The Kings of the CBS Golf Classic
Al Geiberger and Dave Stockton Win Back-to-Back CBS Golf Classics
Happy New Year!
The PGA TOUR returns next week, and while we wait, we have another story about golf on television in the 1960s. We tell the story of the CBS Golf Classic, a popular show that featured two-man best-ball matches. Much of the history of the the CBS Golf Classic has been lost. The films of the matches in the CBS archive were destroyed in a warehouse fire. The players received copies of the films, especially final matches, so much of the history of the CBS Golf Classic sits in storage units or basements of these same players. The history is so cloaked in darkness that we used television listings in newspapers to rebuild the brackets that are displayed in the story.
I was lucky enough to get our hands on one of the films, the 1965 final match between the team of Tony Lema and Bobby Nichols versus Bob Charles and Bruce Devlin. After threading the old and fragile film through a projecter, I used a digital camera to record it off the screen. You can enjoy the clickity-clack version HERE. It’s fun to watch with the 60-second commercials, but the match was a blow-out. Charles and Devlin couldn’t miss a putt, especially Charles.
We’ll return next week with a feature story on the 1981 Tournament of Champions tournament.
In last week’s Tour Backspin Poll, we asked you who you thought would win the Jack Nicklaus Award for player of the year. Viktor Hovland squeeked out the win with 37% of the votes while Scottie Scheffler received 32%. Rory McIlroy came in third with 16%, Jon Rahm garnered 11%, and Wyndham Clark got 5%.
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This week’s Vintage Ad announces the new CBS Match-Play Classic, which a year later would be renamed the CBS Golf Classic. Scroll down to see.
A weird view of Al Geiberger’s swing is featured this week in the Swing Like a Pro feature. Scroll down to view.
We’ve got another selection from the Tour Backspin Jukebox this week. Drop your dime in the slot and listen HERE.
If you like golf history, check out the Your Golfer’s Almanac podcast. Host Michael Duranko celebrates birthdays, milestones, and other accomplishments that occurred on the day in golf history. Listen HERE.
We’re playing CBS Golf Classic Trivia in this week’s Tour Backspin Quiz. Scroll down to play.
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Okay, we're on the tee, let's get going.
Enjoy!
Larry Baush
Geiberger and Stockton Own the CBS Golf Classic
It is October 7th, 1963, at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield Township, NJ, and Paul Harney is hitting his tee shot on the first hole. It is the first shot in a brand-new tournament, produced for television, titled the CBS Match-Play Classic. The show put match play competition front and center with two-man teams playing best-ball. Harney hit that first shot into the woods. His partner, Don January, hit his tee shot out of bounds. It was quite an inauspicious start for the new event.
The format featured eight teams playing at Baltusrol, and another eight teams playing at La Quinta Country Club, in La Quinta, CA. Each match was filmed, on 16mm film, and would be broadcast starting on December 28th and continuing into April. Spectators were not allowed at Baltusrol the first year, while spectators could attend, for a $1 entry fee, the matches in La Quinta.
The legendary Frank Chirkinian produced and directed the show unveiling several production innovations that have become standard in golf broadcasts including the use of cranes for cameras to get an elevated view, and players wearing microphones so the audience could hear the verbal interplay between the players. Tommy Armour and Cary Middlecoff provide the expert analysis of the action while Chris Schenkel provided the play-by-play. Jack Whitaker took over the play-by-play in 1964 while Ken Venturi took over the expert analysis in 1970.
The tournament attracted the best players by offering a $150,000 purse with the winners receiving more than $50,000 (later raised to $70,000) to split. The only top players missing were Arnold Palmer, who had a contract with NBC, and Gary Player, who was out of the country during that part of the year. But the field did include Jack Nicklaus who was teamed with Phil Rogers.
The show proved quite popular as it wound its way through the match play bracket and would return every year until it completed the 1973 matches. In 1972 the format was changed from two-man teams to individual match play.
Players were chosen to play in the tournament by first, being available. As in the case of Palmer, Player, and later Nicklaus, they were not available as they were filming their Big Three Challenge matches at the same time as filming of the CBS Golf Classic. CBS would offer a spot to the top 32 money winners of the year on the PGA tour, and work down the list if a spot was available due to a conflict for any of the top 32 players. CBS then selected the teams based on where the player lived, especially in the early years when there was an eastern bracket and western bracket. The network considered players who were friends with each other to make some of the team pairings.
In 1967 the tournament was moved to Firestone Golf and Country Club in Akron, OH, putting an end to the eastern and western brackets. Filming would begin later that fall for broadcast in the winter of ‘67/’68. Al Geiberger had a great record at Firestone having won his PGA Championship title, as well as the 1965 American Golf Classic, on the course. Geiberger played with Dan Sikes in the 1965 CBS Golf Classic, then with Jacky Cupit in 1966, and Tommy Aaron in 1967. He had only won one match in those three years.
Geiberger recalled, for The Tour Backspin Show podcast, that people advised him to get a good partner for the matches to be played at Firestone as they believed that he had an advantage on the course due to past results. Dave Stockton, a good friend of Geiberger’s, wanted to be his partner in the tournament. The only problem was, he wasn’t inside the top 32 money winners to qualify.
“As soon as I won the tournament, I just bugged the living hell out of him.”
Then, Dave Stockton received a “Champions Choice” invite, an invite voted on by past champions, into the Colonial National Invitational and became the first player to win the tournament the same year they received the special invitation. The victory placed him inside the top 32 money winners for the year, as well as qualified him to play in the CBS Golf Classic.
“Dave kind of forced me to play with him,” Geiberger related on the podcast.
“As soon as I won the tournament,” Stockton recalled on the same podcast, “I just bugged the living hell out of him. Now, we could play together. You should have seen him try to backtrack out of it.”
“I had all these people tell me, ‘go get a good partner.’ Well, nobody really knew Dave. Frank [Chirkinian] came to me and said, ‘are you sure you want to play with Stockton?’”
“I also would be yelling and screaming to pump us up. I made myself pretty obnoxious, actually.”
It was a partnership made in heaven and Stockton knew it.
“Geiberger and I are highly compatible, personally and as golfers,” Stockton said to Larry Sheehan of Golf Digest in 1973. “Alan has played Firestone better than anyone except Nicklaus if you look at the stroke play records. So, he would play his steady game and let me gamble. I also would be yelling and screaming to pump us up. I made myself pretty obnoxious, actually.”
Chirkinian agreed saying to Sheehan, “They were formidable. They played like they were back at Southern Cal—very rah-rah. It annoyed the golfers who prefer to do the full Ben Hogan scene during a match—tip your hat every 40 minutes and make each shot a momentous decision. But, it was effective.”
The team of Stockton and Geiberger hold the record for most titles and the longest streak of matches won. Starting that first year in 1968 they won 10 matches in a row, winning the $50,000 first place prize their first year and then splitting $70,000 in 1969. Another record was recorded in 1968 when Bruce Crampton became the first player to make a hole-in-one in the event during a first round match when he and his partner, Lee Elder, were playing Gene Littler and Roberto De Vincenzo.
What made the CBS Golf Classic work was the blackout of any publicity concerning matches that had already been played. Spectators were not allowed at Baltusrol the first year, while spectators could attend, for a $1 entry fee, the matches in La Quinta. The event stood out from the other made-for-tv golf shows, such as Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf, and The Big Three Challenge. The reason was that it felt, and played out, like a real tournament.
In 1974 the format was changed from a team event to an individual event which was won by Lanny Wadkins. The rumor during the filming of that year’s matches was that the ratings had fallen and that sponsorships were lacking. These rumors proved to be true, and the show was cancelled.
For more than a decade, The CBS Golf Classic provided match play excitement to golf fans during the winter months. The excitement of match play depended on good team pairings, such as the Geiberger and Stockton team. Even though they got off to a bad start, Paul Harney and Don January made a solid team. After Harney hit the first shot of the show into the woods only to have January follow him by hitting his tee shot out of bounds, the two went on to win the championship.
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BONUS STORY
In the 1968 CBS Golf Classic, Al Geiberger and Dave Stockton played a first round match against the team of Tommy Bolt and Tom Weiskopf. Weiskopf idolized Bolt. Stockton flew back from St. Andrews where he was playing in the Alcan Golfer of the Year tournament. He arrived at Firestone the next day after a long trans-Atlantic flight for the first match. Stockton spent the flight doing pushups and running up and down in the aisle to pump himself up for the match.
Geiberger knew that the timing was not good for his team to be playing a match the day following the long airplane trip of his partner.
“If we’re going to win this,” Geiberger told himself and recalled to The Tour Backspin Show podcast, “I gotta carry it.”
Stockton picked up the story from there saying, “I flew all night to get back there, and I was so nervous. As I remember, I birdied like five of the first seven holes, but I’m not sure I made another after that.”
On the ninth hole, Weiskopf hit a monster drive which ended up fifty yards in front of Stockton and Bolt. After hitting his approach shot, Bolt walked down the fairway to where Weiskopf’s drive was and began explaining how the shot should be played.
“I didn’t even know there was a fountain up by the clubhouse, thirty yards over the green.” Stockton recalled on the podcast. “Weiskopf hits this shot, and he puts it in the fountain. Bolt is muttering and swearing about these whippy wristed college kids and all this stuff and I’m laughing thinking that they got no chance.”
“I forgot that we played Bolt and Weiskopf. That was a funny match,” Geiberger remembered.
“They were one-down at the time, and he puts it in the friggin’ fountain,” Stockton said.
Geiberger and Stockton went on to win the match, and another nine more over the course of two seasons.
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WHAT HOLE IS IT?
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Clips You Might Have Missed
Wonderful ace story.
This game can be so cruel, but keep smilin’.
Can’t wait for April!
Tour Backspin Quiz | CBS Golf Classic Trivia
How much prize money did the CBS Golf Classic award in the first decade of the tournament?
Scroll down for answer
Swing Like a Pro
Carl Welty would not approve of this angle for instruction, but it does look cool.
Blind Shot
Click for something fun. 👀
The Tour Backspin Jukebox
On the jukbox in 1968—The 5th Dimension does Stoned Soul Picnic. Drop your dime in the slot and click HERE to listen.
Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema tells the story of one of the tour’s biggest stars in the mid-1960s. A fascinating glimpse into the traveling caravan that was the PGA TOUR during an era where the fields were full of “Mad Men” era personalities. From a hardscrabble youth spent on the “wrong side of the tracks” in the Oakland suburb of San Leandro, to the temptations of Elko, Nevada, to the bright lights of the PGA TOUR, Uncorked tells a story of determination, redemption and, above all else, a love story that documents how Betty, Tony’s new wife, provided the direction and motivation for him to become a top star. Order on Amazon.
WHAT IS HIP?
Parties on New Year’s Eve are very hip.
Tour Backspin Quiz Answer:
No other single golf tournament paid out more than the CBS Golf Classic did in its first decade (1963 to 1973). It paid out over $2 million in prize money.
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The Tony Lema 2024 Wall Calendar features press photos from the 1964 Crosby Clambake (won by Lema) and Lucky International Open.
Vintage Ad
Final Thoughts
I love the story of the homemade persimmon woods.
Ever had a hole-in-one? No? Just keep on trying like 91-year-old Willie Clinton.
That’s some pretty fancy choreography by the 5th Dimension in this week’s Tour Backspin Jukebox.
Excellent. My Dad said a challenge was to avoid finding out who won, as word sometimes got around his club.