The seventh annual golf tournament and dinner benefiting Fit Steps for Life is next week in Tyler. The dinner on Sunday, May 19, precedes the tournament to be played at The Cascades on Monday, May 20.Both events have limited spaces remaining. More information is available on line at www.fitstepsforlife.org or by calling (903) 561-0149.

The putt is etched in my mind forever. Watching on our black and white television in our living room, I was a 10-year-old boy just becoming fascinated with the game of golf that Saturday afternoon in June of 1963. 

Staring at a 12-foot putt to win the biggest prize in golf that evening was East Texan Jacky Cupit, a native of Longview who had already won the Canadian Open in 1961 when he was the rookie of the year on tour and then followed it up the next year with a win in the Western Open. 

The putt barely missed, grazing the edge of the cup before sliding by and Cupit would finish second the next day to winner Julius Boros with the great Arnold Palmer rounding out the trio who played an extra 18 holes to determine the US Open champion in 1963 at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. 

Now 81 and still enjoying his golf, Cupit will get a look at the putt along with clubhouse full of people attending the Legends for Life Dinner on Sunday, May 19 at Willow Brook Country Club in Tyler. He will be joined by fellow former touring pros Homero Blancas, Roy Pace, Marty Fleckman, Babe Hiskey and Dick Goetz to share such memories at the dinner to benefit the Fit Steps for Life program for cancer survivors. 

The program portion of the evening that follows the dinner includes a video presentation using highlight film for each golfer. Gleaned from the archives via YouTube, the US Open highlight reel from 1963 shows Cupit’s narrowly missed putt that elicited a groan from a crowd gathered for a similar event recently in Dallas. Cupit was asked if missing the putt was still painful. 

“No, not really,” Cupit said. “Being in that playoff for the US Open with Boros and Palmer is certainly a compliment to me. I hit a good putt but it just didn’t go in.” 

Cupit was a Tyler resident during his successful years on tour during the early 1960s. 

“I lived over on Brookside Drive in a house that Chad Hanna built for me and AJ Triggs was my neighbor,” Cupit said. “Those were some of my best days in golf because I won the Western Open in July of 1962 and moved into that house a couple of months later.” 

Cupit said he enjoys talking about Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, two of his contemporaries on tour during that time period. 

“I first played with Jack in the third and fourth rounds of the US Open in 1961 at Oakland Hills near Detroit and shot a 67 during the third round,” Cupit said. “That was the course (Ben) Hogan called ‘The Monster’ and the press made a big deal about me making five 3s in a row during that third round. I didn’t think too much of it at the time but looking back, that was quite an accomplishment. I shot 76 the final round and finished ninth but it led to a friendship with Jack that I have enjoyed through the years.” 

Nicklaus heard the story that Cupit amazingly never made a double bogey during one entire golf season at the University of Houston. 

“He would ask me about that and I remember him commenting that he felt that if he played a round without a three-putt or a 6, then he would have a good score.” 

Cupit became aware of the Fit Steps for Life program several years ago when his wife Pat was being treated for breast cancer and prescribed an exercise routine following radiation treatments. 

“I would go with her to the exercise classes and met her teacher who asked me if I played golf,” Cupit said. “I told her I did and she said I should check out the golf tournament to raise money for the program. I ended up putting together a team and then soon after that, was asked to be part of it and it has been something I have enjoyed from day one. I consider it a great honor to be asked to be part of something that is helping so many people.” 

Cupit said the Fit Steps for Life has really helped his wife. 

“She still goes to the classes,” Cupit said. “It helps her stay active and that’s so important. In fact, the Fit Steps for Life program would be good for anyone to use to stay active and healthy.” 

Like Cupit, the other pros on the dinner program have ties to East Texas through their golfing accomplishments. Blancas is known for shooting a 55 in 1962 at the Premier Golf Course in Longview, a round of golf once featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and like Cupit won the old Briarwood Invitational. 

Fleckman won two Briarwood Invitationals and the Texas Amateur in 1964 at Willow Brook. One of his wins at Briarwood came in a playoff against Pace, who also learned the game in Longview before playing on tour for 10 years and then becoming a successful club pro at Wee Burn Golf Club in Darien, Connecticut. 

Pace returned to Longview 17 years ago and started the First Tee of the Piney Woods. Goetz is one of three brothers who are golf pros and has become best known in Tyler and East Texas with his popular Texas Wounded Warriors tournament. 

Hiskey, like Cupit and Blancas and Fleckman, played his college golf at the University of Houston before turning pro and winning on the PGA Tour. He is humorous storyteller and likes to cite his rounds played with Nicklaus and Palmer. 

The dinner on Sunday night precedes the tournament to be played at The Cascades on Monday, May 20.

Both events have limited spaces remaining. More information is available on line at www.fitstepsforlife.org or by calling (903) 561-0149.