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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

Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (58 page)

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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Despite his recent victory at Pebble Beach, Miller was indeed “virtually retired,” as Ballesteros said. And he played that way at Oakmont, shooting 81-76 to miss the cut by ten shots. Miller would never again compete in a U.S. Open or any other major championship. And after 1994, he would appear in only four more PGA tour events.
Nevertheless, the very next summer, in June 1995, Johnny Miller again headlined the cast at America’s national championship.
Two weeks before Miller’s final Oakmont appearance, NBC Sports proudly announced that the network had outbid ABC for the U.S.G.A.’s exclusive television broadcasting rights to the U.S. Open. An impassioned appearance by Miller before the U.S.G.A. helped NBC secure the contract.
“Johnny described what it meant to him and he broke down, remembering what the U.S.G.A. meant for him as a child and a young adult,” NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol remembered.
“I thought of all the sacrifices my dad made and how excited he was when I won it,” Miller said. “I hold this tournament sacred.”
By the late 1990s, Miller had cemented his role as the premier television golf analyst: An NBC Sports golf broadcast featured a distinctive flavor that no other network could match. He proudly stated that his TV persona differed little from his everyday approach to the game. “I was that way before I was on television, saying the same things in my living room watching golf.... When I see something, I’ve got to say it. That’s what I’m paid to do. I can’t just sugar-coat it, when it’s delicious to talk about. I’m not trying to do anything unusual. It’s not an act. It’s just me. OK?”
Miller was crystal clear about his approach to broadcasting, whether his former colleagues liked it or not. For the growth of the game, he would continue to exercise his “go-for-the-flagstick” mentality on air.
“Golf is on a roll,” he said. “It has incredible momentum.... There’s an opportunity for golf to cross over to the mainstream.... The pro tour is really a big, traveling circus. As an announcer, I’m part of it. I’m promoting the traveling circus. The players don’t understand that.... The sooner more of today’s players realize it, the better.”
 
DESPITE MILLER’S ENTHUSIASM FOR THE tour, both golf and his burgeoning television stardom would never be his greatest passion. Minutes after he walked off the Oakmont course and into the press tent, he casually told reporters that “my family and the church are both more important to me than golf. If I had to give up one of the three it would have to be golf.”
Miller still kept the game at a distance. He was far more content to spend time at his home in California, see his children (and grandchildren), and devote only an occasional weekend in the spring or summer behind an NBC microphone.
At the peak of his playing career, one that had begun to bring him worldwide acclaim, Miller flew to New York City in May 1975. Linda and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter with him, Johnny attended an early morning business meeting, then drove through the city to attend the recently finished Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In between a round of golf and an evening flight to Mexico City for an exhibition, Johnny attended a luncheon presented by the National Father’s Day Committee.
Standing next to Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Maine senator Edmund Muskie, and a few other prominent figures, Miller received the committee’s Father of the Year Award. After the luncheon, he conducted another of the innumerable question-and-answer sessions he’d participated in during the past few years. Amid comments about Jack Nicklaus and his thrilling battle with Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf a month earlier at Augusta National, a reporter asked, “When you’re through with tournament golf, how would you like to be remembered?”
“I’ll probably leave as many records broken as anybody who ever played,” he said. “I’ll never win as many major titles as some others, but I can score. I probably range from sixty-one to seventy-six; Jack Nicklaus would be about sixty-four to seventy-three. His poor is better than mine. My good might be better than his.
“But I’m not driven,” he added. “I’m not like Gary Player, who burns to be recognized as the best in the world. Oh, I’ve got the killer instinct.... I never set out to be the best in the world, just to be the best I can be. I was happy with my game in 1974. I had won the National Open, although not the way you would plan it. Six strokes behind starting the last round and shoot a sixty-three to win by one. You wouldn’t program the Open that way. Still, I felt good, and last year I did more, leading the money winners. This year has been going well.
“Golf isn’t my only goal, though. My goals are eternal.”
Of course, Miller was speaking of something spiritual: not about his exploits as a professional athlete. Nevertheless, “the Miracle at Oakmont”—the day when Johnny Miller overwhelmed a legendary course and a Murderer’s Row of golf legends to shoot 63 and win the U.S. Open championship—will always hold an eternal place in the game’s history.
Appendix I
Johnny Miller’s 63: The Greatest Round Ever?
A Historical and Statistical Perspective
3
 
 
 
In narrating the final round of the 1973 U.S. Open, we tried to clear up several lingering sources of confusion regarding both the physical conditions at Oakmont, and the overall scoring patterns on the Sunday when Johnny Miller shot his famed 63 to win the championship. The oft-cited sprinkler malfunction, for example, occurred between Thursday and Friday, not between Saturday and Sunday; heavy rains saturated Oakmont on Saturday morning, not Sunday morning; “winter rules” were never invoked, etc.
We have also indicated there was no simple, predictable link between wet conditions and scoring. Despite softer and slower greens due to the major rains that fell on Saturday, the players’ scores that day were actually the highest of the entire championship (see boxplot one). Moreover, on the day that Miller shot 63, scoring conditions remained very difficult; only three other players broke 70. As Jack Nicklaus recalled, even though Oakmont was “extra wet,” the golf course on Sunday afternoon “played its normal way.”
4
Miller himself has challenged another frequent claim: that it was relatively easy for him to “go low” on Sunday because he was so far behind, and started out so far ahead of the leaders, that he felt no pressure; he could shoot at the flagsticks without fear of consequences.
In fact, says Miller, he felt extreme pressure from the fifth hole onward. Once he birdied the first four holes and blew past Nicklaus and Trevino, he knew he was in the hunt. Indeed, he succumbed to the pressure by leaving makeable birdie putts short on numbers five and six, mishitting a short birdie try on number seven, and three-putting a relatively easy thirty-footer on number eight. Just when it looked like his comeback effort was doomed, he birdied five of the remaining ten holes to eke out a one-shot victory.
Claims and counterclaims by participants and observers are one thing; but assessing the historical significance of Miller’s final round requires more objective analysis. We employ four criteria to evaluate Miller’s performance, all of which confirm its unblemished claim to greatness.
First, Miller broke a golfing threshold by shooting the lowest score ever in a major championship. To do so in the final round, and to win, surely imbued the round with greater historical significance. But setting a new low score for the U.S. Open would have been a tremendous achievement on its own; even if he had failed to win, it would have permanently enshrined Miller in the record books.
Second, Miller shot his record score in the U.S. Open, historically the most difficult of the major championships to
“go low.”
While all of the U.S. Open venues were among the nation’s most difficult, the U.S.G.A. always toughened them in consistent ways—narrowing the fairways, growing the rough, hardening and quickening the greens—that inevitably raised scores. “Old Man Par” remained the standard for measuring greatness in a U.S. Open.
That Miller’s 63 came on the golf course historically regarded as America’s toughest magnified his achievement. A 63 was simply unthinkable at Oakmont. The three consecutive bogeys Palmer made immediately after learning Miller was eight under for the day reflected a blow to his composure so severe that even he, the bravest comeback performer in golf history, simply could not absorb.
A third vital historical marker was how many bona fide great champions Miller overtook to win the championship from six strokes back.
At age twenty-six, after four years on tour, Miller had already won two PGA tournaments, so he certainly knew how to finish strong. But on several prior occasions when he was perfectly positioned to win a major, he had stumbled badly on the back nine—“choked,” in the term he would make famous in 1990 as a TV broadcaster. No one had reason to believe that down the stretch in a U.S. Open, Miller could perform at his best. And especially not when the greatest players of the prior generation—Nicktaus, Palmer, Player, Trevino, Boros, Weiskopf, Littler, Charles—were between three and six shots ahead of him.
But that is what Miller did. Too much commentary on Miller’s 63 has centered on his magical birdie-birdie-birdie-birdie start, but it was his remarkable 31 on the back nine—exactly where he’d sabotaged his previous major championship opportunities—that won him the U.S. Open. Miller knew the well-tested greatness of the players still several shots ahead as he made the back-nine turn, yet he used their greatness as a spur to take their measure and unleash comparable greatness in himself. Remarkably, even though the leaders played quite well by U.S. Open standards, Miller made up the six-shot differential and forged into the lead after birdying number fifteen. And expecting one of the established stars to rise to his challenge, he kept pressing for birdies, missing only by tiny margins on numbers seventeen and eighteen. It truly could have been a 29, even a 28, on the back nine at Oakmont.
Breaking a scoring threshold, conquering a monster venue, and bypassing reigning superstars along the way clearly define a golden path to golf immortality. But Miller’s miracle at Oakmont contained a fourth dimension that reinforces the historic significance of his final round and makes it unique in the annals of U.S. Open golf.
After an opening 71, Miller shot a 69 on Friday that was mainly a result of spectacular putting—the best putting Palmer (his playing partner) had ever seen at Oakmont. Even Miller admitted he’d never putted better. Miller’s 76 on Saturday allegedly resulted from his missing yardage book on the front nine. But, as we demonstrated earlier, that explanation makes little sense; Miller actually scored worse on the second nine, with yardage book in hand. The plain fact is that from a ball-striking perspective, Miller didn’t play particularly well on either Friday or Saturday. A hot putter was all that kept him in sight of the leaders.
On Sunday, Miller obviously turned things around from tee to green. He hit all eighteen putting surfaces in regulation and—vital for good scoring at Oakmont—he kept his ball below the hole each time. Once Miller striped a three-iron and stopped it within five feet of the flagstick on number one—the toughest opening hole in all of championship golf—there was little doubt that this round would yield a very different outcome from the 76 the day before.
But just how different that outcome was is what makes Miller’s final round stand out from all other victories in U.S. Open history. Between 1898 and 1973, seventy U.S. Opens were contested over four rounds.
5
Interestingly, there was considerable variation in the winners’ scores between rounds three and four. Looking at the difference between the round three and round four scores for the seventy U.S. Open winners, we found that the final-round score for half the winners was within three strokes (plus or minus) of their third-round score (see boxplot two). This is a pretty wide range, especially in a U.S. Open where, the experts tell us, consistent excellence of performance under pressure is essential to victory.
BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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