Dave Stockton - "Winning the 1970 PGA at Southern Hills" SHORT TRACK

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle. Then it started to do that.

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Let's talk about the PGA championship. The highlight, uh, 24 starts, 17 cuts made, uh, two top fives. Of course, those were both wins, five top 25. So uh let's start with the win in 1970 at Southern Hills by two over Bob Murphy and Arnold Palmer.

Dave Stockton 0:31

That was phenomenal. That was uh we come in there, and Kathy is now pregnant with Ronnie. Ronnie is going to be born 30 days on September 16th after I win on August 16th. Uh so she can't walk on the golf course. But prior to it, dad had been my dad was always trying to get me mentally prepared, and he had me reading this book, Psychocybernetics, and which is like reading sandpaper. And I finally I uh I finally underlined it, yellow lined it so I could see it. I could read the stuff that interested me. I could read in about 20 minutes. And I took two things out of the book. One, you have to be aggressive if you're gonna win. And the other thing is you have to pick, you have to picture ahead of time what you want to accomplish before you set out to do it. So here I am at Southern Hills, and I'm out early on Monday morning playing my practice round, probably 7.15, whatever. And I'm coming in to 18 about 11 o'clock, maybe a little bit before, and I'm this big natural amphitheater, and I'm picturing 20,000 people sitting there. Little do I know that seven days later I'm gonna be coming up the 18th hole with Arnold Palmer. And as it turns out, I've got a I've got the four-shot league going in the last round, and Arnold, Arnold and I are paired together. Well, this goes back to a story who, and there's a reason why this guy is my idol on tour, was that when I played my second second year on tour, I played in the in the LA Open at Rancho Park, and I was paired in the last round with Arnold Palmer and Don January. And I'd never met Arnold Palmer. I've been on tour two years, but he tended to play the weekends and he tended to play a lot of tournaments I didn't get in. So I'd never met him. So my golf coach introduced me on the first tee to him. And Arnold, they for whatever reason they're pairing 1-3-5. I was seven shots behind Arnold. January is four shots behind Arnold. Arnold is playing really well. And so Arnold tees off, rips it. Then they introduce January, PGA champion, he rips it. So now it's my turn. Well, as January's hitting, I'm looking at my feet and my toes are going up and down, they're just shaking, right? But I'm heavy enough that you can't see that I'm having trouble, right? And uh so it it everything was equal. So I I tee, I hit, just teed it up, no practice wing, ripped it down the middle, 30 yards short of them at least. And as I pick up the teed, this voice goes, Son, son, and I stop, and it's January. And I said, Yes, sir. He says, What do you see out there? I said, I see 40,000 people or 20,000 people, whatever. He says, No, no, no, no, no. Watch Arnold. Arnold's already checked everybody on the left side. Now he's going kind of angling toward the right side, but he's got us by 30 yards in about 10 seconds. And he says, Mr. January says, you know what, he says, son, you really have a problem today that I don't think you're aware of. And I go, Yes, sir, my my ears get real big. And I go, what's that? And he says, uh, well, see Arnold, Arnold's almost to my ball. We're still a hundred yards from it. He says, I know you like to play fast. I know you like to walk fast because you're gonna hit the first shot every time, because you can't drive it where we drive it, not even close. But but we can't putt and chip like you, so it'll be an yeah, it'll be a good match. So sure enough, we're walking down, and and Arnold goes to his ball, and now January goes, now see he's his ball. Now we're watching, he's gonna turn around and look at us like, what in the hell are these guys doing? And he does, sure enough, turn around. He says, I just want to explain to you that you got two options. One, you can walk his pace, at which point you're gonna see me walking up your backside all day, because this is how I walk. And Bruce, you know how he walks. This Texas is kind of stressed. Sauntering along. Saundering along, right? So, so he said, but on the other hand, he said, if you walk my pace, we'll really screw this sucker up. I almost fell over, right? So, so so second hole, I I make an X. There's no people on the right. I go left of the people, I go right to nothing, I come to my ball, January walks by me, he doesn't say a word, he just winks at me. And the third hole is a part three, and I don't know how you slow play that. I just went to one side and got on the green. Fourth hole, here's Kathy. She's on the just off the T on four, and she says, Dave, Dave, Dave, what in the heck are you doing? So I pulled around the ropes, put my arm around her, and I explained what Mr. January said. She said, That makes perfect sense. Well, I'll fast forward to 18. I am five shots, I have no idea what I'm shooting. I'm five shots ahead of Arnold for the day. I'm five under. I haven't made a bogey. I'm five under. He's got me by two. He birdie's eighteen, he wins the tournament. I finish fourth, I make thirty, seven hundred dollars. That's out of the eight thousand I'm gonna make all year. I mean, but I made thirty-seven, we were so fired up. Now we're at Tulsa. The reason I'm telling this story is I'm about ready to go out with Arnold. If he wins, he wins the Grand Slam. This is the only tournament he's he got just got nipped by Julius Boris two years earlier at Pecon Valley in San Antonio.

Intro Music 5:41

Yeah.

Dave Stockton 5:42

So now he's got a chance there against me. And the the uh is one thing in in February to be going side to side in the cool breeze off the ocean in in LA versus 95% humidity and 95 degrees. And but I'm doing it. I'm going side to side. Arnold never beat me, ever. And I never did that to anybody else because just because January, and I I look back on it and go, why did Mr. January have the consideration to not needle me like a lot of his you know, devil? Piers did, right? He could he why he did that to me, I have no idea. But I I remember three putting five, and this guy in the gallery yelled, you got him now, Arnold, because Arnold's within three. And I went birdie two, eagle two, double bogey five on eight, a hard par three, and then I drove in the bunker on nine through a tree, and then knocked at a foot to birdie. So I go birdie eagle double bogey birdie, and I've got a seven-shot lead with nine to go. And I hello. I came to eighteen. First time all day I outdrove Arnold. I was so pumped because I'd made about a 15-footer for par to have a three-shot lead going into 18, and I killed it. And I get it down there, and I I followed a plan, which you go back to Colonial where I won, playing with Cootie, and my ball hit Cootie's ball on the fly on 18, and I'm hitting like a six-iron into 18. And I know I don't want to go to the Australian pond to the left, right? I don't want to go near that. The Crampton pond. The Crampton Pond. If I if I hadn't, if the oak tree hadn't been left to the uh to the right of the right trap, I'd have hit the clubhouse because I wasn't going anywhere near the water. So, and I knew I said, if they if you win by one or two, they don't care. And Arnold hit, I don't know what he hit, a five or five iron or something into the green. And I hit the most beautiful nine iron 20 yards short of the green and to the right. And Arnold just looked at me and gave me thumbs up because he know he knew he was toast. Because I the last thing I want to do is embed it in that that bunker. Nice. That steep bunker, which which Hubert Green did in 77 and almost cost him the open there. Yes, it did. So so at any rate, that's that's my I know it's a long story, but January he just gave me information because I never knew anything about the pace of how I played would affect the outcome of a tournament. But in this case, it was unbelievable that he did that. Thank you, Bones. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. What a class guy.

Mike Gonzalez 8:19

Well, I know it was a hot week out there that week. You were the only player under par that week.

Dave Stockton 8:24

Yes, yeah, and I Gatorade had just been invented. I was drinking Gatorade every three holes. He had these large cans of Gatorade. I never visited a restroom. I mean, you just sweat it right out of you.

Intro Music 8:34

Yeah.

Dave Stockton 8:35

You know, no, it was it was unbelievable. And I, you know, because I needed, I mean, it was more important than me to win a major, and I'm always rooting for the underdogs because of that. I mean, I know it's wonderful, and I and I wish Arnold could have gotten the Grand Slam because he certainly deserved it. Just like I'm rooting for McElroy now, you know, that all he needs is the Masters, which should be the simplest one for him to win. But I just, you know, I it it was very important for me to obviously to get a major, and then of course you'll get to it. I mean, 76 at Congressional. I mean, I I validated the fact that the PGA wasn't luck. I won another one, you know, although in a totally different way.

Mike Gonzalez 9:14

We hope you've enjoyed this short track of For the Good of the Game. And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, and tell your friends until we tee it up again for the good of the game. It's along everybody.

Intro Music 9:39

It went smack down the fairway. And it's time to just nice, just smack off line. My head is as long as you're still in the stage, okay. It went straight down the middle, five away.