Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (28 page)

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Authors: Adam Lazarus

Tags: #Palmer; Arnold;, #Golfers, #Golf, #Golf - General, #Pennsylvania, #Sports & Recreation, #Sports, #United States, #Oakmont (Allegheny County), #Golf courses, #1929-, #History

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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During Saturday afternoon’s third round, Weiskopf surged ahead and built a two-stroke lead, thanks to four back-nine birdies that inspired his third consecutive round of 68.
“I won’t play it conservative; I’m an aggressive player,” he insisted when talking about his strategy for the final round.
Paired with Wadkins in the last round, Weiskopf started spectacularly, posting a four under 32 on the front nine that was sparked by three consecutive birdies. The last birdie signaled that no one was going to stop him from taking the top prize that week. When his tee shot on the 548-yard, par-five ninth landed so close to a tree that he couldn’t take a full swing, Tom boldly smacked a one-iron into the adjacent fairway. He then pitched to three feet and made his birdie to push his lead to four strokes. From there he coasted with an even-par back nine for the victory.
“I’ve always considered myself a good putter, but I can’t imagine anybody putting better for three weeks in a row than I [was] putting at the Colonial, Atlanta, and here. I’m not saying it’s easy. But it’s almost easy for me. I just feel so good,” he told reporters. “I wanted to win so badly last night I didn’t sleep well at all. The way I looked at it is if I didn’t win, it would be a shame because I’m playing so well. I felt the pressure on me to win. That’s why this win means so much to me.”
The triumph at Kemper gave Tom the first repeat victory of his career—a feat he set out to duplicate the very next week when the tour returned to Whitemarsh Valley Country Club for the IVB Philadelphia Open. And this time, the field included his idol, Jack Nicklaus.
Weiskopf made an early statement to his doubters, following up an even-par front nine with a breathtaking five under 31 on the back. He stumbled a bit on Friday (though he posted five birdies, he also ran into a string of bogeys), and trailed an unknown twenty-three-year-old pro, Jim Barber, by six strokes after the weekend cut.
“Who is Jim Barber? I never heard of him,” Weiskopf wondered aloud in an unintended display of arrogance that delighted reporters but upset his tour colleagues. “That’s a great score, but I’m not out of this yet.”
Weiskopf certainly was not out of it, and to back up his remarks he fired eight birdies against just one bogey on Saturday. Unshaken by frequent wildness off the tee, he relied on precision putting to scramble brilliantly, one-putting eight greens. After the round, he led by three shots.
“My attitude is always positive, no more negative thoughts,” he said. “I think I finally know what makes me tick. I set some high goals after the Masters and now I’m setting higher ones. I have no new shots, but I’m making all the makeable putts, and I’m not making any silly mistakes. Maybe it’s maturity... or experience... or confidence.”
Unlike the raw nerves he had experienced at the Kemper Open, Weiskopf slept soundly the night before the final round in Philadelphia, and he was not shy about predicting the outcome.
“I was driving out to the course before the final round and told my wife, Jeanne, ‘They’re not going to beat me.’ Someone would have to shoot an exceptional round to catch me, because I knew I wasn’t going to shoot over par. It may sound cocky but that’s the way I felt.”
Again, Weiskopf drove wildly during the final round, missing seven fairways; he also lost his magical putting touch and three-putted three greens. But no one in the stellar field seriously challenged him—though Nicklaus did match the day’s low, 67—and Weiskopf calmly closed out with a par on the eighteenth for his third victory of the young, topsy-turvy season. He not only had his seventeenth consecutive par-or-better round; he set a PGA tour record by winning $117,145 in just four weeks. The three wins and one runner-up finish meant more to him than the dollars.
“Winning is the hardest thing to do,” he stated. “There’s always pressure on you, whether you win by one or six. If I don’t get an ulcer in the next month it will be an amazing thing. Someone, I don’t remember who, said that we all create our own pressures. I think that’s true. If you stand there and think about water to the right and trap to the left and the trouble and all the things that can go wrong, you’re creating your own pressure. But if you stand over the shot and say, ‘I have the ability to execute this shot,’ then commit yourself to it, well, that’s something else.”
In a matter of weeks, Weiskopf had at last begun to demonstrate that he fit securely among the tour’s elite. He blew away the field. He won with less-than-stellar play. He came from behind to win. He won with fine putting. He won with his trademark booming drives. He even outplayed the tour’s undisputed master at Philadelphia.
But, fittingly, it was Nicklaus who pointed out the gaping hole that remained on Weiskopf’s resume.
“I’ve always said that Tom has more talent than anybody in the game,” Nicklaus told a hometown reporter from Columbus just before the start of the 1973 U.S. Open. “But he’s been slow to use it. He’s finally taking advantage of what he’s always had. The big test for Tom is a major championship. He needs one of those wins to set him off. So far, he’s been his own worst enemy.”
The Golden Bear was not alone in believing that before Weiskopf could authentically wear the crown of greatness, he needed to triumph on the game’s most grueling battlefields, the major championships. A close pal, former British Open champion Tony Jacklin, echoed Nicklaus’s sentiment.
“It should have happened five years ago,” Jacklin said. “He has better temperament because he is maturing. I’m not surprised at all the way he has been playing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he won seven in a row. He’s the only man who could beat Nicklaus. He can hit the ball farther and his swing is as good as Jack’s, but Nicklaus has the perfect temperament. But Weiskopf can’t be regarded as a great player until he wins a major tournament.”
Weiskopf himself readily conceded what a victory in one of the big-four major championships would mean for his career and self-esteem.
“I feel I’m an awful good player but the great players win the major tournaments. The U.S. Open is the premier tournament because of the shots it requires . . . every facet requires a premium,” he told reporters on the eve of the seventy-third U.S. Open at Oakmont.
“I can’t put myself in the class of Nicklaus or Trevino or Palmer—can’t call myself great—unless I win a major championship.”
Weiskopf left no doubt: At Oakmont, he would be chasing greatness.
 
BILLY CASPER’S CONCESSION THAT WEISKOPF’S extraordinary length provided a decided advantage at Oakmont only bolstered Weiskopf’s belief that this was his moment to win a major.
“I’ve driven well the last three tournaments. Why should I lay up now?” he asked. “I think these fairways are the widest I’ve ever seen for the Open—I may eat my words later in the week—but they almost have to be because of the greens. They’re what it really boils down to. Once you get to the green, your work is cut out for you.”
A bit overshadowed on opening day—he was paired with Gary Player during the South African’s record-tying 67—Weiskopf was unable to extend his par-or-better streak when he shot a two-over-par 73.
“But I’m not discouraged. It could have easily been a seventy, by making a few putts. I missed five putts between eight and twelve feet for birdies.
“[It] was those greens that did it. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Alert to the unspoken, yet obvious Nicklaus-Weiskopf rivalry regarding who was longer off the tee, reporters probed the younger Buckeye for commentary on Nicklaus’s first-round eagle two on number seventeen.
“The wind wasn’t behind my back,” he said. “But if Jack can drive it on the green, I can drive it on the green.”
Weiskopf shot “a very easy sixty-nine” on Friday to climb back into the hunt. Though experiencing some trouble off the tee that sent him scurrying afterward to the driving range—“I’m trying to drive it right to left, but I’m hitting the ball straight”—Weiskopf maintained a solid position at the halfway point, locked in a tie for sixth. His total of even-par 142 meant that only five players owned better scores.
“I feel I’m in excellent position to win this tournament,” he said afterward. “Five strokes in an Open is nothing, and quite truthfully, I feel lean and mean.
Gene Borek, the Long Island club professional who broke the course record with a second-round 65, was Weiskopf’s unlikely partner on Saturday. And not surprisingly, the understated career club professional and the rich, brash touring pro had little in common.
“Weiskopf mainly kept to himself,” Borek remembered years later. “He came across as a somewhat aloof kind of guy; you felt that when he walked into the locker room, he could see right through you. Most guys say hello and give you some kind of acknowledgment when they pass by you in the locker room. With Weiskopf on some days, it was like you didn’t exist.”
Weiskopf drove the ball exceptionally well on Saturday, missing only a single fairway. He overcame an early bogey by sinking midlength birdie putts on numbers three and five, only to have a three-putt on the eighth drop him back to even par for the tournament, and more than a half dozen strokes behind the leaders. He also was unable to gain a stroke on the par-five ninth, an essential birdie hole for one of the game’s longest hitters.
Weiskopf gained ground by sinking a tricky twelve-footer for birdie on the eleventh, but he not only failed to birdie the twelfth but bogeyed the par-five. Comfortably on the green in three, he stared down a slippery, twenty-five-foot birdie putt. Even after Borek—on the same line, a little farther away—showed how slick the green was by putting well past the hole, Weiskopf also stroked too firmly, and the ball galloped beyond Borek’s. Weiskopf flailed at the comeback putt, and was lucky to escape with a bogey six.
One over for the last two par-fives, Weiskopf gave vital strokes back to the field precisely where he had to catch up. Tellingly, however, even after botching the twelfth, the Tom Weiskopf of 1973 did not implode; instead, he put his failings in perspective and moved on.
“I knocked my first putt past so hard that I had almost an impossible putt coming back. I was actually afraid I could four-putt,” he said. “I was so hot, really steaming. But I said to myself, ‘This is ridiculous. You made the mental error, but don’t let it ruin your day. Put it behind you.’ A couple years ago, a thing like that would have destroyed me. But I’m more patient now.”
On number fifteen, Weiskopf’s newfound patience paid off. He mishit a four-iron that sailed left and struck a spectator, settling into deep green-side rough. He was left with an unpredictable chip to a green that ran sharply away from him, with a huge, deep bunker looming beyond. Facing another possible disaster, he calmly chopped the ball to within twelve feet of the flagstick, after which he deftly sank the putt.
“It was like an eagle,” he acknowledged afterward.
After a solid par on number sixteen, Weiskopf approached the short, par-four seventeenth knowing that this was a birdie opportunity he simply couldn’t miss if he wanted to contend for the championship. A well-placed long iron off the tee put him seventy yards from the pin, and after a decent pitch, he rolled in the slick, downhill eighteen-foot birdie to go one under par for the day and the tournament.
At the final hole, Weiskopf again tattooed his drive and stroked a towering high iron onto the green. From twelve feet—still using the vintage Tommy Armour putter he had received earlier that year as a gift—he sank the putt and received “some of the birdie roars from the crowd that had accompanied hometown favorite Arnold [Palmer] most of the day.” Weiskopf finished two under par, a second straight 69 that left him only one shot behind the leaders after three rounds.
“After those two birdies on the last two holes, I feel like I’d like to go out and play another eighteen holes,” he told reporters. “I don’t feel like I’m one stroke behind. My concentration has improved each day of this tournament.
“Somebody’s going to have to shoot a heckuva round tomorrow to beat me.”
•
8
•
A Day for All Ages
T
he marquee matchup for Saturday’s round was no doubt the third-to-last: Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus. Together, the 2:16 p.m. pairing had won four of the previous six U.S. Open championships. During the early 1970s, no matter where or what the tournament, Nicklaus and Trevino had to be considered the favorites.
Certainly their most famous duel had come two years earlier when, in a Monday-afternoon play-off, Trevino outlasted Nicklaus at Merion for his second U.S. Open title. Nearly as memorable as Trevino’s three-stroke victory was his preround icebreaker of tossing a rubber snake at Nicklaus’s feet just before they teed off. One female spectator, thinking the snake was real, shrieked so loudly that it broke Nicklaus’s normally stoic intensity.
Though the most celebrated, the Merion showdown was not the only time that Trevino got the better of his friend. With one swing the following summer, he stole from Nicklaus both the British Open crown and a realistic shot at the Holy Grail of prizes, modern golf’s Grand Slam.
Heading into the final round of the 1972 British Open at Muirfield, the “Happy Hombre” enjoyed a one-stroke lead over former Open champion Tony Jacklin. Nicklaus was six strokes behind Trevino, and it seemed highly unlikely that—following his victories earlier that year at the Masters and the U.S. Open—he could still challenge for the Claret Jug. Six birdies by Nicklaus on the first eleven holes—mainly the result of a decision to boldly use a driver on tees where he’d previously used a long-iron—resurrected hopes of victory. He held the outright lead after a birdie on the long tenth hole, then after Trevino spectacularly eagled the ninth, the Golden Bear tied the Merry Mex by birdying number eleven. Trevino maintained his trademark consistency, despite Nicklaus’s charge, and when Nicklaus bogeyed the par-three sixteenth after missing the green, Trevino re-took the lead by a single stroke.

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