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 (47 page)

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

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While Trevino—abandoned by his father and left in abject poverty—spent the better part of two decades honing his game in solitude at dusty Texas driving ranges, hunger did not inspire Tom Weiskopf until after his thirtieth birthday, and the unexpected death of his supportive father.

And even though their fortunes seemed to reverse during the summer of 1973—Trevino’s bulletproof facade crumbling, as Weiskopf finally blossomed into a winner—both men’s U.S. Open ride ended on the seventy-first green.

Weiskopf’s Sunday caucus with U.S.G.A. officials didn’t end on Oakmont’s ninth. In fact, it reconvened on the very next hole.

Slicing his tee shot far into the rough turned out better than Weiskopf had reason to expect. He was allowed a free drop two club lengths from the original position of his ball, which came to rest in an area designated as ground under repair. This time, however, he couldn’t follow up the lucky break with another miracle shot, like the one a hole earlier. From the tall grass, his ball came up twenty-five yards short of the green.

Confident he could scramble for par, Weiskopf readied to pitch downhill onto the green, then suddenly backed away: On the parallel fairway, Arnold Palmer had just made an approach shot, and the army bellowed. Weiskopf reset, gently chipped the ball across the downsloping fairway and fringe, and looked satisfied when it came to rest only twelve feet past the cup. The putt looked fairly straight, but in a classically deceptive Oakmont nuance, it broke much more to the right than he expected.

“That’s too bad; you hate to see a man start making bogeys at this point,” Marr said, empathizing.

Weiskopf couldn’t regain a stroke on the eleventh, the spot where he had made the first of three back-nine birdies on Saturday. Walking down the twelfth fairway, he spotted on a nearby scoreboard the red number next to Johnny Miller’s name.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read one of the boards out there and saw that Miller was five under. Bob Charles, who I was playing with, couldn’t believe it either. He said, ‘there must be some mistake.’ But I told him they don’t make mistakes like that unless Miller’s mother came down to keep score for him.”

Afterward, Weiskopf told reporters he was not terribly surprised by the 63: All week long, he had downplayed the intrinsic difficulty of Oakmont, saying, “Oakmont is not a long course. Matter of fact, it’s rather short. I had only one difficult hole to play, I thought. That was the fifteenth hole.”

The identity of the man who shot the 63, that was another story.

“Johnny Miller?” he told the press. “I didn’t even know Miller had made the cut.”

By the twelfth, Weiskopf knew but remained confident.

“I really still thought I could catch him at twelve.”

But the long-hitting Weiskopf, like Nicklaus, failed to birdie the challenging par-five hole. Still, the deficit—he needed to make up two strokes in six holes—didn’t seem to bother Weiskopf. Nor did he give up when he three-putted the fourteenth green to fall back to two under par, a trio of strokes behind Miller.

The new Tom Weiskopf—the motivated, mature, patient winner of three tournaments in four weeks—didn’t run and hide. He parred number fifteen, the “one difficult hole” he had deigned to recognize, then moved on to the sixteenth, where he absolutely had to make a birdie.

Oakmont’s sixteenth was often overlooked as a torturer of golfers. A lengthy, slanted par-three guarded by bunkers front and left and a steep falloff on the green’s right side, the tee shot required a long iron or fairway wood to get home. Shaped like an upside-down punch bowl, the putting surface featured a pronounced hump at its center that made any putt from the more inviting left side of the green extremely difficult.

Weiskopf pulled a three-iron from the bag and, with his unique blend of grace and power, stroked a towering shot that landed pin-high near the center of the green, then anchored twelve feet left of the pin. From there, he drained the quick, downhill putt off the hump to reach three under and strode briskly to the next tee; one birdie down, two more to go.

“When I made a twelve-footer for a bird at sixteen, I thought I was back in, playing for the lead.”

Then came the seventeenth. Trevino may have failed to reach the green in two, but the Merry Mex was not Nicklaus’s heir apparent off the tee; Weiskopf was. Only he possessed the muscle and high ball flight to launch a driver all the way onto the green. And while Thursday evening Trevino criticized Nicklaus for choosing the high-risk, high-reward approach on number seventeen, Weiskopf saw the perfect opportunity to match his rival and friend.

“[If] Jack can drive it on the green, I can drive it on the green.”

Weiskopf tried, but the air was heavier than on Thursday, and the increasing wind kept even the long-bombing Weiskopf from reaching the green. His drive perched just right of the fairway’s center, less than forty yards from the flagstick; he could easily pitch over Big Mouth and leave himself a short birdie putt. Weiskopf’s bold tee shot had paid off well enough for him to keep his dream of victory alive—and among the leaders, only he had birdied number eighteen the day before.

Whether it was because the greens were firming up in the late afternoon sun and wind, or because he couldn’t spin the ball effectively from a soggy lie—water splashed when he made contact with the grass—Weiskopf’s pitch took a large first hop before rolling farther beyond the cup than he anticipated. He now needed to sink a delicate twelve-footer for birdie to keep within striking distance of Miller.

Weiskopf thought he hit the putt exactly right, and waited for it to disappear. If anything, it appeared to be a right-to-left breaker. But somehow, just as it approached the hole, the ball angled severely right and danced across the front of the cup.

A dejected Weiskopf stood upright, hung his head, and glared first at the ground, then at his putter.

“I felt like I wanted to have my caddie play eighteen,” he said. “I felt so deflated. I really felt I could still catch [Miller].”

Having—perhaps more than ever before—spent every ounce of will and determination, Tom Weiskopf finally gave up.

ALTHOUGH WADKINS, BOROS, HEARD, TREVINO, Weiskopf, even long-shot John Schlee each had a realistic chance to chase down Johnny Miller, by five o’clock Sunday afternoon, Arnold Palmer might as well have been the only man playing Oakmont.

Just a few paces from where Weiskopf and U.S.G.A. officials were still huddling inside the hot-dog stand, Palmer found trouble off the tenth tee, where he launched a horrible drive into the right-side rough, thirty yards off-line. He muscled the ball out, and his approach shot initially looked great, landing just short of pin-high. But the shot didn’t hold. It bounced, then scooted across the length of the green—covering at least a hundred feet before thick grass fronting a rear bunker swallowed it up. From there, Palmer played a brilliant recovery chip, popping the ball out with a hard, descending stroke and letting it roll gently to within six feet of the flag.

“A very fine shot. If he makes a four here, it’ll be some four after the drive that he hit,” Dave Marr observed. “The people are just clapping for him every single hole. I never saw so many people out here that all knew him or know him or are pulling for him. You wouldn’t think there’s anyone else playing.”

Having missed both fairway and green, Palmer now had a chance to leave Oakmont’s “toughest” hole unscathed. He drained the six-footer, then breathed a huge sigh of relief while twirling his visor over his head as the gallery roared.

“I couldn’t have felt better,” he explained. “I was four under par, I was in command of myself, and I had some birdie holes left.”

Palmer now headed to the eleventh, precisely one of those vital birdie holes. He skillfully landed his tee shot over the fairway crest to within ninety yards of the green. Then—with what Jim McKay called “a Pittsburgh-type smokestack in the background”—Palmer struck a perfect wedge that touched down ten feet below the hole, bounced once, and stuck pin-high, just four feet left of the flag. It was his finest shot of the championship.

“He could easily get [a birdie], and if he does, he’ll move into a tie for the lead with Johnny Miller,” said Jim McKay, as Arnie’s Army cheered in anticipation. “You truly may be watching the greatest U.S. Open in history, and every year it seems to get tighter and tighter and more and more exciting. There is no tournament like this one in the world.”

Hitching his white slacks, Palmer walked briskly across a small bridge toward the eleventh green. He tipped his cap to the crowd, which let loose a loud cacophony of claps, whistles, and rowdy cheers.

“[What] do they think this is,” a nearby marshal joked, “a Steelers game?”

Many among the army—including Doc Giffin, Palmer’s trusted press agent, who followed him shot by shot—knew where the King stood in relation to Miller, Boros, Weiskopf, and the rest. And the millions at home who saw the leaderboard periodically flash on-screen also knew the scores.

Palmer did not. All he knew was that sinking the short birdie putt would move him to five under par, an unimaginably good score at the Hades of Hulton, and surely good enough to win the U.S. Open. If there was ever an “easy” chance for a birdie at Oakmont, Palmer had set himself up for one by tagging such a great approach.

The day before, Palmer had birdied number eleven by sinking a titanic forty-five-footer and was so charged up that he smashed his fist into the ground, grinning ear-to-ear as he walked over to pick up his ball. By comparison, his Sunday birdie putt looked like a “gimme.”

In fact, it wasn’t. On this sharply slanted green, Palmer’s short putt was actually downhill and contained considerable left-to-right break. Palmer lined up the putt and, from his signature knock-kneed stance, firmly tapped the ball. But he either didn’t read enough break or he opened the blade; the putt missed by a couple of inches on the low side.

Frozen, Palmer winced over his failed short putt: a painfully familiar sports-page image over the last decade. The gallery verbalized Palmer’s pain, letting out a prolonged “ohhhhh” of angst.

“I made what I thought was a good stroke.”

Palmer gathered himself to tap in for par, shook and hung his head, then-revived by the whistles and the cheers of, “Go get ’em, Arnie!”—marched off the green.

As he walked onto the twelfth tee, Palmer—still playing without glasses or contact lenses—squinted at the scoreboard behind the fourteenth green. With some effort, he “could make out” that Miller had dropped to five under par for the championship.

“Where the fuck did he come from?” Palmer wondered aloud. “How much under par is he?”

“I hear he has [nine] birdies,” his partner, John Schlee, told him.

As it had everyone else that day, the news stunned Palmer. And not just because he thought he owned a one-stroke edge; equally confusing was the identity of the man he now trailed. During the opening two rounds, Palmer’s much younger playing partner hadn’t hit the ball spectacularly from tee to green; he’d remained in contention mainly due to sensational putting, which no one could sustain over four rounds at Oakmont. And in Saturday’s third round, Miller seemed to get what he deserved in the form of that tournament-burying 76.

“It never entered my mind that Johnny Miller could win this tournament,” Palmer admitted that evening.

“Sixty-three ... that’s just unbelievable. That is just about perfect golf on this course.”

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

13.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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