Sergeant Moody, HK Open Champion

Moody had a truly awful putting stroke which, despite a cross handed grip, was composed almost entirely of hinging his wrists. It was an ugly and dangerous thing to watch. As he admitted later: "Holding the putter was like trying to hold a rattlesnake. I hated to look at it even when I'd get on the green. It was kinda embarassing, I'd be putting and I'd be playing with Crenshaw or somebody and I'd look up and they'd be looking somewhere else. They wouldn't watch me putt. It was embarrassing to get up over a putt and here's these guys, they'd be looking off in the trees somewhere because they didn't wanna watch the stroke." Even his best friend Trevino was frank: "This man rolls it worse than anyone alive." Nevertheless, both men prospered beyond all expectations during their first couple of years on tour, with Trevino winning his first PGA event in 1968, a remarkable victory at the US Open.
In 1969, the US Open was held at the Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas. When facing the press asking about his chances, Trevino told them that if he didn’t repeat, Orville Moody would be the next Open champion because, said Lee, "He's one helluva player."
It was a staggering prediction. Known as “Sarge”, given his military background, Moody had only made the Open after scraping through local and sectional qualifying. In the event, he would become the last man to win after doing so.

After the second round, his putting was so bad that his fellow competitors Dale Douglas and Tony Jacklin gave him a putting lesson. It seemed to help, but even after a third round 68, he started the final round three shots behind Miller Barber. In the event, Barber collapsed to a 78 and Orville knew on the last that a par would win.
On 18, after hitting a driver straight down the middle, Moody hit a towering 5-iron to 14 feet. Then, to laughter from the pros watching in the clubhouse, he nervously replaced his own divot.
Luckily he only needed to two-putt the 18th for the title. His first putt was so bad, as he himself said watching it on film: “The ball almost hangs on the putter when I hit it. The putter almost moves faster than the ball.”
"He's about the worst putter of all our real good players," said fellow pro Johnny Pott, himself a cross-hander. “Remember his putt to win the Open? He looked like he hit it with a grease stick. He shook the thing off the blade. I told him he'll set cross-handed putting back 50 years."
His final round 72 gave him a 1-over-par total of 281. That was enough to win by one shot from a trio of players – future PGA Commissioner Deane Beman, Al "Mr 59" Geiberger and Bob Rosberg, who would later go on to work as a commentator for ABC. The latter two were also both former US PGA winners.
In taking the title, he made his first PGA win the US Open, which of course, his friend Lee Trevino had done the previous year. The only other player to have done so previously was Jack Nicklaus, in 1962.