Roberto de Vicenzo (left) and Bob Goleby in the difficult consequences of the 1968 masters.
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“How stupid I am,” said Roberto de Vicenzo faced after signing an incorrect last round note in 1968 Master. His account of accounting deprived him of a place in a play off with 18 holes for the green jacket. She also distracted from Bob Goleby’s victory.
Like De Vicenzo, Goleby played excellent Sunday, posting a six under 66 to put himself in a tie on top. But it did little to distribute the widespread perception of the public that he had not won the tour as much as De Vicenzo had lost it.
After the event, the goalkeeper received correspondence with luggage values, not all congratulations. “He received a ton of letters because many people thought he was playing with Roberto and wrote the wrong result as he was trying to deceive,” Goleby’s son Kye Goolby said recently.
In fact, de Vincenzo was playing in the group forward of the goalkeeper, in a couple with Tommy Aaron.
Kye Goolby told the story of that vague fan post in a last episode of The Golf Podcast, while recounting other memories related to masters involving his father, who died in 2022.
Hard hard to feel bad for a master winner. And Bob Goolby never felt bad about himself. But he withdrew with an inevitable difficulty rising around De Vicenzo’s marked gaffe.
“The first few years were pretty difficult for him,” Kye Gollyby said.
The media did not always make it easy for him either. At one point, Kye Goolby said, one of the main television networks approached his father, offering him big money to attend an 18-holes against De Vincenzo-an attempt discussed to recreate the Play Off with 18 holes that never happened. (Seeing such a competition as a situation without a victory, the goalkeeper refused.)
Over time, however, the goalkeeper, who could be hot on the course, came to consider public hubbub about the incident with equality. He was a winner of the masters, after all. No amount of fraud can remove it from it.
“He got up by treating them all really well,” Kye Goolby said.
Among the people who helped him keep the issues in perspective was Augusta National FOUNDER Bobby Jones. Not long after the 1968 event, Goolby received a letter from Jones by praising him for his Sunday game, which included a ninth bird run and an eagle in 15. On the letter, Jones described Goolby’s approach to par 5 as one of the best shooting he had ever seen. He also reminded Goolby that he would win with the rules of golf, that he was a master’s champion and had to keep the “head up”.
The letter became one of the precious properties of the goalkeeper, adapted to a wall in his office. As a boy, Kye Goolby read it repeatedly, marveling at how much it was. He can practically recite him in literally, but he does not, as the letter now hangs in his office.
