Read Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont Online

Authors: Adam Lazarus

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

Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (33 page)

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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Naturally, Crosby’s Pro-Am—the crooning legend was golf-obsessed—drew Hollywood’s most renowned celebrities. With stars like Clint Eastwood and Jack Lemmon doing their best to act like golfers, the tournament was made for television, and NBC invested heavily in the broadcast of the final round.
Before a rapt gallery and a national TV audience, Miller fended off his playing partner, Nicklaus, for most of Sunday, despite three straight bogeys midway through his round. In reality, though, no one was playing well.
“Everyone laid [sic] down and died out there. Everyone was chopping so bad out there, it was amazing,” Miller admitted. “I don’t think there was one good score from the guys who started in the top ten. Maybe that’s what this course does to you. It jumps up and grabs you.”
Nicklaus took the lead by ramming in a thirty-foot birdie on the fourteenth, but Miller pulled even with Nicklaus, as the TV cameras began to roll, by making a twenty-five-footer of his own on the next hole.
On the short par-four fourteenth, Miller faced a relatively simple second shot from a side-hill lie. After Nicklaus’s eight-iron came up short, Miller chose to “leap on a seven-iron.”
Leap on it he did: “Instead of hitting it with a solid left side, I went down into the shot with my knee and it threw my swing out into the shank. It was a pretty swing. It probably looked nice on TV. It wasn’t jerky or choky.” The ball flew laterally right and hit a spectator before stopping behind a tree.
“It was a beauty. I haven’t shanked a ball since I was twelve years old. Then I remember if you shank one, you’re apt to shank eight in a row.”
As shocking as it was for fans to watch a top professional cold shank a short iron, Miller kept his composure. He then amazed viewers by pairing two wonderful recovery shots with a one-putt green to escape the sixteenth with just a bogey. And when Nicklaus could do no better than a bogey on the par-three seventeenth, the two were again tied.
Miller’s shank itself did not actually sabotage his chance at victory; at the same time, he could not—and never would—let it go.
“But I had the same iron into eighteen,” Miller told reporters later that day, “and I said to myself, ‘Don’t shank it out-of-bounds.’”
Both men parred the eighteenth, and when Miller missed a lengthy putt on the first play-off hole (the fifteenth), Nicklaus snatched the victory by draining an eighteen-footer for birdie.
The Crosby was not a major, but with the marriage of Pebble Beach and Hollywood—beautiful people embracing golf’s Eden—the tournament was made for television. A second-place finish behind Nicklaus again put Miller in the national limelight, and the $16,000 runner-up paycheck was the third-highest he’d earned as a professional.
But Miller did not leave Pebble Beach unscathed.
“From that day forward, I would never be in contention on the back nine on Sunday without thinking, Am I going to shank this again?’” Miller wrote. “That’s what choking is—having thoughts go through your mind that wouldn’t be there during a casual round with your buddies. The shank at Pebble Beach wasn’t a choke, but it led to some unnerving, choking thoughts. I contended in tournaments probably fifty times and every time after that, I was worried about shanking. I never did shank again, but you can bet it was dancing around in my head.”
Although Miller “never did shank again,” tournaments continued to slip out of his hands at the worst possible moments. Winning didn’t become any easier in 1972 following his triumph at the Southern Open.
A month after the infamous shank, Miller squandered the lead late on Sunday in another of the tour’s star-studded, pro-am extravaganzas. In February’s Bob Hope Desert Classic, played on four courses over five days, Miller birdied four of the opening six holes during the final round to grab a share of the lead. After Miller made a birdie on number eleven and an eagle on number fourteen, the tournament was his to lose. And he did.
On the fifteenth, Miller’s nine-footer for birdie rolled past the cup; he then blew the two-foot comebacker for par. On number seventeen, a five-footer for par lipped out. Needing an eagle on the par-five final hole to force a play-off, Miller reached the fringe in two shots, only to see his putt come up two feet shy. The suddenly bored twenty-four-year-old then flubbed another two-footer, his second in the final four holes, and both on national TV.
“I lost interest after missing the eagle. It’s just not the same playing for second or third place. I want to win.”
His spirits didn’t pick up after leaving Palm Springs, especially when he missed the cut at the Masters in April. Luckily, Miller’s next appearance on the big stage, the 1972 U.S. Open, would come at a familiar place: Pebble Beach.
Once again, the Carmel-by-the-Sea masterpiece—now toughened to U.S.G.A. standards, and played in frightful June weather—confounded the world’s best golfers. A two-over-par total after three rounds was good enough to earn Miller a late-afternoon Sunday tee time with Arnold Palmer. Miller shot a 79, but the winds swirling off the Pacific Ocean inflated everyone’s score. Miller’s score actually matched the average that day, and he finished seventh.
A month later at the British Open in Muirfield, Miller set a new course record with a five under 66 in the second round, mostly thanks to one remarkable shot. Frustrated by an opening-round 76, especially his meltdown on number eighteen—he plugged a three-wood into a bunker, leading to a triple bogey—Miller needed an early spark to rekindle his desire and avoid missing the cut. Using the same unlucky three-wood from the day before, he smashed a tremendous long second shot onto the par-five fifth green.
“I knew it was online. And I heard a polite patter of applause. When I walked up there, the ball was in the hole. Shoot! You don’t hole two-hundred-and-ninety-yard shots often.”
Miller promptly birdied the next hole, and cruised through the rest of his day to finish tied for second at the halfway point.
“That shot did wonders,” Miller said about the double eagle (“albatross” to the Scottish gallery). “I knew I could free-wheel. In my last tournament, the Western Open, I had a seventy-six and then a sixty-six.” Miller could not only “go low”; he was most dangerous bearing a wounded ego.
Miller returned to over-par scores in the final two rounds of the British Open and took fifteenth place—eleven shots behind Lee Trevino. And, for the most part, Miller freewheeled his way through the rest of the season. In the next eight individual events, he averaged twenty-eighth place; after a miserable start, he also withdrew one round into August’s U.S. Industries Classic. In early November, Miller found himself outside the top twenty-five in tour earnings.
By that time, Jerry Heard—four days younger than Miller and in his shadow throughout high school, college, and spotlight amateur events—had become the tour’s most heralded young lion. A two-time winner that season, Heard topped $100,000 for the second straight year. And the $61,700 that separated the two northern Californians told only part of the story: Heard regularly eclipsed Miller when they competed on the same stage. Heard posted top-ten finishes that summer in the American Golf Classic and the Sahara Invitational, and tied for fourth in the PGA Championship. Miller took forty-ninth, twentieth, and thirty-third in those events.
A year earlier, feeling tired and in need of a vacation, Miller had turned around a frustrating season with one great week by winning the Southern Open. Now again, in 1972, he rebounded at the end of the season. This time, instead of a trip to Columbus, Georgia, Miller flew to Auckland, New Zealand, to play in the Otago Charity Classic. Jerry Heard was there, but Lu Liang-Huan, Taiwan’s famous “Mr. Lu,” pushed Miller the hardest. Trailing Mr. Lu by a stroke on the seventy-second green, Miller sank an eighteen-foot birdie putt to force a play-off, then drained a forty-footer for another birdie on the first play-off hole to win.
Miller’s second (“unofficial”) victory seemed finally to produce the “big lift” he had anticipated after his first win; it was just a year late. Three days after the arduous trip home from New Zealand, Miller returned to PGA tour competition, playing at the Heritage Golf Classic in Hilton Head. The touring professional at nearby Palmetto Dunes—a club just five miles away—Miller was already quite familiar with the Harbour Town Golf Links and knew that it fit his game perfectly because of its small greens. Despite admitted fatigue, he shot 65 on the easier Ocean Course to tie for the second-round lead.
Cold winds and rain delayed the third round by a day and also hampered everyone once the event resumed. Miller overcame a front-nine 40 to card 35 on the back side and take a one-stroke lead over Forrest Fezler.
“It’s hard to believe I’m leading after a seventy-five,” he said. “It’s hard enough to shoot par here in perfect weather.”
The conditions finally tamed for Monday’s final round—stilt, many women in the gallery wore fur coats—and Miller refused to give up the lead. On the eighteenth, still nursing a meager one-stroke advantage (over Tom Weiskopf), he needed only to sink an eighteen-inch par putt to secure his second PGA tour win.
“All sorts of things went through my mind when I stood over that last putt,” he said afterward. “I thought to myself, ‘You can’t miss this.”’
He didn’t. “A week ago I won a tournament in New Zealand and right now I have lots of confidence,” Miller said at the post-tournament press conference. “Jerry Heard has given me lots of good advice. He told me to take a deep breath and not get pumped up and excited.”
Still, the victory in Hilton Head didn’t launch Miller to tour stardom. “Absence of Names Aid to Miller,” blared the Associated Press headline, as skeptical reporters pointed out the less than stellar field at the Heritage. And the victorious Miller even agreed with them.
“Coming into the last couple holes, you know, anything can happen. But I felt I could handle those guys around me (the challengers) except maybe Tom Weiskopf You know, most of them are young guys and I figured I could beat them. But it would be something else if you’re coming into the last few holes and Arnold or Jack or Lee is there. Those guys—they’re the best players in the world—they put the pressure on you. Maybe you put pressure on yourself. When they’re playing, it’s something else.”
In the first event of 1973, the Los Angeles Open, Miller got his chance to compete against the “best players” on one of the nation’s most revered courses, the Riviera Country Club, where Hogan, Snead, Mangrum, Demaret, Littler, Nelson, Palmer, and Casper had previously won. Miller was outstanding on day one, carding a four under 67, and he finished respectably in seventeenth place-below Nicklaus, who took sixth, but higher than Palmer (twenty-fourth) and Trevino (who missed his first cut in nearly two seasons).
Miller left Los Angeles to compete in the Phoenix Open, where he had famously “gone low” three years earlier, but withdrew before the final round to return to the Bay Area and be with his soon-to-give-birth wife. The father of two returned to the tour in early February and nabbed an impressive string of top finishes in high-profile tournaments. He placed seventh or higher in seven of twelve events, including sixth at the Masters. And two days before he headed to Oakmont for the U.S. Open, he continued to shine by taking third in the Philadelphia Classic (behind Tom Weiskopf, who posted his third win in four weeks).
In the months following his second child’s birth, the excellence—and more important, the consistency—of Miller’s game soared to a new level. He hadn’t yet won against the “best players,” as he called them, but was battling them almost every week. And on the eve of the U.S. Open, he held down seventh position on the money list, despite not padding his totals with one huge winner’s paycheck.
Still, Miller’s case as one of the tour’s truly elite players remained murky.
Golf Magazine
gave him his due, naming Miller one of its six favorites to win the U.S. Open: “He has the shots for Oakmont and could be a hunch-player’s bet.” There was, however, one caveat.
“The lanky, blond style-setter was in hot pursuit of the title at Pebble Beach last year, before he ran into a final-round 79. He finished seventh. The year before, at Merion, he closed out with a fine 70, but it was only good enough for fifth place. Some observers are ready to give him the almost-but-not-quite mantle recently cast aside by Tommy Aaron [who won the 1973 Masters]. The 26-year-old Californian has the habit of roaring into contention with brilliant shot-making only to stumble with one weak round.”
And his fellow touring pros also noticed the repercussions of Miller’s Jekyll-and-Hyde golf game.
As one tour veteran recalled, “If Miller doesn’t birdie a couple of the first four holes, he really doesn’t even care; he can’t shoot sixty-three anymore. I mean, that’s the kind of thinking he had.
“He had this belief,” the pro added, “that ‘if I can’t shoot nothing [i.e., an extremely low round], then I’m just out here filling up the day.... ’ And he shot nothin’ a lot.”
As much as Miller’s “stumbles” shaped experts’ persistent skepticism, it was his disappointing finish in one tournament earlier that season that he couldn’t shake: Arnold Palmer’s February victory in the Bob Hope Desert Classic.
A year removed from his collapse at the 1972 Bob Hope, Miller again had a strong chance to win the event in 1973. Tied for seventh after three days in “golf’s answer to the Boston Marathon,” Miller pounded Tamarisk Country Club in round four with a course-record 63, tying him with—who else—Nicklaus going into the fifth and final round. Earlier that week, the Golden Bear had inspired Miller to believe that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em.
BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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