SAN ANTONIO — It’s been 26 long years since David Ogrin posted his debut victory on the PGA Tour — one in which he held off a youngster named Tiger Woods — and although the memory of the win fades, Ogrin was recently noteworthy thanks to an unbecoming stat.
Ogrin was the last player to make a triple-bogey during the final round of his first PGA Tour victory, a distinction he almost kicked when Davis Riley nearly did the same at the Valspar Championship (although Riley later lost in a playoff).
Ogrin held on for the victory and the $216,000 top prize at the 1996 Texas Open, edging Woods by two strokes and Jay Haas by one at La Cantera Golf Club, all despite a triple on the par-3 sixth hole and a bogey on the tournament’s final hole.
When Ogrin saw his name pop up on a recent broadcast, he admits he laughed.
“That was one of those stats I saw and I went, ‘well, isn’t that interesting,’ ” he said this week. “I mean, it happened. I made triple and won the tournament anyway.”
Now the owner of a golf academy in New Braunfels, a small but bustling city just a half-hour ride from TPC San Antonio, Ogrin said the memory of his victory is starting to fade. As the tournament celebrates its 100th anniversary — making it the sixth-oldest golf tournament in the world, the third oldest on Tour and the longest held in the same city — Ogrin realizes his chapter is falling farther back in the book.
“Time has a way of eroding excitement,” he said. “So I won in 1996, and we can play games like this — it was 26 years ago, so that’s as close to us today as it would be the other way to the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Perspective changes things.”
As for Woods, who has been the buzz of the golf world since news broke that he was testing out his leg with some time at Augusta National in advance of next week’s Masters, Ogrin’s running joke is that he “beat him so bad that Tiger never came back.” Woods’ appearance in 1996 marked his only trip to the tournament.
But Ogrin said that while he was thrilled to hang on and beat Woods at La Cantera, he knew he was witnessing something special. In fact, he said, almost everyone did.
“About the only Tour player who didn’t think Tiger Woods was going to be Tiger Woods was Curtis Strange,” Ogrin joked, referencing a famous interview between the two-time U.S. Open champ and a wide-eyed Woods. “Anybody who was paying attention knew. And I was paying attention. And if you can’t tell, I’m a huge Tiger Woods fan.
“Tiger went on to have a pretty good career. I’m currently between win one and two.”
As for the current venue for the Texas Open, Ogrin insists the Tour has the right one when it comes to San Antonio. The tournament has spent time at historic Brackenridge Park Golf Course, Willow Springs Golf Course, Ft. Sam Houston Golf Course, Oak Hills Country Club, Pecan Valley Woodlake Golf Club, and the Resort Course at La Cantera before moving to its current home, The Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio.
“It’s being played exactly where it should be played. There’s no other course in San Antonio that is up to the task of hosting the PGA Tournament at the level that the guys play at now,” he said. “These days you need a footprint as big as TPC for a PGA Tour event. When you play that course from the back tees or a combination of the two back tees, which they’ll use, it is a true test of modern golf skill. But if we go play it, if we play anything farther back than the green tees, we should be indicted for idiocy. I go play it at 6,200 yards and I think it’s a blast.”
So should you look for Ogrin during this week’s festivities, especially with the tournament celebrating a major milestone?
“Because I’m old and cranky and run a business I don’t think I’ll go,” he said. “There have been a couple regime changes with the Texas Open, and in those changes, I’ve lost a lot of my contacts. I’m just basically a former champion who’s a civilian in relation to the tournament. They invited me to one of the events — I went and had lunch with Lee Trevino — but that’s the last time anyone contacted me. So I probably won’t make it.”
Well, there is an exception.
“The only thing that will get me out to the Texas Open on Sunday is if there’s a chance Jimmy Walker can win again,” Ogrin said. “Then I might make the trip.”
