The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (14 page)

“All he did was talk about how he couldn’t play this course,” says Heard. On the dogleg left 10th hole, he hung his tee shot out to the
right, leaving him on top of the hill and a long way from the hole. He then hit a beautiful high cut with a long iron onto the green. Heard turned to him and said, “Would you get out of here, you can play this golf course.” Trevino kept chattering himself out of it. “It was all b.s., he could play as good as anybody else,” says Heard.

Nicklaus had also been trying to convince Trevino that he could perform well at Augusta National, and Trevino was slightly more confident this time after the addition of one weapon to his arsenal. “I learned the hook about six months ago,” he said. “I used it in the PGA and at Firestone (both wins for him). The hook gets away from you a lot more than the fade, but it gives me confidence in cold weather and at Augusta.”

Trevino was going along at three under par until bogeys on the 16th and 18th holes resigned him to an opening round 71. Still, it was only his fourth subpar score in seventeen rounds at Augusta National. “Today it was just like any other tournament,” said Trevino. “The greens were slow and holding.”

For Murphy, an eagle on the 13th—one of a record seven there on the day—offset a double bogey on the par-four 11th. Four birdies and two bogeys gave him a 70.

And Murphy did it in style too. Every year he had seven custom-made pants—britches as he calls them—tailor-made just for Augusta. “It was the ticket,” he says.

MURPHY AND TREVINO
weren’t the only ones who took advantage of the excellent scoring conditions.

Making his presence known was Sam Snead, the oldest player in the field, just a month shy of turning sixty-three. Snead was a three-time Masters winner and the all-time victory leader on the PGA Tour. “If television would have come along earlier,” says Miller, “Sam Snead would’ve been Arnold Palmer.”

Snead was one of twelve champions in the field—that being a lifetime category—but his appearance wasn’t ceremonial. Eight months
earlier at the most recent major, Snead finished tied for 3rd at the PGA Championship, challenging Trevino and Nicklaus for the title. At age sixty-two, he became the oldest player in the history of the game to finish in the top-five of a major championship.

Snead’s graceful swing was considered the prettiest in golf. On this day, he went off paired with Peter Oosterhuis, the man Lee Elder had defeated at Pensacola. “It was so smooth and so rhythmic—a great shoulder turn,” said Oosterhuis, who played with Snead for the first time that day. “He made it look so easy.”

Snead, who had played in every Masters but the first three, quickly got to two under par. Employing a distinctive side-saddle putting stroke, his name appeared on the leaderboards after birdies at 13 and 14 moved him to three under before bogeying two of the last three holes. Oosterhuis remembers Snead’s playful manner. “I think he enjoyed messing with me,” he recalls. Indeed, Snead got the last laugh. His score of 71 bettered Oosterhuis—thirty-six years his junior—by eight shots.

Even with a 71, Snead wasn’t low Snead for the day. His nephew J.C. shot 69, one of six sub-70 scores on the day. The younger Snead finished runner-up to Tommy Aaron in the 1973 Masters and was coming off the best year of his career; however, he had missed the cut in his last three starts—a problem he blamed on having played and practiced too much since the start of the year. Wet weather kept his trademark panama hat in the locker room on this day. Snead nearly made an ace on the 16th when his tee shot hit the flagstick. He arrived at the 18th without a bogey before pushing his drive right to drop a shot.

Arnold Palmer came in with 69, as did Tom Weiskopf. His momentum from Greensboro continuing, Weiskopf took advantage of the par fives, birdying all of them. He two-putted the 2nd from twenty feet after hitting the green in two shots with a 4-iron, pitched to six feet on the 8
^th
, chipped to seven feet on the 13th, and two-putted the 15th from twenty feet after reaching it in two with another 4-iron. In his career, Weiskopf was 56 under par on the par
fives, an impressive total considering in 116 attempts he’d made only one eagle.

Weiskopf was without a bogey on his card until he came to the 18th, the 420-yard dogleg right par four that rose seventy feet from the tee to the green. In March, nineteen pine saplings had been planted along the left corner of the dogleg, just before the two bunkers that were added in 1966 as a response to Jack Nicklaus’s prodigious drives up the left side of the fairway the previous year. Those bunkers narrowed the fairway width to just thirty yards and took the driver out of the longer players’ hands. The new trees made the tee shot on the hole even tougher, eliminating the option of bailing out to the left and still having a clear shot to the green.

The hole was giving players fits today, yielding just three birdies and playing almost a quarter-shot over par. Among the players with under-par rounds, Palmer, J.C. Snead, Sam Snead, Larry Ziegler, and Allen Miller all made five on the hole. Weiskopf committed to never using a driver off the 18th tee. On this day, it was his approach shot that caused him trouble when he over-shot the green and failed to get up-and-down for par.

Still, it was Weiskopf’s best start at a Masters and his first opening round in the 60s. To Weiskopf, it could have been better. He placed the blame for any poor shots on fliers due to the wet conditions. And like Palmer and Trevino, Weiskopf’s instincts couldn’t totally adjust to the slower greens. Weiskopf counted seven birdie putts between ten and fifteen feet that he failed to convert. “Even though I knew that the greens were slow today, I would leave them short,” he confessed. After some of the fastest greens of the year at Greensboro the week before, Weiskopf predicted, “The greens will never get fast this week.”

Murphy was tied for 7th with his 70, along with two of the best putters in the game: forty-three-year-old Billy Casper, the 1970 winner, and a twenty-five-year-old Kansan named Tom Watson.

Only eleven first-round leaders had gone on to win the thirty-eight previous Masters, but the highest opening round ever by a
champion was 74. As the axiom went, a player couldn’t win the Masters on Thursday, but he could lose it. It appeared one player had done just that.

AS FOR THE
more famous Miller, Johnny got nervous for only two tournaments a year: the U.S. Open and the Masters.

“Jack obviously sold the world on how important majors are,” says Miller. “I didn’t grow up with that kind of thinking. That was a problem for me. I didn’t dream of winning a bunch of majors. I just wanted to win tournaments. I didn’t really care what they were.

“I loved to play aggressive golf and the majors really didn’t pattern into my game.”

He admitted that he had been suffering from “Masters fever” for a month, envisioning every shot he’d face and working on his draw. Miller felt no fades were required off any tee at Augusta, but a right-to-left ball flight was mandatory on holes such as 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 17.

During a practice round earlier in the week, a voice had told him to do something he’d never tried: copy George Knudson. The veteran from Canada was recognized as a great ball striker who drew his shots. With more of a closed stance, Miller shifted all of his weight to the back right heel on his backswing, instead of being centered over his foot. On the downswing, he moved his weight to his left toes, which promoted an inside-out swing plane. The move produced a high, soft draw Miller could use on the holes that swung to the left and to any hole locations that were on the left side of greens. “It was something I’d never done before—the only time I’d ever used it,” says Miller. “I just started hitting it so consistently that way.”

By now, Miller knew the course. This was his sixth Masters. But controlling his emotions remained a problem. “I was over amped,” he says. “I was over my comfort zone even before the tournament started. Even though I loved the Masters tournament, I just wanted to win it too badly.”

Never getting over the opening round hump frustrated Miller. Struggling with his putting in 1972, he changed putters but still had nine three-putt greens in 36 holes. He shot matching rounds of 76 to miss the cut. Thinking the course placed too much of an emphasis on putting, he said they should rename it the “Augusta Spring Putting Contest.” In 1973, he opened with a 75, but came back with a 69 and 71 the following two days to stand four back going into the final round. A Sunday 73 though, left him tied for 6th. By the 1974 Masters, Miller had already won four events on the year and was number one on the money list—only Sam Snead had won more times before the Masters with five in 1950. But Miller’s forthright nature did him in. In a
People
magazine article published the day before the tournament, he was quoted as saying, “If I don’t win the Masters, I’ll be surprised.” Miller meant that he thought he would win it sometime, but his remarks were interpreted as that week. The article rocked Miller. Not used to the spotlight’s glare, he opened with a 72 and then a 74. Miller managed to shoot under par scores of 69–70 on the weekend to salvage a tie for 15th. “I played fantastically well in 1974 and could not putt at all,” says Miller. “I was just choking so bad on my putting.

“By then I knew how to play Augusta, it was just a matter of fighting my nerves with the putter. In majors I got more nervous and that would show up in my putting.”

The added attention in 1975 didn’t ease Miller’s stress level either: “Everyone wanted to know what I was doing, why I was winning everything. I couldn’t hardly get from the parking lot to the clubhouse and the clubhouse back through all the people to the driving range, and the driving range back to the clubhouse, and then somehow from the clubhouse to the putting green. Then the putting green to the first tee. It was such a crazy thing starting on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ...”

Miller was trying his best to accommodate everyone but found it wasn’t easy. He had created a monster for himself. “They were in
control of me,” he says. “It would take so long to get everywhere. It was a crazy time in my life.”

Miller came up with an unorthodox thought to lessen the madness.

“I just decided I wasn’t going to hit any practice balls all week,” says Miller, who began the routine, or lack thereof, on Monday. “Part of me was saying, ‘Are you crazy? You have to warm up.’ But I was playing so well in the practice rounds,” he says.

Beside the putting green, Miller would take fifteen to twenty practice swings to loosen up, stroke some practice putts, and walk directly to the opening tee.

“Every day of the tournament I was semi-freaking out on the first tee,” says Miller. “Standing up there with all those people, and I haven’t hit a warm-up shot.” Miller felt good, though, and began the tournament by hitting his opening shot down the fairway with enough power to easily clear the bunker at the crest of the hill on the right. He would hit the fairway on the 1st hole every day. “Sometimes when you’re not real sure it makes you focus even more,” he says.

Miller’s channeling of George Knudson yielded magical results tee-to-green. If only he could channel his friend Billy Casper on the greens. On that 1st hole, he missed a five-foot putt for par. After a five on the par-five 2nd hole, he couldn’t convert a three footer for par on the 3rd hole. Then on the 4th hole, he missed another four-foot par putt. He was three over after four holes.

Miller was a quick player, and being paired with Bruce Crampton, who had the reputation as a slow one, added to Miller’s antsiness. His other misses included a six footer at the 7th, a five footer at the 12th, and a fifteen footer at the 17th after a poor greenside bunker shot. The Tour’s birdie machine managed to make only two this day: a six footer at the 6th and another at the 8th.

“I was so amped up,” says Miller. “I played just fine. It was all putting.”

He hit fifteen greens in regulation on a day where he felt he was in-between yardages with his irons on almost every shot, but he didn’t make a putt longer than six feet all day. “I’m longer than I ever have been here,” he added. “With an average putting round I could have had a 71 today, with good putting, maybe 68 or 69.”

Miller had hoped for a different start this time. “Give me a good spurt to be up there with the leaders and I can win,” he said. “I don’t choke anymore.” With five bogeys and two birdies, Miller faced reality. “I played terrible,” he said, “and I’ll be lucky to be here this weekend.”

“I kept putting myself behind the eight ball,” says Miller. “That was the problem those first couple of rounds. I was just too dang nervous.”

Once again, Miller had failed to break par in the opening round for the sixth time in six Masters. A score of 75 left him in a tie for 47th. He trailed by eight shots. “Maybe it’s all my good luck averaging out,” he admitted. “If I keep putting like this tomorrow, I’ll be back in California by Saturday.”

BY THURSDAY
, Curtis Strange’s entire family had made it down to Augusta, including his grandfather, his mother, and his identical twin brother, Allan. They were all present around the first tee for his 12:04 p.m. starting time. The hundreds of other patrons around the teeing ground were there to see Jack Nicklaus.

Strange had actually met Nicklaus for the first time Saturday as Nicklaus was leaving and again on Wednesday. “He couldn’t have been nicer,” said Strange. He wasn’t as big in stature as Strange thought he’d be, nor were his hands big when he shook them. But that didn’t settle the nerves. “I was so intimidated just running across him the two times before earlier in the week,” he says. “Jack’s just an intimidating figure and person.”