20 minutes to check every precedent to decide what to do. Including the Bobbly Locke-Peter Thompson decision that did not result in disqualification. It is reported that they were both cogniscant that their decision was going to be historic. A reporter wrote that they new at the end of their discussion that they were giving both players what they wanted:
A trophy for Goalby, lifetime recognition for De Vicenzo (the reigning Champion Golfer).
De Vicenzo won the Shell Houston open 3 weeks later and then at the US Open he was of course asked about the incident. He replied: "It was one of those stupid things you do from time to time. People write to me a lot, they are so kind! They say they feel horrible for what happened to me. They blame others. I just want them to know that it was solely my mistake".
He was presented the Bobby Jones Award later. He said then: I play golf. I have made a lot of friends and some money. Today I have this wonderful recognition. It means a lot to me, to my family, and to the folks back home. To win a tournament, one has to to be very good for a week. To win this recognition, you need many, many years.
You are right Jeff about his storng arms, even in old age. I am honored to have played with him a few holes.