The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (32 page)

Upon answering the telephone at home, Weiskopf occasionally took a call that began with the voice on the other line asking, “Is this Tom?”

“Yes, this is him,” Weiskopf would say.

“Well, I’m going to come over there and beat the hell out of you, you laid me off.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is this Tom Weiskopf?”

“Yeah,” replied Weiskopf, realizing by now that the threatening call was for his father, who also went by Tom.

The elder Weiskopf was a man of conviction, but doing the right thing by the book took its toll on him. The decisions he made were black and white, but the grey areas tore at his soul. “It drove him to drink,” Weiskopf says. “That affected him if he had to lay people off.”

Young Tom didn’t find out about the most heartbreaking story until his father was on his death bed. There had been a train wreck in which someone was killed, and Weiskopf’s father was in charge of gathering evidence for the railroad. He discovered the person responsible for making the ill-judged decisions in routing the trains that led to the accident. He testified what he found out, and that man was eventually fired.

The dilemma was that man was the same person who hired Weiskopf’s father out of college and became his mentor. That man was the one who saw to it he was promoted. That man took him fishing and hunting and spent time with his family. That man was six months away from full retirement and benefits.

The whole incident shook the resolve of Weiskopf’s father. Instead of the occasional drink, he stayed drunk for three years. “That’s the only way he could go to sleep it bothered him so much,” says Weiskopf of the depression his father went through.

But on this day in Toledo, they were a father and his boy at the U.S. Open.

“My dad said, ‘We’re going to watch the greatest swing in golf’,” Weiskopf says. They walked over to the range, and there was Sam Snead. “What a specimen he was back then,” he says. They watched Snead a lot that day and others. One player they didn’t see was seventeen-year-old Jack Nicklaus, who had missed the cut in his first U.S. Open the day before with two rounds of 80. “I’ll never forget Cary Middlecoff on the 18th tee. He had to birdie the last hole to tie Dick Mayer,” says Weiskopf, who observed him regripping more than a dozen times. “He was unbelievably slow.” Middlecoff made his birdie, but lost in an eighteen-hole playoff the following day.

“The next year, I was obsessed with it,” says Weiskopf. He and his friends would ride their bicycles to a nearby par-three course. While his buddies played for fun—Malatin would become a football and wrestling standout at Kent State and Kellerman would become an NFL All-Pro as a safety for the Cleveland Browns—Weiskopf played for keeps. “There wasn’t enough daylight,” he says. “I hit balls, and balls, and balls, and balls.” His parents gave him some pointers but otherwise left him alone. Once he began playing the local public tracks, he was soon firing rounds in the 70s.

Despite not having the early start and advantages Nicklaus and Miller had been afforded, Weiskopf became a scratch handicap in
short order. The Weiskopfs didn’t have much spare change and weren’t wealthy but made sacrifices for their son. “They gave up a lot,” he says. “They put me in tournaments. They gave me good clubs to play with and were very supportive.” Witnessing the fruits of their sacrifices was the difficult part. “My dad couldn’t watch me,” says Weiskopf. “He’d always have to be under a tree somewhere and get a report from somebody.”

Weiskopf began playing in some area tournaments and won a few of them, but he didn’t play in many big state tournaments or compete against upper echelon juniors around the country. Winning at a young age against many of the same peers they would see on Tour gave Nicklaus and Miller added confidence down the stretch of professional events. Weiskopf didn’t achieve that.

In fact, it wasn’t until he went off to college that he truly blossomed.

WEISKOPF PLAYED
well enough in junior events to catch the eye of Bob Kepler, the golf coach at Ohio State University since 1938. He knew Weiskopf’s mother from golfing circles growing up and offered him a grant-in-aid that was formally a baseball scholarship. Unusual for a college coach at the time, Kepler was a very good player himself, having won regionally and competed in four U.S. Opens, shooting a 69 during the 1947 championship to tie for 31st.

“He was the guy who really taught me the game and my fundamentals,” says Weiskopf. Other than generic tips from his parents, Weiskopf was a self-taught golfer. His grip was, in his words, “a caddie grip”—so strong that he could see three knuckles on his left hand. Kepler saw Weiskopf’s raw ability and knew changing his grip was the key to developing it. He turned his hands to the left on the club, placing them on top in a more neutral position. “I remember starting to hit balls and shanking them. Everything went straight right,” says Weiskopf, who thought he already hit the ball pretty well and initially questioned his coach about the change.

“You can’t cut the ball, can you?” replied Kepler. “It gives you more versatility in playing shots.” Weiskopf slowly understood his coach and stuck with the new method through the fall and then into the following spring.

“It was a hard, hard first year,” says Weiskopf of that freshman season. “Then, about the middle of the following summer, I gained distance. I gained height. I could cut the ball a lot easier. I didn’t have to worry about hitting some real bad hooks. I went from a very inconsistent player to a guy who just mailed-in a 68 to a 70 every day at the Scarlet Course. I was always under par. The game just totally changed for me.”

Weiskopf was also undergoing a physical transformation. Just five feet, ten inches tall at high school graduation, he sprouted nearly six inches during that first year in Columbus. “Guys who are tall like I am don’t quite have the balance that the shorter guys have,” he says, believing the ideal golfer’s height to be six feet tall (ironically closer to Nicklaus’s height which was five feet, ten inches). Any imbalance could adversely affect the swing’s tempo among other elements (like George Archer).

Weiskopf had the physical ability to make a big shoulder turn with his backswing. “My trouble was I got a little quick, and I wouldn’t complete my turn,” he says. “I’d start my downswing and go over the top of the ball and hook it.” Kepler worked with him on completing that full shoulder turn, keeping his lower body relatively quiet, and maintaining tempo. In time, what was once considered a disadvantage would be a distinct advantage.

Kepler’s influence extended off the course, too. “Since I was never really close to my father, he was more of a father figure,” says Weiskopf. “I had a great respect for him.” Out of his regimented household back home, Weiskopf flourished in college, finally seeing what it was like to challenge authority, experience his first taste of alcohol, chase girls, and cause general mischief. Kepler was there to reel him back in. “He threw me off the team one time, rightfully
so,” he says after one such incident. “I didn’t think he’d do it, but he did.”

Weiskopf improved enough to win the Ohio Public Links Championship in 1961 and 1962 and to be selected second team All-America as a sophomore in 1962. But after two-and-a-half years, he left Ohio State. “School was not for me,” he says, echoing Johnny Miller’s sentiments. “I knew what I wanted to do.” For now, golf consumed his life.

Weiskopf spent all his time playing and practicing. He won the prestigious Western Amateur in the summer of 1963 by upsetting Walker Cupper and two-time U.S. Public Links champion Dan Sikes in the semifinals and then reigning U.S. Amateur champion Labron Harris Jr. in the final. Weiskopf didn’t turn professional because he had no money. Proof of $5,000 in the bank was a requirement for PGA membership at the time. He sold everything he won and saved the cash.

In June 1964, Weiskopf flew with Jim DeLeone, a friend and lawyer who would be his first business advisor, to watch the final day of the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D. C. When they walked through the gates, they stopped to watch a group tee off the 18th. First was Terry Dill, a big Texan, who drove off on the far left side of the tee—with his feet outside the markers—and played a towering hook that eventually landed in the fairway. Then Bob Rosburg, whom Weiskopf knew was the 1959 PGA champion, placed his ball down on the right side, took a baseball grip, and squeezed a big slice down the other side of the fairway. He turned to DeLeone. “Who’s this guy here?” asked Weiskopf of Dill, who would finish tied for 14th. “Does he ever make any money out here on the Tour?” DeLeone told him he makes $500 or $600 a week. “That was like $50,000 a week to me,” says Weiskopf. “I said, ‘How do I turn pro? I can beat either one of these two guys.’ We wrote a letter the next day to the USGA announcing I was turning pro.”

TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD
Gary Koch was one of the nation’s best amateurs when he arrived for his first Masters in 1974. On his first day at the club the Saturday before the tournament, he walked out the back of the clubhouse to the practice putting green, and noticed a lone figure hitting practice balls in the spacious clearing between the 18th, 8th, and 9th holes. He strolled over beside the 1st tee to get a better look. “Sure enough, I recognize it is Weiskopf’s swing,” he says. Koch, who’d never met him, eased his way down the hill to within twenty yards of him. “Whether he knew I was there or not, I have no idea, but he never acknowledged that I was,” recalls Koch. “He’s hitting what appears to me to be 3-irons to his caddie. He has this effortless swing and the ball’s going way up in the air. The caddie’s taking two steps to his right, catching it on the hop, and he takes a step in and catches one, couple steps to the left and catches it on the first hop.

“I’m sitting there watching this for about 15 minutes,” continues Koch, “and I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’ve never hit one 3-iron that looks like this, not one in my whole life. How could I ever beat this guy? How could anybody ever beat this guy?’”

Those were questions that people had about the man with the swing everyone envied.

Weiskopf stepped into the ball with an erect posture befitting someone who had gone through basic training. There was both an arrogance and an elegance to it. His height and full shoulder turn allowed him to produce a huge arc that, in turn, created tremendous clubhead speed. All of it was accomplished with a vertical motion on plane that sent balls straight up in the air. “That upright swing that I had and staying behind the ball helped me elevate it,” explains Weiskopf.

But it was the tempo and rhythm that others swooned over. There was a grace and smoothness rare for a tall man who always finished perfectly on balance.

“Impeccable golf swing. Impeccable fundamentals. His strength. His power,” says Roger Maltbie. “He could hit some of the most
majestic long irons, and that’s back when we were playing with things that looked like scalpels. Rarely did Tom miss-hit a shot.”

As time passed, Weiskopf learned to control and harness his swing. “He could work the ball. He could play shots,” says his friend Ed Sneed. “He could take something off the ball when he needed to. Obviously, Jack could do that and Johnny could do that, but I don’t think they did it quite as well as Tom when he was in his heyday.”

Weiskopf credits one man with influencing his swing.

“We are victims of an example,” says Weiskopf. “Nicklaus was the example. Look at the way he swung the golf club. Well, that must be the right way to do it. You got to stay back behind that ball. Got to stay underneath it. When you do that it’s easy to produce elevation on the shot. And a right-to-left swing.”

Eventually he was able to produce with consistency a shot only a select few could even attempt: a high, soft draw. “That was what I knew I had to do if I was going to be effective in major championship golf,” he says. It not only produced shots that could make him competitive in U.S. Open or PGA set ups, but it helped him shoot rounds that people still remember.

“I saw him play some of the most incredible golf,” says Bob Murphy, who more than four decades later still remembers a 65 in the second round at Harbour Town the first year there in 1969 when the average score was around 75. “I could have putted one-handed, left-handed and made seven putts that he missed. That’s how well he played.”

Weiskopf’s professional debut came in August 1964 at the Western Open, where he made the cut to earn $487.50. Soon thereafter, Tony Lema told him, “I wish I had all the money you are going to win on the Tour.”

Once on the road, Weiskopf became influenced by hanging around veterans like Sam Snead and Tommy Bolt, the 1958 U.S. Open champion. Bolt was a snazzy dresser with an immaculate
swing and legendary temper. They shared those three similarities. Bolt deepened Weiskopf’s belief that style was nearly as important as substance.

“I’m a traditionalist. I used to get more satisfaction out of playing a great round of golf from tee to green aside from the score,” Weiskopf says. “If I shot 70 or 69 and missed two fairways and maybe one green, I executed. I played the holes correctly under those conditions. That meant a lot to me. I got a little bit too caught up into being that perfectionist. It wasn’t always the score.”

“He very much believed in style points,” says Maltbie. “You had to look good. You had to hit the proper shots. You had to execute them. Those were all very important to Tom in his own game, and as he viewed others. You better be able to do some of that stuff or he didn’t hold you in very high regard.”

It took three-and-a-half years before Weiskopf won, shooting a score to match his style at the 1968 San Diego Open.