Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  Borek shot 72 in the morning round at the North Hills Country Club in Manhasset, then made the short drive on the Long Island Expressway to the Fresh Meadow Country Club for the final eighteen holes. There he shot another round of even par. Tied with four other players at 144, he returned to Fresh Meadow’s difficult opening hole to compete in a play-off for the remaining two slots.

  Peter Kern, the lowest-scoring amateur, effectively bowed out when he launched a shot into a pond; Nashawtuc Country Club pro Charles Volpone Jr.’s double bogey also eliminated him. When former Masters champion Doug Ford sank a thirty-five-foot birdie putt, and Middle Bay Country Club’s Craig Shankland made a conventional par, Borek needed to sink his par putt to remain in contention. He missed and had to settle for first alternate.

  Nevertheless, later that week, Borek was headed to Oakmont. A Pine Hollow member in the steel industry, Gil Merrill (the brother of Metropolitan Opera star Robert Merrill), was on his way to Pittsburgh on business and had been invited to play at Oakmont. He asked Borek to come along.

  “I said, ‘What?’ but then quickly agreed to fly out with him on his plane.”

  Borek arrived at Oakmont the same afternoon that Palmer and Player were prepping for the Open. Early in his career, Borek had jumped at the chance to practice alongside tour stars; by age thirty-six, he had decided against it.

  “In the past, whenever I’d play with a ‘name player,’ there was a lot of conversation and the emphasis was inevitably on him. As a result, I found that I would not pay sufficient attention to learning the course itself. Moreover, unlike me, the ‘name players’ usually liked to hit a lot of balls. So, as nice as it was to come back after the Open and say that I’d played with a star, I generally tried to avoid it.”

  Instead, Borek focused on the course. He found the greens simply nightmarish; never had he encountered greens so fast and so nuanced in their undulations. He decided to spend every free minute on the practice green, trying to store in his mind and his fingers—just in case an alternate spot opened up—the delicate touch needed to cope with Oakmont’s greens.

  Several days later, back in Long Island, still no luck. “I called [U.S.G.A. officials] Tuesday morning and the answer was still no,” said Borek. “I was told it might happen once in twenty years.”

  That was until Dave Hill’s outburst.

  “John Frillman—we’ve been buddies for a long time—he was the guy who encouraged Dave Hill to withdraw, knowing that I was next, telling Dave that he just couldn’t putt Oakmont’s greens!” Borek quipped many years later.

  Hill withdrew Tuesday afternoon and the U.S.G.A. officials immediately called Borek, whose wife transferred the call to him in the pro shop. He drove hurriedly to LaGuardia Airport for a flight to Pittsburgh, only to see it canceled just before departure. He finally boarded a plane later that evening and didn’t arrive in Pittsburgh until three a.m. on Wednesday.

  With no motel rooms available near the overstuffed township, Borek headed directly to the course for another practice round. Eventually an Oakmont member, Willie Robertson, who lived only a hundred yards from the course, offered him a place to stay.

  “I feel right at home,” Borek said about the six-child Robertson household.

  Fortunate after his hectic U.S. Open travel odyssey to have a late tee time (1:35 p.m.), Borek rested Thursday morning. Not long into his round, however, he looked every bit a last-minute substitute who had never equaled par in seven prior U.S. Open championships by shooting 41 on the front side. He “scrambled [his] way back” on the second nine to match the field average of 77.

  “I felt that I’d played very well ... the birdies just didn’t convert, and two or three poor shots led to bogeys and double bogeys. You can’t force the game, only play it one shot at a time. I wasn’t discouraged by my first-round score.”

  The next morning, during the second round, Borek scrambled again—this time into the record books.

  To “scramble” meant to snub the Fownesean tradition that Oakmont embodied. Thirty-foot par saves and heroic recovery shots might thrill the gallery, but they were the antithesis of U.S. Open golf. The U.S.G.A.’s ideal winner would split the fairway with his tee shot, find the best spot on the green to place his approach, and two-putt for par. On Friday, June 15, 1973, Gene Borek mocked seven-plus decades of U.S. Open tradition.

  Borek did not get off to a good start. His approach shot on the first hole missed the green and he scrambled to save par. A nice up-and-down on number two, where he drove into the rough, saved another par.

  On the next green, faced with a tricky twenty-five-footer, the well-traveled veteran read the landscape.

  “I remember thinking to myself that if I didn’t start making some putts very soon, I’d be going home. I knew that you really couldn’t try to make putts at Oakmont; if they go in, they go in. But that was a key moment for my psychology because I really wanted to make the cut. I made the twenty-five-footer.”

  The long birdie sparked Borek’s confidence. He reached the right green-side bunker in two shots on the par-five fourth, blasted out beautifully two feet from the flagstick, and tapped in for birdie. Despite his poor start on Thursday, Borek’s scorecard was impressive (one under par in his last thirteen holes), and he was just getting started.

  Borek scored easy pars on numbers five to seven, barely lipping out a twenty-footer for birdie on the seventh. But after he snap-hooked a three-wood into the hundred-yard-long Sahara bunker that guards the left side of the eighth, bogey or worse seemed inevitable. With the ball buried forty yards short of the flagstick, Borek took a chance.

  “I took a lot of time thinking through my options on the shot and was very undecided. Basically, I didn’t think I could hit it high enough over the lip to get to the flag. I was therefore thinking of playing sideways to the front of the green, chipping it up, and trying for bogey that way. I was also concerned about catching the ball too solidly and going fifty yards over the green and possibly out-of-bounds.... I had a good round going and didn’t want to ruin it.”

  As his playing partners, Bud Allin and Kermit Zarley, waited, Borek abandoned any rational decision: He needed to hit his shot or be penalized for delay.

  “Finally, on an impulse, I just decided to place the ball off of my right foot and beat on it as hard as I could.

  “All I can remember about the actual shot is that when I looked up the ball was very high in the air. I recall saying to myself, How the heck did the ball get so high in the air? I couldn’t believe it. I must have hit an inch or two behind the ball, no more than that. Because of the lip in the bunker, I couldn’t see the shot land. But Allin and Zarley shouted excitedly after the shot and told me that I’d sunk it; the ball had landed well beyond the flag and then spun back into the hole. I couldn’t hit that shot again in a thousand balls. Here was a score of five or six in the making, and I ended up with two. If I’d played smart, I would have been lucky to make bogey.”

  Unexpectedly three under par through eight holes, Borek began to sizzle. With his adrenaline flowing, he crushed a three-wood on the par-five ninth that carried well beyond the flagstick—“almost in the clubhouse”—and scattered the pros gathered on the attached practice green.

  Marshals cleared all the players off the practice green for Borek to stare down a terrifying putt from a hundred feet away. Downhill across the enormous, heaving green, he knew that if he hit the putt a touch too hard it might slide fifty feet beyond the cup and off the green; hit it a touch too softly, and the ball might veer thirty feet off-line. Borek had never seen a putt quite like this; with a throng of fellow pros and members gathered on the clubhouse veranda observing his misery, he simply tried not to embarrass himself.

  Of all the fears on Borek’s mind as he prepared to putt, the sprinkler malfunction earlier that morning was not one of them. Certainly the greens were holding unusually well—his sand shot on the eighth, after all, had backed into the hole—but they had started to dry out, and this was still Oakmo
nt.

  “[The putt] was incredibly fast. I hit the putt like a twelve-footer,” Borek recalled. “The greens weren’t slow at all.”

  On this once-in-a-lifetime day, his touch was golden.

  “The ball kept looking like it was going to stop. But it just kept rolling toward the pin at the corner where the green went up.” The long, brisk putt rolled slowly enough for Borek to walk alongside most of the way, before it stopped a mere six inches from the cup.

  Left with a “gimme,” Borek rolled in his fourth birdie for a 32. In Oakmont’s entire U.S. Open history, only Gary Player, less than twenty-four hours earlier, had ever put together as fine a front nine. And unlike Player—who had scrambled the day before to card an even-par 35 on the back nine—Borek’s magic continued after the turn.

  For a moment, the great round appeared to disintegrate when Borek mishit his tee shot on the tenth into the first fairway bunker on the right. Still 180 yards from the green and left with an uphill lie, the ball sat close to the front lip. The “smart” play would be to pitch out sideways and set up a clear third shot with a midiron into the green.

  But Borek, unsure that he could play safely back into the fairway from his uphill lie in the bunker, decided to rely again on his strength and instinct. He planted his feet on the bunker slope, lined the ball off his left toe, and swung viciously, hoping to clear the lip and move the ball forward far enough to leave a short pitch to the green. The shot was risky—the ball could easily bury under the bunker lip, or rebound and strike him in the face—but the string of front-nine miracles convinced Borek to take another big chance.

  Somehow he held his balance and launched the ball toward the green, with unreal hang time. Immediately he knew he had just struck the greatest shot of his life—and one that (because of the force of the awkward blow) injured his right shoulder permanently.

  “The ball went incredibly high,” he recalled. “It landed on the green thirty [to] forty feet short of the hole. Remarkably for an Oakmont green that was like linoleum, the ball almost plugged.”

  Borek two-putted for a memorable par four. He had played numbers eight, nine, and ten in 2-4-4, when he wouldn’t have been surprised to score 6-6-6.

  On the eleventh green—near the clubhouse, the press tent, and the growing gallery that had heard about his round—Borek rolled in a twenty-footer for another birdie. He was now five under par through eleven holes, and eleven shots better than the day before over the same stretch. The question, “Who the hell is Gene Borek?” reverberated throughout the press tent, as writers hurriedly rewrote their main leads for the evening papers.

  Only one over par for the championship, Borek now fully expected to make the cut and compete in weekend play at a fifth U.S. Open. But he did not rest on his laurels.

  Orthodox pars at the next two stops followed before Borek made his way back to even par for the championship on the fourteenth, where he dropped a high iron to four feet and rolled in the birdie to reach six under par. He then played the next three holes superbly, including a near-miss for birdie on the seventeenth.

  The now intrepid Borek smacked another fine tee shot and an excellent approach to the final green, leaving a chance to tie the U.S. Open single-round low of 64. As he walked up the eighteenth fairway, a large crowd near the clubhouse—now fully aware of his stellar round—stood and applauded. And though his birdie putt missed a few inches to the left, he had earned a special place in Oakmont history, eclipsing not only the 67s by Hogan, Beman, and Player, but also the competitive course record of 66 that former marine Jimmy Clark had set in the U.S. Open sectional qualifier at Oakmont in 1953.

  “First, I’d like to thank Dave Hill,” Borek joked with reporters afterward. “It’s always a privilege and pleasure to play in the U.S. Open, especially on a great course such as this.”

  As brilliant as his round was, the originality of his tale—unknown club pro, last-minute substitute, breaks the course record—along with his personality, captivated the press.

  “Borek did it as easily as a stroll through Schenley Park in downtown Pittsburgh,” reported the Detroit Free Press. “He is 36 years old and has a nice, warm smile, even if there are gaps between all of his teeth. He has a wife and four kids. He stands 6-1 and weighs 200 pounds. He looks like the guy who runs the corner hardware store.”

  Borek was used to such anonymity.

  “[When] I called home a few weeks ago to tell my wife I won the Long Island Open, all she said was, ‘Don’t forget the milk.’”

  THE STARS OF ROUND ONE had all been men whom the public knew on a first-name basis: Gary, Jack, Arnie, Lee. A watered-down Oakmont—the greens slower and much, much softer than usual—opened the door in round two for a largely overlooked group of golfers to charge onto center stage.

  While Borek’s record-breaking round stood out, Friday was also a triumph for several other club professionals who didn’t, under normal circumstances, have the game to shoot par at Oakmont. In addition to Tom Joyce, Billy Ziobro, Greg Powers (all club pros), Lloyd Monroe, the top qualifier from New Jersey and the head pro at Upper Montclair Country Club, finished up a two over 73, twelve strokes better than he did the day before. And, aided by a birdie on the ninth (he was inches from an eagle with a wedge approach shot), Niagara Falls Country Club pro Denny Lyons posted a 74 and made the cut for the first time in a U.S. Open. His two-day total of 146 was five strokes better than his father, Toby Lyons, had shot halfway through the 1953 U.S. Open at Oakmont.

  But for all the surprises of obscure club pros climbing their way up the leaderboard to mingle with tour celebrities, that afternoon no one provided more astonishing golf than career amateur Marvin “Vinny” Giles.

  Giles was a throwback to the great Bobby Jones. Although born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, in much more modest circumstances than Jones-officials at the nearby fancy country club his parents couldn’t afford threatened to notify the police if the teenage Giles didn’t stop sneaking onto their course-Giles played his college golf at the University of Georgia. Under his leadership, the Bulldogs won three consecutive Southeastern Conference titles from 1965 to 1967, and Giles earned All American honors each of those seasons, rising to first-team All American in his senior year.

  And, like Jones, Giles was never lured to join the pro tour.

  “I was planning on getting married and my fiancée made it very clear she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life going from one Holiday Inn to another while I played on tour. The purses also were too small to guarantee us financial security.”

  Instead, Giles enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law, but still matched his game against the nation’s top amateurs. Granted a week off from the firm where he was interning during the summer of 1967, he won the prestigious Southern Amateur. During Labor Day weekend, he headed west to the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs to compete in the United States Amateur Championship.

  Despite his sterling golf résumé—Giles also took second in the 1966 NCAA championship, and had previously competed in three U.S. Amateurs—he still felt like an unknown.

  “Most of the players in the field [Bob Murphy, Marty Fleckman, Bill Campbell, Grier Jones, Johnny Miller] had much more decorated careers up to that point. It was a very prestigious field and my name didn’t stand out, at least not at the outset.”

  Giles rebounded after an opening-day 76 to shoot even par for the final three rounds (from 1966 to 1974, the U.S. Amateur was contested at stroke play, not match play). A birdie on the seventy-first brought the twenty-four-year-old within one shot of the leader, Bob Dickson. Granted a free drop following an errant drive into the woods on the final hole, Dickson won the championship, and Giles took second.

  As runner-up, Giles won a spot in the following spring’s Masters tournament, where he made quite an impression on its founder, Bobby Jones. Shaking off the preround jitters—“I was scared to death before I teed off”—Giles nailed a thirty-foot birdie putt on the first green. He knocked in two more bi
rdies on the front side, and finished his round one under par and tied for a top-ten spot. Giles battled tough throughout the weekend and finished the tournament at even par, the best finish by an amateur in six years.

  Although he was clearly one of amateur golf’s major stars, more final-round hard luck befell Giles the next summer in the 1968 U.S. Amateur. After three rounds in which he failed to match par at Scioto Country Club—the site of Jones’s second U.S. Open triumph four decades earlier—Giles found himself six shots behind the leader, with six golfers ahead of him. A herculean effort in the final round vaulted him up the leaderboard. Three under on the front nine, Giles made two more birdies on the twelfth and seventeenth that cut his deficit to only one shot behind college sophomore Bruce Fleisher. Sparked by a magnificent par save on the sixteenth, Fleisher hung on and escaped with the win. Giles’s record-setting 65 was rendered merely a courageous round of golf by the runner-up.

  Giles returned to the U.S. Amateur in August 1969, dubbed the “sentimental choice” in a packed field. Now twenty-six, he was practically aged next to Fleisher, collegians Tom Watson, Tom Kite, and John Mahaffey; Western Amateur champion Steve Melnyk; and a nineteen-year-old Virginia rival named Jerry “Lanny” Wadkins. Still, the most daunting obstacle for Giles and every golfer in the field remained the punishing course that confronted them.

  “Only Ben Hogan could take this course day after day,” one collegian said. They were playing Oakmont.

  As the final round began, Melnyk held a three-stroke edge over Giles and Allen Miller, the current golf team captain at the University of Georgia. Although the husky Melnyk “appeared to be sweltering from the humidity,” it was his partner in the last pairing, Giles, who spent the afternoon buried in sand.

  Melnyk was a natural enemy to both Miller and Giles; that May, his University of Florida Gators had lost the SEC title to the Georgia Bulldogs. After opening with a bogey, Melnyk overpowered both Bulldogs and, at the turn, was eight strokes ahead, largely because Giles bunkered shots on the second, third, fourth, and fifth holes. Giles narrowed the gap late, but Melnyk still emerged with a five-stroke victory.