Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  Whether it was because the greens were firming up in the late afternoon sun and wind, or because he couldn’t spin the ball effectively from a soggy lie—water splashed when he made contact with the grass—Weiskopf’s pitch took a large first hop before rolling farther beyond the cup than he anticipated. He now needed to sink a delicate twelve-footer for birdie to keep within striking distance of Miller.

  Weiskopf thought he hit the putt exactly right, and waited for it to disappear. If anything, it appeared to be a right-to-left breaker. But somehow, just as it approached the hole, the ball angled severely right and danced across the front of the cup.

  A dejected Weiskopf stood upright, hung his head, and glared first at the ground, then at his putter.

  “I felt like I wanted to have my caddie play eighteen,” he said. “I felt so deflated. I really felt I could still catch [Miller].”

  Having—perhaps more than ever before—spent every ounce of will and determination, Tom Weiskopf finally gave up.

  ALTHOUGH WADKINS, BOROS, HEARD, TREVINO, Weiskopf, even long-shot John Schlee each had a realistic chance to chase down Johnny Miller, by five o’clock Sunday afternoon, Arnold Palmer might as well have been the only man playing Oakmont.

  Just a few paces from where Weiskopf and U.S.G.A. officials were still huddling inside the hot-dog stand, Palmer found trouble off the tenth tee, where he launched a horrible drive into the right-side rough, thirty yards off-line. He muscled the ball out, and his approach shot initially looked great, landing just short of pin-high. But the shot didn’t hold. It bounced, then scooted across the length of the green—covering at least a hundred feet before thick grass fronting a rear bunker swallowed it up. From there, Palmer played a brilliant recovery chip, popping the ball out with a hard, descending stroke and letting it roll gently to within six feet of the flag.

  “A very fine shot. If he makes a four here, it’ll be some four after the drive that he hit,” Dave Marr observed. “The people are just clapping for him every single hole. I never saw so many people out here that all knew him or know him or are pulling for him. You wouldn’t think there’s anyone else playing.”

  Having missed both fairway and green, Palmer now had a chance to leave Oakmont’s “toughest” hole unscathed. He drained the six-footer, then breathed a huge sigh of relief while twirling his visor over his head as the gallery roared.

  “I couldn’t have felt better,” he explained. “I was four under par, I was in command of myself, and I had some birdie holes left.”

  Palmer now headed to the eleventh, precisely one of those vital birdie holes. He skillfully landed his tee shot over the fairway crest to within ninety yards of the green. Then—with what Jim McKay called “a Pittsburgh-type smokestack in the background”—Palmer struck a perfect wedge that touched down ten feet below the hole, bounced once, and stuck pin-high, just four feet left of the flag. It was his finest shot of the championship.

  “He could easily get [a birdie], and if he does, he’ll move into a tie for the lead with Johnny Miller,” said Jim McKay, as Arnie’s Army cheered in anticipation. “You truly may be watching the greatest U.S. Open in history, and every year it seems to get tighter and tighter and more and more exciting. There is no tournament like this one in the world.”

  Hitching his white slacks, Palmer walked briskly across a small bridge toward the eleventh green. He tipped his cap to the crowd, which let loose a loud cacophony of claps, whistles, and rowdy cheers.

  “[What] do they think this is,” a nearby marshal joked, “a Steelers game?”

  Many among the army—including Doc Giffin, Palmer’s trusted press agent, who followed him shot by shot—knew where the King stood in relation to Miller, Boros, Weiskopf, and the rest. And the millions at home who saw the leaderboard periodically flash on-screen also knew the scores.

  Palmer did not. All he knew was that sinking the short birdie putt would move him to five under par, an unimaginably good score at the Hades of Hulton, and surely good enough to win the U.S. Open. If there was ever an “easy” chance for a birdie at Oakmont, Palmer had set himself up for one by tagging such a great approach.

  The day before, Palmer had birdied number eleven by sinking a titanic forty-five-footer and was so charged up that he smashed his fist into the ground, grinning ear-to-ear as he walked over to pick up his ball. By comparison, his Sunday birdie putt looked like a “gimme.”

  In fact, it wasn’t. On this sharply slanted green, Palmer’s short putt was actually downhill and contained considerable left-to-right break. Palmer lined up the putt and, from his signature knock-kneed stance, firmly tapped the ball. But he either didn’t read enough break or he opened the blade; the putt missed by a couple of inches on the low side.

  Frozen, Palmer winced over his failed short putt: a painfully familiar sports-page image over the last decade. The gallery verbalized Palmer’s pain, letting out a prolonged “ohhhhh” of angst.

  “I made what I thought was a good stroke.”

  Palmer gathered himself to tap in for par, shook and hung his head, then-revived by the whistles and the cheers of, “Go get ’em, Arnie!”—marched off the green.

  As he walked onto the twelfth tee, Palmer—still playing without glasses or contact lenses—squinted at the scoreboard behind the fourteenth green. With some effort, he “could make out” that Miller had dropped to five under par for the championship.

  “Where the fuck did he come from?” Palmer wondered aloud. “How much under par is he?”

  “I hear he has [nine] birdies,” his partner, John Schlee, told him.

  As it had everyone else that day, the news stunned Palmer. And not just because he thought he owned a one-stroke edge; equally confusing was the identity of the man he now trailed. During the opening two rounds, Palmer’s much younger playing partner hadn’t hit the ball spectacularly from tee to green; he’d remained in contention mainly due to sensational putting, which no one could sustain over four rounds at Oakmont. And in Saturday’s third round, Miller seemed to get what he deserved in the form of that tournament-burying 76.

  “It never entered my mind that Johnny Miller could win this tournament,” Palmer admitted that evening.

  “Sixty-three ... that’s just unbelievable. That is just about perfect golf on this course.”

  But Arnold Palmer—the man whose legend was shaped by heart-pounding, last-minute heroics—didn’t collapse. He had no reason to. With numbers twelve, fourteen, and seventeen each a realistic birdie opportunity, he could surely make up the single shot he needed to tie Miller, and perhaps even the two necessary to win his second U.S. Open outright.

  “Still confident,” U.S.G.A. historian Robert Sommers wrote, Palmer “played what he thought was a perfect drive, shading the left side where the ground slants to the right and will kick the ball to center-fairway. He was so confident he had played the shot perfectly, he hitched his pants, and with an assured, tight-lipped smile, he turned away and didn’t watch the ball land.”

  Palmer walked down the fairway, eager to see where his fine drive was sitting. Along the way, now close enough to see Miller’s five-under score clearly, he paused and stared glumly at the leaderboard behind the fourteenth green. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, hitched his pants, and marched toward his ball, which he was confident rested safely in the fairway.

  If bad news truly does come in threes, then after squandering a birdie on number eleven and learning that he now trailed a man who began the day six shots back, Palmer should have expected the ensuing catastrophe.

  “I struck what I was sure was a terrific drive at twelve, only to discover a few minutes later that the ball lying in the fairway, which I thought was mine, really belonged to Schlee. Much to my surprise, my ball had caromed left instead of right and was in deep grass on the 603-yard hole.”

  Palmer shed his visor and trekked into the rough. With his cleats buried in the gnarly grass, he took a fierce, short stroke, chopping up a huge divot. Though he advanced the ball far e
nough down the fairway to reach the green in three, he remained more than two hundred yards away, awkwardly positioned on a downhill, left-to-right slope.

  Trying not to slice, Palmer badly pulled a four-wood that carried into deep rough beyond a bunker left of the green. With the pin located just beyond the bunker and the green slanting away, there was no way to stop the pitch anywhere near the hole; Palmer did well just to keep the ball on the green. His fifty-foot par putt stopped short and left of the hole, and a distraught Palmer had to contain his rage before finishing off his numbing bogey six.

  Palmer’s back-nine demise unfortunately didn’t end on number twelve. A mediocre five-iron to the thirteenth hit the green, but so far away from the flagstick that he three-putted for another bogey. And when he three-putted again after a poor approach shot on number fourteen, all hopes for a storybook close to the 1973 U.S. Open died.

  Much golf still remained after Palmer—now three behind Miller, with four holes to play—scored his third consecutive bogey on the fourteenth. Fourteen men, including Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, still hadn’t finished their rounds. And Tom Weiskopf and Lee Trevino had yet to attempt their desperation drives on number seventeen.

  Palmer—as he had done with great fanfare to catch Nicklaus in 1962—also tried to drive the green on number seventeen and make eagle, believing, “What did I have to lose?” He came up short.

  But for his die-hard fans—including Lew Worsham and Bob Ford, who continued to watch the leaderboard through the picture window of the pro shop—the 1973 U.S. Open effectively ended with Palmer’s third straight bogey.

  “When Arnold made those bogeys,” Schlee said, “it was like playing in a morgue.”

  With the round finally over, Palmer—sitting in the locker room in his underwear with a cigarette in one hand and a beer can in the other—spoke with the swarm of reporters, many just as dispirited by his back-nine collapse as Arnie’s Army.

  “I won this tournament once when I wasn’t really supposed to. And four other times I lost when I should have won. I guess things balance out,” Palmer mused to the press.

  “What do they say about this game? It gives you a moment of ecstasy and hours of frustration.”

  Not long afterward, Palmer showered, thanked reporters, volunteers, U.S.G.A. officials, and fellow club members, and then hopped into his Cadillac for the short drive back to Latrobe. As the sun set on Father’s Day 1973, Arnold and “Deke” Palmer headed once again onto Hulton Road without a U.S. Open trophy.

  “As we left the course, there were signs everywhere saying, ‘Palmer for Governor.’ There was a cavalcade. Cars pulled up along the public highway. People got out with signs in their hands. It was nice but I didn’t take it very seriously.”

  THE MORBID SILENCE THAT JOHN Schlee observed once Palmer dragged himself off the fourteenth green was not surprising: to the loyal subjects of Steeltown, their King was dead. But patrons who couldn’t bear watching the lame-duck, final few holes of Palmer’s twosome missed one hell of a show.

  John Schlee had already provided great drama that afternoon. His embarrassing three-drive, double-bogey start on the opening hole embodied final-round pressure: Instantaneously, he seemed to crumble under the weight of sharing the lead in the U.S. Open. Somehow, he pulled himself together to make conventional pars on the next two holes and, with his superb eagle on the fourth, returned to even par for the day. But Schlee’s resurrection was short-lived; he immediately embarked on a bogey-birdie-par-bogey-birdieroller coaster to close the front nine.

  Over the next two hours, as each past, present, and future PGA giant who chased Johnny Miller that day—Palmer, Nicklaus, Boros, Trevino, Weiskopf, Wadkins—wilted at one point or another, Schlee did not. In fact, he played his steadiest golf of the entire championship on the pressure-packed back nine.

  Schlee reached the fiendish tenth green in two splendid shots; his mid-iron to within twelve feet was the day’s finest approach by any of the leaders. Nevertheless, like Miller and Trevino before him, Schlee left the sharp-breaking birdie putt a fraction short. Flailing his putter in anguish, he paced around the green to calm down before putting out for par.

  Not surprisingly, Palmer continued to be the main attraction when the twosome moved to the eleventh. Although Schlee hit a fine wedge that stopped fifteen feet below the hole, Palmer’s magical approach to four feet sent the crowd into a frenzy. Once again, practically unnoticed, Schlee missed the birdie try, misreading the putt to break left when it actually broke right.

  Within moments, however, Schlee, not Palmer, moved to center stage. After sharing the news of Miller’s five-under par score with his befuddled partner, Schlee set up to play his drive from the center of the fairway—the one that Palmer thought belonged to him.

  Following a strong three-wood, Schlee dropped a fine wedge to within eight feet of the cup and drained the birdie putt. He was now a stunning four under par for the day on Oakmont’s three par-fives, and, more important, four under for the championship.

  The joy proved short-lived. Schlee now trailed Johnny Miller by only a single stroke, and with Miller in the clubhouse, his orders were simple: Make up one stroke over the next six holes to force a play-off; two strokes and he would win the seventy-third U.S. Open.

  Schlee, however, never did anything simply. He found the thirteenth green with a five-iron, then three-putted from sixty feet, dropping back to three under par.

  Before the deflated army, Schlee parred the fourteenth and tough fifteenth. Now he had to shave two strokes off his total on the final three holes. Although he had done poorly on the long, par-three sixteenth—bogeying it on Thursday and Friday—he regained some confidence with a solid par there during Saturday’s third-round 67.

  “Your Individual Horoscope, for Sunday, June 17, 1973: GEMINI: A day in which the Geminian’s abilities can shine—especially his gift for successfully judging the advantages of a situation which confounds others.”

  For the most part, all week long, the field had played the sixteenth cautiously, aiming tee shots at the far left side of the green. But the man who used eccentric, often bizarre training methods and regularly experimented with unorthodox driver heads, shafts, and putters saw an opportunity to play the sixteenth more brazenly than others. He decided to attack the flag.

  Caddie Danny Liester handed Schlee a three-iron that he needed to hit on a much higher trajectory than normal to have a chance of holding the green. With a familiar, whirling stroke, he aimed directly at the flagstick. If he succeeded, he would be left with a short, uncomplicated birdie putt; if he was off a hair, the ball would roll down the hillside to the right, and his chance for victory would be all but dead.

  Sharply leaning with body language, begging his shot not to drift too far right, Schlee grimaced in anticipation. Fortunately, his Ben Hogan ball followed Schlee’s command and settled in a great position, pin-high, ten feet away. Best of all, the shot landed to the right of the flag: He would not have to navigate any part of the “upside-down punch bowl” region of the green.

  Undaunted and showing the composure of a veteran professional, Schlee sank the straight birdie putt, returning him again to sole possession of second place—only a single stroke behind Miller, with two holes to play.

  Once he heard that his lead was down to a single shot—and that at least one of his pursuers didn’t seem to be “choking among themselves”—Johnny Miller left his wife and child in the clubhouse so he could witness the conclusion firsthand. He stood quite conspicuously at the head of the gallery that surrounded the right side of the eighteenth green.

  Meanwhile, Schlee moved to the seventeenth, surely the best chance for the long hitter to make the birdie he needed (he made a birdie three there on Saturday), or perhaps even an eagle. But Schlee’s unusually low ball flight with his driver was not ideally suited to carrying the distant bunkers on the fairway’s left side. Instead, he chose the safe play—leaving his driver in the bag—and hit a long iron into the center of the fai
rway, which set up a full wedge to the narrow, slightly elevated green.

  By the time Schlee played the seventeenth, the afternoon breeze had picked up considerably and Schlee didn’t adequately account for this in his second-shot club selection. His wedge stopped a disappointing fifty feet short of the pin. Now he would have to struggle to two-putt for par and keep alive any chance of tying Miller.

  His long, burly arms awkwardly bent, Schlee lined up the desperate birdie try. With perfect speed, the ball headed across the green and flirted with the left edge of the cup, missing by only an inch.

  Schlee settled for par. The lofty, almost absurd dream of reclaiming his mentor’s U.S. Open crown—twenty years after Ben Hogan won it on this very course—would require all seventy-two holes.

  “Who wouldn’t love to be in an eighteen-hole play-off for the U.S. Open with a guy who shot sixty-three the day before?”

  Standing just outside the ropes, Schlee’s wife—enveloped by deflated members of the Palmer faithful—watched her husband nail a terrific drive down the center of the fairway on number eighteen, leaving him 188 yards to the pin. As was her custom, she strolled quickly toward the green to await his approach, as a highly idiosyncratic series of strategic thoughts consumed her husband.

  “When I’m playing an important round,” Schlee later explained, “I carry a ‘gallery in my mind.’ It consists of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Cary Middlecoff, and Dub Fondren. These men walk with me every step of the way and I discuss many shots with them.

  “As I looked at my approach shot, I told my gallery [i.e., Hogan, Nelson, etc.] I wanted to hit a low, left-to-right four-iron. It would land on the front of the green, then run up the hill, next to the pin. In fact, it might go in. They all agreed it was a good plan.”