Originally Posted by psheehan
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I got a great treat the other day, I played 27 holes with 1969 US Open, and 1989 Senior Open winner Orville Moody. Sarge is 72 and has a touch of Parkinsons but he can still find the sweet spot. He hit 7 greens the first 9 in extremely windy coastal sc conditions and in the afternoon 18, with warmer but similar wind conditions, he hit 15 greens..... he switched to the long putter when he went on the senior tour, but his putter wasn't helping him this day... he missed about 10 putts for birdie inside 15 ft... one only about 4 ft. He missed one green badly.... actually fatted a shot, which caused him to comment "I could play 3 or 4 weeks on the PGA tour and not miss a shot, all year without hitting one that bad." The miss left him with a 50 yd. bunker shot from pretty inconsistent sand to an elevated green with the pin about 15 ft. from the bunkers edge. He hit a one bounce and stop shot with his PW that nearly was holed and gently rolled about 6-8 inches behind the hole. I could hit 100 balls in a row from where he was and maybe never get one inside 5 ft.......
What a gentlemen he is... and one of the funniest story tellers I've met. He had me smiling or outright laughing all 27 holes. People like Sarge are why I love this game.
I guess the thing that impressed me most about his game, beside hitting it so darn solid was how darn straight he is.
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Great story, psheehan. Thanks for posting!
Orville Moody was one of those rare, colorful characters on TOUR that everybody 'knows' and roots for. Born in Chickasay, Oklahoma, he won the 1952 state high school golf championship and was promptly recruited to the University of Oklahoma on a
football scholarship. The school didn't have golf scholarships at the time, but their legendary football coach, Bud Wilkinson, loved the game and made the deal. Orville's college career was cut short by what he described as "girlfriend problems," and he quit to join the Army.
"Sarge" spent 14 years in the service, during which time he won the All-Service Championship and 3 Korean Opens. Life was good: He was making $5,000 a year and spending most of his time working on golf courses and playing the game with the top brass. But he wanted to play against the best, so in 1967 he left the Army to take his shot at the PGA TOUR. There, at age 35, he found the golf even better and the grass a whole lot greener: In his first year he made almost $300,000!
Then came 1969 and victory in the U.S. Open on the Cypress Creek Course at Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas. Amazingly, he won after going through both Local and Sectional Qualifying. There have been Open winners who have gone through
Sectional qualifying (the latest being Michael Campbell in 2005 and Steve Jones in 1996), but no one since has won going through
both. That same year he was honored as PGA of America Player of the Year. The door to a fabulous career seemed to have opened wide.
Alas, t'was not to be.
Even great ballstriking cannot make up for a balky putter, and Sarge's putting was among the worst. He trembled visibly over the short ones and said his arms "feel like spaghetti." Sadly, the U.S. Open was to be his lone PGA TOUR win.
Then, along came the Senior Tour and the long putter, the 1985 brainchild of Charlie Owens. Charlie, a fellow competitor, was an ex-paratrooper whose leg had been broken in a jump and then fused at the knee. A story in his own right, he tooled a home-made 46-inch long putter -- later refined and marketed by Matzie Golf as the
Slim Jim -- to help him solve his specific problems, not the least of which was that he could not bend his knee. After much wrangling, both the R&A and the USGA ruled the club legal, and yipping golfers around the world found their salvation.
With his own version of the long putter anchored to his torso and his hands split wide apart on the grip, Sarge quickly became the man to beat. Over the next several years, he won eleven times, including the 1989 U.S. Senior Open. This last feat made him first to win both the U.S. Open and the U.S. Senior Open. He also won three international events, including two Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf (teaming with Bruce Crampton). Once again, he was riding high.
But Father Time was knocking at the door: Prior to the 1995 season and two years after his last Senior victory, Sarge went through triple by-bass heart surgery. He recovered to play 29 events that year, but his career as a serious contender was done.
Along the way, a nasty divorce left Sarge in dire financial straits. So dire that in February 2006, he hawked his U.S. Open gold medal (valued at £30,000) in an auction conducted by the Edinburgh, Scotland, auction house Lyon and Turnbull. You do what you gotta do.
Orville Moody has known both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Through it all, he has remained a true gentleman. He played golf as one of 'us' -- a folk hero, really -- and we admired him all the more for it. Someone once asked him what he would have done had his golfing career not worked out. He didn't hesitate:
"I would have gone right back in the Army."
Hooah! Hooah!
Hybrid Mode
