The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (28 page)

“I saw the world’s greatest player get his own yardage, choose his own clubs, read his own putts, and never ask a caddie anything about how to play golf, how to play a shot, how to play the course,” says Tom Weiskopf. He, Johnny Miller, and others followed suit.

With Elder gone and Nicklaus leading by five, a majority of the writers, commentators, and players believed this Masters was effectively over. Willie Peterson was going to cash in again and pad his annual “annuity” as he called it.

“Nobody can catch Nicklaus with a lead like that,” said Bruce Devlin.

“Jack will be almost impossible to catch,” said Tom Watson.

“I would like to see anybody else than Nicklaus at 10 under,” said Bobby Nichols.

“If someone gets behind him, he’ll just make more birdies,” said Bud Allin.

Nicklaus wasn’t having any of it. If leading by a large margin, he never got too high. If trailing by a large margin, he never got too low. Always, he kept an even-keel. “I’ve been coming to Augusta for many years,” he said. “I’ve blown five-stroke leads before, and I’ve come from five behind before. I’ve seen many strange things happen.”

ONE ABNORMAL
occurrence had already happened on this Saturday that didn’t please Nicklaus. He had been placed with Arnold Palmer in the final tee time.

The pairing was a renewal of golf’s most famous rivalry and heightened the anticipation for the third round, so much so that it felt like a Sunday. For the previous twenty years, they had been the faces of golf—the two most popular players and the two most successful players. They were one-two in career earnings. They were one-two in endorsements. And they were one-one in Masters victories—the only two four-time champions.

“I don’t know why they paired us together. Usually, they pair one with three, but they do things differently,” said Nicklaus. By the order of finish on Friday and scoring, Nicklaus would usually have been paired with Tom Watson, with Palmer in the next-to-last group alongside Billy Casper. “They thought that would be exciting for television people,” says Nicklaus. “They looked at it and said, ‘Let’s put Arnold and Jack together’.”

The two first met on September 25, 1958. It was “Dow Finsterwald Day” in Athens, Ohio, and eighteen-year-old Nicklaus had been asked to come down to fill out the foursome in an exhibition match to celebrate Finsterwald’s recent PGA Championship triumph. Finsterwald’s good buddy Palmer, already twenty-nine years old, shot a course-record 62 that day. But when Nicklaus outdrove Palmer in a driving contest, the rivalry started. It wouldn’t be one between peers so to speak, but one of the established King trying to hold off the upstart kid. Their first duel famously occurred at the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont just a short drive from Palmer’s hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Nicklaus had put on a little weight in college, and shouts of “Fat Jack,” “Ohio Fats,” “O’Blobo,” and “Whale Man” were omnipresent. So angered was Nicklaus’s father that, of all people, Woody Hayes had to calm the moment and hold him back from confronting those fans. The crowds never bothered Nicklaus outwardly, but gave him even more resolve to beat Palmer.

It could be just as worse at Augusta. “In the old days, when the fans were so much for Arnold and against Jack, Jack and I just sort
of let it go in one ear and out the other,” said Barbara Nicklaus. “Depending on your viewpoint, Jack came along at either the right time or the wrong time. Arnold was a hero when golf needed one so badly. How could we blame Arnold’s fans for feeling the way they did about him?”

“That was Arnold’s territory,” says Kaye Kessler. Augusta, Georgia, was where posting bogeys by Nicklaus on the scoreboards once sent the galleries into gleeful approval. “Anything Jack did bad they would cheer,” he says.

Nicklaus was rarely affected by goings on outside or inside the ropes. Although he admitted, “No, I don’t have any problems playing with Arnold,” there was still something about his rivalry with the man ten-and-a-half years his senior. They continued to duel in the 1960s when Palmer was in the prime of his career and the young-gun Nicklaus was just starting his. Now, their positions had changed. It was Nicklaus, thirty-five, at his peak, and Palmer, forty-five, past his.

They each had their legion of fans now. Nicklaus had Jack’s Pack. Palmer had Arnie’s Army, which on this day included actor Jackie Gleason, who was attending his first Masters. In fact, it was at Gleason’s tournament in Fort Lauderdale six weeks earlier where they had last played together, as part of a threesome with Bob Murphy in the final grouping on Sunday. Murphy saw firsthand the self-destructive dynamic a Nicklaus-Palmer pairing could bring out.

“As we played, it became apparent to me that Arnold and Jack weren’t talking to each other that much,” says Murphy. “I thought they would sort of stick together, but they didn’t. One or the other would come over to me. So I ended up having little conversations. It turned out to be even more relaxing for me.”

He continues, “One of the most incredible incidents happened in that tournament that I’ve ever experienced in all of golf.” The 7th hole at Inverrary Golf & Country Club’s East Course was a dogleg
right par four around a lake. Nicklaus hit his drive to the left. Arnold was in the middle. Murphy was closer to the water, but with a shorter shot well in front of the other two on the angle.

With a strong breeze in their faces, Nicklaus went first. “I hear Jack hit this shot, and he hit it absolutely fat,” says Murphy, who watched the ball fall well short of the green. “Arnold, with his lack of hearing, could not hear the fact that Jack hit it fat.”

Nicklaus handed the club to his caddie Argea, and said with a load of sarcasm, “I hit that 4 pretty good.” Palmer, farther up the fairway, then took a 5-iron, and after a solid strike, watched it sail clear over the gallery behind the green.

“We’re walking across the bridge,” says Murphy, “and I hear Creamy (Palmer’s regular Tour caddie Ernest Carolan) say to Arnold, ‘Why did you hit 5-iron? I was trying to tell you that was too much club.’ And Arnold said, ‘Jack said he hit his 4 pretty good, and it was short of the green’.”

Palmer and Nicklaus each made bogey while Murphy made birdie. While watching the pair play each other, Murphy went on to win. Palmer shot 74, Nicklaus 73, and Murphy 68. “There was some gamesmanship with them all the time,” Murphy says.

“Maybe he was a little distracted by beating Arnold,” adds Murphy. “They did find themselves occasionally, when they were paired together, concentrating on only beating each other and forgetting about what the event was doing—and maybe playing some shots that weren’t called for at the time.”

Now they were preparing to rekindle their battle. On the putting green just before their 2:10 p.m. starting time, Nicklaus glanced over to see what scores were being shot. He noticed Johnny Miller’s name, which wasn’t on the board at the start of the day, had been added. Up-to-date scoring was another Masters innovation. Underground cable was first installed on the course in 1941, and by 1955 a phone network was stationed at each green, where each player’s score for that hole was called in. Now, there was 327,904 feet of telephone
wire throughout the property—nearly sixty-two miles—and recent changes in the tournament scoring office, located on the second floor of the tournament headquarters, meant scores were being relayed quicker and more accurately than ever to the twenty-five scoreboards operated throughout the grounds.

It was the main leaderboard on the 18th hole at which Nicklaus was peering. Nicklaus is partially red-green color blind, though, and couldn’t tell whether the “4” beside Miller’s name was red (for under par) or green (for over par). He figured they wouldn’t have put it up if he was going backward.

Palmer, dressed in a red v-neck sweater and white visor, noticed Nicklaus checking out the board and motioned toward it: “He must be four under for the day.”

Nicklaus corrected him, “No, Arnie, you’re wrong. He’s four under for the tournament.”

“Pretty good nine for Johnny,” added Nicklaus.

“It wasn’t bad, was it?” said Palmer.

Nicklaus responded, “No. Nobody’s ever done it before.”

A POSTULATE OFTEN
referenced in tournament golf states that the third round is moving day. It’s the day to get into position to win in the final round. Moving day is a bit of a myth, though. Prior to 1975, each year’s Masters champion had actually shot his lowest score most often on Thursday, followed by Friday—a trend similar to that in the U.S. Open. But this Saturday at Augusta would do nothing to dispel the “moving day” myth.

Johnny Miller had woken up Saturday morning fighting a headache. He and his wife Linda had been staying in a rental house set up by their friends Dudley and Marie Posey, who owned Posey Funeral Home across the river in North Augusta, South Carolina. They met the Poseys through Billy and Shirley Casper and became like family to the Millers. Together, they would go out to dinner several times during the week, a favorite stop being T’s Drive-In and Restaurant
just south of town for catfish and hushpuppies. “It was a real social week for me,” says Miller, who normally didn’t venture out much while on the road.

Miller’s tee-to-green game had been stellar the first two days, as it had been ever since the beginning of 1973. That’s when he assembled a bag of golf clubs that changed his career. “I had a real personal interest in this set,” says Miller, “I put this set together with my hands.”

First came a collection of Tommy Armour 915-T stainless steel irons made around the time of the Second World War. His father, who was a club collector himself, picked up the heads at a secondhand store. They were stainless steel because at the time chrome was needed for the war effort. Miller, who could never get that shank he hit at Pebble Beach out of his mind, liked them because the heads were a little larger than the Tourney Customs MacGregor manufactured in the early-1970s. “I was so freaked out about these little, tiny headed irons being made then that I thought it’d be really helpful if I had a little bigger head,” says Miller, who also lamented the fact the sweet spot on the Tourney Customs was right next to the hosel.

Miller took the vintage heads to the Orlimar club factory in Oakland and had Lou Ortiz cut down the long hosels on them. Miller then reground the top-line and bottom sole, re-shafted them, and added lead tape on the back to make up for the weight lost by taking down the hosels.

“I thought those irons were sort of magical,” says Miller. “They just were the best feeling irons I’d ever used.”

Miller cared for his woods just as much. He refinished them himself, shellacking the wood with two parts linseed oil, one part orange shellac, re-wrapping the hosels, and re-gripping the shafts. And they were just as old as his irons. His 4-wood was an ivory-inserted Tommy Armour pre–World War II model. His 3-wood was a 1948 Tommy Armour shallow faced. And his driver was a 1955 Tommy Armour Velocitized with 10.5 degrees of loft.

“The minute I started using that driver, I started hitting it longer than I had ever hit it in my life and straighter,” says Miller. “I wasn’t as long as Weiskopf, but I was probably closing in on being as long as Nicklaus then.”

“I thought I had put together this magical set,” says Miller. “When I started using them, everything just clicked.”

Although one wouldn’t have thought so from that week, that included his putter. It was a Bullseye, one of the original ones manufactured in 1952 by John Reuter. With little money, Reuter went around to factories in San Francisco with a bucket to sweep brass tailings off the floors. That’s why Miller’s putter had a kaleidoscope of different gold colors in it. When Miller obtained this putter head, he attached a thirty-six-inch shaft to it.

“This set was probably the oldest anybody had ever used in history to win tournaments,” says Miller.

Saturday morning, he bypassed the range once again and proceeded to the practice putting green with an extra putter in tow. “I had a Tommy Armour putter that I was always threatening my Bullseye with when it wasn’t working,” says Miller. The recent struggles on the greens represented his longest putting slump in more than two years. He thought the club cost him a shot to win at both Doral and Greensboro. Putter in his hands, Miller bent over—nose perpendicular to the ball, shoulders parallel to the ground, arms tucked in so close that his hands were virtually touching his thighs—and stroked a few putts. He decided he would give the old Bullseye one more go.

Subconsciously, some extra motivation would be provided by his playing competitor this Saturday. Miller was paired with the thorn in his side from 1974, Gary Player, for a tee time an hour and forty-five minutes before the last twosome. One year earlier, Player had shot a 66 in the third round with a record tying five birdies in a row from holes 12 to 16 to put himself in position to win. Player told everyone that his two majors in 1974 made for a better year than
Miller’s eight wins. Miller understood the comment, but it still irked him somewhat. Miller always recalled playing with him several years earlier at Doral. Coming down the stretch, Player told him, “I cannot remember hitting it better than this.” By his estimation, Miller had hit it inside him fifteen times and shot a 65 to Player’s 70. “I figured I must be a pretty good player,” he said.

“I’m here at Augusta, and I’m a little teed-off that I’ve gotten off to this crappy start,” says Miller. “I know I’m due for a good round.”

It was not long before Miller discovered that “15th club” was with him on this day. The momentum he was looking for came early and quickly. After playing the 1st hole well, just missing an eighteen-foot birdie putt, Miller put on a birdie display never before seen at Augusta National: