Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  “I turned a sixty-four into a seventy,” he complained. “The back nine was probably as fine a nine holes as I’ve ever played.”

  In what was becoming a painful stigma, Tom could not wrestle away a major championship from the Golden Bear on a final Sunday. The implosion occurred early: Three bogeys over the opening four holes cost him dearly, and by the turn he trailed his playing partner, Nicklaus, by five shots. Though Weiskopf gained three strokes on Nicklaus during the back nine, every potential challenger eventually faltered; as usual, Nicklaus did exactly what it took to preserve his lead and win his fourth Masters title.

  “I tried my darnedest out there today, and that’s the best I could do,” Weiskopf said about his second-place finish in the Masters (despite a closing round of 74). “He’s the greatest golfer there is in the game. I was three strokes behind. That’s a pretty big task—to come from three strokes behind and beat him.”

  Reporters scrutinized every moment as the game’s biggest bombers were paired together during a major-championship Sunday. And on the eighteenth fairway, the former college teammates stopped briefly to share a moment of reflection.

  “I said, ‘I wish I could have given you a better fight.... I’ll get you next time.’”

  WEISKOPF CLOSED OUT 1972 WITH another victory as a professional, albeit not an official PGA triumph. Lashing towering drives that “turned the 6,997-yard Wentworth course into a toy,” Weiskopf won October’s Piccadilly World Match Play Championship in England, 4 & 3, over Lee Trevino. In a thirty-three-hole finale, he carded two eagles and six birdies to topple the crowd and pretournament favorite.

  At his opening tournament in 1973, Weiskopf broke par during each round of the Los Angeles Open at Riviera; he tied for second, by far his best performance at that high-profile event. More good news came that week when he learned that Jeanne, pregnant with their second child, was about to give birth. Weiskopf left preparations for the Phoenix Open and flew home to Columbus, where their son joined his two-year-old sister shortly afterward.

  Sadly, the Weiskopfs’ jubilation surrounding their second child’s safe arrival soon gave way to profound sadness.

  As a late Christmas present to his father, who had recently been diagnosed with brain cancer, Weiskopf gave his parents a trip to the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Tournament at Pebble Beach. With Tom just a few strokes behind after two rounds, his father’s condition worsened and he was taken to a nearby hospital. The next day, Weiskopf shot an understandably distracted 84 (he missed the fifty-four-hole cut), and the entire family returned to Cleveland, where his father’s prognosis was poor.

  Although Weiskopf soon returned to competition, the stress and pressures of dealing with both a newborn and a dying father proved more than he could handle. In his first start since learning of his father’s illness, he withdrew following the second round of the Andy Williams San Diego Open—after he and fellow pro Bob Goalby nearly came to blows during a locker-room shouting match.

  “While my father was ill, I just couldn’t seem to get with it,” Weiskopf said later.

  Nonetheless, Weiskopf steadied himself after the Goalby imbroglio and made the cut in consecutive weeks at Inverrary and the Citrus Open. The following Sunday at Doral, he pushed Trevino to the end with a closing-round 67, capped by a twenty-five-foot birdie on the legendary fountain hole. Tom took runner-up honors and just under $14,000 in prize money to show his dying father.

  The following Wednesday, on March 14, with his eldest son playing in a pro-am event prior to the Jacksonville Open, Thomas Mannix Weiskopf died at age sixty. Tom immediately withdrew and returned to Cleveland, where a service was held that Friday morning at St. Pius X Church.

  Weiskopf took two weeks off to grieve with family before returning to the tour, first at the Greensboro Open and then, in mid-April, at the Masters. He played valiantly in both, finishing twenty-ninth in North Carolina and thirty-fourth at Augusta.

  “My father told me he lived and died for my golf. He told me if I set my goals higher I could be as good as the rest of them,” he said two months later. “I was upset at the Masters, naturally. It got down to the point [i.e., before the Masters, when he knew that his father was dying] where I didn’t spend time practicing. My father was being put back in the hospital before then, but it was not a mental thing. It was just no time for practicing.

  “Two weeks after the Masters I started thinking to myself, ‘Things have got to change. I’ve got to start working on my game.’”

  With his father’s expectations weighing on him, that was exactly what Weiskopf did.

  He started drilling daily on putting—easily the facet of his game that had plagued him most in crucial moments.

  “When I used to have a week off,” he told a Columbus reporter at the couple’s lovely Tudor home in Upper Arlington, “I wouldn’t do anything and I wasn’t sharp when I got back on the tour. I’d play halfway good, but I wouldn’t really get it back until the second week.”

  Inevitably, it all came back to Nicklaus.

  “Jack’s the only guy who can virtually turn it on when he wants to, but I think even he plays or practices a little more between tournaments. But he’s so great he can play bad and still win.”

  A month under the new training regimen yielded results. Near the end of April, Weiskopf flew to Dallas for the Byron Nelson Classic, where, despite a disappointing final round of 73, he earned a share of eighth place. And he capped off the tour’s three-week Texas swing (after the Byron Nelson, he missed the cut at the Houston Open) with a brilliant victory—the sixth official win of his ten-year PGA career—at the Colonial Invitational in Fort Worth.

  Although some writers downgraded Weiskopf’s triumph by emphasizing Bruce Crampton’s collapse in the tournament’s final moments, it took four straight rounds of par or better to earn Tom the win. He put pressure on Crampton by rolling in a thirty-foot birdie on the sixteenth from just off the green—his fourth long birdie putt of the afternoon—but a bogey on the seventeenth seemingly cost him a chance at a play-off. Crampton, the hottest player on tour, needed only a par on the final hole for his fourth victory of the early 1973 season. But he played the hole “like a duffer,” duck-hooking his drive and breaking his sand wedge en route, and scoring a double bogey to lose to Weiskopf by one shot.

  “It’s a heck of a way to win a golf tournament,” Weiskopf admitted. “I know how Bruce felt. I’ve done it. I’m happy, but it’s sort of a sick feeling. Oh, it’s a happy win, but not exciting. But like Jack Nicklaus says, you’ve got to play all seventy-two holes to the end.”

  Within two weeks, Tom tested that sentiment in an exciting second-place finish to Nicklaus at the Atlanta Golf Classic. Starting in second place and six strokes behind, Weiskopf seemingly shot himself out of the tournament. His second shot on the opening hole smacked a female spectator on the head, leading to a bogey. He followed that with a disastrous approach shot on the fourth that landed in a pond and resulted in a double bogey. Weiskopf now trailed the leader, Nicklaus, by ten strokes after six holes.

  “I really didn’t think I could win after I got ten down. [But after teeing off], I was so charged up, I wasn’t thinking. I was just charged out there trying to catch up too quick. It always happens to me; I get too aggressive and take silly shots,” he admitted.

  But the “new” Weiskopf—the confident, fully committed, more emotionally mature Weiskopf—emerged on number seven. There he rolled in the first of five birdies to close out the day and shoot his eighth consecutive round of par or better.

  “Up to then I was trying to score as low as possible; then my thought became to win . . . a different attitude. I had to watch it and not make dumb mistakes. I had no intention of trying to reach eighteen in two shots. I played very well the last six holes.”

  Nicklaus, on the other hand, could make no birdies down the stretch and posted bogeys on the ninth, tenth, and twelfth holes. Weiskopf’s third consecutive birdie on number fifteen cut the Golden Bear’s lead to three shots.


  Still, nothing—not even a dachshund that moseyed in front of him as he prepared to hit his drive off the final tee, or a thunderstorm minutes later—could unnerve Nicklaus enough to throw away a double-digit, final-round lead. Weiskopf finished two strokes behind Nicklaus in second place.

  “I’m glad I made it a tournament,” he told the crowd at the awards presentation, “interesting for you folks.”

  On the heels of the best back-to-back finishes of his career, Weiskopf moved just north to the familiar Quail Hollow course in North Carolina, the site of his play-off victory at the Kemper Open two years earlier. As in 1971, the Nicklaus-less field hosted the rest of the tour’s big names—Palmer, Trevino, Player, top-money-earner Crampton, and the flashiest of the young lions, Lanny Wadkins. Weiskopf had earned more money playing the Kemper Open than any other man in the field, so his confidence was high.

  Weiskopf picked up right where he left off in Atlanta. Four birdies on the first seven holes yielded a 65 and a one-stroke lead over Wadkins, who was nearly as hot. But a few weeks of outstanding play were not enough to erase the media’s long-standing doubts about how dedicated Weiskopf really was to joining the game’s all-time greats.

  “A lot of skeptics find it hard to believe that Tom Weiskopf is serious about his golf game,” noted a local reporter. “They keep seeing him reeling off rounds like his seven under par 65 in the first round of the Kemper Open Thursday and they wonder when the other Tom Weiskopf—the one with the fiery temper and foreboding looks and the one who went off on a hunting trip when things were going bad on the golf tour—will emerge.”

  Weiskopf did not dodge the skeptics. Indeed, he seemed eager to explain his sudden turnaround in his own terms.

  “Let’s face it... I’m not getting smarter. Things that happen on the course don’t upset me now like they used to. Then, too, I’ve decided that discipline is the key to the entire thing.” With that wonderful touch of Weiskopf hubris that perhaps sought to camouflage self-doubt, he continued. “Take the other day when I was home and played a round with some friends at the Ohio State course. It took us almost five hours to play; then I went out and hit balls for three more hours. I was hitting the ball so good at the end I almost wanted to applaud.... The only thing I’ve been doing different is that I’m devoting more of my spare time to practice. When I have a poor putting round now, I’ll go out and work on my putting, where before I probably would have said to hell with it.”

  During Saturday afternoon’s third round, Weiskopf surged ahead and built a two-stroke lead, thanks to four back-nine birdies that inspired his third consecutive round of 68.

  “I won’t play it conservative; I’m an aggressive player,” he insisted when talking about his strategy for the final round.

  Paired with Wadkins in the last round, Weiskopf started spectacularly, posting a four under 32 on the front nine that was sparked by three consecutive birdies. The last birdie signaled that no one was going to stop him from taking the top prize that week. When his tee shot on the 548-yard, par-five ninth landed so close to a tree that he couldn’t take a full swing, Tom boldly smacked a one-iron into the adjacent fairway. He then pitched to three feet and made his birdie to push his lead to four strokes. From there he coasted with an even-par back nine for the victory.

  “I’ve always considered myself a good putter, but I can’t imagine anybody putting better for three weeks in a row than I [was] putting at the Colonial, Atlanta, and here. I’m not saying it’s easy. But it’s almost easy for me. I just feel so good,” he told reporters. “I wanted to win so badly last night I didn’t sleep well at all. The way I looked at it is if I didn’t win, it would be a shame because I’m playing so well. I felt the pressure on me to win. That’s why this win means so much to me.”

  The triumph at Kemper gave Tom the first repeat victory of his career—a feat he set out to duplicate the very next week when the tour returned to Whitemarsh Valley Country Club for the IVB Philadelphia Open. And this time, the field included his idol, Jack Nicklaus.

  Weiskopf made an early statement to his doubters, following up an even-par front nine with a breathtaking five under 31 on the back. He stumbled a bit on Friday (though he posted five birdies, he also ran into a string of bogeys), and trailed an unknown twenty-three-year-old pro, Jim Barber, by six strokes after the weekend cut.

  “Who is Jim Barber? I never heard of him,” Weiskopf wondered aloud in an unintended display of arrogance that delighted reporters but upset his tour colleagues. “That’s a great score, but I’m not out of this yet.”

  Weiskopf certainly was not out of it, and to back up his remarks he fired eight birdies against just one bogey on Saturday. Unshaken by frequent wildness off the tee, he relied on precision putting to scramble brilliantly, one-putting eight greens. After the round, he led by three shots.

  “My attitude is always positive, no more negative thoughts,” he said. “I think I finally know what makes me tick. I set some high goals after the Masters and now I’m setting higher ones. I have no new shots, but I’m making all the makeable putts, and I’m not making any silly mistakes. Maybe it’s maturity... or experience... or confidence.”

  Unlike the raw nerves he had experienced at the Kemper Open, Weiskopf slept soundly the night before the final round in Philadelphia, and he was not shy about predicting the outcome.

  “I was driving out to the course before the final round and told my wife, Jeanne, ‘They’re not going to beat me.’ Someone would have to shoot an exceptional round to catch me, because I knew I wasn’t going to shoot over par. It may sound cocky but that’s the way I felt.”

  Again, Weiskopf drove wildly during the final round, missing seven fairways; he also lost his magical putting touch and three-putted three greens. But no one in the stellar field seriously challenged him—though Nicklaus did match the day’s low, 67—and Weiskopf calmly closed out with a par on the eighteenth for his third victory of the young, topsy-turvy season. He not only had his seventeenth consecutive par-or-better round; he set a PGA tour record by winning $117,145 in just four weeks. The three wins and one runner-up finish meant more to him than the dollars.

  “Winning is the hardest thing to do,” he stated. “There’s always pressure on you, whether you win by one or six. If I don’t get an ulcer in the next month it will be an amazing thing. Someone, I don’t remember who, said that we all create our own pressures. I think that’s true. If you stand there and think about water to the right and trap to the left and the trouble and all the things that can go wrong, you’re creating your own pressure. But if you stand over the shot and say, ‘I have the ability to execute this shot,’ then commit yourself to it, well, that’s something else.”

  In a matter of weeks, Weiskopf had at last begun to demonstrate that he fit securely among the tour’s elite. He blew away the field. He won with less-than-stellar play. He came from behind to win. He won with fine putting. He won with his trademark booming drives. He even outplayed the tour’s undisputed master at Philadelphia.

  But, fittingly, it was Nicklaus who pointed out the gaping hole that remained on Weiskopf’s resume.

  “I’ve always said that Tom has more talent than anybody in the game,” Nicklaus told a hometown reporter from Columbus just before the start of the 1973 U.S. Open. “But he’s been slow to use it. He’s finally taking advantage of what he’s always had. The big test for Tom is a major championship. He needs one of those wins to set him off. So far, he’s been his own worst enemy.”

  The Golden Bear was not alone in believing that before Weiskopf could authentically wear the crown of greatness, he needed to triumph on the game’s most grueling battlefields, the major championships. A close pal, former British Open champion Tony Jacklin, echoed Nicklaus’s sentiment.

  “It should have happened five years ago,” Jacklin said. “He has better temperament because he is maturing. I’m not surprised at all the way he has been playing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he won seven in a row. He’s the only m
an who could beat Nicklaus. He can hit the ball farther and his swing is as good as Jack’s, but Nicklaus has the perfect temperament. But Weiskopf can’t be regarded as a great player until he wins a major tournament.”

  Weiskopf himself readily conceded what a victory in one of the big-four major championships would mean for his career and self-esteem.

  “I feel I’m an awful good player but the great players win the major tournaments. The U.S. Open is the premier tournament because of the shots it requires . . . every facet requires a premium,” he told reporters on the eve of the seventy-third U.S. Open at Oakmont.

  “I can’t put myself in the class of Nicklaus or Trevino or Palmer—can’t call myself great—unless I win a major championship.”

  Weiskopf left no doubt: At Oakmont, he would be chasing greatness.

  BILLY CASPER’S CONCESSION THAT WEISKOPF’S extraordinary length provided a decided advantage at Oakmont only bolstered Weiskopf’s belief that this was his moment to win a major.

  “I’ve driven well the last three tournaments. Why should I lay up now?” he asked. “I think these fairways are the widest I’ve ever seen for the Open—I may eat my words later in the week—but they almost have to be because of the greens. They’re what it really boils down to. Once you get to the green, your work is cut out for you.”

  A bit overshadowed on opening day—he was paired with Gary Player during the South African’s record-tying 67—Weiskopf was unable to extend his par-or-better streak when he shot a two-over-par 73.

  “But I’m not discouraged. It could have easily been a seventy, by making a few putts. I missed five putts between eight and twelve feet for birdies.

  “[It] was those greens that did it. But I’ll be back tomorrow.”