Authors: Gil Capps
The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta (9 page)
“Somebody asked me, ‘Have you seen the pairings?’ I said, ‘No’,” recalls Strange. He had been drawn with Jack Nicklaus. “I was a basket case until I teed off Thursday.”
NEARLY TWO DOZEN
players were already on the grounds Sunday, and the rest of them arrived Monday. Gates opened for the first time at 8:00 a.m. Monday. Tickets were no longer available at King’s Way Pharmacy or Bill’s Barber Shop. The Masters was now one of the toughest tickets in sports. For the tenth consecutive year, tickets for the Masters were sold out. Series badges, as they were called, allowed patrons admission to the tournament rounds only, Thursday–Sunday, and, if necessary, to an 18-hole playoff on Monday. Since 1966, these tickets for the tournament rounds proper had been sold out on a priority basis to established customers, a list that numbered around 30,000. The high demand and increased numbers of people on the grounds—everyone who applied was once sold a ticket—forced the club to close this list in 1972. A waiting list was then established. In 1975, there were five times as many requests as tickets. Soon, even the waiting list was closed. “I’m still most unhappy about the fact that we can only take care of about one-fifth of the people that would like to attend the Masters Tournament,” said Clifford Roberts.
Season badges were not good for practice days, so Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, people could walk right up to the gate and buy a daily ticket for $5. They were unlimited. Practice round patrons could walk the course, take photographs, film with movie cameras, get autographs, and see all the best players. All except the favorite, Jack Nicklaus.
The pudgy kid from Columbus had figured out a lot since his first trip to Augusta sixteen years earlier. Gone were the long car rides and side-trips to other Tour stops. It was now a private plane
and regimented schedule. Nicklaus planned the first three-and-a-half months of the year around the Masters, and for a half-dozen years it was unchanged—roughly three events on the West Coast and then three events in the South.
“I always started in January picking the tournaments that I wanted to play that would give me the competition that I wanted and maybe give me similar conditions that I wanted, give me the opportunity to play shots that I wanted to play, that I thought that I might play (at Augusta),” says Nicklaus. “I avoided a lot of tournaments two or three weeks before the Masters simply because you knew you were going to hit a ton of wind and you were going to be playing a lot of knock down shots and stuff like that. Occasionally, I would play some of those, but most of the time, not. I like to play the courses where you needed to fly your ball in the air.”
Another custom that continued just as it had the previous ten years: Jack Nicklaus traveled to Augusta for his practice rounds the week before the 1975 Masters. It was a routine he continued at the other majors as well with lots of success. “I always believed in being prepared,” says Nicklaus.
Fate also played a part. In 1963, bursitis in his left hip caused him to shuffle his schedule. Instead of playing the week before, he went to Augusta for some practice. And he won his first Masters. The next year, he played the Greater Greensboro Open, a tournament that had been moved to the week before the Masters that season and would stay that way on the calendar for twenty-five years. “I went to Greensboro in 1964 (finishing 4th) and didn’t win the Masters (tied for 2nd). That was my last time at Greensboro,” says Nicklaus, who then won the following two Masters.
“Nothing against Greensboro, I felt my preparation was far better going to Augusta than playing a tournament,” he says. “I enjoyed going to Augusta—the peaceful quiet of nobody else there. Going out and playing and enjoying the golf course.
“Would I rather win Greensboro or the Masters? Duh.”
But Nicklaus, who wasn’t without superstitions, admits, “If I had played well at Greensboro and won the Masters, I probably would have said my preparation was playing the week before the tournament.”
Golfers such as Weiskopf, Player, and Trevino preferred to play their way in. While they and others such as Miller and Palmer were in the Piedmont of North Carolina, on Wednesday, April 2, Nicklaus flew up from his home in the Lost Tree Village development of North Palm Beach, Florida, where he moved his family in 1965. Rising at 5:30 a.m., he made a stop in Atlanta for two morning business meetings before landing in Augusta that afternoon. He ate a bowl of oyster stew in the clubhouse before getting to work.
Nicklaus liked to play at least four rounds on these sojourns. Sometimes he’d play nine in the morning, have lunch, then play the other nine in the afternoon. Other times, he would take his time and stay out all day—just he and caddie Willie Peterson, who had seen enough practice rounds to know whether Nicklaus was ready or not.
Usually, he played by himself, but there were times he’d play with good friend and fellow tour pro Gardner Dickinson or maybe one of Augusta National’s two head professionals, Dave Spencer or Bob Kletcke, who had taken $4 off Nicklaus during a practice round at the 1956 U.S. Junior Amateur. Nicklaus never forgot it, but Kletcke always refused to let him play for those $4 back. Kletcke recalls one such pre-tournament round in which Nicklaus was a long way back on the par-five 13th. Even though he couldn’t see the green around the dogleg, he chose a 1-iron for the shot that demanded a high, towering hook. “I looked at Gardner, and he looked at me. And I shook my head ‘no,’ and he shook his head ‘yes’,” says Kletcke. It drew thirty yards, but fell just short of the green. Kletcke questioned Nicklaus, who responded by hitting the shot again, this time to ten feet. “That’s one of the greatest golf shots I’ve ever seen,” says Kletcke. “I never will forget it.”
Hampered by one-and-a-quarter inches of rain on Thursday, Nicklaus got in just three rounds this time. He played his final practice
round with amateur George Burns on Saturday and struck the ball well from tee to green, shooting a 70. Peterson pronounced that his boss was in great form.
“If I shot 276 or 277, I knew that I’d played fairly well to be able to do that. Generally speaking that was going to win the next week,” says Nicklaus. “I had a good week of preparation. Now I can enjoy my weekend and get away from the game, then come back. I’ve got all my preparation I need out of the way. I can just go play.”
Nicklaus returned home Saturday evening, enjoyed some family time, and flew back up to Augusta Tuesday morning. So for him, the actual week of the Masters would almost follow the routine of a normal tournament.
When asked if he was surprised no one consistently copied his routine of preparation for the majors, Nicklaus says slyly, “That was great.” Nicklaus was never going to be less prepared than anyone else. This gave him an added psychological advantage. “He almost thought he deserved to win,” says Johnny Miller.
The trip in 1975 also gave Nicklaus the opportunity to test out a couple of new sticks around Augusta National. Nicklaus had been playing MacGregor golf clubs since age eleven and had the same set of VIP irons by Nicklaus—he had consulted on their design—in his bag since 1967. The set included a 1-iron through a pitching wedge—all with lead tape on the back and black leather grips with gold lacing. He had even used the same MacGregor Tommy Armour 3-wood since 1958. Prior to this Masters, though, two significant changes had been made in the Nicklaus bag.
When Nicklaus had turned professional, the MacGregor Tommy Armour driver he used may have been his favorite club. His ability to hit it long and straight set up his entire game. On a trip to South Africa in early 1966, however, the driver broke, and Nicklaus struggled to find a suitable replacement in the following years.
Before the days of equipment trucks and scientific fitting, players obtained clubs in more rudimentary ways. “We used to pass clubs
around,” says Weiskopf. “That’s how we got clubs. That was our club fitting.” In late 1974, Dickinson broke his driver and Nicklaus loaned him his spare. Needing a new spare to carry with him, Nicklaus found an old driver head lying around that David Graham had once given him. Nicklaus attached a shaft and grip. This MacGregor Tommy Armour 693 driver was anything but new. The style of the head and markings indicated that it was probably from 1948. The late-1940s had been the heyday of MacGregor’s drivers. The vintage driver was nearly an antique.
Nicklaus took the new club with him, and during a tournament in Japan it got passed to youngster Eddie Pearce. Upon returning it, Pearce raved about the driver. Nicklaus hit some balls with it and liked it. He stuck with his normal driver at the start of 1975, but soon began tinkering with the spare again. He put in a different shaft, but that cost him twenty yards in distance. Then he kinked the shaft to take some of the loft off the club until he was satisfied with the effect.
The ever-plotting Nicklaus waited until the Doral Open in March to debut the driver, due to the course’s spaciousness and lack of out-of-bounds. The tournament couldn’t come soon enough. The week before in Fort Lauderdale, he let a three-shot lead with seven holes to play slip away with a double bogey and two bogeys—a very un-Nicklaus like finish. He thought his game was on schedule, but admitted, “Well, maybe I’m one day, one round behind schedule.” At Doral, though, the driver eased his concerns. Nicklaus shot all four rounds under par in Miami and holed a twenty-foot birdie putt on the final hole to cap off his first win in more than six months.
“I lose a little distance with this driver,” said Nicklaus, “but I control the ball better with it.” He was pleased his game was rounding into shape. “I think winning here is indicative of the way I feel I’ll play at Augusta. I’m very pleased,” he told the press.
Nicklaus took the following week off, and during a practice round at the Jupiter Hills Club near his home, he made another discovery.
Three years earlier, he had been forced to retire the sand wedge he’d used since turning professional. As with the driver, he had been scrounging around looking for another he liked before Jupiter Hills head professional Phil Greenwald loaned him an original Wilson R-90 sand wedge. The club was from the mid-1930s, just a few years after they were mass marketed from Gene Sarazen’s invention. Instead of grooves, the worn face was hand-punched with dots—186 of them aligned in eleven vertical rows. “The ones with dots sold for $5, those with lines for $6,” said Nicklaus. He loved the club and took it home. With his steep swing plane, Nicklaus wasn’t considered a great bunker player. The sand wedge would be useful on holes like the par-five 2nd, where a majority of second shot attempts into that green ended up in one of two front bunkers.
The next week, he took his driver and sand wedge to compete in his final event before the Masters. On the opening day at the Heritage Classic on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Nicklaus shot 66. Then on the second day, he fired a course-record 8-under-par 63. Nicklaus considered Harbour Town Golf Links, with its narrow, tree-lined fairways and small greens, tougher to score on than Augusta National. Although challenged by Tom Weiskopf down the stretch, Nicklaus led wire-to-wire for his fifty-sixth PGA Tour win and a new tournament record of 271, 13 under par.
With two consecutive victories and two new clubs in his bag that were a combined seventy years old, he flew the 500 miles back up to Augusta Tuesday morning. He promptly registered and was given number 76—the next-to-last man to sign in (Terry Diehl was the last). That number would be on Peterson’s caddie overalls and the light blue colored player contestant pin that was Nicklaus’s badge for the week. He got back on the course in mid-afternoon and walked up the 18th at dinner time. According to Peterson, he shot another 70. Afterward, Nicklaus showered, changed, and went to the Masters Club Dinner, the annual Tuesday night gathering of Masters champions (with Roberts the only non-golfer who attended).
The affair began in 1952 after being suggested by Ben Hogan, who was the only one of the twenty-two living champions not present in 1975.
On Wednesday morning, Nicklaus played nine holes before his pre-tournament press conference. As was usually the case during that period, he would skip that afternoon’s Par Three Contest. Nicklaus avoided another tiring round and seeing another set of greens he didn’t need. Instead, he would just hit a few practice balls. His goal was to be prepared for Thursday.
There was a different air to Nicklaus’s confidence this year. “I honestly played pretty good the last six weeks. I didn’t have to work on any particular part of my game when I came here,” said Nicklaus. “I’m better prepared than I’ve been in several years.”
“There were fifteen or twenty of us who could beat him,” says Murphy. “We did not beat him when he was on. You could get close, but you didn’t quite get it done. But if he wasn’t playing his best, then we could sneak in and get him.”
Jack Nicklaus had been the favorite in virtually every Masters for the last decade. With his record and stellar play the previous month, he was the odds-makers favorite again in 1975 and the overwhelming choice of local professionals and sports writers in the
Augusta Chronicle’s
pre-tournament poll. The players sensed it and most all of them agreed with Gary Player: “If anybody beats Jack Nicklaus this week, he’ll win the golf tournament.”
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“I
was a twenty-three-year-old rookie on Tour in 1975, and I made the cut in my very first start ever at Phoenix,” recalls Roger Maltbie, who had seen Johnny Miller, four years older than him, play junior golf in the northern California area. “That got me in Tucson the next week, where I made the cut again. I was on Tour and making money ($929 in those two events). I thought I was doing great. Then I realized Johnny beat me those two weeks by sixty strokes. What I thought was good didn’t mesh with reality. A lot of people felt that way with Johnny at that time.”