Authors: Gil Capps
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10
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O
f all the great rounds and low scores Tom Weiskopf shot in his career, the digits he can’t shake from his memory have nothing to do with golf.
ER15767567. His rank, file, and serial number.
In October 1968, just six months after playing in his first Masters, Tom Weiskopf entered basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana with dog tags around his neck. He had passed his physical with the U.S. Army in May. He was classified 1-A and cleared for active duty. But in early July, he was able to enlist in the Army Reserve in Columbus. He wouldn’t be going to Vietnam—at least not yet—but the Reserve was a six-year commitment.
He wasn’t the first golfer or athlete to be drafted into the United States military. Tour pros Bud Allin (Johnny Miller’s college teammate), John Jacobs, and Walter Morgan experienced combat in Vietnam. More than 3.4 million men were deployed to southeast Asia, and 90,000 never came home. There were some serving like a young Larry Nelson, who hadn’t picked up a golf club, but would later win three professional majors. Of all these young men, Tom Weiskopf was the first player leading the money list to be summoned to active duty.
He won again in July at the Buick Open and topped the money list into mid-August. After his final event on September 22, he was second, just behind Billy Casper. “As good as I was playing and with the confidence that I had, if I could have continued to play the fall swing I would have won the money title,” he says. Instead, he finished third with $152,946.
Golf had already been good to Weiskopf. He had earned more than $225,000 in his career. He had traveled outside the country, even shooting a
Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf
television episode in Morocco in 1967. It was in contrast to what he experienced at Fort Polk. “I met some guys who had never been farther than twenty or twenty-five miles from their house in their life,” says Weiskopf. “Eighteen-, nineteen-year-old guys who broke down crying when they were given the first pair of boots they’d ever had for themselves that weren’t a hand-me-down. Guys who wouldn’t shower in front of other guys, they were so shy. I heard guys crying that first week at night in bed. The stuff—unbelievable.” It placed golf in a different light.
Weiskopf was placed in the Army Reserve. “It was all legal,” says Weiskopf, who insists he asked for no special treatment. At any time he could still be called for active duty. “I volunteered. That Reserve Unit was open. It was a very controversial thing at the time in regard to people getting in that program.”
“If I wasn’t in that unit, I might not be here today,” he admits.
For five-and-a-half years, Weiskopf reported to the Ohio Headquarters of the Army Reserve in Columbus for four hours of desk duty every Monday night—even on holidays—as an Army clerk typist. “I did absolutely nothing,” says Weiskopf. While other pros were practicing or with their families, he spent each week traveling to central Ohio either Sunday night or Monday morning, then going to his tournament Tuesday or reconnecting with his family. His two-week summer camp of active duty was held in December.
“I never missed a meeting in five-and-a-half years or my summer camp obligation,” Weiskopf says with pride, knowing the reputation
of other athletes and sons of prominent citizens who never fulfilled their obligations in the Reserve. “I feel like a very, very fortunate person that I had that opportunity to avoid the Vietnam situation,” he says. Still, the arrangement took a toll on him.
“It affected me,” says Weiskopf. “Even though I felt fortunate, it affected me.” For starters, there was the interruption to his schedule, the days he could have been practicing, his toddler Heidi asking why daddy’s leaving, the missed time with his family and friends, the logistical headaches of going back-and-forth, and even the inability to write-off the associated travel costs. When you added up all the days, nearly one-and-a-half years of his life was taken up by his military obligation.
Still, he interjects: “It wasn’t so much that. It was, ‘Why me?’”
That’s a question he would ask himself often over the course of his career.
WEISKOPF’S BASIC
training ended just a little over a month before the 1969 Masters. While in Louisiana, he had played one round of golf in six months, a casual outing with the Commanding General of Fort Polk. Yet soon he would have his best chance to win a Masters.
“I want to tell you when I came out of that six months of basic training, I was really fit,” says Weiskopf. “I think that’s what helped me.” He went to Doral for his first tournament in almost a half a year, hit tons of balls, and finished tied for 19th. The next week, he shared the first-round lead in Orlando. The week before the Masters, he lost in a four-way playoff at Greensboro to Gene Littler.
In Augusta for his second Masters appearance, Weiskopf opened with rounds of 71–71–69. On Sunday, he played in the next to last group with George Archer, a six-foot, six-inch professional born in San Francisco, who grew up playing Harding Park. When you added Weiskopf’s six-foot, four-inch frame, it was possibly the tallest twosome ever in contention on a Sunday at Augusta National. “Tall guys
usually don’t do real well at Augusta,” says Johnny Miller, who was six feet, three inches himself. “It’s tough for tall guys to hit a ball off hilly, downhill, sidehill lies. You’ve got to be real good at striking it solid.” Weiskopf concurred with that assessment. Archer, who actually picked Weiskopf to win at the beginning of the week, was one who never appeared comfortable playing golf. Gangly looking, he squatted down, like the clubs didn’t fit him, and swung off-balance. Most of his ball-striking deficiencies, however, were off-set by his ability to putt. “He was so good around the greens,” says Weiskopf.
A key sequence that day happened on the 15th. Weiskopf hit driver, 4-iron into the green, while Archer hit driver, 3-wood in the water. After playing a bump and run shot into the bank, Archer was lying four, still outside Weiskopf’s eagle attempt. Then, he knocked in his par putt, and Weiskopf missed his eagle try. The moment added to Weiskopf’s bafflement on the greens.
“That’s when we had continuous putting,” says Weiskopf of the rule, in effect from 1966 to 1969, where you could only mark your ball on the green once. “I three-putted eight times for the week. He three-putted once and beat me by a shot. There was a stupid rule. There is one where I let the rule overtake me because I hated that. I didn’t like to have to putt out. Nobody did.”
After bogeying the 71st hole, Weiskopf’s last chance to tie him came on a birdie putt from forty feet. When it missed on the low side, he walked off the 72nd hole with his head down. “When I lost to Archer, I should have beat him there,” says Weiskopf, who could become frustrated when players of lesser ability defeated him. Weiskopf’s game was tailor made for Augusta, and he was picking up its complexities. As it was for Miller in 1971, the loss didn’t bother him initially. “Impetuous youth,” he says. There would be plenty more Masters, plenty more chances to win.
Weiskopf’s solid play at Augusta National continued, finishing tied for 23rd and tied for 6th the next two years. Then, on the final
day in 1972, he played in the last group with Jack Nicklaus, who was the third-round leader. In blustery conditions, both players shot 74 on one of the most difficult Sundays for scoring in Masters history. Weiskopf finished tied for 2nd, three behind him.
In 1974, Weiskopf was in contention once again. After playing with Nicklaus on Saturday and shooting a 70 to his 72, he was poised to strike on Sunday in the second to last group with Bobby Nichols. He made a birdie at the par-five 8th to go nine under par and tie Gary Player and Dave Stockton for the lead. Weiskopf then dropped back with a bogey on the 10th and then another on the 11th after his ball had settled in an old divot in the fairway. Others were having trouble as well, so when he got up-and-down from the back fringe for birdie at the 15th, Weiskopf moved back into a tie for the lead at nine under with Player.
Then at the 16th, with the hole location back left, he aimed just right of the flagstick with a 5-iron. Weiskopf hit the ball fat, and it splashed in water just short of the green. He salvaged a great bogey, getting up-and-down from the forward tee, and had a final opportunity on the 72nd hole. His sidehill, downhill birdie attempt from twenty feet looked perfect, but it hit the right edge and spun out. He dropped his putter, slumped his shoulders, and shook his head—his reaction a carbon copy of 1969.
“I’m very disappointed,” he said after taking 136 putts for the tournament (35-34-33-32). “I only made one putt over ten feet all week. Frankly, I am a very good putter, but I’ve never putted well here. Why, I don’t know.”
Weiskopf had played the second nine in a pedestrian even par. In contention on the final nine holes three times, he had let opportunities to win slip away, finishing second in 1969, 1972, and 1974.
“Everybody thought if anybody ought to win at Augusta, it ought be Weiskopf as long and high as he hit it with that,” says Jerry Heard. “I’m surprised he didn’t win probably four of those Masters,” says
Nichols. “If you saw him play golf, you’d say, of all places, the Masters ought to be perfect for him.”
Tom Weiskopf should have been Jack Nicklaus. That was the consensus among the game’s pundits. It was Weiskopf who should have had multiple green jackets in his closet instead of three runner-up finishes. It was Weiskopf who had the most talent and the best swing. In many observers’ view, the only person standing in the way of Tom Weiskopf was, well, Tom Weiskopf.
Shoot, Tom Weiskopf hadn’t even wanted to be a golfer, even though it was in his blood.
ON NOVEMBER
9, 1942, Thomas Daniel Weiskopf was born in Massillon, Ohio, to Tom and Eva Weiskopf. A few years later they moved forty miles north to the southeast Cleveland suburbs where Weiskopf would grow up. He had a sister, JoAnne, who was five years younger, but his brother Dan didn’t come along until sixteen years later. His parents were excellent golfers and loved the sport. They were public links players and not a part of the country club set.
Weiskopf’s mother was a champion golfer herself. “I was very close to my mother,” he says. “She was a very gracious, quiet, hardworking woman like any mother that had to raise kids.” Before children, Eva Shorb had played competitively. Her first venture with fame came in the first round of the 1936 U.S. Women’s Amateur at age eighteen. The Associated Press wrote, “She has the game and the courage to make a name for herself,” in describing her play against the previous year’s runner-up (and future Hall of Famer) Patty Berg, who won their match, 1 up. Two years later, she again faced Berg in the championship, this time in the third round, and sprinted out to a 4-up lead after nine holes. Suddenly, Berg started crying. “My mother, knowing her personality, she felt sorry for her,” says Weiskopf. Berg came back to win the match, 1 up, and later the championship. “It’s too bad she didn’t have an opportunity because she would really have been something special out there,” her son says.
Weiskopf’s father was equally skilled at the game. Both he and his wife were plus-handicaps as amateurs with fundamentally sound golf swings. They were a powerhouse in Scotch mixed foursomes, once even shooting a remarkable 66 in the format. Not surprisingly, they actually first met on a golf course.
“My parents never forced it on me,” he says in regard to playing golf. “It was a long time until I could beat my dad, to tell you the truth. It took me until the summer of my freshman year in college until I could beat him.”
Weiskopf was blessed with a tall, athletic build and outstanding hand-eye coordination. He dabbled in a variety of sports growing up, including basketball and baseball. “I had two very close friends, Marty Malatin and Ernie Kellerman. We were all a year apart, and I was the middle guy. We played all these sports together and spent a lot of time inventing little things that occupied our time,” he says. “The three of us were inseparable.”
Golf was one sport they didn’t play until the summer following their freshman year in high school. Their parents decided the boys should have jobs. “That’s how I got into golf,” he says. “The three of us took it up caddying.”
To help indoctrinate his son into the world of golf, Weiskopf’s father took his fourteen-year-old to the final day of the 1957 U.S. Open on Saturday, June 15. Early that morning, they climbed in the family’s maroon Dodge Dart—a car that would be handed down to Tom seven years later when he turned pro—and drove two hours west to the Inverness Club in Toledo. “That was unbelievable,” says Weiskopf. “That had a lot to do with wanting to play the game.” But it wasn’t just the golf. The trip was a significant step in their relationship. Unlike the Nicklauses, they were not best buddies. Unlike the Millers, they were not mentor and protégé.
“My dad was a tough guy,” explains Weiskopf. There was discipline and strictness and routines that were to be adhered to. Dinner was eaten at 5:45 p.m. every day. There was a flat-top haircut every
fourteen days. Mass was attended every Sunday. “He was hard to get to know, to tell you the truth,” says Weiskopf. “A neat guy, but he just wouldn’t open up.” In addition to golf, his father actually loved fishing, hunting, and dogs—activities his son would later take keen interests in. Weiskopf didn’t think poorly of his quiet father, but he yearned to be closer. “I was kind of frightened of him I guess,” he says.
The reserved nature of his father could be traced to the job he held. “He was a train master,” says Weiskopf. “He hired and fired people and crews on the railroad all his life.” It was a stressful occupation experienced by the younger Weiskopf himself.