The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (13 page)

While in the hospital, Nichols received a letter from Ben Hogan, who had been in a near-fatal crash himself nearly four years earlier. “It was pretty inspirational,” says Nichols, of the encouragement and
direction the letter gave him. Years later, Nichols would get to know Hogan and thank him personally. As fate would have it, Hogan was Nichols’s playing competitor in the final group of the 1964 PGA Championship. The following month, they got paired together again at the Carling World Open at Oakland Hills outside Detroit where Hogan won the 1951 U.S. Open, and Nichols won again. When the two ran into each other checking out of the hotel the next morning, Hogan looked at Nichols and said, “You ought to pay me to play with you.”

Nichols’s high school football coach was also looking out for him. Johnny Meihaus had played for Bear Bryant at the University of Kentucky. Now at Texas A&M, Bryant heard Nichols’s story and told him to come down to College Station, Texas—he’d give him a football scholarship, even though he would never put on a helmet. “That meant so much,” says Nichols. “I had no money. In those days, there were only half-scholarships for spring sports. The only time you could get a full ride was for football or basketball.”

Nichols hung around the team and took in the practices and games. “I admired his success and watched how he treated players,” he says. Bryant’s pre-season workouts at A&M were legendary. Nichols recalls there being ninety-nine guys on scholarship, and ten days later, only twenty-nine were left. It wasn’t until after Bryant left A&M for Alabama in 1958 that the coach began playing golf. Over the years, he and Nichols played together a lot. Bryant always requested to play with him in pro-ams. “In my lifetime, I’ve had two or three people who have stood out and helped me along in my career,” says Nichols, “and he was one of those. Just a special individual.”

After making the most of playing golf on a football scholarship, Nichols took a job as an assistant professional at Midland Country Club in Texas. The members and staff there put up the money to get him started on Tour in 1960. Nichols made his first appearance at the Masters in 1963 and always enjoyed playing there since it was around his birthday, April 14. In fact, Bryant, who came to the Masters for a
period in the late-1960s and early-1970s, would buy a birthday cake for Nichols, bring it to the course, and set it on a table just outside the clubhouse for other players to enjoy.

But Nichols, a husky six feet, two inches and 195 pounds, also liked the way Augusta National set up for his game. “I never was a real accurate driver of the ball,” he says. “I could hit it quite a long ways, and I could hit it fairly high.” He felt the strength of his game was his middle irons, and although he wasn’t the best at turning the ball over right-to-left, he hit it long enough and high enough to more than off-set that deficiency.

Nichols used his smooth swing to nearly win the green jacket in 1967, when he engaged in a final-round duel with fellow Kentuckian Gay Brewer, a good friend since childhood who should’ve won the previous year had he not three-putted the 72nd hole to fall into a playoff with Nicklaus that he subsequently lost. Brewer was another player who could hit the ball high thanks to a Nicklaus-like takeaway—straight back with a flying elbow—and really spin the ball. Trailing by one on the final hole, Nichols hit a 9-iron fifteen feet right of the pin. “It looked like the putt’s got to go right,” he says, “but it stayed straight.”

Nichols didn’t record another top-ten at Augusta until a tie for 7th in 1974. That year turned out to be one of the best years of his career, winning twice (San Diego and Canadian Open) and earning a career-best $124,747. His success was even more remarkable because Nichols was one of the few PGA Tour players who also held a job as a head club professional. Since 1968, he had served in that capacity at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. His workload at the club meant Nichols rarely played or practiced when not on the road.

“I was pretty pumped up after ’74 and with the couple of wins I felt confident,” says Nichols, who lost on the first-hole of playoff to J.C. Snead at San Diego at the beginning of the 1975 season. But coming into the Masters, he had mediocre feelings about his game. “I feel that I play well enough at times to be in the Jack Nicklaus,
Johnny Miller category,” said Nichols, “but I just can’t play good every week like Jack and Johnny.”

With his hometown PowerBilt clubs and Titleist balls, Nichols used his length to take advantage of the par fives. He chipped his third shot up to tap-in range on the 8th. He hit a 3-iron second shot to the 13th and two-putted for birdie. He holed a downhill birdie putt on the 15th. He also holed a fifteen-foot birdie putt on the 220-yard par-three 4th hole and an eight footer on the par-four 10th after hitting a 4-iron in. Nichols hit thirteen greens in regulation and got up-and-in on the other five holes. The bogey-free 67 was his lowest round ever in the Masters.

“These were the best scoring conditions I’ve ever seen at the Masters,” said Nichols, who also fired a warning, “I don’t play good all the time, but when I am playing good, I usually keep on playing good for a while. When I get a good start, I begin to feel good about my swing, and I play within myself.”

The 67 would hold up, and Bobby Nichols would be the first-round leader in the Masters. It was only the second time that he had the outright lead after 18 holes on Tour. The other was that 1964 PGA.

This year, April 14 fell on a Monday, the day after the final round. He would turn forty. Only Ben Hogan at forty in 1953 and Sam Snead at forty-one in 1954 had won the Masters at a more advanced age. It would be a pretty impressive feat for the man
Los Angeles Times
columnist Jim Murray once called: “The best (golfer) who ever died.”

FOR THE REMAINDER
of the day, temperatures never got out of the mid 60s. Only a tenth of an inch of rain fell officially in Augusta, but the intermittent showers were just enough to soften the course.

“The course was really the best that I’ve seen it, set up the best for scoring,” said defending champion Gary Player, who shot 72, only one stroke higher than his opening round the previous year.

The numbers reflected Player’s sentiment. The average score for the day was 73.7—the third lowest opening round average at the
time. Sixteen subpar rounds were recorded with only three in the 80s. The only two factors that prevented scores from being even lower were slow greens and hole locations. “The toughest pins were always in round one,” says Johnny Miller.

Conditions were a bonus for the longer hitters, who took advantage of the par fives. But the softer greens also allowed the lower-ball hitters to hold the greens, even though some of the shorter hitters were hitting two to four clubs more into some holes. No one took advantage more than Bob Murphy and Lee Trevino, the players right behind Miller, Nicklaus, and Weiskopf on the season’s money list.

Murphy, fourth in earnings with $77,970, didn’t take up golf seriously until a shoulder injury ended a promising baseball career at the University of Florida. Three years later he won the 1965 U.S. Amateur and then the NCAA the following year. “I was playing really well then,” says Murphy of 1975 after missing a significant portion of 1974 with a thumb injury. In February, he finished runner-up at the Bob Hope Classic, three shots behind Miller. Then in front of his mom, dad, and brothers, and while playing with Nicklaus and Palmer in the final round, he won the Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic near his home in Delray Beach, Florida. The victory was his first in nearly five years and earned him the final invitation into the Masters field just six weeks before the tournament.

Right behind Murphy on the money list was Lee Trevino in fifth place with $71,983. Trevino had won the last major—the 1974 PGA Championship at Tanglewood Park in North Carolina, besting Nicklaus by a single shot. Trevino won his twentieth Tour title at the Citrus Open in Orlando five weeks earlier and had come to Augusta off a 4th-place finish at Greensboro.

But neither Murphy nor Trevino had ever recorded a top-ten finish in the Masters and weren’t on anybody’s list of favorites.

“The only time I played well at Augusta—and Trevino the same—is when the weather was crap,” says Murphy. The two players
had four things going against them: their lack of length, their left-to-right-ball direction, their low ball flight, and their attitude.

“It was wide open, and we wanted it to be twenty-four yards wide,” says Murphy, whose strength was accuracy. The lack of rough and virtual absence of fairway bunkers—only six holes had them—negated their strengths. Neither could take advantage of the par fives—they had to lay up on most of them, where as Jack, John, and Tom regularly reached all of them in two shots.

“It was set up for the guys who hit it long,” he says. “And those were the guys who won.”

“My swing was built around a fade,” says Murphy, who admits he even thought about leaving his driver out of the bag that week. “Of all the courses I played anywhere, Augusta was as close to an unfavorite as I had.”

Murphy tried to compensate: “I used to start four of five weeks ahead, I’d change 3-woods, drivers—all kinds of different ideas. I just didn’t have those shots. And even if I had been able to put the ball down farther, I still would’ve been at a disadvantage because my iron shots were too low going into those greens.”

Augusta National was particularly frustrating for Trevino, the 1971 Player of the Year, who at that moment was the one golfer who had proven he could go head-to-head with Nicklaus in majors and beat him. Trevino’s toughness and determination were born from golf’s ultimate rags-to-riches story. He grew up in Dallas, was raised by his grandfather, dropped out of school at age eight, and spent four years in the U.S. Marines. He worked as an assistant professional in El Paso, Texas, playing big money games when he sent in an entry fee for the 1966 U.S. Open. Two years later he won the championship with Nicklaus finishing 2nd. He beat Nicklaus in a playoff at the 1971 U.S. Open. Again over Nicklaus, he won the 1972 British Open and the 1974 PGA, the most recent major just eight months earlier on a course with thick, damp rough and tee shots that required more fades than draws. Four times Trevino resigned Nicklaus to runner-up
finishes in majors, yet he felt he just couldn’t compete against him at the Masters. “Trevino was awesome,” says Miller. “Somehow he convinced himself he couldn’t win there.”

Trevino concurred, saying the Masters was “a perfect example of my talking too much and then psyching myself out.” He even skipped the Masters in 1970, 1971, and 1974. “That was the greatest mistake I’ve made in my career,” said Trevino years later.

“Lee didn’t handle well the pomp and circumstance that is Augusta,” says Murphy. Both Trevino and Murphy were street-wise, self-made players who could be cantankerous at times.

Some of the protocol didn’t sit well with the two of them. In 1971 when near the lead after each of the first two days, a cart was brought up behind the 18th to take Murphy to the press center. “I slid over and tapped the seat for Gayle (his wife) to get in, and the guy told me they don’t have women in golf carts here,” says Murphy. “We walked.”

The little slights, either real or perceived, bothered Trevino as well and his run-ins became front-page news. Early in the week of the 1972 tournament, Trevino nearly walked out after a security guard on the 8th hole tried to kick out his friend and regular Tour caddie Neal Harvey for wearing a tournament badge instead of a practice round ticket. Trevino regularly changed his shoes in the parking lot, although he claimed it was because the range was closer to his car than the clubhouse. Next to the lack of a black competitor in the tournament prior to 1975, his actions had been public relations problem number one for the club.

“Lee mocked Augusta National. The guys were rich, had everything, and were maybe a little arrogant,” says Murphy. “He didn’t have any use for those people.”

On the course, Augusta National just didn’t play to his strength and that unique swing he developed on the public courses in Texas. Utilizing a strong right hand grip, he got ahead of the ball on the downswing and held on. The result was a low, push-cut that he could always hit solidly with complete control of the trajectory. “Lee Trevino
developed a system for hitting a golf ball that worked for Lee Trevino,” says Roger Maltbie. “If you had to get the ball in the fairway on the last hole for the whole world, he’d be the guy I’d pick.” Nicklaus said the two best ball strikers he ever saw were Hogan and Trevino. But Trevino couldn’t hit the ball high, and he couldn’t hit it long.

Trevino claimed he didn’t consider going back to Augusta until August 1974 when he won his first PGA Championship. He now had captured three of the four professional majors. “A career grand slam is very much on my mind,” said Trevino of the feat only four players had accomplished—Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus. “That is why the Masters is so important to me; it’s the only one I haven’t won.”

“Trevino often said, ‘Had it not been the Masters, Murph, you and I would have never played there’,” says Murphy. “But being Augusta, you went.”

Trevino began the opening round paired with his friend Jerry Heard. At the Citrus Open in 1972, Heard was in the fairway needing par on the 72nd hole to win. He was playing with Trevino, who knew that the youngster was pumping adrenaline, so Trevino told him, “Whatever club you think you’re going to hit, hit one less Heardie.” So instead of hitting a 6-iron from 162 yards, Heard took a 7-iron and flew it just past the flagstick. “If he hadn’t said that, I might not have won the tournament,” admits Heard.

Trevino’s attitude was slightly different on this day. “He was ranting and raving,” says Heard. “I remember we got up to that first tee, and you’re always a little nervous. But he was really nervous. I was wondering why he’s so nervous today. He was way worse than me.” The nerves helped Trevino focus. He birdied three of the first four holes, prompting scoring officials to put his name up on the large leaderboards around the course—a rare sight for patrons. Even going out in 33 did little to pump up his self-belief.