Donna Caponi - Part 3 (The 1981 LPGA Championship and Broadcasting)

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Well you still were gonna have a lot of fun these next two years as we start nineteen eighty with that victory you mentioned it it does it in them. And by the way, I probably spent more time in the casino there than I spent on the golf course, which doesn't exist anymore. Uh right. But so two weeks later, what do you do? You go to the dinosaur and uh win by two over Amy Alcott.

Donna Caponi 0:35

I did. I did. And then Amy, I think, ended up winning it three times, didn't she?

Mike Gonzalez 0:40

I think she won it at least uh three times, yeah. Uh the last being in ninety-one, I think. Yeah.

Donna Caponi 0:46

Yeah. Um I don't remember a whole lot about that round other than Amy and I were paired together, and the eighth hole is a part three. They put the pin in the back left corner and she hit it on the green on the very far right, so she had to be seventy-five, eighty feet away from the hole. But when she had to put, she had to go over the fringe. So she probably and it was thick fringe and then the rough line. So she decided she was gonna chip it. And her caddy's name was Tom, and so we were all standing there, and she was away, and she pulls out a wedge and she goes onto the ball and she's getting ready to hit it, and we're yelling at her, Stop, stop, Amy. Well, she forgot to have Tom go hold the flag because somebody had to hold the flag, you're on the ground. She wasn't even, she was just trying to execute that shot.

Bruce Devlin 1:51

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 1:52

I remember, and oh my gosh, she was so shaken because she'd realized how stupid that was. And she says, I was just thinking so much about my shot. But that's the one thing that I remember about that that uh actually the final round, and then it always would blow the tournament at least one or two days out of the whole week. And because it's always in March, and Palm Springs is known for their wins in March, the wind blowing in March. And there's this sixth hole. And normally I would hit driver two green, and I had to hit driver three with dead into the and I knocked it on the green over a hazard, and I thought that's what won the golf tournament for me because um if I hadn't hit that well, no telling where the ball would have gone because it was blown so hard.

Mike Gonzalez 2:45

Yeah, well, your 13 under that week was a scoring record at the time. Of course, it's since been broken, but uh uh so this is 1980 at the dinosaur. It became a major three years later. And uh the the lady you beat by two, Amy Alcott, won that first one as a major in 1983. It wasn't though until her second win uh there, which came in the dinosaur as a major in 1988, that she uh made the old jumping into Poppy's Pond famous. Yeah.

Donna Caponi 3:15

Though uh everybody is asked to jump in. I said no, but happened the next year, thank God. The Amy do that. She started it. But the one thing that I did, um do you remember you might not remember this? There's a uh baseball player who played for the Dodgers, George Culver was his name. And he played for Houston, played for Cincinnati. Anyway, I had this humongous putt on the 18th hole. It must have been 120 feet. And again, it was windy, and just getting on the green in three over the hazard that was in front of the green was a feat itself. I'm so far away, the wind blown so hard, and I went to putt it, and I only got halfway because the wind blew me off line, uh out of balance. And now I get over that putt, line it up, and I'm still 25 feet away, and I make it. And I and I take uh my club, made it look like a machine gun, and I like blew that hill away. When I won the tournament, so which would I think that was on a Saturday, so Sunday when I won, I picked up my golf ball and I went to throw it in the hazard and it flipped off my fingernails and it landed on the green. So George called me and said, Leave throwing to me, you just play golf. Oh my god. I didn't the ball didn't go 10 feet.

Mike Gonzalez 4:41

And I thought I remember you saying you're throwing the football around with the guys as a kid.

Donna Caponi 4:45

Yeah, right. When I was young, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 4:48

Well, uh, you weren't done winning in 1980. Uh Bruce, a few more victories uh come out of that after that uh Dinosure.

Bruce Devlin 4:56

Yeah, the next victory, Corning Classic, that uh beat uh Mara Blackwelder by two shots.

Donna Caponi 5:04

Yep. Um that was a great event because it's it was in a very small town. A lot of people came out. The town of Corning is where Corningware products were uh glass factory beautiful. But everybody in town would decorate their rooms welcoming the LPJ, their their all the storefronts. We would go and judge what we thought was the best one. It was a it was a great tournament. Some of the best tournaments that we had on tour were in the small markets, and I'm sure we wanted to test this. They were the best everybody came out, you know.

Bruce Devlin 5:44

Yeah. So the next one you win was uh United Virginia Bank Classic, and you beat a pretty good player there by four shots, Nancy Lopez.

Donna Caponi 5:54

I did, and uh the funny thing about that one is that we were rooming together that we had this huge lead, and uh she says, Well, I'm coming after you. I said, Okay, you think you can beat me, right? So I'm looking up at the leaderboard and she's making all these birdies, and I'm going, oh no. She's about trying to catch me. So uh and Nancy and I, and Ted, my husband and I, and Nancy and her husband Ed, we do a lot of traveling together. Uh, no golf clubs, we just go on cruises. We've been everywhere. We just we've been having a blast the last six or seven years. It's that's great.

Bruce Devlin 6:40

And then to finish off, 80, you win uh ERA real estate classic at uh Brook Reach Country Club in Kansas.

Donna Caponi 6:49

Oh, Kansas City, yeah. I think I can remember that hole is that the 18th hole, second shot, was straight uphill. And I would always run up that hill so that when I would get to the green, I'd have time to catch my breath. Because if you walk up really slow and you're just panting and panting, that's the only thing I can remember about that tournament is the 18th hole.

Mike Gonzalez 7:13

That was your yeah, that was back to back. So you won the you know you won the United Virginia the week before, and then the ERA uh the that next week. So uh you get into 1981, and what a year that is. Six wins. You were the golf writers of uh women's player of the year that year. Um, but it was sort of a transformational year for you personally, wasn't it?

Donna Caponi 7:35

Yeah, that's when I was going through my divorce and my mother was ill, and then there was just a lot of stuff going on. I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to handle it all, but you know, I did, and then there was a point where I just didn't want to play golf anymore. I I really did. I didn't know what I was gonna do because I didn't have a whole bunch of money. Um because even though you were successful, you know, you weren't making a buy.

Bruce Devlin 8:01

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 8:01

So um I still needed to get work some way. I did lots of corporate events which was good. That that kept me going there too. And then I met my husband Ted around that same time. And then uh Arnold Palmer came up to me and said, I understand you're doing some TV. And he said, How would you like to start working at the golf channel? And that's kind of where TV kind of fell into my lap. Um, I went to Paul Spangler and who was the producer of ESPN, and I said, I'd like to do some TV. I don't know if I'm any good or not. I said, You don't have to pay me, but I'll fly in. You fly me in and you pay my expenses, and let me just see if I can do anything. And uh I did. Said you're hired, and that's kind of where TV kind of fell in my lap.

Mike Gonzalez 9:00

Interesting. Well, let's uh let's just uh let's just zip through your wins in '81 and and get you to end of career, and then we're going to talk about broadcasting and uh and kind of the things you're up to now. We start in 1981 with your second win at the Pro Am uh uh at the Desert Desert Inn. And this was by three over the lady that won the U.S. Open LeGrange Country Club that year, Pat Bradley.

Donna Caponi 9:25

Oh right. Oh, I didn't realize I didn't remember that she finished second. I don't remember much about uh that tournament.

Mike Gonzalez 9:34

Well, it was back-to-back wins there, and then uh you you went on to uh win the American Defender, which was by one over Kathy Shirk, and that was at Northridge Country Club in North Carolina.

Donna Caponi 9:47

I have a story about that. I wasn't gonna play that. Uh my husband at the time had to have surgery, and we had scheduled it on an off week of my schedule. And I got a call from the commissioner and he said, Is there any way that you could change your mind about playing this event? I said no. Um I planned this for months because of the surgery. And we had a clause LPGA contracts with tournaments that you had to have ten out of the top twenty, twenty out of the top forty players on the money list. Well, a lot of girls were taken Bradley, uh I'm not sure even Nancy, maybe Nancy, I don't remember how many of the players decided to skip that event, and I was one of the top players, and nobody else was going to come back and play the event. And that clause also said that if we didn't have enough players according to that contract, they'd cut the purse by 50%. So 50% wouldn't get the girls out of town. That was just not enough money there. So I felt terrible and I said, Okay, let me talk to my husband about it. And uh the surgery may have been on Tuesday and Wednesday was going to be the pro am, and then Thursday through Sunday. So I said, Look, if I get you through the surgery, then I'll fly to Raleigh or I'll ask them to get me out of the pro am and then I'll participate in the event. And uh came and I called the commissioner and then I called the tournament director and I said, Look, I'll be there. I said, But you my I gave my caddy the week off. He was catting. In fact, I don't know if he took the week off totally and went back home, or he was there catting for another player. I said, number two, I won't play in the Pro Am. I said, I'll be getting in the night before, so I need to get a somebody to get me a caddy uh of a one of our regular caddies and uh let him chart the golf course for me. And I ended up did did talk to him and I said, you know what we need, just chart it and tell me where to hit it and where not to hit it. And I and I end up winning the tournament.

Bruce Devlin 12:18

How about that? Well, she had one more major in her, Bruce. Oh boy, that was uh again, we go back to the Jack Nicholas Golf Center, which you said you loved, and you win the 81 LPJ Championship there for your fourth major victory, or as we might footnote, maybe that was the sixth one.

Donna Caponi 12:39

Yes, exactly. But my my made sixth was uh again another situation where uh I was just playing well and putts I was making putts from everywhere. I mean, I could I could see them, um, I could see the line. It was uh it was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. But when you win a major, oh my goodness.

Bruce Devlin 13:03

You gotta make some, don't you? You really do.

Mike Gonzalez 13:05

Yeah. So you came uh to the 18th T, all three of you, this being Gerlin Britz, Pat Myers, Donna Capone, tied at seven under.

Donna Caponi 13:22

Yes. And it was uh par five and we all drove it pretty far down the fairway. And I can't remember if I laid up and then hit a wedge on the green. You guys would know more because you've been reading this stuff. I haven't thought about this stuff in twenty four years. I had a putt of about uh maybe eight feet, ten feet and uh I made the putt for Bertie and Geraldyn Britz comes over to me and congratulates me. And no, maybe the putt was longer. Maybe she had an eight-footer and I had about a ten or fifteen footer. She had to putt second. And she comes over and she shakes my hand and said, Congratulations. And I'm looking at her like, what? You know, I didn't say you still have a chance to putt. And uh she didn't make it and I ended up winning.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

So interesting. Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah. Have you ever had that happen before? Not me.

Mike Gonzalez 14:26

No, me either. So, Bruce, uh, as you know from our research, uh Donna played an incredible 18-hole stretch of golf. So if you if you go from the the second round back nine to the third round front nine, she shot 32, 31, 63 for those 18 holes. Yeah, how about that?

Donna Caponi 14:49

Wow. Hey, you know, I'm pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

I guess so. I would say so.

Donna Caponi 14:59

One year my dad made a uh plaque for me. His famous line was not bad for a girl.

Bruce Devlin 15:07

Oh no.

Donna Caponi 15:09

Still have hanging my trophy around. Not bad for a girl.

Mike Gonzalez 15:13

That's like uh uh Hollistacy's mom after she won a junior tournament. She didn't want her to get too cocky. And uh Bruce, you remember what she told her? Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 15:21

Go in and clean up your room. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Shirley, Shirley Temple. Temple.

Donna Caponi 15:29

Yeah, Nellie is her name. She's a fabulous, she's still living. I think she's 90 something. She is great.

Mike Gonzalez 15:36

Yeah, she was on the USGA committee and and quite a lot. Yes, wasn't it?

Donna Caponi 15:41

And because I lost my parents so so uh so early in their lives, 49 and 56, every Mother's Day it seemed like Tilly would come on on tour, and I'd always go and hug her on Mother's Day.

Bruce Devlin 15:54

Oh, that's nice. That's great. So you had two more wins left in '81, right? You win the Western Union International Classic at uh Meadowbrook Golf Club in New York by two over Julie Stranger. Stringer? Do you call it Stranger or Stranger?

Donna Caponi 16:14

Uh I don't actually know who it was.

Mike Gonzalez 16:16

It was Stanger, but Pine was the name of Stanger Pine, Julie Stanger Pine. Okay.

Donna Caponi 16:22

Yeah, that's either a married name or maybe. Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 16:24

Yeah, that must be what it was. Yeah.

Donna Caponi 16:27

Uh I don't remember a whole lot about the golf course. It was uh in fact, I think the champions tour. Did you ever play there, Bruce?

Bruce Devlin 16:34

No, no, I never played there, no.

Donna Caponi 16:36

They had a a champions event.

Bruce Devlin 16:39

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 16:39

Not too long ago at that golf course. I don't I don't remember too much about that.

Bruce Devlin 16:45

See, you're if you think about it there, though, just not too long ago, uh the man that's working with you today is 85 years old, so it would have to have been a long time ago for me to have played there.

Donna Caponi 17:01

I think it looked absolutely gorgeous.

Bruce Devlin 17:04

So to finish it off, Boston 5 Classic. Uh and you you won that big over a uh a young lady from Australia, Jan Stevenson.

Donna Caponi 17:16

Yes. Uh in fact, that's where I met my husband, Ted, who I'm with now said 41 years ago. Uh he was uh a member at that club. And uh yeah, in fact, if you look at this the list of names of players that it wanted that golf course, they're all on the hall and had very successful careers. This golf course was not very long, but oh my god, you had to you had to hit every shot in your bag. Uh it it was it's called Ferncroft Country Club.

Bruce Devlin 17:49

Yeah, right.

Donna Caponi 17:50

It's a absolute beauty. I've been really talking to the owners of the golf course and uh the golf pro trying to get a legends, women's legends event there because definitely go back to that event. Just a matter of finding a sponsor.

Bruce Devlin 18:09

One other thing, well that one other thing, uh Donna, that week happened. Do you remember what it was?

Donna Caponi 18:19

Did I rip it?

Bruce Devlin 18:21

No, that victory qualified you to be somebody who could get put in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Ladies' Golf Hall of Fame, sorry. You qualified that week.

Donna Caponi 18:33

That's right. Uh you know, at the time you didn't you didn't think about that, uh because the LPGA Hall of Fame was so difficult to get in that you know you just had to keep winning until you fell over and then say, Okay, did I win enough?

Bruce Devlin 18:48

Yeah, or did I win enough?

Mike Gonzalez 18:50

Yeah, you so then they changed the those rules, which was you went in with a flourish because starting with the LPGA championship three weeks in a row, it was win-win-win. Yeah.

Donna Caponi 19:03

Well, I remember Carol Mann saying on TV when she was doing a broadcast, um, because I had said in an interview that maybe it was after five or six wins that we would really like to work hard to possibly get in the hall of fame. Being leading money winner wasn't anything that I really put prior to myself, but being in the hall of fame, I just it would be so proud. My dad would have been, parents would have been so proud of it.

Bruce Devlin 19:33

Absolutely.

Donna Caponi 19:34

And um, so that was something, but he said, you gotta learn a lot more before you can get in the hall of fame. And I was like, I thought you were my friend. I'm trying.

Mike Gonzalez 19:46

Uh so take us through the decision to just start sort of winding down the professional golf side and maybe ramping up uh something else.

Donna Caponi 19:54

I think more than anything, I just got tired of the grind. I mean, it was it was a lot of work and it was great, but you know, I I stopped saying hello to people, I stopped being not that I wasn't nice to people, I I would avoid interviews. Um, I'd always make an excuse, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. And I and I loved the age. Like I said, I was devoted as one of they could always get something out of me uh if they needed a story. But um and I just decided I I have to get away. And it would be and I promised myself when I joined the tour and my parents that if I didn't like it, if I wasn't having fun, that I was gonna get out, because there's too many players that just hang on and hang on and keep on and on and on. Yeah, and I just didn't want to do that, and I felt like I was young enough that I could get another job done. And so that's when I thought about television, and uh the last event was uh was in uh St. Petersburg, Florida. I can't remember the name of the golf. And I played pretty well because I knew it was gonna be my last event, and I remember Sandra Palmer in the locker room saying, You'll be back. And I said, No, I won't. I said, I've made this decision. I said I might play a couple events, a major here or there, but I am not coming back. She says, Mark my word. In fact, you know, I saw her the other day, she owes me bucks because I think we Oh, there you go, Ramanda. And I I never went back, other than uh I may have played the Dinosaur, a couple of those special. And that's when I thought, you know what, I'll call Paul Spangler and see if there's any future in TV. And then I'm sure you want to talk a little bit about the TV part, but uh I saw Arnold at a at an event, and he came out to Me and said, uh I want you to call Joe Gibbs at at this number. And I was one of the first announcers hired. Keith Herschel, the producer, who is a good friend of Bruce and mine. And um actually today is his birthday. I gotta send him a note. Uh it it was the best. I I was so blessed. Bruce should probably say the same thing, to have two careers totally opposite, but still around a sport we loved.

Bruce Devlin 22:35

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 22:35

It's it was it was great.

Bruce Devlin 22:39

Well, I you here's something that you probably uh most of our, you know, we've I think as Mike said, 61 people we've interviewed about, you know, their wonderful golf careers and how how magnificent all of them have been playing this wonderful game. You fall into a category that most people would find unbelievable, and that is you're on the side of losing more than you won in playoffs. So we've Mike's kept a record of this. Of all of the great players we've talked to, their winning percentage is less than 50%. It's about 43%. Isn't that amazing? All these great players.

Donna Caponi 23:26

Remember Betsy Rawls?

Bruce Devlin 23:28

Yeah, sure.

Donna Caponi 23:29

Great, great player. She said 90% of your career is a disappointment.

Bruce Devlin 23:36

She's probably right. Yeah, you're gonna lose a lot. Yeah.

Donna Caponi 23:41

That you know, you're disappointed because you didn't win or you didn't play better or whatever, but that 10% It's worth it all. It was worth worth all those hours.

Mike Gonzalez 23:52

Yeah, let's just uh we'll wrap up your career quickly and then and then talk about uh career number two. If you just look back on the majors, I I I assume the Dinoshore were your best finish when it was a major. Anyway, I'll qualify that was in '85, the year uh Alice Miller won you your T13. But was that one of your favorite events to go to?

Donna Caponi 24:13

It was because it was televised. And you know, we weren't getting. You have to remember, when I started the tour, we only had one or two televised events. That was it. And fortunate for me, I was successful on those events, so it helped name recognition. And we owed so much to David Foster, who was the chairman of Nabis.

Mike Gonzalez 24:40

Yeah. Yeah.

Donna Caponi 24:41

And um putting paying for this event, and uh it it was, it was it it's our master.

Bruce Devlin 24:50

Yeah, yeah.

Donna Caponi 24:50

And of course, I was disappointed because we're we're not gonna be playing here, we're going to Houston, and uh, I don't know the name of the golf course, they may have said it, but it's Chevron is not a new sponsor.

Mike Gonzalez 25:04

Right, yeah. Uh you had a couple of uh uh close calls at the De Maurier while it was a major from 79 to 2000. You you finished third to Pat Bradley in 1980 and third to Sandra Haney in 82, both at St. George's Golf and Country Club.

Donna Caponi 25:20

Yeah, that's a beautiful place. It's it's so lovely. Uh again, I don't remember a whole lot about that tournament, but um I played a lot of tournaments. Well one year I played 35 tournaments, every tournament on the schedule.

Mike Gonzalez 25:38

Is that right?

Donna Caponi 25:39

It's a lot, a lot of events.

Bruce Devlin 25:41

Is that right?

Mike Gonzalez 25:42

Well, you finished uh, you know, when it was regularly running the title holders, as I mentioned, through uh 66 as sort of a regular major. Uh that was your top 10 finish that year, and then the final year of the Western Open in 1967. Uh uh you played in that one, finished 21st. Uh, but again, that was really early in the career and really late in uh matter of fact, the last time the Western Open was a was a major. Um you also were were an assistant captain in uh in the Solheim Cup in 2005. Tell us a little bit about that experience.

Donna Caponi 26:17

That that was fabulous. Uh Nancy was the captain. Lopez called me and says, Would you be my assistant? Oh my god, yes. And it was the best time. Uh in fact, I'm sure you've probably talked to Nancy already, but uh that was a highlight of our career, you know, because I didn't play team sport.

Bruce Devlin 26:38

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 26:39

And she did a little bit when she was also, but most of the time individual sport. So having that atmosphere and the players and the whole thing was just fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And we won, which even made it better.

Mike Gonzalez 26:53

Yep, yep. Well, I'm sure you had plenty of common experiences with my co-host here as you got into your broadcasting career. Uh matter of fact, you you both spent time at uh some of the same places, maybe not at the same time, but uh um you had a remarkable career in golf broadcasting, uh, as did Bruce. And uh I'm gonna ask you what uh we've asked Bruce before. Uh tell us about some of that early advice you would have gotten before you went on air for the first time.

Donna Caponi 27:23

You know, I didn't get a whole lot of it. And and I I kept saying, you know, don't you guys have to educate me on? They said, no, because we want you to be natural. And I said, You're gonna want me to go to New York and go to broadcast school? You know, because I wanted to do a good job, and it was gonna be important for the LPGA to have me representing them, so I wanted to be in the best light. And uh they said, No, just go and do. And the funniest thing, the first three or four four broadcasts that I did, we'd finished, and I thought, wow, I had a really good show as far as I was concerned. You know, I had made some really good points and I was on the ground, not in the booth at in the beginning of my career. And I've I've done both ground and and booth. But so we finish up and we come back and then all of a sudden everybody takes off. And I'm going, anybody gonna talk to me? They go, Hey Donna, see you tomorrow. Uh we're we're going to dinner at such and such, uh, meet in the lobby at seven. So the next week it's the same thing. And I'm going, so I went to my producer, Truth Herschel, and I said, No, uh, no, it was um who's our producer? I can't think of it. Anyway, and I said, uh I said, Am I doing okay? And he says, Yeah, you're doing great. Larry Cirillo. Do you remember Larry Cirillo?

Bruce Devlin 28:51

I do, yeah, I sure do.

Donna Caponi 28:54

He says, Look, I and I said, you know, when you play professional golf, you hit a good shot, everybody claps. Hey, great shot, and all this kind of stuff. In TV, they don't do that. They just say, All right, see you tomorrow. We'll see you at dinner and stuff like that. I said, Am I doing okay? It's when they talk and they sit you down and say, You can't say this, you can't do that. That's when you have to worry. So then I figured out they said, just do my job until somebody tells me differently.

Mike Gonzalez 29:22

So yeah, you know, Bruce, we we we've talked to so many of our guests who have done a stint in TV. I mean, I think uh Jerry Pate and Lee Trevino and Andy North and Baker Finch and Curtis Strange and and all of them, and you included, Bruce, did it just sounded like you guys all just got thrown to the wolves.

Bruce Devlin 29:41

Yeah, I did get one piece of advice uh from Don Olemeyer. Uh, and he told me his advice to me was just remember one thing, Bruce. The people sitting in their living room can see what's going on. Your job is to fill the space in that they don't know anything about. Conversations with players, uh idiosyncrasies of their swing, uh slow-mo, you know, whatever it might be. So he said, don't go tell them it's a pretty day and we're on the 15th hole because they already know that. That was good advice, really.

Donna Caponi 30:23

Yeah, um uh um an announcer that used to be with um he always did Augusta, can't think of his name. He's retired, he lives in Denver. I can't come up with his name right this second. He said to me, I called him up actually, and I said, um what just quick advice because I wasn't gonna see him at the next event, and he said talk like you're talking to people sitting on the couch. So it's basically the same thing. Something that's and that's why I pride in myself when I do these walk and talk to walk and ask a player and um questions. Like you know, the it's like uh Ben Crenshawk. Well, a lot of people don't know he's a great bird watcher. He's famous for bird watching, and Hale Erwin was a great photographer, and so everybody knows that they're good golfers, but I'd say to to either one of them, have you seen any great birds out there? Um you take any pictures, Hale, of anything out there on the golf course. So uh yeah, I that's what I like.

Bruce Devlin 31:31

I like telling a story about somebody that they don't know, things that they're what we're doing with you today. You're telling your story that a lot of people have never heard parts of it ever before. And we thank you for doing that. That's great.

Mike Gonzalez 31:51

Why don't you just give us top three highlights from your career? Looking back on all the great golf and golf events you witnessed, what really stands out for you?

Donna Caponi 31:58

Tiger, tiger, tiger.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Sur surprise, surprise.

Donna Caponi 32:04

Um, when I worked on the PGA tour uh on the ground walking, um just watching such unbelievable golf. And I mean it's even amazing now what he's doing with that leg with that we know that had a 50-50 chance of losing. But I he had taken two weeks off and we were at the Byron Elson, I'll just never forget this. And he hadn't played at all during his two week vacation, just had to get away. And so when he came back out, he was a little rusty. He finished bogey double bogey bogey and Lance Barrel gets in my ear and says, Go interview Tiger.

Bruce Devlin 32:49

Not really something I want to do.

Donna Caponi 32:51

Yeah. So I didn't say it because you know the guys could get away with what I couldn't get away with saying, I am not doing that. You know, if one of the other guys on the ground did I would ask him. So anyway, uh I went up to Tiger, signed a scorecard, I said, I'm going to tell you you don't have to do this. But they would like me to talk to you. And he says, which was so good about. He says, I will only do it because it's you, because I know you're not gonna throw me under the bus.

Bruce Devlin 33:28

There you go.

Donna Caponi 33:30

Because being a player, as Bruce, it's so much easier to talk to these players because they know, you know, they they know exactly that you know. I know what it's like to have uh a three-iron from a downhill lie to a backright pin placement and you're a hooker, you know.

Mike Gonzalez 33:50

Yeah. Not not little not literally, figuratively.

Donna Caponi 33:56

So anyway, and he was great. He said, Okay, well, you know, you finish bogey double bogey bogey, but you do have a lot of rust on now, because you finish that way, what are you gonna go work on with the driving range? And the first thing out of his mouth was good question, because again, I didn't throw him under the bus because I am rusty, and but I needed to get away, I needed to put clubs away. And right now, what I'm gonna go work on, first thing I'm gonna work on is getting lunch. Because if you've ever been around Tiger, he has a bottomless pit. That's all he wants to do is eat. And so um, he said, I'm just gonna work on getting my timing back. He says, because that's what happened at the end of the round. I I just lost my lines, and and he says, I'll just work on that. So I think the best times I had on the PGA tour were just fabulous. The guys were so nice to me and they treated me like they're I was their little sister. And then from that tour, the PGA tour, the PGA powers to be said, would you work for us on the champions tour? And I said, Oh, great, that would be fabulous. So I went over there and worked, and that was really a lot of fun because these are players that you grew up with.

Bruce Devlin 35:11

Sure.

Donna Caponi 35:12

Lee and Dave and Arnold, and and again, they they were abusive to me in the best of ways.

Mike Gonzalez 35:20

They they're and I loved being Yeah. Was it hard to give that all up?

Donna Caponi 35:28

Um after twenty-five years of doing TV and twenty-five years, you know, like a couple months here or there, um what I missed was the friends and the friendships. Because all of a sudden you're home and you don't hear from anybody. And I still do keep up with my golf friends. Um and then my husband had gotten sick and I would have had to give it up anyway because he was he had uh developed lung cancer, he had a melanoma in the lung. And there would have been where I wouldn't have been able to go on the road. So it sort of came at the the right time.

Mike Gonzalez 36:16

So that's when I Well I I'm sure our listeners are gonna really enjoy hearing your story, and uh as we as we wind down, uh we typically like to ask our guests just uh three questions, and I'm gonna let my partner start.

Bruce Devlin 36:36

So Donna, if when you were 19 or 20 and you would have known then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

Donna Caponi 36:52

I don't think I'd do anything any different than what I did. Because when you and I played the tour, and I know you're just a couple years older than I am, but when we played the tour, it was fun. And now it's big business.

Bruce Devlin 37:06

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 37:07

If you know you have to have your trainer, your sports psychologist um this and that. When we played, we we just went out and played. And so I would not do anything any different than then. Would I have liked to have made a lot more money? Absolutely. Who wouldn't? But thank goodness I was able to keep my corporate clients uh for the longest time and still do a little bit of corporate work and still do speeches and tell stories about my life on the road. And um and then the little bit that we made in television, because you you know, unless you're uh a big, big name, there wasn't a whole bunch to be made in television either.

Bruce Devlin 37:49

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 37:50

Okay, we're gonna give you one career mulligan. Where do you take it?

Donna Caponi 37:56

Career mulligan? Ooh, boy. Um gosh. Does everybody else have a hard time with this?

Bruce Devlin 38:10

We get different reactions to it, I can assure you of that, Donna.

Mike Gonzalez 38:15

It it's been all over the map in terms of the answers we get. Uh but uh, you know, yeah, they they have to think a while to come up with, okay, and I'm stalling for you, by the way, but uh, is there one shot, you know, particularly in a major, but maybe to win a tournament that would have made the difference that you would have d wanted to redo on?

Donna Caponi 38:34

Um why am I having why am I just blanking out on this question? It's such a great question. Um so maybe I would say in Sunningdale on the ninth or tenth hole I hit the shot and went over the green and made a double bogey, and I was maybe leading the golf tournament and I bladed it as I did. And on top of it being embarrassing, and then they have to make double bogey from less than a hundred yards. Um that's probably a shot because it it was that sunny day. I just loved that golf course, and that's the only one that I can come up with right this second.

Mike Gonzalez 39:21

Well, I'll I'll give you one that we really enjoyed uh and we attribute this one to Jack Nicholas. It wasn't one of his shots, it was three of his opponent's shots.

Donna Caponi 39:31

Um yeah, when Sandra Palmer chipped it in, you know, holed it out of a bumper in Las Vegas on the 18th hole. I lose by one, and then um Sandra Post chipped it in in a playoff in Wheeling, West Virginia. I remember those.

Bruce Devlin 39:46

There you go. There you go. All right. It's our last one, Donna.

Donna Caponi 39:50

Okay.

Bruce Devlin 39:51

How would you like to be remembered?

Donna Caponi 39:55

Oh I loved every minute of the two jobs that I did. I really did, and I think I'm so blessed to have have had two great parents who wished they'd have lived longer to see how successful both Janet and I were under their tutelage and um our personalities and and our our lifestyle and how I mean there isn't a day. In fact, my sister was just in LA at the uh cemetery where our parents are both buried. And I haven't been up there in probably 30 years. I don't call Janet probably the same thing. And we're both on the phone because I said, Do you think they know that we did okay? You know?

Bruce Devlin 40:47

Yeah.

Donna Caponi 40:48

Because it was they were young. I mean, dad at 14 he had an aneurysm, and mother had breast cancer.

Bruce Devlin 40:55

Well, Donna, I can tell you one thing. Both Mike and I had a terrific time with you today. We really appreciate you taking the time and going into depth about the way you played the game and how much you loved it. And uh, I just want to personally say thank you. And I know Mike would like to say something too.

Mike Gonzalez 41:15

Thank you. Well, we sure did. We appreciate you taking the time. More than anything, we appreciate you sharing your story with us and our listeners. I'm sure they're really going to enjoy it.

Donna Caponi 41:24

Thank you very much. Thanks for being patient with me and hooking up the uh the monitors. But anyway, you guys have a great and safe holidays, and uh uh I'm so pleased that you added me to your list.

Bruce Devlin 41:39

Thank you, Donna. Been great.

Mike Gonzalez 41:42

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 tee it up again for the good of the game.