by Adam Lazarus
Still, Miller’s case as one of the tour’s truly elite players remained murky. Golf Magazine gave him his due, naming Miller one of its six favorites to win the U.S. Open: “He has the shots for Oakmont and could be a hunch-player’s bet.” There was, however, one caveat.
“The lanky, blond style-setter was in hot pursuit of the title at Pebble Beach last year, before he ran into a final-round 79. He finished seventh. The year before, at Merion, he closed out with a fine 70, but it was only good enough for fifth place. Some observers are ready to give him the almost-but-not-quite mantle recently cast aside by Tommy Aaron [who won the 1973 Masters]. The 26-year-old Californian has the habit of roaring into contention with brilliant shot-making only to stumble with one weak round.”
And his fellow touring pros also noticed the repercussions of Miller’s Jekyll-and-Hyde golf game.
As one tour veteran recalled, “If Miller doesn’t birdie a couple of the first four holes, he really doesn’t even care; he can’t shoot sixty-three anymore. I mean, that’s the kind of thinking he had.
“He had this belief,” the pro added, “that ‘if I can’t shoot nothing [i.e., an extremely low round], then I’m just out here filling up the day.... ’ And he shot nothin’ a lot.”
As much as Miller’s “stumbles” shaped experts’ persistent skepticism, it was his disappointing finish in one tournament earlier that season that he couldn’t shake: Arnold Palmer’s February victory in the Bob Hope Desert Classic.
A year removed from his collapse at the 1972 Bob Hope, Miller again had a strong chance to win the event in 1973. Tied for seventh after three days in “golf’s answer to the Boston Marathon,” Miller pounded Tamarisk Country Club in round four with a course-record 63, tying him with—who else—Nicklaus going into the fifth and final round. Earlier that week, the Golden Bear had inspired Miller to believe that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em.
“I don’t force birdies anymore,” Miller said. “I just hit the greens and let the birds come. My new stroke is like Nicklaus. I address the ball in the same manner he does.”
In yet another limelight battle against a “best player,” Miller wilted. On a rainy, gloomy desert Sunday, Palmer, not Johnny Miller, triumphed.
Playing one group ahead of the Palmer-Nicklaus-Schlee threesome, Miller lost the lead with mediocre golf on the front side, then charged on the back. Birdies on numbers thirteen and fifteen narrowed the gap to one stroke, a deficit he nearly overcame when his ten-foot birdie putt on the sixteenth just missed. But he then played the seventeenth poorly, and when he failed to drop a lengthy putt for par, he became just a side note to the confrontation between golf’s top two heroes.
Afterward, Miller unintentionally confirmed suspicions that he lacked the inner strength of a champion; he just could not keep his head in the game.
“I kept thinking they would rain out the round and we’d play tomorrow. The result was that I didn’t concentrate. But that shows my inexperience. It was damned wet out there, but I should have been playing like I meant business.”
Despite the abysmal weather, none of the other pros obsessed about the conditions. Although Palmer admitted to thinking that the round might be suspended, he stayed focused on winning. Miller’s Sunday failure at the Bob Hope only reinforced his fragile self-confidence.
“I was getting a tag like Tommy Aaron. I had heard them down in Augusta, last April. They were calling me another Tommy Aaron because I could never win any of the big ones,” Miller acknowledged.
“That hurt. I wanted to do something about it.”
Miller’s mind-set on the eve of the seventy-third U.S. Open was curious: Though nurtured by a Mormon father who praised him constantly and preached, “Never allow yourself to think negatively,” John was actually prone to crippling self-doubt. But this was no paradox to those who knew him well.
“I think Johnny’s personality really was a personality that was either very positive and very confident or very negative,” Nicklaus explained years later. “I don’t think there was much in between for Johnny.”
JUST AFTER TWO P.M. ON Saturday afternoon, Miller joined Bob Charles on Oakmont’s opening hole to begin the third round, just three shots off the lead.
In the press tent following the second-round 69 that had wowed his partner, Arnold Palmer, Miller had been asked to gauge his prospects of winning the Open, under the inevitably tremendous late-round pressure.
“If it’s somebody like Jim Colbert, I feel I’m as good [as] or better than he is, so there’ll be no problem. If it’s Jack Nicklaus, well ... it’s like a Volkswagen and a Corvette in a race. The VW doesn’t win unless the Corvette breaks down.”
From the first tee box, Miller could see Nicklaus strike an approach from the rain-soaked fairway that sailed far beyond the green—the first of several “nondescript shots” that led to a 74 and frustrated the usually unflappable defending U.S. Open champion.
Miller’s afternoon would be far more maddening—starting when he reached into his pants pockets, then into his golf bag, for the yardage book he had relied on heavily during the first two rounds.
“I got to the first tee and I went through the first zipper and second zipper and third zipper, and then I started panicking,” he remembered. “I got Linda. I said, ‘You’ve got to go, my yardage [book] must be back at the house! You’ve got to go back and get it!’ So she had to go back to the car and drive all the way there and back.
“Talk about stupidity!” he once said. “The biggest tournament in the world, and I don’t even double-check. I tried to play by guesswork Saturday, not knowing if I was a hundred and fifty yards or a hundred and sixty yards from the flag.”
Miller bogeyed the first hole. Then he bogeyed the second. After a pair of pars, he bogeyed the fifth and followed that with a disastrous double bogey on the sixth. He was five over par after six holes; his hopes of winning the U.S. Open seemed over.
Blindly making club selections, Miller launched his approach to the seventh green into a bunker, setting up another likely bogey. A blast from the fluffy sand ran twenty feet beyond the cup and nearly against the fringe; two putts would place him six over par after seven holes and seal his fate. But Miller stroked a perfect, par-saving putt and breathed a sigh of relief as the ball disappeared from sight; still drowning, but not officially dead.
As Linda fought traffic on her way back to Oakmont, Johnny hit a superb tee shot on the par-three eighth and sank his first birdie of the day. And on the par-five ninth, Miller—stilt without his precious yardage book—launched a high two-iron toward the front right “sucker” pin; it barely carried a bunker and settled seventeen feet from the hole. Exuberantly rolling in the eagle putt, Miller closed out the front side with a roller-coaster 38, two over par. The birdie-eagle momentum from numbers eight and nine helped ease Miller’s mind almost as much as Linda’s appearance on the tenth tee, yardage book in hand.
As it turned out, the yardage book was no panacea. Just as his round had begun, Miller started the back nine by bogeying the tenth and eleventh holes with wild shot making. He was lucky to score only a bogey on the par-four eleventh after he drove into the deep rough and bunkered his second shot.
The zaniness of Miller’s third round continued with a birdie on the par-five twelfth, but any illusion that he had returned to top form died with bogeys on numbers fourteen and sixteen. In total, Miller’s strokes added up to 76: seven bogeys, one double bogey, two birdies, and an eagle. So much for the steady golf necessary to win a U.S. Open.
“The round was a nightmare.”
When Miller awoke, he trailed the four-way conglomerate of leaders (Palmer, Boros, Heard, Schlee) by six strokes. Even if he believed Gary Player’s first-day prognostication that “anybody six behind with one round to go honestly could win it quite easily,” the problem for Miller was who stood in front of him. Twelve golfers, including the four greatest of his time, and seven major championship winners in all: Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Player, Boros, Gene L
ittler, and Bob Charles. The list also included the tour’s hottest player, Tom Weiskopf, and its top young lion, Miller’s fishing buddy, Jerry Heard.
“I was really down [Sunday] morning. I had almost no desire,” Miller recalled. “I went out there ... and I didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do.”
What followed was the greatest round ever played.
• 10 •
Chasing a Living, Chasing Trouble
“When I got to the course [Sunday] morning, I was like a Thorough-bred itching to run, but I had to wait and then wait some more,” John Schlee recalled about his 2:23 p.m. tee time as a coleader of the 1973 U.S. Open.
Schlee’s main anxiety, however, was not his start time but his final-round partner. Playing alongside western Pennsylvania hero Arnold Palmer was a fate that one reporter likened to “facing a firing squad without the blindfold.” Whereas Palmer received a lengthy introduction and a rapt ovation from his army lining the first fairway, few noticed Schlee, even though he had notched his first PGA tour victory a few months earlier at the Hawaiian Open, and ranked twelfth on the 1973 earnings list.
Nevertheless, Schlee found some comfort in being paired with the King. Sunday would be the twelfth time the two had played together, and, according to Schlee, “I beat him every time except Palm Springs.” That February, following his victory in Hawaii, Schlee had battled valiantly alongside the world’s two most intimidating golfers—in a threesome with both Palmer and Nicktaus—during the last round of the 1973 Bob Hope Desert Classic. Over the drenched Bermuda Dunes course, he shot a one under 71 (one better than Nicklaus, two higher than Palmer) and took sixth place.
Still, Palm Springs was not Oakmont, home of the raucous enlistees of Arnie’s Army. “It’s like a two-shot penalty playing with Arnie. It’s so hard to concentrate with people yelling, ‘Arnie, Arnie,”’ Schlee told reporters.
Schlee was not bad-mouthing golf’s superhero—far from it.
“Don’t get me wrong; thank God for Arnold Palmer.... We wouldn’t be here without him. I’m one of his biggest fans.”
Schlee’s affection probably diminished a few moments later when, amidst the noise and chaos, his opening drive flared high and right toward the out-of-bounds fence. But no one standing guard along the first fairway, except Schlee’s wife and caddie, really cared.
JOHN SCHLEE WAS BORN JOHN Harold Tabor, in the small mining town of Kremmling, Colorado. Founded in 1881 during the Colorado Silver Boom, Kremmling was home to Cecil Harold Tabor and Mary Ethel Jones, who gave birth to John on June 2, 1939. With her son, Mary Jones left both Cecil and Colorado in 1945 and moved to Oregon. She soon married Carl “Lucky” Schlee, a Navy man based at Tongue Point, located in Oregon’s northwest corner.
Lucky and Mary raised their only child in Seaside, the small coastal town formed after railroad tycoon Ben Holladay built a vacation home there in the 1870s. (Even today it remains a popular summer resort area.) Middle-class vacationers from Portland helped pay the family’s bills, as Mary managed a modest, six-unit motel adjacent to their small house. Portland’s “old money” vacationed just north of Seaside on the beaches of Gearhart. Each town supported a public golf course: nine holes in Seaside, eighteen in Gearhart.
While John was in the sixth grade, Lucky’s navy buddy, Bill Otto, gave the boy a set of golf clubs. He quickly put the gift to good use and within two years, John became a staple at Seaside Golf Course, located barely a hundred yards from his home.
Schlee was already a fine player by the eighth grade, when he befriended Jim Cartwright, the son of Seaside Golf Course’s laid-back owner, Charlie Cartwright. Jim played on the high school golf team as a freshman and he realized that Schlee’s game far exceeded that of the team’s current ace. Exceptional power and a fearless mind-set stood out most, and Cartwright could hardly wait for Schlee to join the squad.
Cartwright soon became Schlee’s best friend. Still, even he didn’t know about Schlee’s past in Colorado, although Schlee did not legally change his name from John Tabor to John Schlee until 1955 (age fifteen). Perhaps further disguising his roots, Schlee went by the name of “Jack” throughout his entire upbringing in Seaside.
At the start of high school, Schlee played as Seaside High’s number two golfer, then quickly took over the top spot during his freshman year. As he matured and reached his adult height and weight (six-three, 185 pounds), Schlee’s golf astonished both peers and a small network of Seaside adults who attended the school’s matches. The town had a statewide reputation for producing star athletes in football and baseball, but no one had ever seen a high schooler play golf like Jack Schlee.
More than even how far he hit a golf ball was how hard he hit it that awed the small high school galleries. With wrists that seemed five inches longer than the average person’s, Schlee “popped those wrists ... and just killed it,” remembered Seaside’s star football player Neal Maine, also a member of the Seagulls links team.
Even adults who watched the professionals each year at Portland’s PGA tour event believed that no one—not even Arnold Palmer—hit the ball harder than the teenage Schlee. Some observers of Schlee at the Seaside Golf Course concluded that his low trajectory resulted from how hard he hit it: The dimples on 1950s golf balls were simply not designed to be struck with such force, and the ball could not get fully airborne as a result.
True or not, an aura of mystery surrounded Schlee’s power, intriguing every golfer in town. That aura earned him more “free passes” than other Seaside youth.
And Schlee was not simply a power player. He drilled religiously at chipping and putting on the practice green adjacent to the Cartwright home. Charlie Cartwright allowed all the high school golfers to play for free, and when the course was not in use, he let them “hunt” for lost balls to keep or use or sell. Charlie loved kids, wanted them to have fun, and he became especially close to Jack, his oldest son’s best friend.
Charlie knew that Jack and his mother quarreled often, and that Lucky hesitated to assert himself as the family disciplinarian. Throughout high school, Jack practically lived with the Cartwrights, eating many of his meals in their house or in the golf club’s restaurant for free.
No one was surprised to learn that once Jim Cartwright graduated and left Seaside for military reserve duty, Jack moved into the Cartwright home, sharing the bedroom with Jim’s twelve-year-old brother. For the better part of four years, Jack Schlee could be found either on the Seaside Golf Course or in the home of its owner, Charlie Cartwright.
Apart from Schlee’s raw power, his imagination, self-confidence, and capacity to live entirely in the moment inspired locals to predict PGA stardom for him. Schlee delighted in achieving the impossible, or at least trying shots that no one else dared. Not only did he hit the ball a ton, he regularly scrambled pars with nerves of steel and shaped shots high and low, left and right, like a seasoned pro. For every golfer in Seaside, a round with Schlee was a grand adventure.
Seasiders also noticed that Schlee never displayed anger or threw clubs when he failed, or gloated upon pulling off an unthinkable shot. As Maine recalled, “you always had this feeling that even the ultimate end wasn’t all that important.... Every shot was an event unto itself: ‘Forget the before and the after; this shot stands on its own for what I can do with the ball at this point in time, period.’”
At a junior tournament in Portland, several boys stepped up to the first tee (a dogleg par-four) and took ferocious practice swings, pretending to drive the green before playing the hole safely down the middle. When Schlee’s turn came, he took no practice swings, aimed directly across the dogleg, and smashed the ball onto the green, within eagle putt range. He then walked unassumingly off the tee without acknowledging the applause of the gallery. Six under par at one point during the round, Schlee refused to coast, and his go-for-broke spirit ultimately yielded several large numbers that cost him the tournament.
Erratic, up-and-down rounds like this defined the teenage Schlee. He would put to
gether a hot streak and fearlessly pursue it, seemingly headed for a record score. Then, as Maine recalled, “the whole thing would go sky-high.” Even when Schlee shattered Seaside’s course record by shooting a 58 (twelve under par), he bogeyed the last two holes, a product of his unceasingly aggressive style of play.
Because he concerned himself only with preparing for a future on tour—not helping his team’s chances for victory—Schtee practiced high-risk shots in every match, posting a good, not great, high school record. Still, during his junior year, the Seaside Gulls won the North Coast league championship and Schlee earned medalist honors with a 74. That summer, he totaled the lowest score in the thirty-six-hole medal qualifier for the Oregon Junior Golf Tournament, and finished sixth in the event.
The next year (1957) Schlee only got better, taking medalist honors in nearly all of the Gulls’ matches. At the state championship in May, Seaside finished thirteenth in a field of thirty-one teams; Schlee closed out his high school career with the Gulls’ best score, a four over 152, nine strokes behind the medalist winner. Schlee’s play during the 1957 season impressed Oregon State University enough to dispatch two of its best players to meet with him and see if he might consider attending OSU on a golf scholarship.
OREGON GOLF COURSES WERE NOT the only place where Schlee flashed his athletic gift. Not just tall but with a sculpted physique and muscled legs, he could “leap like a kangaroo.” One year, Lucky surprised his stepson with an expensive racing bicycle, and Schlee further built up his legs by riding to and from the Washington state line on weekends, before returning for a late round of golf.
Schlee occasionally ran hurdles for the track team, and started for the football team during his senior season. As a defensive end, he earned a place in Seaside sports history by securing a championship game victory, thanks to his solo, open-field tackle of the opposition’s star running back.