Dale Douglass modestly says he was a late bloomer, but he had brushes with fame from a fairly early age — even if he didn’t realize it at the time.
For one year at the University of Colorado, Douglass was even a Kappa Sigma fraternity brother of a guy named Robert Redford.
But Douglass would go on to gain some fame in his own right, which is one of the reasons he’s among the 10 people being inducted into the CU Athletic Hall of Fame on Thursday (Nov. 11). His credentials include three wins on the PGA Tour and 11 more on the Senior Tour, now known as the Champions Tour. Perhaps his most notable victory came in 1986 at the U.S. Senior Open, arguably the most prestigious tournament for players 50 and older.
Just five players in the history of golf have played more official PGA Tour-sponsored events than Douglass, who has 1,043 such tournaments to his credit (444 on the PGA Tour and 599 on the Champions circuit), a run which spans from 1963 through 2010.
And CU is where Douglass (pictured; photo courtesy of CU sports information) laid the foundation for that long and successful career in golf. As Douglass says now, “I never had a real job. I was blessed to play the game.”
The 74-year-old, who has lived at least part-time in Colorado for almost 60 years (he currently resides in Castle Rock during the summer), is no stranger to being inducted into halls of fame in Colorado. He’s also a member of the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame (1989), the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame (1977) and was part of the inaugural class of the CU Golf Hall of Fame (1989).
The current honor “must be some mistake,” Douglass said in his self-deprecating way. “My accomplishments during school weren’t very significant. Most of my accomplishments were after school.”
Though it’s been more than 50 years since Douglass played at CU, some of the memories from those days are indelible. When Douglass competed for the Buffs in the late 1950s, noted amateur Les Fowler was the volunteer coach for CU.
“Les was a wonderful player, probably as good or better than anyone on the team,” Douglass said this week by telephone from his winter home in Paradise Valley, Ariz.
When Douglass played for CU, college golf was a much different animal than it is today. Nowadays, almost all college tournaments are multi-team invitationals. Back in the 1950s, dual meets were the norm, with only a smattering of large-scale tournaments such as the Big Seven and Big Eight Championships and the New Mexico Tucker Invitational.
Back then, “we’d take CU vans — not fly — to tournaments,” Douglass said, remembering one of the more memorable trips he took. “We would take turns driving and one time we were going out to California and we stopped late at night, when everybody had been sleeping. There had been about two miles of signs that said “˜bridge out.’ But the guy driving continued on until he stopped right in front of where the bridge was really out.”
Douglass and his teammates survived that close call, and on one of those trips to California, he got a bit of a wake-up call from a playing-ability perspective. The Buffs were facing the University of Southern California in a dual meet at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, and Douglass was to play USC’s Al Geiberger, the man who would become famous for being the first player to break 60 in a PGA Tour event.
Geiberger was running a little late, but that didn’t keep him from making a 50-foot birdie putt on the first hole. “He beat me bad,” Douglass remembers. “That was the first really good player I played.”
But Douglass was certainly one of the better players in the Big Seven and Big Eight Conference, posting three top-eight finishes in the conference championships. He also owned a 33-6 individual record in dual matches.
“This past summer I played with some of the (current) CU players out at Colorado National, and I was impressed how serious they were,” Douglass said. “I was a serious golfer on our team.
“In the spring when the snow was melting I would go out to Boulder Country Club and chip from one dry area to another (amidst the patches of snow).”
Douglass graduated from CU in 1959 and turned pro in 1960, but it took a while for him to get a foothold on Tour. Until landing a spot in 1963, the Fort Morgan product taught golf in Casper, Wyo., and at Lakewood Country Club.
Once he did land a regular spot on Tour, he gradually moved up on the money list year to year until he peaked in 1969, when he won the Azalea Open and the Kemper Open, and played for the U.S. in the Ryder Cup. That year, Douglass finished 12thon the PGA Tour money list. The next year, he won his third and final Tour event, the Phoenix Open.
In 1986, after turning 50 and while calling Boulder home, Douglass had a major career revival, winning four times on the Champions Tour, including the U.S. Senior Open, and finished third on the money list. All in all, in the 11-year stretch from 1986 through 1996, Douglass won 11 Champions Tour titles.
Nowadays, Douglass competes only occasionally on the Champions Tour, though he still tries to keep his game in shape, out of force of habit if nothing else.
“People expect you to play well, so I have to keep it up,” he said.
