The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (35 page)

Years later, holograms, bar codes, electronic scanning, and metal detectors would arrive. For now, the patrons only needed to show their badges and respect the rules, written and unwritten, inside. No periscopes. No running, even though the gaits on some patrons made
speed walking champions jealous. Those through the gates first were in a slight hurry to stake their chairs at the most desirous locations on the course. Squatting was an unwritten custom and tradition at Augusta National going back many years, but chairs must be folding and canvas—lawn chairs and those with hard seats were outlawed in 1962 because patrons were standing on them.

On the way, patrons picked a pocket-sized
Spectator Suggestions for the Masters Tournament
written by Bobby Jones out of one green-painted box, and out of another a Starting Times and Pairings sheet with tee times on one side and a green, black, and red map on the other. There was a rush to the 12th tee, 13th green, 15th green, and the par-three 16th, where the most boisterous galleries tended to congregate on the weekend. But the prime spot for chairs was around the 18th green, where patrons would see a champion crowned. It would be ten hours before the final group walked onto the 72nd green. Looking down the pairing sheet, surely the winner would have to come out of the last four twosomes with thirty major championships among them at the time and all major winners except the youngster Watson:

The fact that Weiskopf and Miller—number one and number three on the leaderboard after 54 holes—were paired together for the final round was an oddity found only at the Masters. The other majors at the time paired players 1–2, 3–4, 5–6, etc. with any ties determined by the order of returned scores on Saturday (or Friday in the case of the British Open, which finished on Saturdays until 1980). Meanwhile, the Masters featured a hodge-podge of pairings over the years. For a while, the 54-hole leader was always paired with
Byron Nelson, and the leaders used to never go out last. Since 1969, tournament officials had paired one and three on the leaderboard in the final group with the second and fourth place players in the penultimate group (a practice that would stay in place until 1982). Instead of a Weiskopf–Nicklaus final twosome, that meant Nicklaus and Watson would be going off just ahead. It was Miller’s first time in the final group at the Masters after being in the fourteenth-to-last on Saturday and barely making the cut, but it was his second in a major—the other being that 1973 British Open with Weiskopf. There wouldn’t be a lot of conversation in that final group, but there would be a lot of watching and looking ahead to the man playing just in front of them.

“I’d rather be two strokes ahead going into the last day than two strokes behind,” observed Nicklaus years later. “Having said that, it’s probably easier to win coming from behind. There is no fear in chasing. There is fear in being chased.”

WEISKOPF ARRIVED
at the course Sunday, carrying his pair of burgundy slacks on a clothes hanger, size 34 waist and 34 ½ inseam. Weiskopf was one of the snappiest dressers in golf and borderline obsessive in his meticulousness. The crease on his pants had to be straight down, otherwise he wouldn’t wear them. A pair with a double crease met the same fate. On this morning, he ironed them himself and carried them to the course so they wouldn’t wrinkle while sitting in the car.

“I got that from my mother,” says Weiskopf, who adds that she always dressed his father well. He also took cues from Tommy Bolt, whom Weiskopf considered the best dressed player he’d ever seen. “It’s easy to coordinate two colors, but when you get three and four that look good together, now you’ve done something pretty special,” he adds with a twinkle in his eyes.

There were few clothing deals at the time, so Weiskopf bought all of his clothes himself. His slacks were custom-made by Hamilton-Taylor
in Cincinnati—the same company that manufactured Augusta National’s green jackets—and his sweaters were designed by Pringle in Scotland. “My sweaters were one of a kind. I used to sit down with their guy and choose my colors. They would never make another one,” says Weiskopf of the cashmeres that ran $300–$400 apiece. The jumpers, as they are called in Scotland, were shipped to Weiskopf in the off-season. “I’d start thinking about what outfits I’d wear at Augusta around Christmas time,” he says. Going through a shipment of new arrivals in late 1974, a purple sweater with an argyle pattern on the front stood out. “I said, ‘I’m going to wear that next year’,” Weiskopf remembers.

“I always felt good if I wore certain colors,” he said, yellow being one of his favorites which he wore on Saturday. For Sunday, he reasoned differently: “I’d worn green and finished second three times so I thought I would wear something that clashed.”

Two players who did have clothing contracts were Miller and Nicklaus. Miller was another player who enjoyed wearing snazzy attire. At the end of 1973, Miller signed a deal with Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest retailer in the United States Johnny Miller Menswear would become ubiquitous, but Miller felt his style, which once featured custom-made clothes and shoes, took a hit. “Their clothes fit well,” he says, “but they were not that high quality.” Today, he was dressed conservatively in a light blue golf shirt, white pants with light blue checked stripes. None of the three players wore a hat, a visor, or had a logo of any sort on their clothing this day.

For Saturday and Sunday rounds that would be televised, Nicklaus had his outfits picked out months in advance by the Hathaway Company. He came out of the locker room in white pants and a green-colored shirt with white horizontal stripes—as close to “Masters” green as you could get with the tag inside the collar stating: “The Hathaway Golf Classic shirt, 100% Cotton Lisle (L), Wash Warm, No Bleach.” He felt ready as he walked onto his preferred practice spot on the west side of the range to meet Willie Peterson,
who gave him a strange look. “Aren’t you going to put your shoes on,” he asked. Nicklaus looked down. His street shoes were still on his feet. “That’s what you call real concentration, isn’t it?” said Nicklaus.

Once Nicklaus changed into his white, tasseled golf shoes, he returned to the range and encountered a more pressing problem. His swing tempo was off.

SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS
while walking from one side of the clubhouse to the other, Nicklaus made it to the 1st tee with Tom Watson. Unfortunately for him, the hiccup in his swing followed him as well. “My opening tee shot was always a tough tee shot,” says Nicklaus. “You always had to hit it hard enough to get over the bunker, but you also didn’t want to hit it into the trees on the left (a dozen of which had been added two years earlier to narrow the landing area).” With a swing out of sync, his opening drive of the final round went right, hit a tree, and bounced further right into the trees. Fortunate to have any play, he clipped a tree on his recovery shot and then left his third shot with a wedge short. He made bogey on the opening hole for the second day in a row. “I could’ve kicked myself,” Nicklaus said. “The swing wasn’t long enough. It was slow enough but too short.” He was now two back.

Just as Grout and Jones had taught him, Nicklaus remedied a fix on the spot. He told himself to “complete the backswing.” That would remain his primary swing thought for the rest of the day. “A lot of times I would get very quick at the top of my swing,” says Nicklaus. This meant he would get his weight all the way back on his right foot and rotate too quickly, moving his shoulders and hips left of the target. The result was a block to the right, as on the 1st hole, or dropping the hands inside and flipping the club. “My thought was to make sure to finish the backswing and give me time to collect myself and move forward,” he says of the remedy.

Historically, the tee shot on the 2nd hole was another that gave him problems. This time, Nicklaus hit the fairway and reached the
greenside bunker in two shots. But it was the bunker farthest away, nearly thirty yards from the hole. For the second day in a row, he took out his new forty-year-old sand wedge and blasted out to three feet for a birdie. The rhythm returned in his swing and in his stride. On the 3rd hole, he spun his pitching wedge approach to within tap-in range to tie Weiskopf for the lead.

Weiskopf and Miller teed off eight minutes after Nicklaus, and Weiskopf had already made a key decision. He wouldn’t use his driver today. Weiskopf’s MacGregor 3-wood was strong—almost 12 degrees—and went nearly as far as most player’s drivers but with greater accuracy. Miller noticed Weiskopf’s strategy and how well he was playing. “He was playing very conservatively, hitting a 3-wood off almost every tee, which was a new game plan for him,” says Miller. “He was pretty bulletproof then.”

The back-and-forth battle commenced. After pars on the opening two holes, Weiskopf made his first birdie of the day at the 3rd to retake the outright lead. Nicklaus struck a 5-iron to four feet on the 5th for his third birdie in a four-hole stretch to tie Weiskopf at 10 under par. Fifteen minutes later Weiskopf rolled in a six footer from behind the hole at the 6th to go 11 under. With the golf and temperature heating up, Weiskopf shed his cashmere sweater. In the fairway on the 9th, Nicklaus knew from his scorecard that from the last ridge in the fairway, it was 130 yards to the front of the green, 160 to the back. He hit an 8-iron seven feet behind the hole and made the birdie putt.

Nicklaus was out in three-under 33. Weiskopf would make the turn right behind him with a bogey-free 34. Counting ties, the lead changed hands five times in the first nine holes.

“These guys just wouldn’t throw me a bone,” says Miller. “They were playing great golf.”

Weiskopf recalls little of his own play early in that round but can still see Miller. “I don’t remember hardly anything about the front side except for Johnny Miller was knocking the flag down,” he says.

Miller was enjoying the freedom of a pursuer. He birdied the 2nd hole, but a bogey from over the green at the 3rd dropped him five shots behind Weiskopf at the time. Then, Miller got hot: a six-foot birdie at the 4th, a fourteen footer at the 6th, two putts for birdie from twenty-five feet on the 8th where he barely missed an eagle, and a fifteen footer from right up the fall line on the 9th. He shot 32 on the first nine with five birdies. That was 10 under on holes 1–9 on the weekend. He had made up half his deficit from the lead and was now just two back.

“I was in chase mode and totally aggressive,” says Miller of the pressure-free feeling. “Enjoying the fact I was hitting every fairway and every green and not getting in any trouble whatsoever.”

“He was really, really playing well. Nicklaus was playing well,” says Weiskopf, who as the overnight leader felt he may have been a little too cautious. “I was playing okay. I was a little tentative.”

With nine holes to play Nicklaus, Miller, and Weiskopf had separated themselves from the field, even though scoring was the best of the four days. The course average that Sunday was 71.3—two-and-a-half strokes lower than in the third round.

Earlier, the reigning U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin made the most of the improved conditions. After making just five birdies the first three days, Irwin birdied the first three holes and was off and running. “I didn’t play all that well, really,” he said. “I missed some shots, but when I missed, I missed in the right places.” Irwin holed lots of putts, including three from more than twenty feet in length. After eight birdies (tying Art Wall’s 1959 record for most in one round), he had the opportunity for one more on the 18th, just off the front-right of the green, thirty feet from the hole. It was a putt for 63, which would match Johnny Miller’s at the 1973 U.S. Open for the lowest in a major championship.

“When it got about two feet from the hole, I said, ‘I just set a record’,” Irwin said. Instead, it slid just right. His 64 matched the course record held by Lloyd Mangrum in 1940, Jack Nicklaus in
1965, and Maurice Bembridge in 1974. It also jumped him from a tie for 19th into a tie for 4th at day’s end.

Of the other challengers, Bobby Nichols got to six under with a twenty-five-foot birdie putt at the 12th. Normally, with all the danger and rewards ahead, he wouldn’t have been out of it. But, he pulled his tee shot on the 13th into the woods, made par, and then missed a two-and-a-half footer at the 15th just as he had on Saturday. He scrambled around the rest of the way for a bogey-free 69, finishing at six under par with Irwin.

Nichols’s playing competitor could not get back in the tournament either. Arnold Palmer’s day could be summarized in one hole. With the hole location on the right side of the 12th green about four yards on, his tee shot nicked the bottom of the flagstick and struck just beside the hole. The ball finished twelve feet away, though, and he missed the putt—from a near hole-in-one to a routine par. Palmer finished with a 72 and wound up tied for 13th—his last top-twenty finish in the Masters.

In the second to last group, Billy Casper shot a 70 to finish tied for 6th. Lee Trevino shot 71 to finish tied for 10th. He would never finish better in the Masters.

Tom Watson was the only player within five shots of the lead after turning in 34 thanks to holing a shot from the back bunker at the 7th and another birdie at the 9th. Although he would never get closer, Watson’s play would be a significant factor in the outcome.

The remaining nine holes for the game’s top three golfers would determine not only the Masters champion, but their places in the game’s history.