The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (38 page)

Ahead on the final hole, Watson, after being in one of the fairway bunkers, holed a birdie putt to shoot 73. His blunders at the 16th may have helped Nicklaus, but a par there would’ve put him in solo fourth instead of a tie for 8th. Still, he walked off the last hole feeling confident about his ability to play the course and compete against the likes of Nicklaus, Miller, and Weiskopf.

Nicklaus had a very makeable putt himself on the 18th. It would break off hard to the left at the hole and run out, but he was only
eleven feet away. A three-putt from Nicklaus wasn’t likely. “It’s a putt he should make half the time,” says Miller. But before he putted, Nicklaus heard a roar from the 17th. Immediately, he went into stall mode. “I was curious to know whether or not I was ahead,” he said. “I might have been more aggressive if Tom had made birdie at 17. If John birdied, then I would go at it as a lag putt.”

So Nicklaus walked around the hole again, glancing at the large hole-by-hole leaderboard facing the green. After a short pause, they posted the scores. Weiskopf stayed at 11 under. Miller went from 10 to 11. “He’s that cagey this guy,” says Miller. “I’m not sure why he waited. It shouldn’t have made any difference. He should’ve just said, ‘I’m knocking it in, take these guys out’.” Somewhere inside him, Nicklaus didn’t believe Weiskopf or Miller had it in them to birdie the 72nd hole at the Masters to tie him. So he chose the cautious route, easing the putt that broke more than a foot to the left right up to the hole. Nicklaus tapped in for par to finish with a 68 and a total of 12-under-par 276 for the tournament.

Miller and Weiskopf stood on the 18th tee, the only two players left on the course. Miller had the honors. He took a driver, mimicking Lee Trevino’s swing to produce a baby cut that landed in the middle of the fairway. Weiskopf hadn’t wavered from his game plan all day, taking 3-wood off nearly every par four and five. “LeRoy said, ‘What do you think?’” says Weiskopf. “I said, ‘driver’.” Driver! Now he pulled the driver. “I said, ‘I’m not laying up’,” Weiskopf recalls. “The only chance I have is I’ve got to drive it. If I’m going to win this thing I’ve got to give myself a short second shot.” Just as the CBS truck and Scully picked up on it, Weiskopf made the point moot. The ball took off over the right tree line and appeared as if it would never come down. “He hits the longest drive maybe we’ve ever seen on 18,” says Miller. Weiskopf concurs: “I hit one of the best drives I’ve ever hit in my life.”

Miller’s ball was some fifty yards behind Weiskopf’s. For his approach shot he picked a 6-iron out of the bag. After pushing the accelerator
to the floor all weekend, a tinge of conservatism entered his thought process at the worst time. “Instead of aiming at the pin, something told me to aim twenty feet right of the pin (to protect again pulling the shot),” says Miller. “That’s just a terrible thought. I should have just said, ‘Hey, I’m going to knock the flag out’.” As soon as he struck the ball, he and Eubanks began motioning for the ball to hook left. It stopped just past pin high but eighteen feet right of the hole. “I hit it within an inch of where I was aiming,” says Miller. “That’s the only regret I had about that whole tournament.”

Weiskopf’s ball actually sat on a slightly downhill lie, and with just over 100 yards to the hole, he debated between a really hard pitching wedge and a little 9-iron. He chose the 9-iron—the least amount of club hit into the 18th all week. Weiskopf aimed straight for the hole. The ball started right at the flagstick, landed three feet in front of the hole, bounced five feet in the air ten feet past the pin and came back slightly. He was unlucky the ball didn’t wind up closer than eight feet. If the ball would have hit a foot or two higher up the slope, it would have gathered more momentum and finished even closer to the hole.

They walked up the fairway to the same thunderous applause that greeted Nicklaus. One final putt for Nicklaus’s two biggest threats—of the day and the era—to tie him and force a playoff.

Nicklaus peered out from the scorer’s tent just behind the green to watch. His presence was felt by everyone.

As Miller looked his putt over first, the roars of the day had turned to complete silence. Putting directly into the sun, he took two practice strokes and addressed the ball, looking at the hole four times before striking it. The ball missed by just a few inches on the low side of the hole. “I hit a good putt, just under read it,” says Miller, who hit it right where he wanted. Miller grimaced to the sky. “I played a twenty-seven-inch break and the ball broke thirty inches,” he says.

“Nicklaus,” laughs Miller. “He was smiling after I missed because it was like, ‘I don’t want to play that guy tomorrow’.”

Weiskopf looked at his putt from the side and then from behind. He lay eight feet from vanquishing the demons. He had seen Miller’s putt break quickly to the left. “I said to myself make sure you hit it firm,” says Weiskopf. Just like Miller, there were two practice strokes and then four looks at the hole after addressing the ball. As Weiskopf stroked the putt, his head moved with the ball with anticipation. “When I looked up,” he says, “I thought I’d hit a good putt.” He truly believed he had made it, but somehow at the very end, the ball stayed right, never touching the hole. It was a putt that had fooled many players over the years—one that looks like it’s got to work slightly to the left towards the 11th green. This time, it didn’t turn back until eighteen inches after the hole. When it finished, the hole was directly between the ball and Weiskopf. With a blank look on his face, Weiskopf hit the putter’s face with his right fist and sighed. The heartbreak was evident.

“I just hit it too hard,” says Weiskopf. “I hit it through the break. That reflected back to the 17th hole. We are all victims of what happened previously. I didn’t want to miss it on the low side and thought there was a break.

“It was tough.”

Before his two challengers tapped in for their pars, Jack Nicklaus exited the back of the scoring tent. He was the winner of the 1975 Masters Tournament.

NICKLAUS WAS
whisked away to the basement in Butler Cabin first for the television presentation, somewhat surprised. “I just knew one of them was going to make it,” said Nicklaus. “I figured that if Johnny makes his putt, Tom wouldn’t and if Johnny misses, Tom would make his and we’d have a playoff. I never wish anybody any bad luck. I was happy he didn’t make it, but I wasn’t rooting against him.”

The cabin was built in 1964 and the following year hosted the made-for-television green jacket ceremony for the first time. At the
time, runners-up were also a part of the proceedings, so sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on a leather green sofa were Nicklaus, Miller, and Weiskopf.

It was the first time Cliff Roberts had seen Weiskopf’s purple palette up close. He had earlier told Pat Summerall, “No wonder he didn’t win, look at that outfit he’s wearing.” Weiskopf never wore that sweater again, placing it in storage for his son Eric. Ironically a dozen years later, Augusta native Larry Mize pitched in on the 11th hole in a playoff to win the Masters in a purple ensemble almost identical to Weiskopf’s.

Gary Player, the defending champion, presented Nicklaus with his jacket, size 44 Regular. “I watched it on TV. I was choking more than you guys,” he said, to which Nicklaus replied, “We didn’t have time to choke. Everybody was making birdies.” George Burns, who wrapped up low amateur honors at four over par, one shot better than Jerry Pate, was also there.

From Butler Cabin, the combatants walked thirty yards to the practice putting green for the actual trophy presentation where Roberts proclaimed, “What a threesome. What a golf tournament. What a champion.”

Again, Weiskopf, Miller, and Nicklaus sat side-by-side-by-side. It was there that Nicklaus leaned over to Miller and said: “Thanks for making that the most fun golf I’ve ever played in my life.”

“He says, ‘Thanks for making it so much fun for me.’ Not for us. But for me,” says Miller. “That was the e-ticket ride. He wanted a couple of guys who would push him and he just barely beat us.”

For winning, Nicklaus received a record $40,000—$5,000 more than Player got in 1974. Miller and Weiskopf earned $21,250 each. Nicklaus would also take home a gold medal, a bas-relief sterling silver replica of the Masters trophy, and a silver cigarette box engraved with the signature of every player in the field.

“This is the best I’ve played ever, including 1965 (when he set the Masters 72-hole record of 271),” said Nicklaus. “I never bogeyed a par five or a par three. I played the par fives in eight under and didn’t make a mistake, and I played the par threes under par.”

True to his formula, Nicklaus was the champion of limiting his mistakes. His six bogeys for the week were the fewest of anyone in the field. He didn’t hit a single ball in a water hazard.

“I had the best feeling of control over the golf ball for a stretch of four days that I can remember,” said Nicklaus. “A lot of it I’d say was due to my driver.”

He had shot 141 on the weekend. “Normally, you would win by six or seven shots,” said Nicklaus, “but there were a couple of talented boys who played extremely well. I’m just damned glad to win the tournament.

“This is the first time that I have played a major championship that none of them gave it away. All of us had a right to win. Tom played well enough to win. John certainly did. I was lucky to have won. They certainly played well enough. That to me is fun. I think it is wonderful that something like that can happen in America today—to be in that kind of a fight. It’s fun to be involved. For three men to play to win and none of them fall on their faces. Obviously I enjoyed every minute of it.”

“They’ll win their Masters, and they’ll win a couple of them,” he continued. “These two guys have more talent than any young players today. They’re going to dominate golf from now on.”

The victory delighted Jack Nicklaus more than any other in his career. For the rest of the evening, he wore a giddy smile on his face. It was in sharp contrast to his adversaries. Miller was disappointed. Weiskopf was disconsolate.

“In all the time I have played golf, I thought this was the most exciting display I had ever seen,” Nicklaus stated upon having the green jacket draped across his shoulders for a record fifth time. In one afternoon, and with one putt, he had changed the game.

AFTER HOLING OUT
on the 72nd hole, Miller had playfully put his ball in his mouth and bit it. He then tossed it into the gallery.

His weekend scores of 65–66=131 added up to the lowest final 36-hole total in major championship history. It also set the Masters record for lowest final thirty-six-hole total and lowest consecutive 36-hole total, breaking Nicklaus’s 64–69=133 in 1965. His final fifty-four-hole score of 204 broke the Masters record held by Ben Hogan (1953) and Nicklaus (1965). Eight birdies on that Sunday tied the tournament record for most birdies in one round. Ten total Masters records were broken or tied by Miller—an incredible feat for someone who didn’t win. He actually beat Nicklaus by ten shots on the weekend in which he missed only two greens in regulation. “I didn’t think anybody could play this course like he did the past two days,” said Nicklaus.

It was pretty impressive for a guy who didn’t hit a ball on the practice range all week.

Even in defeat, Miller looked at his performance as a victory in certain respects. “I think this proves to people that I can play in tournaments besides Phoenix and Tucson,” said Miller.

He had responded with a pretty good answer to those critics who said he couldn’t stop Jack from winning when he wanted, his U.S. Open was a fluke, and he can’t play in majors. “A lot of people are saying I’m not really as good as my record indicates,” he said. “Ask Gary Player and Tom Weiskopf. They will tell you that I’m not shooting all those low scores by chipping in or sinking forty-foot putts. They will tell you I can play a pretty good game of golf. I want to play well in major championships, and I think I can play well in them. I feel I have the game to win any tournament I play in. I’ve already won on almost every conceivable type of course.”

“I was disappointed, but it was like, wow, that’s cool,” says Miller. “I didn’t hold it against Nicklaus for that putt at 16.

“The difference between Weiskopf and me was like I was in a fun horse race trying to catch these fast horses, and I almost caught
them, so it was sort of thrilling to make it that much of a run being that far behind. But for Weiskopf, he viewed it as his tournament and then Nicklaus makes that crazy putt at 16. He chunks it, makes bogey, two-shot swing, loses the tournament right there. It was really stinging, I think, to Tom.”

“
I REMEMBER
sitting there and seeing a lot of faces. There were happy faces and a lot of sad ones too. And I was looking at them,” says Weiskopf of the trophy presentation. “Mine was sad, I know that.”

Arguably, Weiskopf had played better than Nicklaus and Miller for the entire tournament. He was the only player to play the par threes, par fours, and par fives each under par. He was also the only player in the field without a round over par—the fourth time he’d done that in the Masters.

“It usually gets down to a shot one way or the other,” says Weiskopf. “And it’s usually a putt, isn’t it?”

“When you play that well for 72 holes, it makes it tougher,” he says. “I finished it off at 17 and 18 playing those holes as perfectly as you possibly could play them, and it didn’t happen. That’s the tough thing about it. You had your chance. Not just one chance, I had two good chances.”

Weiskopf’s session in front of the press was a solemn affair. “It’s very hard at times to put into words when you’re very, very unhappy,” he said that evening. “Someone once said you can’t explain pain. There’s no explanation. I just felt terrible. I’ll win this tournament yet. And when I do the jacket will be tailor made.