Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  In a flash, Miller fell apart. He played the fifteenth (often a birdie hole) poorly from tee to green and luckily saved par, then found the right-side bunker on the par-three sixteenth. When his par putt rattled out of the cup, the lead vanished. Although Coody promptly birdied the sixteenth, Miller was not out of it until his horrid play at the final hole, where his tee shot hooked left, hit a spectator, and bounded into an area once used as practice grounds. With no chance to get the birdie he needed, Miller bogeyed number eighteen and finished as runner-up to the anonymous Coody.

  “On that day, I lost my cool,” he later wrote.

  Not surprisingly, in light of his recent run at the Masters and his earlier top-ten finish at Olympic, the press now considered Miller a gambler’s bet to win the next major championship: June’s U.S. Open at Merion. In his final start before the Open, Miller fully displayed his dare-the-gods “go low” talent by shooting a seven under 65, the lowest opening round in the history of the Atlanta Golf Classic, before finishing respectably in fifth place behind Gardner Dickinson.

  Miller did not quite see himself as a “dark horse.”

  “I can hit the ball with anybody,” he said before the Open. “I always feel I play better in the U.S. Open. I feel a lot of guys choke, but my game isn’t affected by pressure.”

  Whether or not Miller’s blow-up at the Masters contradicted his brash claim that everyone choked but him, those who had seen him “go low” expected him to perform as well at Merion as he had at Augusta National. Merion’s hilly terrain and numerous small, treacherously slick and contoured greens placed a premium on pinpoint approach shots, and no one hit his irons straighter, higher, or controlled his distance better than Miller. His game clearly “fit” the course, and Miller wondered aloud if that week in Pennsylvania, something grand might happen at the stately, turn-of-the-century venue.

  “This is a wonderful course,” he said, “but I believe if it’s wet there are going to be a lot of low scores—maybe they’ll even break the course record.”

  In his fourth U.S. Open, Miller stared down Merion like an old veteran, finishing fifth behind Trevino after his historic play-off triumph over Nicklaus. Attesting to how well he could play the nation’s toughest courses, Miller matched par in three of his four rounds, a feat equaled only by Trevino.

  Miller finally reached the winner’s circle later in the 1971 season, but he received considerably less praise for his triumph than for his top-five finishes at the Masters and the U.S. Open. After Merion, Miller made the cut in seven consecutive starts, but he felt his game was going stale: Only once did he finish in the top ten, a tie for ninth at Akron’s American Golf Classic. Deciding he needed a rest from the tour grind, he and his California junior golf pal, Jerry Heard, planned a fishing trip to Montana.

  But John Montgomery, tournament director of the recently established Southern Open, convinced Miller to skip the vacation and compete in September’s PGA event in Columbus, Georgia.

  “He begged me to go,” Miller said. “He said I had done so well previously in Georgia [i.e., April’s Masters], I should come back down here again.”

  Montgomery may have been desperate for any name—wintess young lion or not—to join the rather lackluster field. Without Nicklaus, Trevino, Player, Palmer, Weiskopf, Casper, or even the hotshot Heard—now eighth on the tour money list—the Atlanta Constitution proclaimed lawyer Dan Sikes and defending champion Mason Rudolph the top contenders. Local native Tommy Aaron, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Gay Brewer, Grier Jones, and a few other youngsters provided the remaining “star” power at the Southern Open.

  Miller slashed the Green Island Country Club with an opening-round low of 65, then shot a three under 67 to keep pace with Brewer for the halfway lead. A 68 on Saturday put him one stroke on top, heading into the final round. Wearing “a navy blue shirt, red-white-and-blue Uncle Sam pants, no cap and a winning grin,” the twenty-four-year-old “Mod Miller” ran away from the field and coasted to a five-stroke victory, his first as a professional.

  Tunnel vision, Miller believed, kept him focused throughout the round. “I’m not going to look at the leaderboards,” said Miller, narrating his final round for the press. “I know a lot of people do it, even Arnold Palmer, but I don’t want to know what anybody else is doing. A lot of times you’ll see what some other guy is doing and you start figuring that you’ve got to do this.

  “I may have been destined to win this one; I had no intention of being here,” Miller frankly told the crowd afterward, before handing over the $20,000 winner’s check to Linda as a gift (the couple’s two-year anniversary would be later that week).

  “It was getting a little old being introduced as an ‘outstanding young golfer.’ Honestly, the money didn’t mean that much to me because I’ve had a [pretty] good year money-wise. I just wanted to win. It means that I will be paired with the tournament winners in the future, guys like Palmer, Nicklaus, Casper, etc., instead of nonwinners.

  “Winning this one will give me a big lift.”

  In truth, Miller did not experience any “lift” for the remainder of the 1971 season; he finished no higher than seventeenth, and averaged a thirty-fifth-place finish in four straight late-season events. Still, the win at the Southern Open and his stellar performances in the first two majors earned Miller the seventeenth spot on the tour’s annual earnings list, far higher than his fortieth-place finish a year earlier.

  Nineteen seventy-two opened with great expectations for the three-year veteran, but early in the season he mainly experienced heartache.

  Miller eagerly awaited January’s Bing Crosby Pro-Am, which was spread over the breathtaking courses of the Monterey Peninsula—Cypress Point, Spyglass Hill, and Pebble Beach—only two hours south of his childhood home. After an ugly first-round 75 at Cypress Point dropped him nine strokes behind the front-running Nicklaus, Miller pulled within three of the leader the next day, thanks to a sparkling 68 at Spyglass. On a calm and peaceful winter Saturday along the rocky shore of Carmel Bay, Miller shot a 67 at Pebble Beach—the same course where he’d won the California Amateur five years earlier, and the site of his controversial extra-club match-play win in 1963—to grab a one-stroke lead.

  Naturally, Crosby’s Pro-Am—the crooning legend was golf-obsessed—drew Hollywood’s most renowned celebrities. With stars like Clint Eastwood and Jack Lemmon doing their best to act like golfers, the tournament was made for television, and NBC invested heavily in the broadcast of the final round.

  Before a rapt gallery and a national TV audience, Miller fended off his playing partner, Nicklaus, for most of Sunday, despite three straight bogeys midway through his round. In reality, though, no one was playing well.

  “Everyone laid [sic] down and died out there. Everyone was chopping so bad out there, it was amazing,” Miller admitted. “I don’t think there was one good score from the guys who started in the top ten. Maybe that’s what this course does to you. It jumps up and grabs you.”

  Nicklaus took the lead by ramming in a thirty-foot birdie on the fourteenth, but Miller pulled even with Nicklaus, as the TV cameras began to roll, by making a twenty-five-footer of his own on the next hole.

  On the short par-four fourteenth, Miller faced a relatively simple second shot from a side-hill lie. After Nicklaus’s eight-iron came up short, Miller chose to “leap on a seven-iron.”

  Leap on it he did: “Instead of hitting it with a solid left side, I went down into the shot with my knee and it threw my swing out into the shank. It was a pretty swing. It probably looked nice on TV. It wasn’t jerky or choky.” The ball flew laterally right and hit a spectator before stopping behind a tree.

  “It was a beauty. I haven’t shanked a ball since I was twelve years old. Then I remember if you shank one, you’re apt to shank eight in a row.”

  As shocking as it was for fans to watch a top professional cold shank a short iron, Miller kept his composure. He then amazed viewers by pairing two wonderful recovery shots with a one-putt green to escape th
e sixteenth with just a bogey. And when Nicklaus could do no better than a bogey on the par-three seventeenth, the two were again tied.

  Miller’s shank itself did not actually sabotage his chance at victory; at the same time, he could not—and never would—let it go.

  “But I had the same iron into eighteen,” Miller told reporters later that day, “and I said to myself, ‘Don’t shank it out-of-bounds.’”

  Both men parred the eighteenth, and when Miller missed a lengthy putt on the first play-off hole (the fifteenth), Nicklaus snatched the victory by draining an eighteen-footer for birdie.

  The Crosby was not a major, but with the marriage of Pebble Beach and Hollywood—beautiful people embracing golf’s Eden—the tournament was made for television. A second-place finish behind Nicklaus again put Miller in the national limelight, and the $16,000 runner-up paycheck was the third-highest he’d earned as a professional.

  But Miller did not leave Pebble Beach unscathed.

  “From that day forward, I would never be in contention on the back nine on Sunday without thinking, Am I going to shank this again?’” Miller wrote. “That’s what choking is—having thoughts go through your mind that wouldn’t be there during a casual round with your buddies. The shank at Pebble Beach wasn’t a choke, but it led to some unnerving, choking thoughts. I contended in tournaments probably fifty times and every time after that, I was worried about shanking. I never did shank again, but you can bet it was dancing around in my head.”

  Although Miller “never did shank again,” tournaments continued to slip out of his hands at the worst possible moments. Winning didn’t become any easier in 1972 following his triumph at the Southern Open.

  A month after the infamous shank, Miller squandered the lead late on Sunday in another of the tour’s star-studded, pro-am extravaganzas. In February’s Bob Hope Desert Classic, played on four courses over five days, Miller birdied four of the opening six holes during the final round to grab a share of the lead. After Miller made a birdie on number eleven and an eagle on number fourteen, the tournament was his to lose. And he did.

  On the fifteenth, Miller’s nine-footer for birdie rolled past the cup; he then blew the two-foot comebacker for par. On number seventeen, a five-footer for par lipped out. Needing an eagle on the par-five final hole to force a play-off, Miller reached the fringe in two shots, only to see his putt come up two feet shy. The suddenly bored twenty-four-year-old then flubbed another two-footer, his second in the final four holes, and both on national TV.

  “I lost interest after missing the eagle. It’s just not the same playing for second or third place. I want to win.”

  His spirits didn’t pick up after leaving Palm Springs, especially when he missed the cut at the Masters in April. Luckily, Miller’s next appearance on the big stage, the 1972 U.S. Open, would come at a familiar place: Pebble Beach.

  Once again, the Carmel-by-the-Sea masterpiece—now toughened to U.S.G.A. standards, and played in frightful June weather—confounded the world’s best golfers. A two-over-par total after three rounds was good enough to earn Miller a late-afternoon Sunday tee time with Arnold Palmer. Miller shot a 79, but the winds swirling off the Pacific Ocean inflated everyone’s score. Miller’s score actually matched the average that day, and he finished seventh.

  A month later at the British Open in Muirfield, Miller set a new course record with a five under 66 in the second round, mostly thanks to one remarkable shot. Frustrated by an opening-round 76, especially his meltdown on number eighteen—he plugged a three-wood into a bunker, leading to a triple bogey—Miller needed an early spark to rekindle his desire and avoid missing the cut. Using the same unlucky three-wood from the day before, he smashed a tremendous long second shot onto the par-five fifth green.

  “I knew it was online. And I heard a polite patter of applause. When I walked up there, the ball was in the hole. Shoot! You don’t hole two-hundred-and-ninety-yard shots often.”

  Miller promptly birdied the next hole, and cruised through the rest of his day to finish tied for second at the halfway point.

  “That shot did wonders,” Miller said about the double eagle (“albatross” to the Scottish gallery). “I knew I could free-wheel. In my last tournament, the Western Open, I had a seventy-six and then a sixty-six.” Miller could not only “go low”; he was most dangerous bearing a wounded ego.

  Miller returned to over-par scores in the final two rounds of the British Open and took fifteenth place—eleven shots behind Lee Trevino. And, for the most part, Miller freewheeled his way through the rest of the season. In the next eight individual events, he averaged twenty-eighth place; after a miserable start, he also withdrew one round into August’s U.S. Industries Classic. In early November, Miller found himself outside the top twenty-five in tour earnings.

  By that time, Jerry Heard—four days younger than Miller and in his shadow throughout high school, college, and spotlight amateur events—had become the tour’s most heralded young lion. A two-time winner that season, Heard topped $100,000 for the second straight year. And the $61,700 that separated the two northern Californians told only part of the story: Heard regularly eclipsed Miller when they competed on the same stage. Heard posted top-ten finishes that summer in the American Golf Classic and the Sahara Invitational, and tied for fourth in the PGA Championship. Miller took forty-ninth, twentieth, and thirty-third in those events.

  A year earlier, feeling tired and in need of a vacation, Miller had turned around a frustrating season with one great week by winning the Southern Open. Now again, in 1972, he rebounded at the end of the season. This time, instead of a trip to Columbus, Georgia, Miller flew to Auckland, New Zealand, to play in the Otago Charity Classic. Jerry Heard was there, but Lu Liang-Huan, Taiwan’s famous “Mr. Lu,” pushed Miller the hardest. Trailing Mr. Lu by a stroke on the seventy-second green, Miller sank an eighteen-foot birdie putt to force a play-off, then drained a forty-footer for another birdie on the first play-off hole to win.

  Miller’s second (“unofficial”) victory seemed finally to produce the “big lift” he had anticipated after his first win; it was just a year late. Three days after the arduous trip home from New Zealand, Miller returned to PGA tour competition, playing at the Heritage Golf Classic in Hilton Head. The touring professional at nearby Palmetto Dunes—a club just five miles away—Miller was already quite familiar with the Harbour Town Golf Links and knew that it fit his game perfectly because of its small greens. Despite admitted fatigue, he shot 65 on the easier Ocean Course to tie for the second-round lead.

  Cold winds and rain delayed the third round by a day and also hampered everyone once the event resumed. Miller overcame a front-nine 40 to card 35 on the back side and take a one-stroke lead over Forrest Fezler.

  “It’s hard to believe I’m leading after a seventy-five,” he said. “It’s hard enough to shoot par here in perfect weather.”

  The conditions finally tamed for Monday’s final round—stilt, many women in the gallery wore fur coats—and Miller refused to give up the lead. On the eighteenth, still nursing a meager one-stroke advantage (over Tom Weiskopf), he needed only to sink an eighteen-inch par putt to secure his second PGA tour win.

  “All sorts of things went through my mind when I stood over that last putt,” he said afterward. “I thought to myself, ‘You can’t miss this.”’

  He didn’t. “A week ago I won a tournament in New Zealand and right now I have lots of confidence,” Miller said at the post-tournament press conference. “Jerry Heard has given me lots of good advice. He told me to take a deep breath and not get pumped up and excited.”

  Still, the victory in Hilton Head didn’t launch Miller to tour stardom. “Absence of Names Aid to Miller,” blared the Associated Press headline, as skeptical reporters pointed out the less than stellar field at the Heritage. And the victorious Miller even agreed with them.

  “Coming into the last couple holes, you know, anything can happen. But I felt I could handle those guys around me (the cha
llengers) except maybe Tom Weiskopf You know, most of them are young guys and I figured I could beat them. But it would be something else if you’re coming into the last few holes and Arnold or Jack or Lee is there. Those guys—they’re the best players in the world—they put the pressure on you. Maybe you put pressure on yourself. When they’re playing, it’s something else.”

  In the first event of 1973, the Los Angeles Open, Miller got his chance to compete against the “best players” on one of the nation’s most revered courses, the Riviera Country Club, where Hogan, Snead, Mangrum, Demaret, Littler, Nelson, Palmer, and Casper had previously won. Miller was outstanding on day one, carding a four under 67, and he finished respectably in seventeenth place-below Nicklaus, who took sixth, but higher than Palmer (twenty-fourth) and Trevino (who missed his first cut in nearly two seasons).

  Miller left Los Angeles to compete in the Phoenix Open, where he had famously “gone low” three years earlier, but withdrew before the final round to return to the Bay Area and be with his soon-to-give-birth wife. The father of two returned to the tour in early February and nabbed an impressive string of top finishes in high-profile tournaments. He placed seventh or higher in seven of twelve events, including sixth at the Masters. And two days before he headed to Oakmont for the U.S. Open, he continued to shine by taking third in the Philadelphia Classic (behind Tom Weiskopf, who posted his third win in four weeks).

  In the months following his second child’s birth, the excellence—and more important, the consistency—of Miller’s game soared to a new level. He hadn’t yet won against the “best players,” as he called them, but was battling them almost every week. And on the eve of the U.S. Open, he held down seventh position on the money list, despite not padding his totals with one huge winner’s paycheck.