How a Masters champion coped with controversy after his win

“What a stupid I am,” Roberto De Vicenzo famously declared after signing an incorrect final-round scorecard at the 1968 Masters. His bookkeeping goof deprived him of a spot in an 18-hole playoff for the green jacket. It also distracted from Bob Goalby’s win.

Like De Vicenzo, Goalby played brilliantly on Sunday, posting a six-under 66 to put himself in a tie at the top. But that did little to dispel widespread public perception that he hadn’t so much won the tournament as De Vicenzo had lost it.

In the aftermath of the event, Goalby received mailbags-worth of correspondence, not all of it congratulatory. “He got a ton of letters because a lot of people thought he was playing with Roberto and wrote the wrong score down like he was trying to cheat,” Goalby’s son, Kye Goalby, said recently.

In fact, De Vincenzo was playing in the group ahead of Goalby, in a pairing with Tommy Aaron.

Kye Goalby told the story of that unflattering fan mail in a recent episode of the Destination Golf podcast, while recounting other Masters-related memories involving his dad, who died in 2022.

It’s hard to feel sorry for a Masters winner. And Bob Goalby never felt sorry for himself. But he did grapple with the inevitable awkwardness that arose around De Vicenzo’s scoring gaff.

“The first few years were pretty hard for him,” Kye Goalby said.

The media didn’t always make it easy on him either. At one point, Kye Goalby said, one of the major TV networks approached his dad, offering him big money to take part in an 18-hole televised match against De Vincenzo — a contrived attempt to recreate the 18-hole playoff that never happened. (Seeing such a contest as a no-win situation, Goalby declined.)

Over time, though, Goalby, who could be hot-tempered on the course, came to regard the public hubbub around the scoring incident with equanimity. He was a Masters winner, after all. No amount of scuttlebutt could take that away from him.

“He wound up handling it all really well,” Kye Goalby said. 

Among the people who helped him keep matters in perspective was Augusta National co-founder Bobby Jones. Not long after the 1968 event, Goalby received a letter from Jones praising him for his Sunday play, which included a run of back-nine birdies and an eagle on the 15th. In the letter, Jones described Goalby’s approach to the par 5 as one of the finest shots he’d ever seen. He also reminded Goalby that he’d won by the rules of golf, that he was a Masters champion and should hold his “head high.”

The letter became one of Goalby’s prized possessions, framed on a wall in his office. As a boy, Kye Goalby read it repeatedly, marveling at how well-written it was. He can practically recite it word for word, but he doesn’t have to, as the letter now hangs in his own office.

Unlike his dad, Kye Goalby never played golf for a living. But he has forged his own path in the game as a respected golf course shaper and designer. To hear more about his life in golf and his Masters memories, you can listen to the entire Destination Golf episode here.

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