Fifty years ago, Dave Stockton won the PGA Championship at Congressional Country Club in bell-bottom trousers and rocked some groovy sideburns as he holed a clutch 15-foot par putt to secure the title. No one was more surprised to be going home with the Wanamaker Trophy than the champion.
“My first thought was I can’t believe I won it,” Stockton recalled. “My second thought was there must be 20 guys shooting themselves that they should’ve won this tournament and then the other thought that hit me is I’m going to be Ryder Cup captain someday.”
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Stockton benefited from an incredible break that would no longer exist to help him. In the final round, Stockton played the first five holes in 3-over but severe thunderstorms in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb northwest of Washington, D.C., halted play with the final group able to play just three holes on Sunday. Officials wiped out the partial scores and restarted the round fresh the following day. Stockon, who had been among those advocating to continue amid the adverse conditions, played the first five holes when the tournament resumed under sunny skies on Monday in 2 under. It was a five-stroke swing.
Dave Stockton won the PGA Championship in 1970 and 1976.
“If it hadn’t rained Sunday, I don’t think I would have been in the top 10 or even top 15,” he claimed all these years later.
Stockton edged 46-year-old Don January, who hit an approach shot into a lateral water hazard at 10 and made double bogey, and Raymond Floyd, who had won the Masters earlier that year. January had replaced Nicklaus, who doubled No. 6 and went on to bogey the eighth, 10th, 12th and 14th holes, as a contender after Nicklaus had replaced Morgan, who had passed 54-hole leader Charles Coody in earlier action. For two holes, David Graham and January shared the lead.
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Notably, it was the last major where legends Nicklaus (fourth), Gary Player (tied 13th), and Arnold Palmer (tied 15th) all finished in the top 15, with Palmer’s result marking his final top-15 placement in a major championship.
When Stockton won his first major, the PGA Championship in 1970 at Southern Hills, he oozed with confidence. At the suggestion of his father, Gail, a former professional who had taught him the game, Stockton had read the book “Psycho-Cybernetics,” a self-help book designed to identify, analyze and change your self-image and improve yourself from the inside out. He convinced himself before the championship had begun that he would win.
Congressional, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. Every hole seemed too long and hard and Stockton didn’t like his chances. He enjoyed visiting the White House on Monday, and prepared lightly for the competition. He trailed Gil Morgan by eight strokes at the midway point. Morgan faltered in the third round and inclement weather on Sunday resulted in the first instance in the tournament’s history to force the final round to conclude on a Monday.
Stockton was known as the King of the pro-ams and he had a big event to do for American Airlines that day. Thanks to his improved start on the front nine, Stockton leaped into contention. But it wouldn’t be easy as Stockton drove it crooked all day and had to keep scrambling for pars. At the 14th, he flared his tee shot right and remembers en route to his ball crossing paths with his young son, Ronnie, building a tee-pee of sticks. Stockton fanned his tee shot right at 17 too, and his approach caught the right-hand bunker, leaving him a tricky shot to a two-tiered green with the pin positioned just over the top of the tier.
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“I hit the all-time greatest trap shot,” Stockton recalled. “If I hit it a foot shorter of where it landed, the ball would’ve gone back down the slope and if I hit it a foot closer to the hole, it would’ve gone 15 feet past. As it turned out, I had a gimme.”
Having failed to hit a fairway since No. 11, he opted to hit 3-wood at 18 and split the fairway but that left him 220 yards with water guarding the green. He wanted no part of it and hit a lay-up shot to 65 yards. There was a collective groan when he wedged to 15 feet.
Dave Stockton celebrates on the beach with the Ryder Cup in 1991 after winning at Kiawah Island in South Carolina.
“I could hear the people running getting ready for a playoff, assuming I’d make bogey,” Stockton said. “I told my caddie, Mike Rose, that there are a lot of people who aren’t going to see the end of the tournament because it’s about to happen right here.”
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He read an inside right putt, which was his favorite type. Despite the stakes, he said he treated that putt the same as any other and felt no pressure at all.“I really didn’t,” said Stockton, whose 72-hole total of 1-over 281 was the highest winning score in the tournament’s history up to that point. “When that last putt was four or five feet from the hole, I just knew it was going in. It was a hell of a feeling. I turned to the people across the lake and raised my arms. I didn’t even see it go in.”
To this day, Stockton claims he didn’t deserve to win but he’s darn glad he did because it did lead to being the victorious U.S. Ryder Cup captain in 1991. That night, he and wife Cathy were escorted into the men’s locker room to field a call from U.S. President Gerald Ford and then Stockton made good on his sponsor commitment that day.
“The American Airlines people were getting ready to leave when I strolled in with the trophy and even the oversize check they gave me,” he said. “I talked for an hour and a half. You’ve never seen a more grateful group of executives in your life.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Dave Stockton won 1976 PGA Champoinship after Sunday scores wiped out
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