The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (33 page)

“I approached the game as a living with no great expectations,” he says. “Then I married, and it definitely was work. I had responsibilities. I took a lot of time for myself and did things with my friends that I liked to do.... It’s a sport but it’s still hard work.”

Weiskopf was constantly on the go, and even with his Army Reserve duty, he still played more than most. “In retrospect, I think he played too much golf,” says Murphy. “Had he played fewer times I think he would have been more ready to go when the time came, rather than finishing someplace on Sunday and making your way to the next stop.”

With all of this talent, it begged the question: why wasn’t Weiskopf winning more? In his first ten full seasons on Tour, he won a respectable eleven times and finished top-thirty on the money list nine consecutive years. It provided a nice living, but others saw a guy with the potential to be an immortal in the game.

WHY? WHY
wasn’t Tom Weiskopf more successful?

In short, the answer was Tom Weiskopf. His personality traits were in constant conflict with being the type of golfer so many thought he should.

“I used to worry about anything and everything,” says Weiskopf. “I am a perfectionist. I can’t stand mediocrity. Everything has to be done right.” An example was his penmanship, which was exquisite. Autographing golf balls bothered him because the signature on a dimpled sphere could never be written to his satisfaction.

“I wasn’t happy if I wasn’t doing what I knew I could do,” he confesses. “You can’t do that.”

When things didn’t go as Weiskopf thought they should, he could get easily agitated. The results would be mood swings up and down that could change his personality in a flash.

“He was the kind of guy who could be very charming and engaging and fun,” says Maltbie. “He might walk by you on the way to the practice tee and say, ‘Hi Roger,’ and then he might pass you a half-hour later and you didn’t exist. He was a hard guy to get a read on.”

Having a positive outlook could yield great results for Weiskopf, but when things weren’t to his liking, the going could be rough.

“I had to be self-motivated, for whatever reason,” he says. “I had to like where I was to feel like I could play good. I had to like the situation. If I didn’t, I didn’t care about it.” If Weiskopf was playing well and in contention, there was complete resolve. If he was playing poorly, he could totally disengage.

“Nothing disturbed Nicklaus,” says Kaye Kessler. “Weiskopf was so different from that.” He didn’t let things go. Things didn’t stick in Nicklaus’s craw, but they did in Weiskopf’s. Temperament and concentration were Nicklaus’s strengths. He could turn a 75 into a 70. Weiskopf would turn a 75 into an 80. Or higher.

“I was very spontaneous with my emotions,” he says. “I showed my temper. I was never fined for throwing clubs. Never broke any clubs. Did I bury some in the ground? Of course I did.”

Weiskopf was fined for other indiscretions. In the second round of the 1974 PGA, he played hockey with his ball on a green, then walked over to a rules official to withdraw due to an injury. When asked to describe his injury, he responded, “I’m 25 over par.” For that, Commissioner Deane Beman fined him $1,000. After double bogeying the last two holes during the third round of the 1974 World Open, Weiskopf left the scoring tent without signing his card and was disqualified. That fine cost him $1,500. Then in January 1975, the tournament director of the Tucson Open accused Weiskopf of scraping in putts and conduct unbecoming during a score of 41 on the back nine in round two. Weiskopf countered that every putt was hit with his feet on the ground and two hands on the club. He even birdied holes 14 and 15 in an attempt to make the cut.

In any case, his reputation as a hothead and underachiever had seeped into the psyche of those in the golf universe. Terrible Tom. Tempestuous Tom. The Towering Inferno. Those nicknames bothered Weiskopf. To him, it seemed like the press would blow up any innocent occurrence to make him fit the part.

One year in Texas, Kessler remembers Weiskopf storming off the golf course after a round. Kessler followed him. There had been a photograph in the local newspaper showing Weiskopf throwing a golf club. The cutline said, “Weiskopf throws club in a fit of anger.” Weiskopf claimed he had just tossed the club routinely to his caddie while walking out of a bunker. He was livid. Yet, Weiskopf couldn’t get away from his public persona.

“My wife read something one time and said, ‘Who’s this guy I’m reading about here’,” recalls Weiskopf, who met Jeanne Ruth, Miss Minnesota 1965, at the 1966 Minnesota Golf Classic. They were married just over three months later.

“Golf was never the most important thing in my life,” he says. “It was at first when I learned how to hit golf balls. By 1975, I had another life, a good family, great friendships, terrific hobbies. I wasn’t obsessed with being the world’s greatest player, I just wasn’t. Those
other people wanted me to be that, I think. That’s fine. I wasn’t who they thought I was.”

But Weiskopf still read the clippings and heard the talk. “He said one time, ‘I’m getting sick and tired of reading about how much potential I have’,” says Maltbie. Maybe he didn’t need to be the greatest, but maybe all the expectations kept itching the perfectionist in him. “He expected so much of himself. I think for a big part of his career, Tom was a disappointment to himself,” adds Maltbie.

One evening, he and Ed Sneed walked into a Jacksonville Beach, Florida, bar before dinner, when an older, white-haired gentleman approached. “Hey, isn’t you Weiskopf,” he asked. “Come up here, I want to buy you boys a beer. I’m Smitty.” He shook their hands, turned to Weiskopf, and pronounced: “I want to ask you something, Weiskopf. I watch you on TV a lot. I want to know how come you fuck up so much.” Weiskopf chuckled.

“People pretty much universally liked Tom,” says Sneed. “He was a good guy. He was fun to be with. I think the pressure of the spotlight changed him. If he was in the locker room just sitting there, without the external pressure of the press, Tom was as fun to be around, to laugh, to tell a story. Tom’s a pretty interesting guy, too. A lot of people don’t give Tom the credit for being intellectually as strong as he is. He’s a smart guy, a very smart guy.”

It was even possible that Tom Weiskopf wasn’t mean enough. Tommy Bolt once told him, “You’ve got the greatest swing in the world and all the potential. But you got to be mean. You’ve got to grind ‘em down to win.”

“Tom has a very, very soft and compassionate side to him when it comes to other people,” says Sneed. “It’s a side of Tom a lot of people would never see.”

Weiskopf never saw a psychologist or sought help to address any characteristics that were impeding his golf game. “I should have,” he
says. “At that period of time in my life, you’re an egomaniac playing the tour. I should have. I’d be the first to admit.”

Instead, Weiskopf put it all back on himself. His guilty conscience worked in overdrive. “I didn’t make any excuses,” he says. “I blamed myself and took it out on myself.”

Like his father found out, life is not black and white. Young Tom found out the pressures of navigating those grey areas were tricky. To combat them, he would fall into the same trap as his father.

WHY? WHY
did Tom Weiskopf’s father have to be an alcoholic?

Alcohol was a much bigger presence on the Tour in the 1970s. Before trainers, psychologists, nutritionists, and most importantly big money entered the game, the Tour was more like a traveling carnival. “There was a lot more unity,” says John Mahaffey of that period. “You tried to beat the other guys like crazy, but you were buddies afterward.”

Go in any locker room, and not only would beer be available, but a significant number of pros would be lingering and drinking it. There were players such as Johnny Miller who didn’t drink or socialize, and there were those who drank socially and never let it consume them. And there were some who let alcohol ruin them.

“There are years I don’t remember,” says Mahaffey, a PGA and Players champion who admits drinking was detrimental to his career. “Anytime it affects your personal life, it’s going to affect your golf game, too. I’ve been married four times, and alcohol was a factor.”

Weiskopf started drinking in college, but by his late twenties his alcohol consumption increased. Beer, red wine, vodka—whatever he was in the mood for. He rarely mixed drinks at night, but once he started on something he could drink it dry.

“I wasn’t a good drunk,” confesses Weiskopf. “I wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t confrontational. But I could drink with the best of them. I
didn’t drink every day. I didn’t drink because I was happy or sad. I had a problem.”

Few people knew of Weiskopf’s problem at a time when drinking too much either wasn’t noticed or it was ignored.

“I didn’t know it when I played with him all those years,” says Murphy. “Had no idea that that struggle was going on.” “It’s not like he was coming in all red-eyed and you could smell it on his breath,” says Heard.

Each stop on Tour featured its popular hangouts and old friends to mingle with. Ed Sneed was a frequent companion of Weiskopf and admits his game suffered as well from those evenings. “We probably drank more beer than we should have,” says Sneed. “I’m not sure I realized it at the time because there were times when he might have kind of a binge.”

When Weiskopf asks why he drank, he responds: “Was it because you play the game and all the things that are a part of that game that get to you? I don’t know. People drink for different reasons.”

“He was his own worst enemy,” says Ben Wright, who had his own struggles with alcohol. “I remember one year at Hilton Head he never got upstairs to his bedroom. He would get so drunk he couldn’t negotiate the stairs so he slept on the couch in the living room. He would be incoherent in no time.”

“He used to say to me that if only Nicklaus hadn’t been around, I’d have had a hell of a career,” recalls Wright, “and I said, ‘I doubt it. You’re too damn stupid after dark.’ He couldn’t deny it.”

Weiskopf admits that alcohol played a large role in why he wasn’t as successful on Tour as many thought he should be. “It was a problem,” says Weiskopf. “That alone would have been a whole new book about Tom Weiskopf had that not been a problem then or had it been confronted.

“Drinking affects your attitude. It affects your emotional side. It’s a downer. The only reason I was probably able to mask it or get
through it, or exist, or continue, or win...was the fact that I was so talented and in such great shape.”

It’s said the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and unfortunately for so many, neither does the bottle. Weiskopf frequently made the connection between his drinking and his father’s, but he couldn’t sever it.

The frustrations with trying to make everything perfect, trying to be in control, trying to live up to his expectations and to those of others, boiled to the surface later in his career while drinking at a bar one evening. Sitting with Roger Maltbie and others, Weiskopf turned to them and stated: “I’m so sick of this. When I play golf, I’m trying to paint a beautiful portrait, and all these other guys are scribbling.”

It spawned another nickname that night: Rembrandt.

ON CHRISTMAS DAY
1972, Weiskopf presented his father with a gift, a trip with him to the Crosby Pro-Am in late-January. His father had always wanted to see Pebble Beach in person. But once on the Monterey Peninsula, Weiskopf’s father began feeling ill. At a local hospital, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After a couple of weeks, he was transported back to Ohio and admitted to the Cleveland Clinic. In between tournaments and the Army Reserve, Weiskopf carved out at least two days every week to visit his dad.

“That’s probably the closest time I’d ever been to my father, those three months,” he says. “We talked about all kinds of things we’d never talked about.” Among the topics of conversation was his new grandson Eric, born two weeks before their trip to Pebble Beach.

His father passed away on March 14, 1973.

“That was the toughest thing I had ever gone through in my life,” says Weiskopf. “I had finally understood this guy, I felt. And he understood me. We talked about a lot of my short comings. And he said, ‘Tom, you’ve got all the talent in the world. If you just apply yourself a little more. And don’t be so hard on yourself’.”

In the end, Weiskopf came away with remorse and the feeling he had let his father down.

After three weeks off the Tour, he returned in April with mediocre showings at Greensboro (tied for 29th) and Augusta (tied for 34th—his worst Masters finish). After working through the mourning process, he began putting more work into his game. He finished tied for 8th at the Byron Nelson Classic in his next start. Only some substandard putting with his trusty Bullseye putter was holding him back until he ran into Johnny Miller at the Colonial National Invitation Tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, in mid-May.

“I made two Tommy Armour putters, cut the shaft way down, the hosel way down,” says Miller. “I’m on the putting green trying them—one of them is laying on the ground—and he (Weiskopf) grabs this putter and says, ‘I want to try this.’ And he didn’t say two words to me. He basically took my putter without even asking. Never said thank you after he was Player of the Year that year. And made every putt he looked at from that time on. To this day he’s never said, ‘John, that was nice of you to let me have that putter’.” Miller never saw the putter again.

In full confession years later, Weiskopf believes that the putter came from Arnold Palmer via David Graham, who was the chief club pusher at the time. But what happened later wasn’t in dispute. “He went nuts the rest of the year because of that dang putter,” says Miller. “He just made everything.”