Author’s note: The 124th U.S. Open will take place in Pinehurst, North Carolina, June 10-16. As with many events and passages in American sports history, Native Americans role in the U.S. Open has been underplayed, from Oscar Smith Bunn (Shinnecock Montauk) playing in the 1896 and 1899 events – to a Native champion, Orville Moody, a man whose grandmother walked on the Choctaw Trail of Tears. Moody won the 69th U.S. Open in 1969 at Cypress Grove. Below, his family recounts the story.
Mark Wagner
Special to ICT
Orville Moody was known as “Sarge” in part because of his long history in the U.S. Army, and for his everyman persona. So when he won the 69th U.S. Open in 1969 at Cypress Creek, little attention was paid to Moody’s triumph as a Native son. But the Choctaw Nation whooped it up.
“They had a parade in Anadarko,” Junior Moody recalls. “He couldn’t be there for one reason or another, so his mother and some of us went. She rode in the car. I was just a young kid.”
Junior was 10 years old when his uncle received his eagle headdress and the proclamation: Indian of the Year, 1969.
Moody’s Native heritage may have been ignored due to the Vietnam War and Orville’s 14-year history in the service. Perhaps it was the social unrest or the Moon landing. Whatever the reasons, the Choctaw Nation did not miss the beat.
“About his mom, Sarah,” Junior notes, “he used to talk about how her family walked the Trail of Tears. Her parents had walked. That’s how they got to Chickasha. Grandma Moody. When I was in fifth grade, she was 89. She was considerably older when she had him. He was the youngest of 10.”
Junior would have been the proverbial kid at the candy shop window, watching his grandmother sitting in a big, yellow convertible that had the family name on it.
“I can still see her face like it was yesterday. All the Indians had their feathers on, for a golfer,” Junior says. “It’s still a bit unbelievable.”
The parade is now called the American Indian Expo and has gone on for 89 years. In 1969, the star of the show was a man they called Sarge on the PGA Tour: Orville Moody, Choctaw, Everyman. He had captured the U.S. Open with a 14-inch putt that held off a playoff with three players lingering one stroke behind.
While her son was unable to ride in the parade, Orville’s mother Sarah soaked in the glory, riding past the Hall of Fame of Famous Indians, which would have included, and fittingly enough, a monument for Most decorated Indian soldier in U.S. history. Pascal Cleatus Poolaw (Kiowa Warrior), who received 42 awards and medals for exceptional bravery.
And what Junior doesn’t remember about that day, his father, Leon Spanky Moody does: “Yay. His mother had to ride for him, that’s true. Orville had to play a tour event in Oklahoma City that day, but he returned at night. He was in a big dance thing. Orville got out there and danced, danced out there with the ladies in their gear and everything.”
Moody was “Sarge.” An Everyman. A great ball striker, but with the yips. Reflecting on his life after emerging from the U.S. Army and winning the U.S. Open, Orville is reported to have said, “I always had a place to sleep, a place to eat, and I always got paid. The money is too good to go back now, but I was happier then.” He was comfortable as an everyman, as Sarge. Even Bob Hope had a joke about that Everyman persona: “Moody was on the tour for two years before he stopped saluting his caddie.”
The stories roll off the Moody Clan’s tongues with considerable glee. All of them agree that Orville Moody’s name would be a household name – like Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus – if only he could putt.
“He was the best ball striker out there,” Junior recalls. “If he could putt during his heyday, he would have been up there with Nicklaus, Palmer. Trevino used to say that all the time. He could hit it good, but then would get the yips.” Orville Moody is part of all of us for this as well: from tee to green is the easy part, from green to cup is a gauntlet of an outsized challenge.
“He couldn’t putt,” Leon Spanky says with a laugh. He remembers following Orville one year at the Colonial. “On the 17th green, Orville had a one-foot putt. Well, he hits the thing, and it sits on the edge for a long second before it drops. I was in the gallery, and Orville looked at me and said, ‘If that didn’t drop, I was going to quit.’ He used some choice words at that. … We all could hit it real good, but Orville struggled with the putting.”
All that changed on the Senior Tour for two reasons. One, he took his teenage daughter Michelle on as a caddy, and two, he started using a long putter. Michelle won’t take complete credit for her father’s resurgence as a senior.
“Credit where credit is due,” she says. “There was a golfer named Charlie Owens. He deserves credit ‘cause he was a great guy. He was a paratrooper in the military, and he could not bend over. One of his knees was fused. Might have been his left one. He used a long putter, and dad said, let me try that. After that, he fashioned his own long putter. I’ve still got it at my house.”
It’s got to be … the putter?
“I could read greens,” Michelle says humbly. “If it got dark or cloudy, I would read greens, ‘cause dad would struggle to see clear. I was an extra assurance with him. A second set of eyes. … And I could keep him calm.”
Long before Nick Faldo had Fanny, Melissa Moody-Blackmon was the pretty, blonde caddy lugging around a giant bag. She remembers her father, like many an Army vet, had some choice vocabulary. And an attitude! In one tournament – maybe it was in 1987 – Orville ripped the head off his putter with three holes left to play.
“I do remember that,” Michelle says. “He got mad after he missed a putt. We were up in New York I think. He came to the fringe with a putter that he had designed. A mallet head. He didn’t rip it off. He tapped it down on a sprinkler head, and the head fell off. And I looked at the other caddy, and my eyes got big. Dad said, ‘Dammit Michelle!’ Like it was my fault. We had three holes left, and he’s putting with an iron of some sort. … Well, we were coming up on the last, and there’s a crowd, and I‘m praying silently, ‘God, can you just make this end?’ Didn’t you know he holed it out on that last hole, and we didn’t have to putt.”
Golf is not the first sport one thinks of in Native American history, but the history has not erased the Moodys’ collective memories or the family’s talent in the ball and club game.
Leon Spanky Moody might not have won a PGA event, but his exploits in golf rival his uncle. At one time Spanky held every course record in Lawton, Oklahoma. Now 88, he drives a club car for the Comanche Casino, but his memory of his days alongside his uncle, the Indian of the Year, are unabated.
“We went everywhere together. Fishing and hunting, and we played a lot of golf. I held the record at Lawton Country Club, and Orville came visiting off the tour. Well, he set a new course record at 62. First time playing it. He was playing good golf then.”
And while Spanky Moody now drives would-be VIPs around the casino, his son Junior is still on a golf course. Turning off his lawnmower to talk, he recalled proud memories of his father, Leon, who worked at just about every course in Lawton. And Junior’s sons work at a golf course in Duncan. The Moody family goes so far back, the names don’t come easy. “My great granddad … I never met him. Then there’s Dale, Cleve, Leon, Spanky, Michelle … Orville. Lloyd, Orville’s brother, he could break par shooting both left- and right-handed. Every one of us is in the golf business still.”
Junior agrees the time has come for a history of Natives in golf.
“All of us have our cards,” Junior says. “The Moody clan are all registered Choctaw tribal members.” Their lives are anchored in the heart of Indian Country, where the Trail of Tears became lives lived for family and country and – surprise – golf. Orville’s father Cleeve was the greenskeeper at Chickasha Country Club, where young Orville got his start. The family later moved to El Reno, Oklahoma, and then Oklahoma City, where Orville started at Capitol Hill High School as a junior.
“He became a good golfer at that time,” Junior Moody said. “He won the state championship there at Capitol Hill.”
After high school, well, Orville’s story gets a little complicated. Even though he didn’t play football, he won a football scholarship to Oklahoma University. And a scholarship at that time was more like work study.
“He was in charge of making sure the tennis courts were there,” Michelle says with a laugh. “That was just what they paid him for.” Kind of like a no-show, government job. Anyway, it didn’t work out. Six weeks into his college career, his girlfriend back home broke up with him, and Orville joined the Army and served for 14 years. Eventually, his duties became organizing and maintaining golf operations within the Army. And he won the Korean Open three times while still in fatigues and quarter tones.
“Some general liked Orville real well,” Leon recalls. “So that general got him placed in Special Services and took Orville everywhere he went. When that general went to Korea, he took Orville with him. To Seoul. He taught the Korean ladies how to caddy. And now look, they’re tearing up our tour.”
One of the family’s favorite Orville Moody stories involves Lee Trevino who had gone on a tour of Korea to entertain the troops. Trevino bursts into the golf shop on the post and says, “Who’s your best golfer? I want to play him.”
“Well,” Junior laughs in that soft Oklahoma lilt, “Orville steps up and says, ‘I’ll play you.’ He went out and beat the stuffing out of Trevino. They became friends for life.”
They also became playing partners. In the 1969 World Cup in Singapore – what could be considered an all-Indigenous team – Moody and Trevion represented the U.S. The duo won by eight strokes over the Japan team of Takaaki Kono and Haruo Yasuda.
A family thing
Michelle Moody-Blackmon is now what she calls a fair-weather golfer. “When it’s sunny and warm and the course is dry, I play.” Her son Brody is carrying on the tradition of competitive golf. He starred at Ole Miss and recently placed in the top 32 at a qualifier. And she is happy to restore the history of her father’s triumphs.
“People forget the Senior U.S. Open victory as well,” she says. “It was at Laurel Valley. Near where Arnold Palmer was from. We were sitting in the club house with Eddie Price, my dad’s friend from the service. We saw Frank Beard go off to the range. And Eddie says, he’s gonna be done after 9. We sat in the clubhouse until ten minutes before tee time. We never hit a range ball that week. It was too hot. … On the last hole (a par five), Frank Beard was done, and people in the gallery were yelling for dad to go for the green in two. He walked over to the crowd and told them, ‘Look. You all are crazy. I’m going to hit an eight iron, then pitch onto the green and two putt to win the U.S. Open. … After we won, we drove out and ate dinner at a Dairy Queen.”
The stories fall easily out of the Moodys’ collective memories, all meant to honor their family and tribe, with Orville being the most well-known. And the accolades don’t take the shine off his just-one-of-us personality. High school star, college drop-out, Sarge in the Army, married a cocktail waitress he met on the tour. The stories live on and Orville could tell them, too.
Junior recalls one tournament, during a rain delay at a pro-am, their foursome all huddled in a shed out of the rain, “We were playing at Falcon Head, and there was a guy named Danny Williams who had a TV show out of the city. He was an Indian, too. When the rain started, and we took some cover, and Williams asks Orville to tell a story. Well, he started telling stories about the tour and the Army. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to bust a gut.”
The press didn’t make much of Sarge’s Native heritage, but every Choctaw knew the family had walked the trail and now took the flag at 69th U.S. Open in 1969. Michelle recalls that his eagle headdress hung for years in the living room.
How good of a golfer was Orville Moody? Michelle’s favorite story comes from the Senior Open.
“We were at the Open, or maybe it was a pro-am, ’cause they were notoriously slow.” Michelle’s voice is filled with a hint of delight. “We were stuck on a par three and there is a noisy seabird perched in a tree. My dad said, ‘Michelle, give me a seven iron.’ I asked him what he needed a seven iron for. He said, I’m going to get that bird out of the tree. I told him I wouldn’t give it to him ‘cause he would kill that bird. That’s when he said, I’ll hit it between its feet. .. Sure enough, he hit that ball right between his feet, and the bird flew off. That’s how good he was.”
Everyman. Sarge. Open champion. 1969 Indian, er, Native American of the Year.
If only he could putt.
This story, “Indian of the Year,” is adapted from Mark Wagner’s book “Native Links, The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf,” due out this summer on Back Nine Press.
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