Gary Hallberg played the PGA Tour in the 1980s and ’90s, when the atmosphere wasn’t always so serious, and many of the day’s “designated” events were those with the names of celebrities attached.
Names such as Bing Crosby. Bob Hope. Jackie Gleason. Glen Campbell. Heck, former baseball catcher Joe Garagiola had his mitts on a tournament in Tucson, Arizona.
Andy Williams, the handsome, polished “Moon River” crooner and smiling television-show personality, served as host of the San Diego Open for 20 years, his name attached to the title. So when Hallberg broke through to win his first PGA Title at the 1983 Isuzu-Andy Williams San Diego Open – this week’s edition marks the 40-year anniversary – it opened some new doors for the 24-year-old former college phenom who was considered a “can’t miss” talent at golf’s highest level.
When Hallberg’s champion’s obligations had ended that evening, he visited with Williams, who asked him where he would be staying at the following week’s event, the L.A. Open. Hallberg told him that he had been booked into one of the player hotels. “Oh, no,” Williams told him. “I’m making a call. You’re staying with my friend Pierre.”
Williams’ pal, as one might expect, wasn’t an average Joe. He was Pierre Cossette, a television producer and father of the Grammy Awards telecast that Williams often hosted. Hallberg pulled into the drive of a beautiful home, which overlooked the crashing Pacific Ocean waves behind it. Inside, an A-lister party was going on. Hallberg got some food, and noticed the man across from him was somebody he knew.
“I know you from somewhere. I know I do. Have we met?” Hallberg asked. The man extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Joe Namath.”
Hallberg, now 64, laughs as he recounts the story. Golf has given him troves of them. As a four-time first-team All-American at Wake Forest – only a handful have accomplished it, Hallberg being the first – he figured by this age, there would be lots of victory stories to reflect upon, too. There weren’t as many as he expected. Winning at Torrey Pines – a venue he loved since showing up to a World Junior there as a teen – always will be something special.
It’s funny how things merge sometimes, especially in golf. Hallberg received a swing tip the week before the San Diego event, while in Hawaii. Payne Stewart, a good friend, told Hallberg that he was hanging too much on his left side. Hallberg made the adjustment and started hitting the ball better.
In San Diego, he played a practice round with Jay Haas, a fellow Demon Deacon from Wake. Hallberg had not been putting very well. “Forget everything else,” Haas told him, “and just try to hit your putts solid.” Hallberg thinks about that today and says, “Hit the ball solid? That’s the thought? Kind of weird, right?”
It worked. Sunday afternoon, 72nd hole, the tournament at Torrey Pines’ South Course, came down to future Hall of Famer Tom Kite and the 24-year-old Hallberg, who had not won on tour. On the par-5 18th hole, water guards the green; both players missed the fairway and were forced to lay up. The hole location was in its traditional front-left position, just above the fronting water. When Hallberg watched Kite lay up to 60 yards, he thought to himself, “No chance he’s making birdie.”
“I won $54,000 that day (at Torrey). I was like the richest guy. Are you kidding me? Anyone need any money? Give me a call.” – Gary Hallberg
Hallberg’s sweet distance for the week was right around 112, 113 yards. He asked his caddie what they had to position themselves near that magic yardage: “128 yards,” he was told. Again, strange. He laid up with a pitching wedge. When the two started computing yardage for the third shot, they looked at each other and smiled. They had 112 yards in. Hallberg choked down a pitching wedge – those were 52 degrees back then – and hit a soft draw to 8 feet.
Kite missed for birdie, and Hallberg, following some nerve-racking moments – he backed off at one point because the Goodyear Blimp was humming too loudly overhead, and he noticed the thin blade of his 50-year-old Cash In! putter was visibly shaking below – he holed the putt. Just before he drew the putter back, he had one final thought: Hit the ball solid. It was one of three PGA Tour titles for Hallberg, who also won the 1987 Greater Milwaukee Open and 1992 Buick Southern Open among 567 career PGA Tour starts.
“I won $54,000 that day (at Torrey),” Hallberg said. “I was like the richest guy. Are you kidding me? Anyone need any money? Give me a call.”
He bought his mother a Cadillac with a portion of the winnings. A year after winning, Hallberg would lose in a playoff in San Diego (to Gary Koch). Torrey Pines was his haven. In a six-year stretch from 1981 through ’86 in San Diego, Hallberg’s finishes: fourth, seventh, first, second, 12th, sixth. Pretty good.
“I even rented a place there for a couple of years,” said Hallberg, who mostly played out of his home state of Illinois. “I had to stay close to where I won, right?”
There was a postscript to Hallberg’s first visit to the Los Angeles mansion belonging to Cossette, the man who put the Grammys on television. Hallberg and he hit it off, and at the end of the week, Cossette had an incredible offer for his guest. Come back out here next month, the night of the Grammys, Cossette told him, and they would have a little fun. They would dress Hallberg up, really cool, fedora and all, and Cossette would seat him in the front row for the show, right between Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson. Most of the world would wonder who this gentleman is, but Cossette and Hallberg would enjoy a great inside laugh.
Instead, Hallberg went to the Honda Classic in Florida that week, where he missed the cut. His timing wasn’t always the best.
“He certainly had the ability to do a lot of really good things,” said Curtis Strange, another Wake Forest standout who played there just ahead of Hallberg. Strange says he doesn’t know for sure, but he may have had a hand in Hallberg ending up at Wake.
“In the North-South (Amateur) one year, he came down from Illinois and I played him in the first round. I beat him, but barely,” Strange said. “I saw Coach (Jesse Haddock, a college legend) the next day, and I asked, ‘Have you talked to this Gary Hallberg? I would suggest you do. He can really play.’ ”
Hallberg was a high school junior at the time, Strange figures. He always has watched Hallberg with interest, expecting big things.
“You know,” Strange said, “when you watch Gary walk, or shoot pool, or do anything, he does it a little bit smoother than the next guy. And when you watch him swing a golf club, you think, that’s better than the next guy.”
Strange said that when he hears Hallberg’s name, or if he and Haas mention his name in conversation, it brings a smile to both. “Gary is a gentle soul,” Strange said.
Hallberg said that when he got out on the PGA Tour in 1980 (he was Rookie of the Year despite only 13 starts), he was brimming with confidence. He had just won the NCAAs, was a match-play killer, and was one of golf’s top prospects in years. Complete game. Total package. Big things awaited.
“I remember playing with Gary at Baltusrol (in 1980) the first two rounds of the U.S. Open, and I just thought, ‘Wow!’ ” said PGA Tour/PGA Tour Champions winner Peter Jacobsen. “This guy has got mucho talent. He can hit it long, he can move it left to right, he was a great putter, and he had a really good attitude, just a really fun attitude. He was fun to play with, and enjoyable to be around.
“Gary was a very special player. When I watched him, I saw so much talent. But I think Gary questioned his talent. Even on the Champions Tour, we’d talk. He always was curious how his golf swing looked. You can start asking too many questions. That shows a crack in the dam.”
Hallberg, who resides in Colorado these days and is trying to make a living in entrepreneurial ways in addition to his golf, looks back and admits as much. Even though he was 1980 Rookie of the Year, he finished just outside the top 60 that season. Technically, he had a card, but would spend the next two years qualifying to get into events. A prominent teacher convinced him that his swing needed changing, and he ventured down that often perilous path.
Hallberg did make 567 PGA Tour starts, and did experience winning. Years later, in the mid-1990s, a wrist injury would knock him off the tour. When he finally got rolling on the PGA Tour Champions (where he won in 2010), he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2014. Another setback. In all, around the world, he did the math and counts 1,000 professional starts.
Sure, there were times of struggle, but there were brilliant flashes, too. There always seem to be flashes. In 2012, Hallberg shot a second-round 63 at Turnberry in the Senior Open Championship in Scotland amid rugged conditions. Bernhard Langer declared it the “round of the year.” Tom Lehman asked, “Did he play the par-3 course across the road?” Hallberg led through 36 holes, but finished second to Fred Couples.
“When I got onto the PGA Tour, I think I felt like I was going to win 50 tournaments. I really believed it,” Hallberg said, chuckling last week when thinking just how tall, and historic, that mountain was. “Rookie of the Year, this and that. Then I got a lesson for the first time from a pretty big-name teacher, and I changed my whole swing. All of a sudden, I didn’t know what I was doing.
“It was during that two-year period when I didn’t get in the top 60 and was qualifying for events. I lost a lot of confidence, and I was never the same.”
Looking back, Hallberg, so gifted in the 1970s and ’80s, can’t even specify what it was he was seeking in his constant swing work. He slipped into a classic golfer’s abyss, trying to chase down perfection in a game that doesn’t offer it.
“As golfers, we are always trying to get better,” Jacobsen said. “It’s like this big maze. You take this right over here, you take a left over there, and suddenly, you can’t get back to where you started.”
Not every golfer can be a four-time First Team All-American, win an NCAA Championship, win on six different “major” tours, win all across the globe (including Japan and Argentina), and win events in five decades.
Trying to find his answer, Hallberg said perhaps he was trying to build the “choke-proof” swing.
“I had someone tell me, hey, if you really want to win a lot, you need to change this and this,” he said. “My fault. No sour grapes. I’ve had a great life as a golfer. No regrets. I tell people I’ve had the best lifestyle of anyone I know.”
Maybe the “can’t miss” kid didn’t miss as much as one might think he did. Not every golfer can be a four-time First Team All-American, win an NCAA Championship, win on six different “major” tours, win all across the globe (including Japan and Argentina), and win events in five decades. That’s the one that has his attention these days as he ponders making a couple of PGA Tour Champions starts in 2023.
“I won the Illinois Open in the ’70s, won (PGA) Tour events in the ’80s and ’90s, (in the) 2000s I won on the Korn Ferry (2002), and in 2010, I won the senior event,” Hallberg said, running through the storybook that is his career.
“My goal … if I can win one tournament (in the 2020s) – six decades – that would be pretty cool. At least I think so. That’s a lot of years, you know? I’m determined to do it.”