All-American Profile: Gary Hallberg
The First 4x NCAA 1st Team All-American
At the culmination of each college golf season, the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) and Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) announce the selections for the annual All-American golf teams, broken down into First team, Second team, Third team, and Honorable Mention categories. Being selected for any of these honors is an incredible achievement that isn’t taken lightly.
The distinctive plaques, shipped to each of the teams whose player made the list, are unboxed with as much excitement as any Christmas present, and proudly hung on the walls of modest to multi-million dollar golf facilities alike. Golf programs revel in the number of All-Americans counted among their alumni, making a particular effort to highlight those players who earned multiple entries in the record book.
In short, it’s kind of a big deal. Making the team more than once is more than newsworthy. Imagine not only earning that honor all four years of your collegiate career, but also being the first in NCAA golf history to be named to the First Team after every season! Today, in the first of a series made in conjunction with the GCAA, we examine the remarkable collegiate career of Wake Forest’s Gary Hallberg.
*NOTE: underlined text provides a link to references or sites with more information
BEFORE COLLEGE
Gary Hallberg didn’t come from a golfing family, but the sport found him all the same. He told the Chicago District Golfer (Aug 2024 edition) about his start in golf which included his father, a construction worker who immigrated with Gary’s mother from Sweden, discovering the game by chance and introducing golf to his 7 year old son. By 1973, at age 15, young Gary was setting course records (68 at Palatine Hills Golf Course) and finishing runner-up in the prestigious Orange Bowl Junior tournament after a playoff loss to future Buckeye hall of famer Mark Balen.
The Hallbergs moved to Barrington (northwest of Chicago) onto a 30-acre lot which was described in the Southern Illinoisan newspaper as having its “...own mini-sized 9-hole golf course...[including] a 230 yard hole over water and a 225-yard hole with trees hugging the green.” Apparently the practice area paid off as Gary won medalist honors in the 1974 state high school championship held at the University of Illinois’ Orange Course.
The next year he was competing against some of the top college and amateur players in the country in events such as the North & South where he lost in the match play section to the reigning NCAA champion Curtis Strange1. In July, he fell in a playoff to California Amateur Champ (and another future Buckeye legend of the 1979 NCAA championship team) John Cook at the Junior World Championship played at Torre Pines. That October, Hallberg achieved his greatest victory to date with a win at the Illinois state PGA Junior Championship.
Gary’s final year in high school, 1976, proved to be a major one for his young golfing career. In May, he again showed out at the North & South where he won medalist honors. The next month he qualified for the U.S. Open where he was the youngest player in the field. Shortly before entering Wake Forest, Hallberg won the 59th Western Junior Amateur held at Eugene Country Club, which proved to be a fitting segue into his collegiate career as Oregon had recently been awarded hosting responsibilities for the 1978 NCAA championship at the same course.
COLLEGE YEARS: WAKE FOREST
It’s not clear exactly when Wake Forest coach Jesse Haddock recruited Gary Hallberg, but we have to imagine that the exposure at the North & South played a major role. In any case, Hallberg attended Wake Forest beginning in the Fall of 1976 on a full-ride thanks to the Arnold Palmer Scholarship. Just a few months prior, Coach Haddock had shocked the college golf world by taking the job at Oral Roberts. This kicked off a very interesting coaching carousel which resulted in Wake Forest hiring Georgia Southern coach Ron Roberts. What played out in the backdrop of the first two seasons of Hallberg’s collegiate career makes his story even more interesting.
1976-77
Gary Hallberg was one of two big name freshmen to join Wake Forest for the 1976-77 season. Griff Moody of Athens, GA was also expected to compete right away for the team that was barely a year (and a coach) removed from winning the NCAA championship. Due to the fallout of the team [let’s be generous and call it disagreements], Moody would soon transfer to the University of Georgia, but will play a part in this story later.
Coming into college, Hallberg had already been saddled with great expectations as some were saying he might already be better than Curtis Strange at that age. Not only did he not disappoint, Hallberg was the country’s most successful freshman, accumulating 3 collegiate victories. His second event was the renowned Dixie Invitational which he won by three strokes thanks in part to a course record-setting second round 67/-5. Amidst everything else going on at Wake Forest, this quelled a few of the immediate concerns while simultaneously ramping up the comparisons with Strange who had earned his first college medalist honors at the very same event three years prior.
Hallberg’s second win came at the Palmetto Intercollegiate in March, where he set the tournament record with 203/-13. The very next event, the Iron Dukes, Gary captured his third win on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff with NC State’s Bill Hamilton.
The 1977 NCAA championship was a mixed bag of success and disappointment for the Demon Deacons. Hallberg stumbled early with a second round 83 and finished 19 strokes behind repeat champion Scott Simpson of Southern California as Wake Forest finished 10th in the team standings. There was some exciting news to come out of the weekend, however, as Wake Forest was announced as the host for the 1979 NCAA championship.
Outside of college golf, Hallberg took the North & South Amateur mantle from two-time reigning champ Curtis Strange, further pushing comparisons despite the NCAA results. Later that summer, he finished runner-up (again) to John Cook at the Sunnehanna. Both players were named as 1st Team All-American selections - the only two freshmen to receive the honor that season - and then members of the victorious 1977 USA Walker Cup team. Gary represented his country well, going 1-1-1 in his matches at Shinnecock Hills. If all of that wasn’t enough, he also won the Illinois State Open Championship.
1977-78
Hallberg showed up for his sophomore season and immediate picked up where he left off. The first tournament of three tournaments in the Fall portion of the season was the Foxfire Intercollegiate which Wake Forest won behind Gary’s fourth collegiate medalist honors. At the River City Intercollegiate in October, Hallberg was co-medalist with Rod Spittle (Ohio St) and Bill Britton (Florida), the former taking the short playoff. The final tournament at Cypress Gardens didn’t go so well and, rightly or not, proved to be the final nail in the Coach Ron Roberts coffin. By the beginning of December, Wake Forest announced the return of Coach Jesse Haddock for the Spring season.
I’m excited to have the opportunity to play under Coach Haddock. He recruited me, and I knew him pretty well. I think the others are excited, too. The freshmen don’t really know him, but I think everyone will shape up. It’s a new life, almost. We’re Starting all over again. That’s the way I’m going to approach it.
-Gary Hallberg (Winston-Salem Journal, Dec 1977)
Wake Forest found immediate success upon Haddock’s return, winning the Big Four followed by a convincing win at the Palmetto. Hallberg missed repeating as medalist by three strokes behind none other than Georgia’s Griff Moody. Less than a week later, Wake Forest finished well behind Oklahoma State playing at Pinehurst’s renowned No.2 course, but Gary defeated co-medalist Lindy Miller on the first hole of their playoff.
The next month, the pair competed in the 42nd Masters - thanks to fact US Walker Cup members were still invited if remained amateur - a practice dropped after 1988) where both made the cut. Immediately afterwards, a tired and slightly injured (elbow) Hallberg helped Wake Forest win its 11th ACC team title in 12 years (11 in a row for Coach Haddock). He posted the second best score on the team, just six strokes behind medalist and teammate Scott Hoch.
There wasn’t much college golf between the ACC in April and the NCAA championship in June, but Hallberg did keep busy. His quest to repeat at the North & South appeared to be in jeopardy due to a lower back injury ahead of the Finals match against Centenary’s Hal Sutton. Gary played through the pain, hitting punch shots through most of the morning round in an attempt not to overextend. Thankfully his back loosened up in the afternoon and he was able to take the title again, becoming the first teenager (19) to win the tournament multiple times.
The 1978 NCAA men’s golf championship marked a very interesting turning point in the sport’s history with the official switch over from counting a team’s AGGREGATE best four-man score at the end of the tournament to the DAILY 5-count-4 we know today. The championship was held at the same Eugene CC, site of Hallberg’s Western Junior Am victory two years prior. Although Wake Forest as a team struggled but still finished a respectable 7th, Hallberg finished T10, seven shots back of champion David Edwards [Ok St] and 5 back of his old roommate Griff Moody.
Another successful collegiate year consisting of three co-medalist performances (two “wins”) and a top 10 performance at NCAAs resulted in Gary Hallberg again being chosen as a First Team All-American. Almost immediately after the black-tie dinner that August in New York to celebrate, Hallberg traveled back to his home state to take the Illinois State Amateur Championship from Demon Deacon teammate Gary Pinns.
1978-79
Once again Gary Hallberg started his collegiate season with an individual and team victory at Foxfire. Three days later, he settled for second behind teammate Robert Wrenn at the 36-hole Grandfather Intercollegiate, undone by a triple bogey on the last hole after leading throughout. He ended the month with a third place finish at the Cypress Gardens Intercollegiate in Florida.
The final two months of 1978 were busy ones for Hallberg and other top collegiate players despite the lack of “actual” college golf tournaments. In November, an all-star list of 8 NCAA players teamed up for the 4th Annual US-Japan collegiate competition. After three days of competition at Pebble Beach and Spyglass, the Americans came out victorious (third time in four years) as Hallberg went 2-1 in his matches. Two weeks later in El Paso, Gary closed the Fall season with a victory at the prestigious Sun Bowl All-America Collegiate Classic, besting a field comprised 1st-2nd-3rd team All-American selections.
As the Spring season began, Hallberg and his Wake Forest teammates only had one thing on their minds: hosting the NCAA championship in the coming May at Bermuda Run. The path there was littered with plenty of team and individual runner-up finishes, but most of it was framed negatively; such as Hallberg’s T2 (with Hal Sutton) at the Pinehurst Intercollegiate where he finished with a +6/78 and just two strokes behind medalist Britt Harrison [Ok St]. A major bright spot was yet another team ACC title, Coach Haddock’s 12th. Here newspaper accounts wax poetic on Haddock’s disdain for the term “individual” yet also point out Gary Hallberg’s runner-up finish (by four strokes) as “possibly the only disappointment” in not also capturing the individual medal. He quickly made up for it, though, by shooting 65-68-72=205/-11 to win the Chris Schenkel Invitational. That, along with all his other many successes, led to him being presented with Wake Forest’s highest athletic honor: the Arnold Palmer Award.
The time for NCAAs had finally arrived:
“People probably will expect me to win the NCAA because it’s [at Wake Forest’s home course], but I won’t feel any pressure. You only feel pressure when you’re not prepared. And I’ll be ready.”
-Gary Hallberg (The Sentinel, Jan 1979)
Hallberg’s opening round 72 didn’t exactly shout preparedness, but it was good enough for 8th place while Wake Forest was in the middle of the pack at 16th. Soft conditions and a hot putter resulted in a second round 66 which moved him into 1st and the team into 3rd. The wind blew the following day, resulting in a third round 76 for Hallberg, who maintained a one stroke lead over Bobby Clampett [BYU], Joey Sindelar [Ohio St], and Wayne DeFrancesco [LSU]. Wake Forest hoped to make a run in the final round, but lost 11 strokes to Ohio State who leapfrogged over the Demon Deacons and four other teams to capture their first NCAA championship. Even as he was cruising to an NCAA individual title, a majority of Gary Hallberg focus was on the team result which undoubtedly made Coach Haddock extra proud:
“Although he observed Clampett’s every move, Hallberg said he didn’t know the size of his margin until he headed to the 17th tee. ‘Someone told me I had a five-shot lead,’ Hallberg said. ‘It surprised me. I thought it was closer. I was intent on keeping the team concept in mind. When I got to 17 and 18 I thought of the individual and I bogeyed both those holes.’ Hallberg’s bogeys were insignificant. Wake Forest finished five strokes behind second-place Oklahoma State and Hallberg won by three shots with his 73, one over par.”
Turning Down the Walker Cup for NCAAs
There was an extra layer to the NCAA championship and a reason why Hallberg preached about the team aspect despite winning as an individual. Just a few months prior, he and a few others had to turn down the opportunity to play in the 1979 Walker Cup at Muirfield in Scotland, choosing instead to represent their college team at NCAA championship. This is a fascinating drama which we will definitely be covering in a future post, but here is the short version: the NCAA and USGA failed to properly communicate when considering the dates of the NCAA champion and Walker Cup; due to the insistence that players be present for the week long festivities beyond just the golf, the collegiate players were put into the impossible position of choosing either their school or their country. Gary Hallberg, John Cook, and Bobby Clampett all chose the former and perhaps were rewarded with karma as Hallberg and Clampett finished 1-2 in the individual race while Cook’s Buckeyes took the team title.
Note: text from the above newspaper article is included in this footnote2
With both Hallberg and Cook earning First Team All-American status for the third year in a row (second in a row for Clampett), they became the 7th & 8th players to reach that milestone3. And once again, shortly following the All-America banquet in New York, Hallberg repeated at the Illinois State Amateur Championship, capping off a wildly successful 12 month stretch.
1979-80
On an individual level, Gary Hallberg had matched nearly all of Curtis Strange’s collegiate accomplishments through three seasons, leaving many to wonder - loudly and repeatedly - if the former was going to follow the latter onto the PGA Tour with an early exit from Wake Forest. Gary had always maintained that he was going to see it through four years to graduation, and that’s exactly what he did.
His senior year began somewhat unceremoniously, however, as academic eligibility prevented him from competing in the normal Fall tournaments. Hallberg started his final collegiate semester by winning the historic New Year’s Invitational held at Lakewood CC before returning to the team in full in the Spring and immediately finished runner-up with Mark Calcavecchia [Florida] at the weather-shortened Pinehurst Intercollegiate just behind Hal Sutton [Centenary].
Even in an abbreviated season, Gary Hallberg managed to differentiate himself in a way that elicited the following quote from Coach Haddock:
“This is one of the best performances by any Wake Forest team that I’ve coached. And that goes back a pretty good ways, doesn’t it?” -Coach Haddock (Winston-Salem Journal, Apr 1980)
This came after a conference record-setting performance at the ACC championship where Hallberg shot 67-69-68=204/-12 to capture individual medalist honors and lead the Demon Deacons to yet another team title by 30+ strokes. He followed that with a co-medalist showing at the Schenkel Invitational, falling to repeated rival Hal Sutton on their second playoff hole. A few weeks later, Sutton again beat Hallberg in extra holes when the pair met in the Semifinals match of the North & South, which Sutton would go on to win the following day.
Unfortunately, Wake Forest suffered an extremely disappointing showing at the NCAA championship held at Ohio State’s famed Scarlet Course. Hallberg quickly found himself far outside of contending for a repeat championship with an early 81, and the team failed to make the cut following the third round.
The disappointment of the NCAA championship was somewhat mitigated by the announcement of the 1980 All-American team selections. Gary Hallberg became the first player in the 12 year history of the awards to be named to the First Team all four years of his collegiate career.
AFTER COLLEGE
Gary Hallberg’s last amateur tournament was the 1980 Sunnehanna where he finished runner-up to BYU’s Bobby Clampett. Hallberg elected to turn pro in time for the Western Open and forego one last shot at the U.S. Amateur. Part of his decision was driven by the new rule that would allow players to earn their PGA Tour card by earning a set amount of money ($8,000) and thereby skip the daunting Q-school entirely. It only took Hallberg three weeks, securing the card with a third place finish at the Quad Cities Open where he finished behind former Wake Forest alum Scott Hoch and Curtis Strange. Funny enough, he had secured his PGA Tour card nearly a month before attending the annual All-America dinner in New York!
Hallberg was eventually named the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 1980. He went on to have a successful pro career, earning the first of three PGA Tour victories at the 1983 Isuzu-Andy Williams San Diego Open.
Given everything above, it’s no surprise that Hallberg is a member of multiple Halls of Fame including the Illinois Golf HoF, and was named to the Wake Forest athletic Hall of Fame. He was also one of 12 Wake Forest golfers recognized on the ACC's 50th Anniversary men's golf team in 2002. While Arnold Palmer is widely recognized as one of the greatest athletes to come out of Wake Forest, Gary Hallberg clearly belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of Demon Deacon golfing greats.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more All-American Profiles coming soon.
At that time, several of the big amateur tournaments such as the North & South was played before the end of the collegiate season. The 1975 N&S was played in May, so Strange was still the NCAA champ until he relinquished the title to teammate Jay Hass the following month.
“My country, may she always be right, but right or wrong, my country.” Stephen Decataur
The usually placid realm of collegiate and amateur golf might appear on the surface as the last sane place in the wide world of fun and games in this “me-first” era of sports. But, today, there’s turmoil aplenty right there, and this turmoil has swept up such stars as BYU’s Bobby Clampett, Weber State’s Mike Gove, Wake Forest’s Gary Hallberg, Stanford’s Doug Park, and Ohio State’s John Cook, and deposited them in the middle of a controversy - not of their doing - which has forced them to choose between their college and their country.
It’s a case of be damned if you do and be damned if you don’t and it is blatantly unfair to the golfers involved. It is hard to figure out who the heavy is in this drama, the NCAA or the United States Golf Association. Maybe neither is a real heavy, but both are guilty of failure to communicate with each other and failure to recognize the needs of the other regarding this year’s NCAA championships and Walker Cup matches. And caught smack in the middle are the nation’s leading collegiate players.
To understand the dilemma the golfers are in, it is necessary to remember that the NCAA championships are perhaps the most prestigious amateur tournament in the world because the nation’s college players are the world’s best amateur. And then remember that earning a berth on the Walker Cup team is the pinnacle as far as non-college amateur competition is concerned.
The Walker Cup involves a match pitting the best amateurs in the United States against the best amateurs in Great Britain. The matches are sponsored by the USGA and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, the directing fathers of world wide amateur golf. The match is - in the words of a USGA spokesman - more than a golf competition. For the players it is an experience of being an integral part of a team representing the United States. It is the pioneer in the use of golf team matches to foster international competition and good will. It is a vital part of the relationship between the USGA and the Royal and Ancient. An important part - and a traditional part - of the match is the arrival of the respective teams at the site and the preparation and other activities that build to the playing of the match itself. The players need time to adjust to time change and the unusual wind, turf, and other characteristics of Muirfield. The match is foursome play that requires time and practice to understand fully and play properly.
The U.S. team must be in Scotland by May 24 and it is not possible to have part of the team there at one time and part another. The 1979 match was scheduled by the British years ago. It is precisely scheduled so as to permit members of the respective teams to participate in the British Amateur Championships the following week. No change in the scheduling at the end is possible.
Okay, in that long paragraph is the essence of the problem. Ordinarily it wouldn’t be a problem because the NCAA usually holds its championships in June and there is no conflict with the Walker Cup match. But last year the NCAA made a mandate that all championships must be started before the end of May. The 1979 tournament was awarded to Wake Forest and scheduled for Memorial Day weekend, starting Wednesday, May 30. Then, according to BYU coach Karl Tucker who is a member of the NCAA selection committee the coaches discovered that May 30 was also the starting date for the Walker Cup match in Scotland.
The Walker Cup team consists of of the best amateurs in the country and the top six, at least, come from the college ranks with Clampett the undisputed number one. If the NCAA were to be held at the original date, the college players would have to chose which event they wanted to participate in. So, the coaches asked the NCAA to change the date and the NCAA obliged by advancing the date to May 23. But in doing so the NCAA, for some reason, didn’t bother to talk to the USGA about the move. There was no communication between the two groups.
BYU and most of the other top NCAA teams and players were Mexico when the coaches became concerned about the way golfers could compete in both events. Tucker had just arrived back in Provo when he received a phone call from USGA President Sandy Tatum. “We have a problem,” Tatum said. Then he said it was necessary for the college players to leave the country May 23, the date the NCAA was to begin.
Tucker and the other coaches asked the NCAA to change the dates of the tournament again, preferably back to June. Then they asked the USGA to bend the rules slightly and allow the college players to arrive late, after playing in the NCAA championships. The NCAA, not recognizing the importance of playing in the Walker Cup, refused to change the tournament date. The USGA refused to break tradition and allow some of the collegians to report to Scotland late.
Now the golfers, themselves, had to make a decision as to which event they wanted to participate in. When Clampett sat down with Tucker to talk things over, Karl told him he wasn’t going to give him any advice because he had to make up his own mind. “Bobby took five seconds and told me that when he came here he honestly felt BYU had a chance to win the national championship and he was not going to turn his back on that chance now. He was going to play in the NCAA,” Tucker said.
Now when you realize playing in the Walker Cup means, among other things, an automatic bid to the Master’s, you realize how hard it must have been for Clampett to pass the Walker Cup. Some of the others didn’t. Gove took the Walker Cup and so did Park of Stanford.
The result of it all is that this year’s U.S. Walker Cup team will not include all the top 10 amateurs in the country. And the NCAA will be without some of its top individuals. This, in turn, might keep some of the teams such as Weber State and Stanford cut, too, because they will have compiled their good records with golfers who won’t be in the tournament.
It’s a mess. And there is no reason for it. The conflict in dates was discovered in time. All the NCAA and USGA had to do back then was get together and talk. It would have solved everything. But they didn’t do that. Each went its own way and will now bump heads. And the players are the ones who will be hurt in collision.
John Konsek [Purdue] 1958-60, Ben Crenshaw [Texas] 1971-73, Gary Koch [Florida] 1972-74, Curtis Strange [Wake Forest] 1974-76, Keith Fergus [Houston] 1974-76, Lindy Miller [Oklahoma State] 1976-78, Hallberg & Cook, Bobby Clampett [BYU] 1978-80...others later