Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  Even before turning twenty-one, John Miller was a U.S. Open hero, a weekend qualifier at the Masters, and a first-team All American (an honor announced by Arnold Palmer, chairman of the selection committee) the previous year. And in May 1968, at a dinner inducting Casper into the California Golf Hall of Fame, Miller accepted the Northern California Amateur of the Year Award. Ultimately, the evening turned into a celebration of Mormon golfers: Miller’s former mentor, John Geertsen, was also presented with the state’s Golf Professional of the Year award.

  Miller proved to be the best amateur in all of California later that summer by winning the California State Amateur championship. Sparked by a new putter and a new putting stance (he took only thirty-seven putts in twenty-six holes), Miller cruised to a 12 & 10 victory in the thirty-six-hole final round at Pebble Beach. The candid 160-pound senior proclaimed, “[Every] iron in my bag was great.”

  Miller’s sparkling amateur resume naturally fostered visions of future greatness.

  “Gene Littler and Ken Venturi both sprang from the California State Amateur Golf Championship to capture the United States Open,” the Oakland Tribune observed. “Johnny Miller is destined to follow in their footsteps.”

  Like those two fine amateurs who quickly became great professionals, Miller did not return to Brigham Young in the fall of 1968. He never received his college degree and never undertook a Mormon “mission” at home or abroad (usually for two years), as did most Mormon male students at BYU.

  “A college degree,” he said, “is not going to help you sink those two-footers.”

  During the summer and fall of 1968, Miller competed in a few amateur tournaments and prepared for the tour qualifying school in Palm Beach Gardens in April. He experienced tour life in January 1969, qualifying for the Kaiser International Open Invitational at the Silverado Country Club and Resort in Napa. Playing just an hour from his home, Miller held his own among a field that included Trevino, Palmer, and Littler. His two under 70 on the first day was even more impressive because he lost a ball in a pond on the eighteenth. Terrible rains over the next two days—both Friday’s and Saturday’s rounds were washed out—did nothing to interrupt Miller. When he finally returned to the course on Sunday, he shot five birdies on the front nine, only to have the score erased due to more rain. The following morning, with the course drenched in water, Tournament officials declared Miller Barber the thirty-six-hole winner; John tied for forty-second.

  Miller received his tour credentials in April 1969, finishing in the top fifteen at Q School along with fellow Californians Rodney Curl and Bob Eastwood. With representation by Ed Barner, a fellow Mormon and Billy Casper’s agent, and initial financial backing from a San Francisco-based group of businessmen, Miller ventured onto the PGA tour in May 1969.

  Just like when he learned the game under John Geertsen, or his steady rise to first-team All American status at BYU—he received only honorable mention status, along with teammate Mike Taylor, following his brilliant performance at Olympic—there would be a few growing pains for Miller. After he quickly bagged $770 for a twenty-fourth-place finish in his first event, the Texas Open, he reached the top twenty-five only twice the remainder of the year.

  Life on tour changed quickly for Miller in 1970. Playing desert golf in January at the Phoenix Country Club, he carded 72-71 and just made the cut. Forty-year-old Paul Harney’s 65 was the talk of the tournament, as the long-hitting tour journeyman led by one shot after two rounds. But the next day, Miller grabbed all the headlines and revealed for the first time a unique talent that would become his signature as a touring pro: The young man could “go low.”

  Miller got off to a fast start on Saturday morning: birdies on the first three holes. Three more birdies on the front nine made for a stellar six under 30. Shooting par on the back nine would yield a 65, two off the course record of 63. Miller seemed headed for exactly that number over holes ten to fifteen. But he then rolled in lengthy birdie putts on the sixteenth and seventeenth; another par would tie the course record and spring Miller back into contention.

  Miller’s Saturday was shaping up to be the mirror opposite of the day before.

  “My putting was real bad,” he said about his Friday round. On Friday night, Miller had vented to Karsten Solheim, the innovative golf-club maker who, at the time, still personally hawked his controversial PING putters and new perimeter-weighted irons at tour events. Later that evening, Solheim helped Miller regrip and recalibrate his clubs.

  “But while he was there,” Solheim recalled, “I started brainwashing him about my putters.”

  Curiously, Solheim was just continuing a conversation he had started years earlier with Laurence Miller. In 1956, nine-year-old John and his father had participated in a hole-in-one contest at Lincoln Park, near the family’s San Francisco home. Solheim—then an engineer for General Electric—approached Laurence and tried rather aggressively to sell him on his inventions. But even a demonstration back at Solheim’s garage/workshop couldn’t convince Laurence to buy any of his oddly designed putters.

  Skeptical at first, just like his father fourteen years earlier, John warmed to the rogue designs that Solheim handed him and selected a PING Cushin number four putter.

  “[When] I rolled in about thirty straight putts on the rug, I started getting excited.”

  With the new putter in hand, Miller exuded confidence on the greens during his Saturday dream round, especially around noon when he reached the 535-yard par-five eighteenth in two shots. A conventional two-putt birdie from forty feet meant the course record. Instead, Miller boldly stroked the putt, which dropped dead center for an eagle and a mind-numbing score of 61, one shy of the PGA tour record.

  “[It] worked like magic,” he said of Solheim’s oddly shaped flat stick.

  Miller’s 61 jumped him to within two shots of the leader, Gene Littler, and close to his first tour victory.

  “It was just one of those days. It’s got to be the greatest round I ever played,” he told the press. “Golf is a game of ups and downs—and sometimes they come very quickly.”

  NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE’S LOU GRAHAM DREW the esteemed honor—or sad misfortune—of playing consecutive rounds of a U.S. Open at Oakmont with Arnold Palmer. And though the former military guard of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier would eventually overshadow everyone at a U.S. Open, with a shocking play-off victory at Medinah two years later, few noticed him at all during the second round at Oakmont in 1973.

  As Graham hovered near the cut line all Friday afternoon (he would miss by a single stroke), his playing partners—Palmer, golf’s graying King, and Miller, the golden-maned young lion—provided more than enough excitement for the gallery. Like Palmer, Miller shot 71 on Thursday and was confident he could win the title.

  Dressed in a powder blue shirt, houndstooth slacks, and no hat to cover his flowing mop top, Miller joined the man whose bold style of play had inspired him since childhood. The threesome teed off at 10:04 a.m., and although news of a serious sprinkler malfunction (see chapter six) had not yet fully surfaced to the press, gallery, and players waiting to begin, visual evidence blanketed the course.

  “There was casual water on the sixth green,” Miller joked. One putt Miller stroked actually left “a rooster tail.”

  “You could see water around your shoes,” Palmer added. “Even with soft greens, it’s not all that easy.”

  Had reporters spoken to Palmer as he made the turn, they might have heard a different response. With the greens considerably slower than usual in the late-morning haze, Palmer cruised through the front nine almost flawlessly.

  Following a routine par on number one, he crossed the bridge and nailed a birdie from fifteen feet on the short second hole. On the par-five fourth, he rolled in a putt from eight feet for a second birdie. On the eighth, the 244-yard par-three that he bogeyed the day before, Palmer stuck his tee shot onto the back edge of the green, twenty-five feet away.

  He rolled the right-to-left slider into the center of
the cup, and doffed his white visor to an army in uproar. At three under par for the day and for the tournament, Palmer had begun his charge. And with the ninth hole up next—a par-five he’d birdied four times in his last six rounds at Oakmont—he hoped to close out the front side within one stroke of the leader.

  Grabbing the tournament’s lead was not on Johnny Miller’s mind Friday afternoon; maintaining even par was challenge enough. He found trouble on the third hole when his approach from the fairway fell into a green-side bunker, leading to a bogey. On the next hole, he squandered an easy opportunity to regain the lost stroke.

  “I missed a two-and-a-half-footer for a birdie on the fourth hole,” he said, “and I got a little down.”

  Miller now trailed his regal playing partner by three strokes after only four holes, and with the more boisterous members of Arnie’s Army stirring, he faced an uphill battle just to remain competitive.

  “[Palmer] doesn’t bother me any more or less than any other player. I’ve matured. I’ve gained confidence. Playing with Arnie or Jack would have shaken me up a few years ago, but not now,” he said. “Those guys used to make me nervous. I can remember stealing glances at them, trying to copy what they were doing and watching to see if they were watching me. If they weren’t I thought I was doing something wrong. If they were, boy, did that make me jittery.”

  Any hint of those butterflies quickly vanished late Friday morning. Two poor iron shots on the par-four fifth left Miller a difficult fifteen-footer to save par. Staring down another bogey, he rolled in the putt to spark a spirited turnaround.

  “As mute testimony that I don’t get tight anymore in that sort of company, I had the best putting round of my life from the fifth hole on.”

  Following a solid iron from the seventh fairway that left him twenty feet from the flagstick, the confident Miller—he now used an Acushnet Bullseye putter, not the PING that had secured his 61 in Phoenix—converted the birdie putt to pull back to even par.

  Neither Palmer nor Miller could shave another stroke off par on the inviting uphill ninth or the difficult tenth holes. Palmer remained three under and Miller even par for the day.

  Everything began to change on the eleventh green.

  Reminiscent of his brilliant ball striking in 1962, Palmer had hit every fairway and every green in regulation on Oakmont’s first ten holes. The streak of straight hitting continued on the eleventh, where he was pleased with par. But Miller matched not only Palmer’s excellent shot making; he nailed a twenty-five-footer for birdie.

  Putting magic produced another birdie for Miller on the twelfth. Again twenty feet from the hole—this time facing a severely breaking downhill putt over the rapidly drying green—he rammed it home to move to two under par.

  Palmer, who also had a twenty-footer on the par-five twelfth, couldn’t cash in the birdie and, worse yet, missed his comebacker. The three-putt bogey dropped Palmer into a tie with Miller, whom he had led by three shots just two holes earlier; eleven-year-old memories of Oakmont three-putts festered.

  “The three-putt green put me off a little and seemed to cause my other problems,” he said.

  Problems such as hooking his iron to the par-three thirteenth, just shy of a steep bunker. Palmer’s recovery shot sailed thirty feet above the hole and, luckily, he escaped with a bogey.

  Palmer’s previously superb driving broke down on the fifteenth. Bogged down in the rough, he missed another green and could do no better than a third back-nine bogey.

  Despite three consecutive bogeys, Palmer’s friendly demeanor did not change. On the sixteenth fairway, he paused for several moments to chat with a few friends in the gallery, including harness-racing legend Del Miller, and Bobby Cruickshank, the seventy-nine-year-old, two-time U.S. Open runner-up who still gave lessons at nearby Chartiers Country Club. In front of his friends, Palmer stopped the bleeding and made a par.

  Palmer’s bandwagon, nevertheless, fretted over his errors. Near the seventeenth green, someone asked Deacon Palmer how he felt.

  “I felt good, until Arnie came up with those three bogeys.”

  In front of the eighteenth green, surrounded by anxious spectators, Palmer stroked a bold chip shot that bounded past the hole. He then sank the six-foot comebacker to remain even par at the halfway point of the championship.

  “It seemed like every time I missed a green, I would get a bogey. If I can cut down the mistakes, I will be there in the end,” he said. “I drove it numerous times in trouble. I had only one three-putt green, but a lot of putts I hit were bad putts.”

  Miller seemed incapable of stroking a bad putt. After the beautiful pair of birdies at numbers eleven and twelve, he again saved par from twelve feet on the thirteenth. Pars all the way into the clubhouse gave Miller a two under 69 for the day. Playing numbers eleven to fifteen five shots better than Palmer catapulted Miller into a tie for third place, just three behind Player.

  Commenting on Miller’s putting display, Palmer called it, “[The] greatest I’ve ever seen. It got to the point where he finally missed a twenty-footer at number sixteen—and was mad.”

  Miller oozed confidence in the press tent.

  “You need to do three things in a major championship. You have to be a good driver—keep the ball in the fairways—hit the ball high to hold the hard greens, and be a fast green putter. I’m all three,” he said. “I grew up playing an Open course, Olympic, and I like tough courses. I can’t play easy courses. I like courses where you shoot a seventy-three and you’re still in competition.

  “I can win,” he added. “But I can’t try to win. I’ve got to play well and maybe some of the leaders will make some bogeys.”

  That was the fate that befell Palmer during his second round; he let his emotions get the better of him.

  “The old Palmer wouldn’t have let a little three-putt bother him,” one veteran reporter reflected. “He would have eagled the next hole with a chip shot or something. He is not the old Palmer, though, and one of his playing partners, Johnny Miller, agreed that it is partly mental.”

  “Palmer is playing well,” said Miller. “He will be near the top ... if he doesn’t try too hard.”

  Trying too hard: That didn’t seem to fit Johnny Miller’s laid-back, California image.

  • 6 •

  A Watered-down Open

  Neither Player’s six birdies nor Nicklaus’s eagle on the seventeenth—not even unheralded Tom Shaw’s sixty-foot birdie putt on the roller-coaster eighteenth green—could diminish Oakmont’s reputation for unrelenting toughness after Thursday’s opening round. Intermittent heroics could not nullify the body-dragging weariness that Oakmont induced in the world’s best golfers.

  And that was the way Oakmont’s members and the U.S.G.A. wanted it.

  Thursday evening, after tying the course record of 67, Player proclaimed that shooting 72s the rest of the way would please him greatly and result in his second U.S. Open championship. As the course continued to dry out after Tuesday’s storm, it would play even firmer and faster and “become more difficult and I expect the scores to rise.”

  Player had no idea that on Friday morning, under the same heat, humidity, and blue skies as the day before, the playing conditions at Oakmont would change radically.

  He did not get off to the same hot start on Friday, scrambling for pars on two of the first three holes. One of the game’s top sand players, he chipped softly out of a green-side bunker on number four to set up another birdie. He bogeyed number seven, the result of driving into a bunker and failing to negotiate a six-footer to save par. Player then atoned with two fine woods and a two-putt on the dicey ninth green for a birdie four.

  “I was pretty fortunate to do the front nine in one under par,” he said after missing five greens and one-putting four times to save par. “[My] short game today was about as good as it could be.”

  Player’s short-game wizardry continued on the back side, as he managed nine knee-rattling pars to close out his second subpar performance (7
0). He walked into the press tent still on top of the field at 137, the lowest score for the first two rounds in Oakmont’s U.S. Open history.

  “I’ve been putting very well here, and I credit that to hours and hours of practice. If practice and putting mean perfection, then maybe, just maybe, that’s my fate here,” Player said. “Next to Ben Hogan, I probably practice more than any player in the game.”

  For all that bravado, Player was not quite ready to claim victory at the halfway point.

  “The leader very seldom wins the tournament. Any tournament. The leader wins about two out of ten times at most,” he said. “Sure, there’ll be quite a few low rounds, but when you come to the last nine holes of the [U.S. Open] tournament, you suddenly get a bad case of tonsillitis.”

  Though he finished by early afternoon, Player had already changed his tune from a day before, when he predicted that scores would rise on Friday. In fact, within his own threesome, only Player’s score rose: Tom Weiskopf’s 69 and Tommy Aaron’s 71 were, respectively, four and seven strokes better than their scores the previous day. While Player had to scramble, several golfers near the top of the leaderboard began chasing him down.

  Like Player, Bob Charles of New Zealand pioneered international golf in the early 1960s, but because he competed in Asia and Europe as much as the U.S., the American media excluded him from the “elite player” debates. His fellow pros knew better. The tall, thin left-hander’s refined skills and mental agility produced a 1963 British Open Championship and four PGA tour victories. And during a five-week stretch in 1968, he won the Canadian Open, then took second place in both the British Open and PGA Championship. Arnold Palmer called Charles the greatest putter he ever saw.

  Charles, however, was never blessed with great length off the tee, and by 1973 he had become discouraged about his future on the PGA tour.