"You Just Made Me $20,000 Richer"
Chi-Chi Rodriguez and Jo Ann Washam win the Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team event in 1976
What a great weekend, and not just for golf.
I got to see the University of Washington Huskies defeat the Oregon Ducks in Vegas to get into the College Football Playoffs as the #2 ranked team. What a thrill. LETS GO ALL THE WAY!
Link’s Magazine has the lowdown on where to play if you’re traveling to New Orleans to see the Huskies in the Sugar Bowl. The bucket list course is TPC Louisiana in Avandale and the best bargain course is Golf Club at Audubon Park in New Orleans. If you’re going and you play either one, let us know how it went. Send an email to larry@tourbackspin.com
We’ve got you covered for that golf history lover on your holiday gift list—a premium subscription to the Tour Backspin newsletter for as low as $5.
Find more gifts in the Tour Backspin Gift Guide.
Congratulations to Scottie Scheffler for winning the Hero World Challenge. Scheffler, using a new putter, did not have a single three-putt the entire tournament. It was also great to see Tiger Woods go 72-holes and it looks like he will play one tournament a month in the upcoming year. Great to have him back.
There’s a lot going on in the world of golf including the ball distance rollback and rumors of Jon Rahm heading to the LIV Tour. We live in interesting times.
The PGA TOUR is bringing back a mixed-team event with PGA TOUR players joining LPGA players in this week’s Grant Thornton Invitational at Tiburōn Golf Club in Naples, FL. There has not been a mixed-team event on the PGA TOUR since the 1999 JC Penny Classic won by John Daly and Laura Davies. We’re turning back the clock to 1976 when Chi-Chi Rodriguez and Jo Ann Washam won the Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team Championship at Doral Country Club in Miami, FL. Scroll down to learn more.
Update on the Coyne Prize: The winner of the Coyne Prize was Jason Way for a story entitled Yard Golf. Congratulations Jason! You can learn more about Jason HERE. I’m thankful that I was named a finalist for Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema.
Check out the 2024 Tony Lema Wall Calendar available in the Tour Backspin Pro Shop HERE.
You can buy Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema on Amazon HERE.
In last week’s Tour Backspin Poll, we asked you if it was time to end the Player Impact Program (PIP). 100% of respondents thought it was time for this handout to players to go the way of persimmon drivers.
The USGA and the R&A announced a rollback of the golf ball on Wednesday and some people are not happy. If you’re a recreational golfer, you have until 2030 “to give golfers, manufacturers and retailers additional time to adjust” according to the USGA and R&A.
Check out what Geoff Shackelford has to say about the industry, “gatekeepers,” and the Vancouver Protocols concerning the rollback in his great newsletter “The Quadrilateral” (subscribe HERE). HERE is his update as of Wednesday.
Here’s what Brandel Chamblee thinks about it:
And then there is what Club Pro Guy thinks.
Now let us know what you would have liked to see happen with a ball rollback in this week’s Tour Backspin Poll.
Tour Backspin Poll
Clips You Might Have Missed
This is weird.
Nice toss.
This week’s Vintage Ad features a “play anywhere” contest with a tie-in to the 1976 Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team Championship. Scroll down to see.
Check out the power generated by Laura Baugh in this week’s Swing Like a Pro feature. Scroll down to view.
We highlight the love songs of 1976 in this week’s Spotify playlist. 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.
Congratulations to David Rihm who correctly identified #17 at Shadow Creek Golf Club in North Las Vegas, NV, in last week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT? contest. David beat out four other correct answers in the random drawing and a prize pack is on its way to him. Check out the 2023 leader board and scroll down for your chance to win in this week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT?
Only one week left! You can still save your spot. This is a great book right in the wheelhouse of the era we cover here at Tour Backspin. You can buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble and then join us For FREE, to talk about it with Patrick on the 14th. Sign up HERE.
We’re playing Mixed Team Event 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
“What Else Is There to Life but Golf and Girls?”
It is Thursday, December 16th, 1976, and the boys and girls are playing together in the $200,000 Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team Championship on the Blue Monster at Doral Country Club in Miami, Florida. The tournament, which first began as the Haig and Haig Scotch Foursome in 1960, paired a PGA TOUR player with a player from the LPGA, but had not been played since 1967.
It was resurrected, albeit somewhat hastily, in 1976 as the Pepsi-Colas Mixed Team Championship. It was conceived by Ray Volpe, the active young commissioner of the LPGA, as a Sadie Hawkins Day themed event with the women pros choosing their partners. Since there was not a conflicting event on the PGA TOUR, the men were given almost indifferent approval to play. Volpe worried that there would be trouble attracting the most popular players from the PGA TOUR, but was relieved when the field included Arnold Palmer, Tom Weiskopf, Lee Trevino, Hale Irwin, Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw, and Raymond Floyd, to name just a few.
“It was the shot of validity that we needed,” Volpe said. “Once the other men heard Arnold was playing, it elevated the tournament in their minds. I’m very grateful to Arnold for that.”
The field was limited to the top-60 money winners on the tour, or anyone who had ever won a PGA-sponsored tournament. Laura Baugh waited until the deadline to see if her boyfriend, Bobby Cole, would win the Del Webb Sahara Invitational to become eligible for the Pepsi-Cola. He didn’t, and Baugh asked Hale Irwin to be her partner.
New this year was the format under which the competition would be conducted—a selected drive, alternative shot format. Each player drove the ball, men from the championship tees playing at 7,065-yards, women from the women’s tees playing 6,200-yards, and then they would select which drive they wanted to play before finishing the hole by alternate shot. If the man’s drive was used, the woman would hit the second shot, and vice versa.
“It’s nice to have a man around out there.”
“What else is there to life but golf and girls,” said a smiling Jim Colbert when asked about the women and men teaming up together.
The women seemed to agree with Pat Bradley of the LPGA saying, “It’s nice to have a man around out there.”
Bradley was paired with Raymond Floyd and went on to say, “We decided that I would drive first on each hole. With Ray standing there behind me, it’s like having a mulligan. I know if I get in trouble, he’s going to rip it right down the middle of the fairway.”
The favored team, Ben Crenshaw and Judy Rankin shot a 70 in the first round and sat four strokes off the lead set by Dr. Gil Morgan and Marlene Hagge. Morgan was winless on the PGA TOUR while Hagge was in her 27th year on the LPGA Tour, a tour that she founded along with twelve other women in 1950.
Bradley and Floyd were another shot back at 67, while four teams were tied at 68—Colbert and Sylvia Bertolaccini of Argentina, Jo Ann Washam and Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Penny Pulz and David Graham, and Mary Lou Crocker and Fuzzy Zoeller. Arnold Palmer and Sandra Palmer (no relation) shot a 73 while the Hall of Famers Patty Berg and Gene Sarazen were at the bottom of the leaderboard at 80.
“It’s a great feeling to stand out there in the fairway and know that if you get it anywhere inside 15 feet it’s good, your partner is going to make it.”
Sandra Post and her partner, Tom Watson finished their second round and Post seemed almost embarrassed while Watson was grinning ear to ear. They had just brought the Blue Monster to its knees shooting a nine-under-par 63 for a two-round total of 134 and a two-shot lead over Washam and Rodriguez who added a second straight 68.
Post one-putted five of the last six holes and Watson told the press after the round, “Along about the 16th hole I took my putter out of the bag just to look at it. It seems like I hadn’t held it in my hand all day long. It’s a great feeling to stand out there in the fairway and know that if you get it anywhere inside 15 feet it’s good, your partner is going to make it.”
Bradley and Floyd were at 137, while Morgan and Hagge bogeyed three of the par 5 holes before rallying late to shoot a 73 that left them five strokes back of the leaders.
Post and Watson followed up their second-round 63 with a 70 in the third round and were in a tie for first place with Washam and Rodriguez who shot a third straight 68 for a 204 total. Washam and Rodriguez birdied six of eight holes in one stretch and held a two-shot lead before falling back into the tie with Post and Watson.
“The best woman player I have ever seen. She swings like Ben Hogan.”
It looked like the event was turning into a two-team race as the next closest team was Pulz and Graham who were four strokes off the lead. Bertolaccini and Colbert were another shot back at 210 and Hagge and Morgan were at 211.
Rodriguez loved his partner calling her, “The best woman player I have ever seen. She swings like Ben Hogan. I call her ‘Little Hogan’. It’s just a matter of time before she takes over the ladies tour.”
Rodriguez and Washam, like quite a few of the other teams, utilized a strategy where they would use the woman’s drive resulting in the men hitting the approach shot. Washam was long, and straight, off the tee, and Rodriguez was hitting his approach shots very close to the hole.
In the fourth round, Rodriguez kept up his steady stream of compliments on Washam’s game and the confident pair took control of the tournament. Using the strategy that had served them so well to this point with the woman hitting the drives, the man hitting the approach shots, and the woman then making the putt, the pair broke open a four-team battle at the 14th hole with a birdie. They then followed with two more consecutive birdies and pulled away from the teams of Bertolaccini and Colbert, Pulz and Graham, and Post and Watson.
“You just made me $20,000 richer.”
Washam and Rodriguez held on to win by four strokes while the teams of Bertolaccini and Colbert tied for second with Pulz and Graham. Post and Watson dropped down the leaderboard after a final round of 76 finishing five strokes behind the winners. Washam and Rodriguez split the $40,000 first prize while the second-place teams split $20,820.
Rodriguez’s compliments almost embarrassed Washam who said, “I will never come down form the clouds after all these comments.”
“You just made me $20,000 richer,” Rodriguez responded. “What do you expect? I may never win again, I’m 41 now. I owe it all to my partner. I knew we were going to win it all the way. The reason is that she’s the greatest. I had the greatest partner out there.”
Rodriguez did win on the PGA Tour one more time at the 1979 Tallahassee Open and then won 22 times on the Champions Tour, but it was a victory in a mixed event in 1976, with a woman, that caused him to turn the superlative spigot on full blast.
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BONUS STORY
Jo Ann Washam was born in Auburn, Washington and played her early golf at what is now called the Auburn Golf Course where she won the women’s championship at the age of 13.
She went to Washington State University on an Evans Scholarship which is awarded to caddies, or others that work in the golf industry. She was the first female from the Pacific Northwest to be awarded an Evans Scholarship. She played in national championship tournaments for both the Cougars golf team and basketball teams.
At 5’3” she played guard on the basketball team, but as she displayed at the 1976 Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team Championship, she was long off the tee.
In the male chauvinistic ‘70s, Washam was described in almost every newspaper report of the tournament as “pert little Jo Ann Washam.” But with three titles on the LPGA Tour, and the victory in the Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team Championship, she proved herself a giant. She was enshrined in both the WSU Athletic and Pacific Northwest Golf Association Halls of Fame.
There was an advertising war between Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola that reached a fever pitch in the 1970s. Interestingly, Washam won the Pepsi-Cola Mixed Team Event with Chi-Chi Rodriguez in 1976 and then in 1979, she lost a five-way playoff in the Coca-Cola Classic to Nancy Lopez. The other three players were Bonnie Bryant, Hollis Stacy, and Mickey Wright (who was 44 years old!)
Think of the marketing opportunities in the cola wars if Washam would have won that playoff to hold both the Pepsi and Coke titles.
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WHAT HOLE IS IT?
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Tour Backspin Quiz | Mixed Team Event Trivia
Name the teams who were multiple winners in the Haig and Haig, Pepsi-Cola, and JC Penny Classic mixed team events. Which brother-sister team won and what year?
Scroll down to for answer
Swing Like a Pro
Laura Baugh and her powerful lower body.
Eric Cole is the son of Laura Baugh and Bobby Cole. He just got named as a finalist for the Arnold Palmer Award (rookie of the year) and the next day he does this. Good job, Laura and Bobby.
RE: Tour Backspin 11/30/2023
This is GREAT, Larry
-Brad F.
Larry:
Keep up your great work, no one does it better.
-Gary P.
Enjoyed the FB piece about Doug Sanders 1970 win, I was working there!
-Gary S.
Blind Shot
Click for something fun. 👀
The PGA TOUR Policy Board put out a memo to address player’s concerns. Read it HERE.
The Tour Backspin Playlist
Love songs of 1976. Click HERE to listen on Spotify
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?
Pastels and floral prints in 1976
Tour Backspin Quiz Answer:
Dave Ragan and Mickey Wright won the Haig and Haig in 1961 and 1963. Davis Love III and Beth Daniel won the JC Penny Classic in 1990 and 1995. Larry and Laurie Rinker won the JC Penny Classic in 1985.
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Check out the Tony Lema 2024 Wall Calendar now available in the Tour Backspin Pro Shop.
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
Remember how chauvinistic we were back in the ‘70s?
How great was it seeing Tiger back on the course in an event?
Speaking of Tiger, what do you think of him going from #1,328 in the OWGR to #898—for finishing in 18th place in a 20 person event? Let us know in the comments.