Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (48 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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But Arnold Palmer—the man whose legend was shaped by heart-pounding, last-minute heroics—didn’t collapse. He had no reason to. With numbers twelve, fourteen, and seventeen each a realistic birdie opportunity, he could surely make up the single shot he needed to tie Miller, and perhaps even the two necessary to win his second U.S. Open outright.
“Still confident,” U.S.G.A. historian Robert Sommers wrote, Palmer “played what he thought was a perfect drive, shading the left side where the ground slants to the right and will kick the ball to center-fairway. He was so confident he had played the shot perfectly, he hitched his pants, and with an assured, tight-lipped smile, he turned away and didn’t watch the ball land.”
Palmer walked down the fairway, eager to see where his fine drive was sitting. Along the way, now close enough to see Miller’s five-under score clearly, he paused and stared glumly at the leaderboard behind the fourteenth green. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, hitched his pants, and marched toward his ball, which he was confident rested safely in the fairway.
If bad news truly does come in threes, then after squandering a birdie on number eleven and learning that he now trailed a man who began the day six shots back, Palmer should have expected the ensuing catastrophe.
“I struck what I was sure was a terrific drive at twelve, only to discover a few minutes later that the ball lying in the fairway, which I thought was mine, really belonged to Schlee. Much to my surprise, my ball had caromed left instead of right and was in deep grass on the 603-yard hole.”
Palmer shed his visor and trekked into the rough. With his cleats buried in the gnarly grass, he took a fierce, short stroke, chopping up a huge divot. Though he advanced the ball far enough down the fairway to reach the green in three, he remained more than two hundred yards away, awkwardly positioned on a downhill, left-to-right slope.
Trying not to slice, Palmer badly pulled a four-wood that carried into deep rough beyond a bunker left of the green. With the pin located just beyond the bunker and the green slanting away, there was no way to stop the pitch anywhere near the hole; Palmer did well just to keep the ball on the green. His fifty-foot par putt stopped short and left of the hole, and a distraught Palmer had to contain his rage before finishing off his numbing bogey six.
Palmer’s back-nine demise unfortunately didn’t end on number twelve. A mediocre five-iron to the thirteenth hit the green, but so far away from the flagstick that he three-putted for another bogey. And when he three-putted again after a poor approach shot on number fourteen, all hopes for a storybook close to the 1973 U.S. Open died.
Much golf still remained after Palmer—now three behind Miller, with four holes to play—scored his third consecutive bogey on the fourteenth. Fourteen men, including Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, still hadn’t finished their rounds. And Tom Weiskopf and Lee Trevino had yet to attempt their desperation drives on number seventeen.
Palmer—as he had done with great fanfare to catch Nicklaus in 1962—also tried to drive the green on number seventeen and make eagle, believing, “What did I have to lose?” He came up short.
But for his die-hard fans—including Lew Worsham and Bob Ford, who continued to watch the leaderboard through the picture window of the pro shop—the 1973 U.S. Open effectively ended with Palmer’s third straight bogey.
“When Arnold made those bogeys,” Schlee said, “it was like playing in a morgue.”
With the round finally over, Palmer—sitting in the locker room in his underwear with a cigarette in one hand and a beer can in the other—spoke with the swarm of reporters, many just as dispirited by his back-nine collapse as Arnie’s Army.
“I won this tournament once when I wasn’t really supposed to. And four other times I lost when I should have won. I guess things balance out,” Palmer mused to the press.
“What do they say about this game? It gives you a moment of ecstasy and hours of frustration.”
Not long afterward, Palmer showered, thanked reporters, volunteers, U.S.G.A. officials, and fellow club members, and then hopped into his Cadillac for the short drive back to Latrobe. As the sun set on Father’s Day 1973, Arnold and “Deke” Palmer headed once again onto Hulton Road without a U.S. Open trophy.
“As we left the course, there were signs everywhere saying, ‘Palmer for Governor.’ There was a cavalcade. Cars pulled up along the public highway. People got out with signs in their hands. It was nice but I didn’t take it very seriously.”
 
THE MORBID SILENCE THAT JOHN Schlee observed once Palmer dragged himself off the fourteenth green was not surprising: to the loyal subjects of Steeltown, their King was dead. But patrons who couldn’t bear watching the lame-duck, final few holes of Palmer’s twosome missed one hell of a show.
John Schlee had already provided great drama that afternoon. His embarrassing three-drive, double-bogey start on the opening hole embodied final-round pressure: Instantaneously, he seemed to crumble under the weight of sharing the lead in the U.S. Open. Somehow, he pulled himself together to make conventional pars on the next two holes and, with his superb eagle on the fourth, returned to even par for the day. But Schlee’s resurrection was short-lived; he immediately embarked on a bogey-birdie-par-bogey-birdieroller coaster to close the front nine.
Over the next two hours, as each past, present, and future PGA giant who chased Johnny Miller that day—Palmer, Nicklaus, Boros, Trevino, Weiskopf, Wadkins—wilted at one point or another, Schlee did not. In fact, he played his steadiest golf of the entire championship on the pressure-packed back nine.
Schlee reached the fiendish tenth green in two splendid shots; his mid-iron to within twelve feet was the day’s finest approach by any of the leaders. Nevertheless, like Miller and Trevino before him, Schlee left the sharp-breaking birdie putt a fraction short. Flailing his putter in anguish, he paced around the green to calm down before putting out for par.
Not surprisingly, Palmer continued to be the main attraction when the twosome moved to the eleventh. Although Schlee hit a fine wedge that stopped fifteen feet below the hole, Palmer’s magical approach to four feet sent the crowd into a frenzy. Once again, practically unnoticed, Schlee missed the birdie try, misreading the putt to break left when it actually broke right.
Within moments, however, Schlee, not Palmer, moved to center stage. After sharing the news of Miller’s five-under par score with his befuddled partner, Schlee set up to play his drive from the center of the fairway—the one that Palmer thought belonged to him.
Following a strong three-wood, Schlee dropped a fine wedge to within eight feet of the cup and drained the birdie putt. He was now a stunning four under par for the day on Oakmont’s three par-fives, and, more important, four under for the championship.
The joy proved short-lived. Schlee now trailed Johnny Miller by only a single stroke, and with Miller in the clubhouse, his orders were simple: Make up one stroke over the next six holes to force a play-off; two strokes and he would win the seventy-third U.S. Open.
Schlee, however, never did anything simply. He found the thirteenth green with a five-iron, then three-putted from sixty feet, dropping back to three under par.
Before the deflated army, Schlee parred the fourteenth and tough fifteenth. Now he had to shave two strokes off his total on the final three holes. Although he had done poorly on the long, par-three sixteenth—bogeying it on Thursday and Friday—he regained some confidence with a solid par there during Saturday’s third-round 67.
“Your Individual Horoscope, for Sunday, June 17, 1973: GEMINI: A day in which the Geminian’s abilities can shine—especially his gift for successfully judging the advantages of a situation which confounds others.”
For the most part, all week long, the field had played the sixteenth cautiously, aiming tee shots at the far left side of the green. But the man who used eccentric, often bizarre training methods and regularly experimented with unorthodox driver heads, shafts, and putters saw an opportunity to play the sixteenth more brazenly than others. He decided to attack the flag.
Caddie Danny Liester handed Schlee a three-iron that he needed to hit on a much higher trajectory than normal to have a chance of holding the green. With a familiar, whirling stroke, he aimed directly at the flagstick. If he succeeded, he would be left with a short, uncomplicated birdie putt; if he was off a hair, the ball would roll down the hillside to the right, and his chance for victory would be all but dead.
Sharply leaning with body language, begging his shot not to drift too far right, Schlee grimaced in anticipation. Fortunately, his Ben Hogan ball followed Schlee’s command and settled in a great position, pin-high, ten feet away. Best of all, the shot landed to the
right
of the flag: He would not have to navigate any part of the “upside-down punch bowl” region of the green.
Undaunted and showing the composure of a veteran professional, Schlee sank the straight birdie putt, returning him again to sole possession of second place—only a single stroke behind Miller, with two holes to play.
Once he heard that his lead was down to a single shot—and that at least one of his pursuers didn’t seem to be “choking among themselves”—Johnny Miller left his wife and child in the clubhouse so he could witness the conclusion firsthand. He stood quite conspicuously at the head of the gallery that surrounded the right side of the eighteenth green.
Meanwhile, Schlee moved to the seventeenth, surely the best chance for the long hitter to make the birdie he needed (he made a birdie three there on Saturday), or perhaps even an eagle. But Schlee’s unusually low ball flight with his driver was not ideally suited to carrying the distant bunkers on the fairway’s left side. Instead, he chose the safe play—leaving his driver in the bag—and hit a long iron into the center of the fairway, which set up a full wedge to the narrow, slightly elevated green.
By the time Schlee played the seventeenth, the afternoon breeze had picked up considerably and Schlee didn’t adequately account for this in his second-shot club selection. His wedge stopped a disappointing fifty feet short of the pin. Now he would have to struggle to two-putt for par and keep alive any chance of tying Miller.
His long, burly arms awkwardly bent, Schlee lined up the desperate birdie try. With perfect speed, the ball headed across the green and flirted with the left edge of the cup, missing by only an inch.
Schlee settled for par. The lofty, almost absurd dream of reclaiming his mentor’s U.S. Open crown—twenty years after Ben Hogan won it on this very course—would require all seventy-two holes.
“Who wouldn’t love to be in an eighteen-hole play-off for the U.S. Open with a guy who shot sixty-three the day before?”
Standing just outside the ropes, Schlee’s wife—enveloped by deflated members of the Palmer faithful—watched her husband nail a terrific drive down the center of the fairway on number eighteen, leaving him 188 yards to the pin. As was her custom, she strolled quickly toward the green to await his approach, as a highly idiosyncratic series of strategic thoughts consumed her husband.
“When I’m playing an important round,” Schlee later explained, “I carry a ‘gallery in my mind.’ It consists of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Cary Middlecoff, and Dub Fondren. These men walk with me every step of the way and I discuss many shots with them.
“As I looked at my approach shot, I told my gallery [i.e., Hogan, Nelson, etc.] I wanted to hit a low, left-to-right four-iron. It would land on the front of the green, then run up the hill, next to the pin. In fact, it might go in. They all agreed it was a good plan.”
Just as Schlee readied himself for the crucial swing, however, a U.S.G.A. official called for him to wait, as a ruling was in process on the green. The moment of pause jolted him.
“It was then I realized this was the most important shot of my life. I needed to relax. So I relaxed everything. As a student of hypnosis, I was easily able to do this. I did such a good job, I almost fell asleep. Arnie, who I was paired with, awoke me from my semislumber by saying, ‘John, you can play now.’
“I went through my procedure and set up. As the club started back, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t doing it. I thought to myself, ‘Hang on and hope for the best!’
“As I moved through impact, my legs straightened and I hit a long, thin shot through the green.”

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