Donna Caponi - Part 1 (The Early Years and 1969 U.S. Women's Open)

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Welcome to another edition of FORE the Good of the Game and Bruce Devlin. Our young lady guest this morning is our 61st guest. She's a World Golf Hall of Fame member, and she's got something else in common with you besides playing golf.

Bruce Devlin 0:30

Oh, I think that might be a little work in the television industry, but you know something she worked at another game that was quite remarkable too. Prior to her winning two US Opens back to back, the only other person to ever do that was Mickey Wright. And what a pleasure it is to have with us today, Donna Caponi. Thanks for joining Mike and I. We look forward to uh you telling your story.

Donna Caponi 0:55

This is such an honor that I'm the 61st person to be interviewed. This is this is really cool. Thanks so much.

Mike Gonzalez 1:03

Well, it's so nice to have you this morning. You know, Donna, uh Bruce and I were kind of clicking along doing these interviews as part of this project to capture all these great life stories of the greats of the game. And uh we were probably 40 interviews in when uh somebody reminded us that there are lady players out there as well. And uh, you know, we were spending a lot of time talking to Bruce's buddies that he played with on the tour, naturally. And uh it was probably nine months ago or so that we started on the ladies, and I think uh you're probably about our 21st woman, many of whom are Hall of Famers that uh joined the program.

Bruce Devlin 1:41

Yeah, the girls have been great, Donna.

Donna Caponi 1:43

Well, thank you. Uh it's like I said, it's a great honor to have you guys even want to talk to me at my age.

Mike Gonzalez 1:52

Well, we've got a lot of great things to talk about. And what we typically do in telling your story, Donna, is we always go back to the beginning. We know you were born in Detroit, Michigan. Maybe you didn't spend much time there, but take us through kind of that early childhood leading up to being introduced to the game of golf.

Donna Caponi 2:07

Well, my parents were born and raised in Detroit. And when I was about three and my sister was one, my parents decided they wanted to move to California. Now, I don't remember that part of the story because I lost my dad at age 49 and my mother at 56. So I don't think ever a subject that was brought up of why did we move from Detroit to California, other than better weather. So um dad took a train out, uh, set up, uh got us a house, and then Janet, my younger sister, and uh my mom and I, we took the train out maybe two or three weeks later. And that's really how we ended up in California. My father was uh in the tile business, so what he would do is tile bathrooms, and that was the job that he had in um in Michigan. One of the things that both my parents, neither one of them gradu graduated from high school, they both left school when they were twelve years old because they both had to go work and uh bring in money to the family. So when we moved to California, my dad got in that same business, which was great. And then uh he would play every Saturday morning with the guys uh at Rio Hondo Country Club in LA and um would play every I think it was every Saturday. And when I got tall enough to be able to go and pull his pull cart, he would take me out. Mom would come and pick me up after nine holes because I'd get tired. So now I'm I'm four or five years old. He'd cut off a couple clubs for me, and while we were on the golf course, I'd pull his pull cart up to his ball and I'd sit on the tire and I'd wait for him to hit. And then he had little clubs in his bag, so he would drop a ball down and say, Okay, the group in front of us is just getting on the green, we're not holding a flag, go ahead and hit a couple. So I hit a couple, and the guys that he was playing with were his buddies, so they loved having me around. One footnote to that is that every time I I'd sit on the tire and my dad smoked like they did back then, he would throw a cigarette down on the ground and he'd hit the shot. And as he went up to get his divot to put back in, I'd run over his step on a cigarette, and then he couldn't figure out where his cigarettes went. So a after a couple rounds he figured out that I was stepping on him. So now we get to California and he's he was a really, really good player and was working on his hands and thought, you know, maybe I could play some turn with some crow. And in the meantime I had cook golf clubs, and now every time he'd walk out the door and he's going to hit some golf balls, I'd grab onto his leg so that he would have to take me with him. And then probably by the time five or six, I was hitting balls every day with him. And he decided, like I said, to work on his game and he turned pro and he became an assistant pro at a club in the San Fernando Valley. And that sort of helped jumpstart myself and Janet, my sister, who's two and a half years younger, he would uh start hitting balls with us and that's really how it all started is in the public golf courses and the clubs was always so nice to let me play for free, use the driving range. And then fast forward till I was seventeen, eighteen, my father then got his own club job in the Valley and um he became a head golf professional. Well, as Bruce knows, you don't make a lot of money in the golf business. And my my dad was doing that, my mother was working two jobs and now all of a sudden now I'm nineteen years old and I had decided when I was about fifteen, sixteen that I'd like to turn pro and play the LPGA tour. Well, my parents didn't have a whole bunch of money, so how do we do this? Well, they had a college fund account, which by the time I turned pro at nineteen, that five thousand dollars was given to me. Uh they bought me a car and I drove from California to Florida to play on the very first event. And the funny thing is I when I do speeches and stuff, I tell people, I said, I left when I was 19, and five years later, when I got to Florida, I was 26. It's amazing how you grow up. I'd lived in California all those years, never could afford to play in any golf tournaments other than the junior tournaments in the LA area, which were great. We'd have 35 tournaments in one summer. So, and that's how um so get to Florida and now I'm 19 and I'm playing on the LPGA tour.

Mike Gonzalez 7:07

Donna, before we fast forward to the LPGA tour experience, obviously we're going to take you back still to your younger days because we've got some amateur career to talk about. And I want to know when you were able to graduate out of your uh uh cut-down clubs that you started with.

Donna Caponi 7:23

Well, it's funny, as I got taller, obviously those clubs would be too short. So my dad then would get another set out of the bargain barrel, the five dollar clubs, and then I'd use those, and I was pretty good with them. And then finally, when I was 12 years old, I got a brand new driver, brand spankin' new that Spaulding made. And uh so my parents ordered it, got the club, and I got it sometime late in the afternoon, and dad came home from work and so excited. I got my first brand new golf club. Can we go? I said, Okay, yeah, we'll go, we'll go so they're night lighted. So we go to the driving range, swing in this brand new club. My mother was in the car with my sister. Janet was doing homework in the backseat, mom was crocheting. Dad goes in to get a bucket of balls, brings them out, and he no sooner put a ball on the tee and I took a club back and hit him right in the middle of the forehead.

Bruce Devlin 8:28

With the new club. With a club.

Donna Caponi 8:31

So he sat in the car and I was crying and mother said, What happened? And I told her what he says, how many times have we told you to answer nobody's around? When you know the the typical thing you tell your kid. But I was so excited about it.

Bruce Devlin 8:49

It's funny.

Donna Caponi 8:50

It was 1957 because I say I don't remember how many years ago, but I had it engraved um on the year that he gave it to me. So yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 9:01

Well, you would have been eight years old at that time when you got your first new Spaulding Junior Club.

Donna Caponi 9:06

Yes, yes. It was a great club. In fact, I think it is, it's either at the USGA Hall of Fame or the uh LPG World Golf. I mean the World Golf Hall of Ham.

Mike Gonzalez 9:18

Okay, all right. Well, by by the time you got that club, you had already won the LA Junior Championship.

Donna Caponi 9:25

I did at um gosh, I can't think of the name of the golf course, but it was right next to, and Bruce would know that Rio Hondo Country Club and Wilshire Country Club. It was uh golf course pre-golf course over there. And um, yeah, I did. In fact, um that I was one of the first, probably the first one, I'm sure it's been broken. I set a course record there, I couldn't tell you what it was, for this little nine-hole uh it was a miniature golf course, more not miniature, um executive course.

Bruce Devlin 10:01

Right, right. Um couple of par fours and par threes, huh?

Donna Caponi 10:04

Yes, yes.

Mike Gonzalez 10:07

So at this time, I mean, now we're we're still we're kind of late six uh fifties coming into the sixties, uh long before Title IX. So the whole university system for women's golf, I mean, that was yet to come, wasn't it?

Donna Caponi 10:21

It was. And in fact, fast forwarding to high school or even junior high, they had a boys' golf team, but they we didn't have a girls' golf team. And they wouldn't let me play on the boys' golf team. Their reasoning was that you'll beat them to death, it wouldn't be good for them for their ego. And now look, they're all p everybody's playing in the sports, not w with your gender, but anyway, yeah. So I thought, oh, that's fine. Just played unit tournaments in the area when I came. And um that's kind of by the time I got to high school that I decided to turn pro.

Bruce Devlin 11:02

So Donna, a lot of our uh great players that have had had great success playing the game professional game of golf play other sports too. Did you ever play any other sports?

Donna Caponi 11:13

I did. I actually in school lettered in I think all the sports that they had. Um one quick story, I was they I was throwing a football around the guys during I don't know, it was PA P P E classes.

Bruce Devlin 11:32

Right.

Donna Caponi 11:32

And the men's coach at the high school was the javelin trainer for the Olympics. And so he says, I've never seen a woman throw a football as well as you're throwing that. Had you ever thought of throwing a javelin? I what? You know, I play golf, whatever sport. So he says, I want you to go and ask your parents if I could have you throw the javelin to practice and see if you could do it. I went home and my parents said, Absolutely, absolutely and I don't remember because I was crying and I was going, let me try. No, absolutely not. So I never did that. And then also I was a great swimmer and um sea hunting the TV with uh Lloyd Bridges.

Mike Gonzalez 12:23

Was it Lloyd Bridges?

Donna Caponi 12:25

Was it Lloyd Bridges? Anyway, I think so. We went to a birthday party and they had this huge swimming pool, and one of the producers of that show was a woman, was at the party and she was watching me swim. She said, Would you ever consider being a stunt double for our show? And I went, Oh my god, that would really be cool, right? Now I go home and say, Mom and Dad, they want me to be a stunt. Absolutely not, absolutely not my everyday something outside of golf, but I understand what they were playing. And uh they wanted me to concentrate on one sport if I was gonna be good at one. And especially my dad saw that quite a bit of talent. Um, but until you try and you play in a tournament, you just don't know whether you have the what whatever it takes.

Mike Gonzalez 13:24

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about uh how you learned the finer points in the game. I guess at the time, while your dad was a professional, he probably wasn't yet a seasoned golf teacher. Uh, but I'm sure you learned under his watchful eye. But, you know, back in that day, no video to speak of, not a lot of television, certainly not for the women. Where did you w see this stuff to kind of learn it?

Donna Caponi 13:48

You know, I thought, and I still believe my father was brilliant at teaching, and he taught everybody in the valley in San Fernando Valley here. Had lots of entertainers and that would come and take lessons from him. They knew me from as my careers was moving along in high school. And but I I just thought he was great. And he had a great following in as far as teaching goes. And then my sister fast forward became one of the top 50 teachers in the United States. So she's since retired from that. But um he just taught it simple. Um sort of like Tiger's dad, you know, you just have to keep it simple, stupid. You know, if you get too complicated, you get in get in your way.

Bruce Devlin 14:40

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 14:40

I had actually talked to Tiger a lot about that being kids who were raised by their father, you know, taught by their father at such a young age. And so many of the things that Earl would say to Tigers, the same thing my dad would say to me. And also Stockton, who's like my big brother. Dave's dad did the exact same thing. We were all taught simple basic fundamentals, and you can't get it complicated. If you get it complicated, I think that screws everybody up.

Bruce Devlin 15:09

I agree with you. So so Donna, uh you played in the in the uh Hillside uh House Ladies Open uh on the LPGA tour in 1964. Was that the was that the nucleus for you making the decision to turn pro? Or had you you'd mentioned earlier you'd sort of thought about turning pro when you were 15, not when you were 19.

Donna Caponi 15:34

Yes, when I was 15, that's when I decided because now I can't play golf teams. There were just you know a lot of junior tournaments, but and I wasn't I wasn't a great student in school, because they gave me two PE classes so I could grab so I could graduate because I just wasn't interested in anything else but golf. And so by the time I talked to my parents and they said, Okay, well we're saving your top, it's set right there, and then when you decide you want to take go on a tour, here's five thousand dollars. And funny as it is, my rookie year I made sixty five hundred dollars. I finished twentieth on the money list, and I gave back the five thousand that they gave me after one year. And they didn't want to say, Oh, a deal's a deal. So I gave them back the five, and kind of my career advanced from there.

Mike Gonzalez 16:32

So uh at some point you do have an experience where you uh the light goes on, you say, I can play with these women. When did that happen for you?

Donna Caponi 16:41

Ooh. Um Well, I went to Santa Barbara to play as an amateur in an event at Montecito Country Club. Remember Montecito? Ruth, yeah, but anyway, and I watched the women pros and I think I was in a pro maybe I played in the pro am even as an amateur. And I played pretty good against whoever it was I was paired with, I don't remember. And that's when I decided, you know, I could probably do this. And talked to my parents again and saying, I know it's a big undertaking, and I'd have to go on the road, and never really been out of California by myself on top of it. And so they said, We we think you're mature enough to do it, so we'll fill in the paperwork and send it in.

Mike Gonzalez 17:37

And as we've heard from some of our other guests, Bruce, there wasn't a lot involved in declaring yourself an LPGA professional back then, was there? No, there wasn't. You basically just, as you said, you filled out the paperwork, probably sent in a little bit of money and said, okay, I'm on tour.

Donna Caponi 17:56

That's it.

Bruce Devlin 17:58

There was one other subject I wanted to touch basis with you before we got into your career. At some point in time when you were a young lady, you you must have either been a good dancer or you like to listen to a lot of different music or something. Tell us a little bit about that. You got some you actually got some sort of uh interesting nicknames, didn't you?

Donna Caponi 18:20

Well, the Watusi kid, uh, one of our caddies nicknamed me that when the song of the Watusi was out. You know, when you're on the road and you guys know that you travel, it's it can be a life. So you're hanging out with your friends who played the tour, then you have pro-am parties, and I'd love to go to the pro-am parties because you would meet people, yeah, save for the entertainment afterwards, and they'd always have a band or something, and so I'd always start to dance, and I didn't drink at all. In fact, I didn't drink, have anything to drink until I retired from the tour. So that's when I started dancing, and one of the caddies or the players started calling me that Watusi kid. And um, then they started calling me Whoppy because I'm Italian, so full-blooded, as a matter of fact. So that's kind of how that name came about. And also when I practiced, it was always so boring, you know, hitting balls. So I set the little radio next to where my golf balls were, and I kept it on low so it wouldn't bother anybody else. And people say, Well, doesn't the music bother you? I said, No, because I concentrate when I'm over the ball, I hit the shot, and then I listen to the tunes. And it's something I always do, always, always, always.

Bruce Devlin 19:38

So very interesting.

Mike Gonzalez 19:40

Very interesting. So you're the one that started that music trend on the golf course, huh? Yes. We won't blame you. Well, let's uh for our for our listeners, let's add a little bit to the the professional career recap that uh Bruce gave us at the top for for Donna Capone. Turn professional, as we mentioned, 1965 at age 19. 29 professional wins, 24 of which were LPGA tour victories, which puts Donna 24th on the all-time list. Only Jane Blaylock has uh she's the only one with more victories, uh not in the World Golf Hall of Fame, and we might ask you to comment on that in a bit. But uh joined the tour in '65, uh, talked about your nicknames. You had some uh early roommates, as I remember. Did you hang with uh Marlene Hagee and uh Judy Rankin a little bit?

Donna Caponi 20:32

Yes, Mar uh Judy and I traveled together for maybe five years before she was trading before I got married. Uh so she was my roommate, Marlene and Susie Burning. So the four of us were um notorious for party girls, but again, none of us drank, we just like to had a good time. So, yes, we did, and then when Judy and I got married, like I said, uh, because our husbands would be on the road with us, which were great. It those are were some of the best times. Uh it was so fun.

Mike Gonzalez 21:04

Well, we've had uh Susie on the program, we've had Judy on the program. Um we had hoped to have Marlene on the program, but uh we understand she's not uh in the greatest of health right now, right?

Bruce Devlin 21:15

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 21:16

One of the great founders of the LPGA, along with her sister and 11 other women. Um we always enjoy talking about what you just alluded to, and that's sort of in the early years, life on the tour, on the road, stop to stop, you know. Uh with some of them, I sort of compared the early LPGA tour to uh uh sort of the regional circus that moves from town to town, suts up, does the big show for the week, tears down, and off they go to the next city. That's kind of the way life was, wasn't it?

Donna Caponi 21:48

Yeah, it was. And and Bruce is laughing because Bruce and his wife and the kids would go from tournament to tournament, just like the the Torvenos and the uh Y. And the Stocktons and Arnold and Jack and all those players. Well, that's how we were. We were group, we used to call ourselves group 101, going from town to town. And then we also got three cars from Oesmobile. And every 3,000 miles, you would turn it in and they'd get a new one. And get a brand new one. And you drive it for another 3,000, and they'd pick all the cars up because we drove every place. Nobody could afford to drive. I mean, to fly. So with that, you'd see this carrot of 10 and 15 cars in a row going. Some of them were five and six hundred miles apart. So as soon as the tournament was over with, everybody had packed their cars and we'd start driving.

Mike Gonzalez 22:46

So the the leader of the pack had to be a good map reader because there wasn't any GPS back then.

Donna Caponi 22:51

Oh GPS. And if anybody got tired or hungry, we'd flash the lights. Um, saying, and on Monday, it's the worst day because for some reason, and I don't know, maybe Bruce can attest to this. We wanted to eat every day. I mean, all day. All we wanted to do was eat. So um a lot of stops. Should have been at some of these stops a lot earlier, but we made so many stops. Gosh, especially Marlene. Marlene was a chow hound on Monday. Oh my goodness.

Bruce Devlin 23:27

Chow hound. I love that.

Mike Gonzalez 23:31

That had to bring up so many great memories, though, of life on the road, the places you stay, the people you meet. Uh uh were you were you ever guests in homes, or were you typically always in motels and things?

Donna Caponi 23:42

No, we were guests in homes, uh, if you chose to do that, which uh which was fine. And we did that maybe early years to try and save some money. But then it, you know, when you started making a little bit of money, then you wanted to stay in hotels and uh a little private. It was great to stay people's homes, but they always wanted to have a park to show you off, so to speak.

Bruce Devlin 24:06

Right.

Donna Caponi 24:07

You know, sometimes you just you're around people all day with tournaments and the galleries and stuff, and you really wanted that quiet time. If if I was in a hotel room on a Monday and I didn't have anything to do, I'd never even open up my curtains. I'd lay in bed, and I'd order breakfast, lunch, and dinner, room service, and that's all I do. I would do absolutely nothing. But it was always nice that they open up.

Mike Gonzalez 24:33

But yeah, yeah. And I'm sure uh and Bruce, uh you know we've talked about this a lot with other guests, as as the career progresses and as the successes mount, demands on your time get greater and greater and greater. I think the couple of the things that our listeners and the typical golf fan forgets about is a couple things. One, the constant demands that you face at the pinnacle of your career on your time. You just can't get away for your quiet time. And two, we often forget that um outside the ropes, life continues to go on.

Bruce Devlin 25:09

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 25:10

It it does. And um it's so hard to explain unless you've been in this life of professional golfers, professional sports, in I think in general, that the safest place I ever had in my mind was when I was between the ropes. Not I don't mean safe worrying about somebody. It's just that it was the most comfortable. And again, when I started the tour, uh, I was like an ugly duckling. And so when I would go into the media room or I would talk to people, I'd go, I I shied away from that. But as soon as I got inside the golf course or inside the ropes, then I could perform. And then as my career developed and I got more confidence in myself, then it was easy to be able to mix and mingle with people. Or I actually was voted one of the best uh in the media room because I would give them a lot. Um, I would do my best to whatever their questions were to answer them, and then give them something else to run with.

Bruce Devlin 26:18

Well, you know, you know, Donna, that was your fault. You realize that, don't you? Because the very first golf tournament that you won was a U.S. Open Championship. So you got thrown into that uh that stage of of uh you know time consumption with reporters and people that wanted to promote golf. So uh you got to blame yourself for that, girl.

Donna Caponi 26:42

Absolutely. And it's funny, there's a great story which I don't know about, but I'll tell you again. Um it's in Pensacola, Florida, City Kills Country Club, and I'm five shots out of the league going into the final round. And I finished second, I don't know, somebody told me it was eight or ten times before I finally won my first tournament. Not that I choked myself to death. I always played well on Sunday, but somebody else always was a shot better or two shots better. And so anyway, the Sunday round at the Women's US Open, the 18th hole was a par five dog leg left. And as it always does does July in Florida, you have those afternoon rains. So we all teed off, we go down the fairway, and all of a sudden the storm comes in and there's a lightning flashing everywhere. And PJ Boatright, who was the head of the USGA at the time, he uh calls play. And so I went up to him and he was till this day, every pairing what is it, the last 25 groups has an official with that group, a rules official. So PJ was assigned to my group. So I said, Can I just hit my shot up in front of the green? And uh he says, Nope, we've called play for the day, enough enough for the day till the storm blows up. So went in the clubhouse, I sat there, and I never looked at the leaderboard. I didn't want to know what everybody else was doing. I my theory, which was dad's theory, you can beat the golf course, you beat the players. So that's a good theory. Okay. So people kept saying, Yeah, but you need to know whether you need to make birdie or and I said, Well, I can't control what everybody else is doing. I'm just gonna do the best that I can in my ability. So anyway, I'm in the clubhouse and the storm goes over about an hour and a half, two hours later. We go back out over to my ball, and there's casual water around a lot of areas, and so I look at my ball and it's in a little bit of water, but just enough to where I probably couldn't get a three wood on it, and I would afraid it would squirt. So I kind of jumping up and down, I said, Mr. Boat Ride, you sure this isn't enough water here that I can get a free drop? Right? Well, the rule then would still be that the water has to be over the lip of your heel of your shoe. And he says, No, Donna, sorry, that's not so I laid up. Uh if we he would have allowed me to hit before we call play, I would might have been able to reach the drain. So I laid up with a five wood. I had about 60 yards left to the hole. And now my caddy says, We need to make a birdie here. Okay. So now I know by looking at the leaderboard on the 18th hole where I stood. So I was tied with uh Peggy Wilson and Mickey Wright, I think was in that last group behind me. Anyway. So now I've got this shot into the green and 60 yard sandwich. And the one thing they always tell you, right, Bruce, never be above the hole in a major championship. My point is beat above the hole in a major championship, and knowing how to make this to possibly win. Because the group, I mean the third to last group, the group behind me has fallen apart. I know that. And the lead group, that's how I found out again by the leaderboard, there was only one girl, Peggy Wilson, who was I was tied with. So I was 500 par. So I'm lining up this putt. It's a downhill left-to-right break, six feet. I'm lining it up, I got my spot, I'm gonna walk around and get over the ball, and I hear Byron Nelson say this birdie putt, probably to win the US Open. Now the next part is the scary part. The putt breaks right to left. And I went, oh my goodness. Now with TV, they've got glass encased that aren't even on the 18th screen. So you could hear them whispering. So I'm over almost over the putt, and I look at my ball and I look at the pup, and then I turn around and I look up at the tower, and Byron says, Oh my gosh, Donna heard me talk. Yeah, I heard you talk. So I walked the putt again and I'm going. My dad used to tell me, go with your first instinct. What usually you're right when you read a putt or pick a club, it's always your first instinct. Don't talk yourself out of it. So needless to say, I played it left to right. I make the putt, I win the U.S. Open, I go in the locker in the pressure. I said, Why did you back off? And so I tell them the story. And they said, Oh, you're new at this, aren't you? And I said, What do you mean? They said, Well, where was the camera? And I said, I'm trying to win a golf tournament, and you want me to know where the camera is? Then the camera was on the other side of the hole, putting looking this way, and Byron is doing left to right, left, right, right to left off the camera. So I read it the way I thought.

Bruce Devlin 32:19

Now, thank goodness.

Donna Caponi 32:20

Yeah. Then fast forward about um oh, I think three or four weeks later, that we we were usually the first US Open, first USG event was the women, and then the men would be behind us, whatever town or state they were in, about three weeks. So I happened to be at the airport and I ran into Byron Nelson, and he says, Oh, by the way, congratulations on you when I didn't get to see you afterwards. And and I said, Yeah, and he and I said, Thanks for the read. And he started laughing. He says, Yeah, I read it in the paper on Monday morning. He says, Listen to this one. He said, We just finished the men's U.S. Open where Billy Casper was. And Billy had this putt on the 18th hole, about uh six or eight feet, again above the hole. And Byron in the tower says, Everybody that is putting, and uh Jim McKay was his the host at the um the host, and he said to Jim, he says, You know, every player that's put this putt has played way too much great. So Billy hears him say that. So he's walking around this putt. He said, slam dock, I got this putt. And he makes the putt. So he sees Byron after the tournament and says, Hey, thanks. I would have misread that putt and lost the US. He wants credit. He says, I should get credit for my win, Billy's win on his resume. I said, No, you know, you won 19 tournaments in one year. I said, I think fine.

Bruce Devlin 33:46

You got enough resume, right?

Mike Gonzalez 33:49

Well, that was a great first win to come out of the box. That's again for our listeners, the 1969 U.S. Women's Open at Scenic Hills, Country Club by one over Peggy Wilson. That finishing 69 uh was a fine, fine finishing round after coming back, uh trailing Ruth Jesson by five after the third round. I understand it was hot that final day.

Donna Caponi 34:11

It was. It was uh in fact, Gatorade became very popular right around that time. So they had a lot of uh a lot of it in the locker room. And uh Curry Kerpatrick, is that is that right, Bruce? Remember him with Sports Illustrated?

Bruce Devlin 34:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Donna Caponi 34:30

He was a sports writer and um he was just a really good friend of all of ours. So after the tournament, he gave me a glass of champagne to toast the wind. And then somebody says, put a little Gatorade in, because I didn't like the taste of it. So I poured some Gatorade in maybe half the bottle, and oh hi. Because again, I'm not a drinker, so mixing those those two together, oh my goodness. So I went lesson not to do that, not to but it was hot.

Mike Gonzalez 35:04

Well, it was a pretty good leaderboard with uh Donna on top, Peggy Wilson, and and and next at four over uh for the tournament came Kathy Whitworth. Uh uh that's the one tournament Kathy really wanted to win, but she won a bunch of them.

Donna Caponi 35:17

She did. She was one of the best and still is one of the best women of all time.

Mike Gonzalez 35:24

She was yeah, and and y her name's gonna come up again uh as we talk about your record. But the thing that uh always amazed Bruce and I about Kathy was uh not only did she win 88 times on the LPGA tour, but she finished second 95 times.

Donna Caponi 35:42

Isn't that amazing? It it is astounding. It it is and had one of the funniest putting strokes. In fact, um we said we were gonna talk a little bit about her, so I'm probably jumping ahead, but we had LPGA team event, and uh so I called Kathy and said, Will you pair up with me? She says, Absolutely. So we won it a couple times, but we would the very first event, she had an old that it was called a tomboy putter, and she would, when she put, she take the putter head outside the line and then reroute it. So she basically took the readout. If it was a right edge or inside right, she'd just play it straight in because of the cut in the motion of her golf ball. So when we would read each other's putt, she says, Well, I read it inside right. Well, it might be two inches out right for me, because I would dye the putt in versus her stroke. And uh the putter she used all those years was a Tommy, Tommy boy or something like that. Nobody in the world had ever putted with this putter before. And she was really fine. She was fine.

Mike Gonzalez 36:51

Yeah, and and you know what's amazing, 20 of those 95 second places were playoff losses.

Donna Caponi 36:57

Oh, really? Oh yeah, I think one time up in Northern California, which I was crushed to beat, you know, somebody who you just idolized.

Mike Gonzalez 37:09

So you celebrated this U.S. Open victory, I believe, with your sister, didn't you?

Donna Caponi 37:14

Yes, Janet was there. Uh she played in the tournament, and I she made the cut, but she she played pretty well. And so it was fun to be able to celebrate. That was uh that was something spectacular having her there.

Mike Gonzalez 37:29

Thank you for listening to another episode 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 teat up again for the good of the game. So long, everybody.