Bob Rosburg: Native Son, PGA Champion, ABC's Voice
Bob Rosburg (1926–2009) owns the best junior-golf story in San Francisco history. Born in the city and raised on the Olympic Club's junior program, at age 12 he faced retired baseball legend Ty Cobb in the first flight of the club championship — and beat the Georgia Peach 7&6. Club lore says Cobb was so embarrassed he never played there again (Stanford Athletics).
Player
Rosburg played baseball and golf at Stanford, where he was part of the 1946 national championship golf team, and turned pro in 1953 (Stanford Athletics). His career year was 1959: he came from six back with a closing 66 to win the PGA Championship over Jerry Barber and Doug Sanders, finished second at the U.S. Open, and made the Ryder Cup team (Wikipedia). With his PGA title, the San Francisco generation had claimed the first leg of its collective Grand Slam.
"Rossie"
ABC hired Rosburg in 1974, and he invented a job that hadn't existed: the on-course reporter, walking the fairways to call lies, distances and disasters the tower couldn't see (Golf Compendium). For roughly 31 years, "Rossie" was the voice in the fairway — famous for the verdict every viewer learned to dread: he's got no shot. He died in 2009 at 82 in La Quinta (Variety). Alongside Venturi at CBS and Miller at NBC, he made it possible to say that every network's golf voice was a San Franciscan.
