Few people know that Roberto de Vicenzo is the professional with the most victories in history. The Argentine player treasured no less than 215 victories, including the 1953 (paired with Antonio Cerdá), 1962 and 1970 (singles) World Championships. But De Vicenzo was best known in the world of golf for a major mistake, the one he made in the last round of the 1968 Augusta Masters. He had played one of the best final rounds in the history of the tournament, with 31 strokes in the first half for a total of 65, and it was his 45th birthday. With that score, he should have played a playoff for the victory the next day against Bob Goalby. However, the joy turned into a tremendous sadness: his partner Tommy Aaron had made a mistake on the Argentinean’s card and scored four strokes on the 17th hole when in fact De Vicenzo had made three. Roberto did not notice the mistake and signed the card. That result, with one more stroke, meant that he could not play in the playoff.
How stupid of me,” he lamented. Three weeks later, he would win one of the five titles he won on the U.S. Tour, the Houston Open. His only Grand Slam victory came in 1967 at the British Open, a tournament he came close to winning on several occasions, as he finished in the top five nine times.
De Vicenzo was born on April 14, 1923 in Chilavert, province of Buenos Aires. At the age of 7 he was already playing the sport that would later become his passion and his livelihood. “I liked it so much,” he recalled as an adult, “that at home I would grab a wicker stick and hit anything that was spherical.”
Humble family
De Vicenzo came from a humble family and as a child he had to lend a hand at home, preparing food for his younger siblings. But before, early on, he had already plunged into the icy water of the lakes of some golf course rescuing balls that earned him tips to contribute to the family’s precarious economy.
His great skill with the clubs changed his destiny and, as an adult, he became the best Argentine golfer of all time and one of the five Argentine sportsmen of the 20th century, according to the vote of the Circle of Sports Journalists, which placed him at that level together with Diego Maradona, Juan Manuel Fangio, Guillermo Vilas and Carlos Monzón.
De Vicenzo made his professional debut in 1938, at the age of 15, and played the first 36 holes of the Argentine Open, having missed the cut. He arrived at Ranelagh Club in 1940 as assistant to professional Armando Rossi. In 1942 he won his first tournament, the Litoral Open, in Rosario. His prestige skyrocketed that same year when he won the Westinghouse Grand Prix in the United States, his first international title.
But his great moment of glory came in 1967 when he won the British Open, the most prestigious tournament in the world, beating the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. He was 44 years old and was already considered a veteran with few opportunities, but he, who was considered among the top 10 golfers in the world, responded by winning that tournament. The following year would be the year of his ‘famous’ Augusta Masters, when an error in the sum of the strokes on his card relegated him to second place and he lost the option of the playoff.
De Vicenzo won open nationals in 16 countries on 42 occasions. In 1974 he was World Veterans Champion and in 1983 he won his last great victory, at the Merryl Lynch in the United States. In 1968 he was distinguished with the Richardson award for best player of the year; in 1969, he received the Bobby Jones trophy, awarded by the Professional Golfers Association of the United States (PGA) to the best golfer of the year; in 1970, he was appointed honorary member of the Royal Golfers Association. He is an honorary member of the Saint Andrews Club, an institution founded in 1513 and creator and supervisor of the rules of the sport of golf, and in 1979 he was inducted into the exclusive Golf Hall of Fame of the Professional Golfers Association of the United States. Her favorite definition is the following: “I play and I feel a communication, the little ball seems to beat, it goes up the club and into oneself. Golf is this, a shared feeling”.
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