Bob Rosburg: PGA Championship Winner, First 'Fairway Reporter'
Bob Rosburg played on the PGA Tour from the 1950s into the 1970s. He was known for a brilliant short game and for winning a major championship. Later, Rosburg became even better-known as a golf broadcaster. He pioneered a new role on golf telecasts, and ultimately appeared on golf broadcasts for 30 years.
Full name: Robert Reginald Rosburg
Date of birth: October 21, 1926
Place of birth: San Francisco, California
Date and place of death: May 14, 2009, in Palm Springs, California
Nickname: Rossie
His Biggest Wins
Rosburg had six official wins on the PGA Tour:- 1954 Miami Open
- 1956 Motor City Open
- 1956 San Diego Open
- 1959 PGA Championship
- 1961 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am
- 1972 Bob Hope Desert Classic
In the Majors: PGA Championship Win, Other Finishes
In major championships, Bob Rosburg had one win, two runner-up finishes, and 11 total Top 10 finishes. His first appearance in a major was at the 1948 Masters; his last, in the 1974 PGA Championship.And his major championship victory was at the 1959 PGA Championship, where he came from six shots behind at the start of the final round to win.
Rosburg was at 211 after three rounds in that 1959 PGA, tied for seventh and six strokes behind leader Jerry Barber. But in the final round, Rosburg scorched the front nine in 30, a tournament record at the time. He wound up scoring 66 to Barber's 73 to win by one stroke over Barber and Doug Sanders. Rosburg's final-round, six-shot comeback to win was a PGA Championship record until 1978.
Rosburg was twice the runner-up in U.S. Opens, first in 1959 and again in 1969. In the 1959 U.S. Open, Rosburg was four behind leader Billy Casper after three rounds. In the final round, he scored 71 to Casper's 74 and finished one stroke behind.
At the 1969 U.S. Open, Rosburg was five off Orville Moody's lead entering the final round. He wound up with a 3-foot putt for par on the 72nd hole to force a playoff. But this great putter missed that one and he finished one back. Rosburg was very much a surprise contender that year, 42 years old and having been mostly off the tour for several years.
Rosburg also tied for third in the 1971 U.S. Open, two strokes out of the Trevino-Nicklaus playoff. He also had Top 10 finishes in the U.S. Open in 1955 (t5), 1958 (t5) and 1964 (t9); in The Masters in 1954 (t6), 1955 (t4) and 1966 (t10); and in the PGA Championship in 1971 (t9). Rosburg never played the British Open.
More About Bob Rosburg
The 1976 Who's Who in Golf (Elliott/Kelly, affiliate link) called Bob Rosburg "a very outspoken player and sometimes temperamental player." He was known, primarily in the first half of his career, for having a temper and sometimes letting negative thoughts get the better of him.He earned a reputation for withdrawing from a lot of tournaments when things weren't going his way, and later in life said that was something he regretted.
"This sport isn't like any other where a player can take out all that is eating him on an opponent," Rosburg once said. "In golf, it's strictly you against your clubs."
Rosburg did not have a classic swing. He used a baseball grip, unusual then and now among pros. In a 1959 edition of Golfdom, Herb Graffis called Rosburg "decidedly unorthodox" and noted that he "practices very little." But Rosburg was a fabulous putter and short-game golfer. He often chipped with a 4-iron or 5-iron.
"He had one of the premier short games ever. He was as good as it got around the greens." — Ken VenturiPeter Alliss once wrote that Rosburg "had one of the ugliest swings ever to be seen on the U.S. or any other golf circuit and was not a greak striker, but the other side of the coin was that he was one of the best putters ever, employing a wristy rap at the ball."
In the 1959 Pensacola Open, Rosburg needed only 19 putts during one round, at the time the second-lowest total in a PGA Tour round ever.
Rosburg was born in the 1920s in San Francisco and was something of a prodigy for his time. There is a 1930 newsreel story that shows him golfing at age 4. At age 7, Rosburg scored a hole-in-one on the Stanford University golf course.
And at age 12 he drove baseball legend Ty Cobb out of Olympic Club. The 12-year-old Rosburg met Cobb, then in his 50s, in the first flight club championship match at Olympic Club in 1938. And the kid whipped Cobb 7 and 6.
"All his buddies started razzing him so bad — and you know he was a pretty hot-tempered guy — that he never came back to Olympic Club again," Rosburg told Golf Digest decades later. "All the club members and his friends, they were saying stuff to him like, 'How can a great athlete like you let a kid like this annihilate you? Not only beat you but embarrass you?' He dropped his membership, went down to Menlo Park and played the rest of his days down there."
Rosburg went on to reach the championship match of California State Amateur three times, 1943, 1944 and 1948, but lost all three. During that stretch he also played in a PGA Tour event for the first time: At age 17, Rosburg finished 30th in the 1944 Los Angeles Open.
He attended Stanford and was part of the school's national championship-winning squad in 1946. He was also a standout on the school's baseball team. Rosburg graduated in 1948.
He didn't turn pro until 1953, and 1954 was Rosburg's first as a PGA Tour member.
And he got his first official win that year, at the Miami Open. It was the second-to-last tournament on the 1954 schedule. But earlier in that year, Rosburg won a tournament called the Brawley Open in California. That event appeared on the tour's schedule in 1954, but today the PGA Tour no longer counts that event as official. Hence, Rosburg is credited with six tour wins today, not seven as some older sources give him.
Rosburg won twice in 1956, at the Motor City Open (where he beat Ed Furgol in a playoff) and San Diego Open.
And although he didn't win a tournament in 1958, he did win the PGA's Vardon Trophy award for leading the tour in season scoring average (70.11 strokes per round). Rosburg also had his first Top 10 finish on the season-ending money list that year, ninth place.
In 1959, "Rossie" improved to a career-best seventh on the money list, on the strength of his PGA Championship victory and runner-up showing in the U.S. Open. Those finishes also helped get him onto Team USA for the 1959 Ryder Cup. Rosburg played two matches and won them both, first teaming with Mike Souchak for a foursomes win. In singles, Rosburg defeated Harry Weetman, 6 and 5.
His next victory happened at the 1961 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, and it was his last win on tour for 11 years.
Rosburg's results began dipping as his 40s approached, and for most of the second half of the 1960s he did not play much on the tour. He turned full-time to club pro duties. But that turned out to be a way back to the tour. In 1968, he won The Masters Par-3 Contest. Then Rosburg was runner up in the PGA Club Professional Championship. And when he won that tournament for club pros in 1969, he decided it was time to try playing full-time on the PGA Tour again.
It was a good decision, because Rosburg had one more win in him. At age 46, Rossie won the 1972 Bob Hope Classic by one shot over 22-year-old Lanny Wadkins.
Proving to himself he could still do it, Rosburg cut back on his schedule the next two years, and 1974 was his last full or part-time season on the tour. He final start in a PGA Tour tournament was in 1983.
PGA Tour statistics show Rosburg with 467 career starts on the PGA Tour. In addition to his six victories, he finished second 19 times, third 13 times, in the Top 5 at 67 tournaments, and in the Top 10 in 113 tournaments.
In addition to ninth in 1958 and seventh in 1959, he finished 11th on the season-ending money list in 1961. From 1954 through 1963, Rosburg was always in the Top 40 on the money list. He dropped to 93rd in 1964, and wasn't in the Top 60 (the cutoff at the time avoid Monday qualifying) again until 1971.
After the 1964 season, Rosburg was 19th on the PGA Tour's career money list (1947-forward). After the 1974 season, he was 43rd.
Rosburg could have recorded a few more wins, but he had a poor record (1-5) in playoffs. Among his second-place finishes were playoff losses at the 1957 Venezuela Open (to Al Besselink); 1958 Eastern Open (to Art Wall); 1961 Greater Seattle Open (to Dave Marr); 1961 Bakersfield Open (to Jack Fleck); and 1962 Orange County Open (to Tony Lema).
Rosburg played the Champions Tour intermittently, as he could fit in tournaments around his broadcasting schedule. In 71 total starts on the senior circuit between 1980 and 1994, Rosburg had one runner-up showing and five Top 10 finishes.
Off-Course and Broadcasting Career
Like most pros of his era, among those who weren't big stars, Bob Rosburg had club affiliations and held down club pro jobs during and after his tour career. Among those jobs was pro at Brookridge Golf & Country Club in Indio, California, whose golf staff he joined in 1960.In the mid-1960s, Rosburg became head pro at Westwood Country Club in St. Louis. He resigned that position in 1970 (becoming golf director for Sheraton Hotels) to return to the tour for several years.
Rosburg served as chairman of the PGA Tournament Committee in 1959-62, and as a player-director on the Tournament Players' Division Policy Board in 1972-73. (It was while in the former role that Rosburg had to fine Tommy Bolt for farting during a tournament.)
Along with Mike Souchak, Rosburg was one of the two instructors featured in the Jaycees' Junior Golf Instruction Handbook published and offered for free in 1960. That same year Rossie offered audio instruction on the vinyl record album, "Hear How to Improve Your Golf." And he authored The Putter Book (affiliate link), part of a Golf Digest instructional series in 1965. Rosburg was also featured in the 1990 book Top Tips From Senior Pros (affiliate link).
Rosburg got into broadcasting starting 1974, when he was hired by the ABC television network. And he was a sort of pioneer as a golf broadcaster: The New York Times, in its obituary of Rosburg, called him "the first broadcaster to work entirely from the fairways." Rosburg was the one who launched the now-ubiquitous role of the roving reporter on golf television.
All his colleagues called him "Rossie" on-air, and for 30 years Rossie was on the air doing golf for ABC Sports. The negativity that sometimes crept into his thinking during his playing career also came out in the phrase for which he became known as a broadcaster: "He's got no chance" is what Rosburg often said when a player's ball was in a tough spot.
He told Golf Digest that his first rule for an on-course reporter was, "Don't talk while the ball is in the air. You're not adding to the suspense — and if you're wrong, you sound like an ass."
At the time of his death in 2009, Rosburg held the record as the longest-serving golf broadcaster on television.
Rosburg died at age 82. He was underdoing cancer treatments and, weakened by the chemotherapy, fell outside a restaurant. Head injuries sustained in the fall were the cause of death.
Rosburgh is a member of the SoCal Golf Hall of Fame and of the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame.
Sources:
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
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Scharff, Robert. Golf Magazine's The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1970, Harper and Row.
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Steel, Donald, and Ryde, Peter. The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1975, The Viking Press.
