A Golfer's Life (26 page)

It was around 4:45 in the afternoon when I finally got a share of the lead, tied with Hogan and Fleck at four under par after a birdie at 11. I cooled off a bit at that point and made five consecutive pars, arriving at 17 at four under after seventy holes of golf.

At one point before the turn, I looked over and saw wordsmiths Drum and Jenkins following along in the Army. Smiling at them, I couldn’t resist a well-aimed barb: “Well, well. What are you guys doing here?” I don’t recall if or what they may have answered, but the staggering tension was visible on their faces as well.

The 17th was a 550-yard par 5 with an island green sitting in the middle of a still lake. The hole’s design forced even long players like me to go with an intelligent drive, careful lay-up, and safe pitch to the putting surface. The pin in the afternoon final round was positioned dangerously close to the
front of the green—and the slope that led to a watery doom in front. A typical fourth-round Open pin placement, set up to make someone either a hero or a goat. Ben Hogan’s putter had been shaky all week. Perhaps that explains why he, the premier precision shotmaker of all time, decided he needed to get his third shot as close as possible to the hole for a reasonable chance at birdie or even a two-putt. In a daring attempt that had some people scratching their heads for years, he went directly for the flag, his ball barely clearing the band of water in front of the green. It was almost a phenomenal shot, but he and the gallery watched in horror as it spun backward and trickled down the slope into the water.

You have to credit Ben. He did what a champion does at such a crucial moment: play the shot he thinks will work best and the devil take the consequences. Facing disaster, he didn’t hesitate to remove his shoes and socks and wade into the water to slash the ball out and onto the green—exactly what I would have done under the same circumstances. He somehow got the ball onto the putting surface but missed his par putt, and I think that finally took the steam out of him. At 18, his drive found the water a foot or so short of land and sank his hope of a fifth Open championship.

Behind him in the fairway, I saw much of what was unfolding and tried to keep Pap’s stern injunction to “take care of my own business” in my mind, meaning I needed to keep my focus where it ought to be—on the next shot and nothing else. Even after I’d been informed that I alone was leading the tournament, and even after I successfully negotiated the moat and putted out for par at 17, I quietly sweated bullets.

One more par
.

That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Concentrate on the next shot
, I told myself.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Try to stay calm and keep your head still
.

I wanted to win a United States Open so badly. I’d
dreamed of winning the Open as a small boy, and now all I had to do was make
one
par to achieve that dream. I don’t recall whether I knew it or not, but two holes behind me, Jack Fleck was the only guy with a realistic chance of catching me. As he’d proven by stunning Ben Hogan at the Olympic Club, the man was capable of producing miracle finishes.

I hit a 1-iron across the pond and safely into the fairway at 18, feeling a massive surge of relief. I’d avoided the hazard that had undone Bolt and Hogan and God knows how many other world-class players that week. A few moments later, I felt my emotions seesaw when I pulled my 4-iron approach shot and wound up to the left of the green. The ball was eighty long feet from the cup and in the rough. United States Open rough, no less. I walked up and stared at the lie for several moments. I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to gain as much composure as possible.

If I got up and down, I’d have my 280. If not, Fleck or someone else would probably at least tie or might pass me.

You can wait your entire life for a moment like this. I took out my wedge, set up over the ball, and made a crisp little chip that sent the ball rolling slowly toward the pin. It stopped a couple of feet from the hole. On my way to the ball, I paused to repair a pitch mark and then straightened up and studied the line. When I finally stood over the ball, my hands were moist from the heat and the tension, and those couple of feet looked more like two miles. But I kept my head dead still, took the putter back slowly, and rolled the ball into the heart of the cup.

I suppose I didn’t believe, for an instant, what I’d just done. After half a beat of silence, the air around the green exploded, fractured by wild cheers and whistles. I glanced around, took a step or two to the hole, and lifted my ball from the cup, then turned and flung my white visor toward the gallery at the back of the green.

I later learned that, in the excitement, an NBC announcer had prematurely announced to his audience that Arnold Palmer was the new National Open champion. But that certainly wasn’t the case, with Souchak, Cherry, and Jack the Giant Killer still out on the course.

With my heart beating wildly, I signed my card and went into the press tent to get a Coke. I took a seat at the interview table and the place erupted into a noisy den of questions and activity. A few minutes later, word reached us that Don Cherry had gone for the green at 17 in two and topped his ball into the water, while Fleck, two back then thanks to a missed one-footer at 16, could do no better than par. He would need an eagle at 18 to force a playoff. Instead, after what felt like an hour, he tapped in for bogey and the U.S. Open championship was mine.

Somehow I got a call through to Winnie from the noisy pressroom to her parents’ house in Coopersburg. They’d been on the road, as it turned out, when they heard on the radio that Arnold Palmer was about to pull off one of the biggest comebacks in Open history. By then, of course, the verdict was in amid the long shadows of that Denver afternoon. My final-round 65, in fact, had overtaken fourteen players and at that time was the best finish ever by an Open champion, beating Gene Sarazen’s 1932 finish by one stroke.

When I finally got Winnie on the phone amid the hubbub of excited voices, my heart was still thumping wildly. I decided to skip most of the details, though.

“Hiya, lover,” I said to her. “Guess what? We won!”

S
ome would say the arrival of Jack Nicklaus in my “backyard” at Oakmont in Pittsburgh, two years later, was almost the match of Cherry Hills for sheer quality of drama. Though I didn’t care for the outcome, I can’t disagree. The Open that year had all of the classic elements: a hometown favorite son
at the peak of his form, a brilliant tour rookie everyone feared, highly partisan crowds, and the intensity of a National Open on the line.

I’d had a great year, my best start ever, leading up to Oakmont—including back-to-back wins at Palm Springs and Phoenix (where I enjoyed a 12-shot margin of victory, the largest of my career), followed by my third win at the Masters in April, then those three consecutive wins at the Texas Open, the Tournament of Champions, and the Colonial.

The pre-tournament consensus had me as the man to beat, and the home-field advantage of Oakmont, a course I knew intimately, seemed like a storybook setting for a second Open championship. Frankly, after playing poorly and finishing twelfth at Oakland Hills in Detroit the previous year, I was determined to do well in front of the homefolks in Pittsburgh. But as I was careful to warn the writers and anybody else who would listen to me prior to that week, “Everybody says I’m the favorite, but you’d better watch the fat boy.”

I wasn’t trying to insult Jack. In fact, as I think back on that comment, I realize I was mimicking much of what was being written about Jack’s weight and appearance, and his apparent threat to my dominance of the Tour. Since joining the Tour at Los Angeles the first week of the year and winning $33.33, Jack had steadily climbed the leader board, and it was clear to anybody who’d witnessed his power and finesse and almost unearthly ability to focus on his game that Jack Nicklaus’s moment had arrived. Whatever image problems he had early on regarding his weight or appearance or personality were, in my mind, completely irrelevant. I knew he was perfectly capable of taking the Open at Oakmont, because golf courses play no favorites and young Mr. Nicklaus simply had the look of a champion about him. I could see it, and so could anybody else who cared to look beyond the image baloney. As I privately expressed to Winnie and a few others from Latrobe, I
really did view him as the one man I feared could snatch away the second Open title, one I dearly wanted to win in front of my hometown fans—a prophetic hunch, as it turned out.

I suppose if I had an ace in the hole where Jack was concerned, it was simply that Oakmont was a dangerously narrow golf course, with punishing rough that could turn errant tee shots into major disasters. Jack had something of a “flying elbow” in those days, a tendency to get wild off the tee with those huge, high-power fades of his. U.S. Open rough, of course, is the great equalizer of the championship. Anybody who misses fairways probably has no chance to contend in a National Open.

I was pretty sure the heavy partisan fan factor wouldn’t bother Jack; in fact, it might even be a motivating factor in his favor. With that year’s Masters title already in my pocket, and the goal of a modern Grand Slam intensely set in my mind, the pressure was really on me to prove to the world that I deserved a second Open title. On top of that, the tournament was being held on ground that held great meaning for me. It’s ironic that it was this same rugged Open rough, specifically the rough around the greens, that gave me fits and ultimately proved to be my downfall. Oakmont’s glassy putting surfaces also played a part in my undoing. At best, I was a mediocre putter on very fast greens, and I probably should have practiced on a similar putting surface prior to the Open. But I didn’t, and that oversight took its toll.

Almost from the opening bell, my fears began to materialize. Jack and I were paired together for the first round, and an estimated gallery of 12,000 spectators lined the first fairway, anxious to watch us do our things. Jack started with three consecutive threes, all birdies, but I gave my fans precious little to cheer about. After just three holes, I trailed Jack by five strokes and it looked as if the day would be a long one. Fortunately, I righted the ship and ripped off my own string
of birdies while Jack faltered just a touch. I shot an opening-round 71, and by the end of the day I stood one better than Jack for the championship. Both of us trailed reigning Open champion Gene Littler, who shot 69 in a round that included an eagle on the par-5 ninth. But Gene had trouble figuring Oakmont’s mighty lethal greens, too, and the next afternoon Bob Rosburg and I surged to the front of the pack, I with a 68 and Rossie with a 69.

After sixteen holes of the morning round on Saturday, Rossie took the lead, but I regained it a hole later by driving the green at the short 17th and making the putt for an eagle two. Unfortunately, I gave a stroke back with a birdie attempt that was too bold on 18, missing the comebacker for par and suffering yet another three-putt bogey. The 73 dropped me into a tie at 212 with Bobby Nichols.

I went to fetch a ham sandwich and Coke, feeling let down. Though I still had a piece of the fifty-four-hole lead, all those careless three-putts were killing my psyche. Jack, on the other hand, two strokes back, hadn’t had even one of them. He’d putted brilliantly over some of the most treacherous greens in championship golf. The sandwich and Coke refreshed me. I even downed a pint of chocolate milk for an energy boost and walked back to the first tee, where my final round was set to begin.

“Go get ’em, Arnie!”

The whooping and cheerleading had intensified.

I remember being aware of how large the crowds had grown. By early afternoon, some 22,000 fans were on the grounds at Oakmont, and by the end of the tournament something like a total of 25,000 more spectators than had ever attended an Open before would come to Oakmont.

Some of them could have used crash seminars in proper sportsmanship—or basic civility. I didn’t witness much firsthand, aside from the crowd’s unusual boisterousness, but I
later heard of several instances when zealous Palmer partisans called out unflatteringly to Jack and even cheered when he—and other contenders, for that matter—missed a shot. This was deeply distressing both to Jack’s father and to mine, both of whom were in the gallery that week, and when I heard about some of the incidents they made me angry. There is no room for such shenanigans in the game of golf. But it also played right into Jack’s hands, as far as I was concerned.

At the ninth hole of the final round, I faced an opportunity to put the Open out of reach. I was two under for the round at that point, three under for the championship. If I could reach the par-5 ninth in two and make birdie—better yet, eagle—that might cinch the deal. I don’t suppose it surprised anyone that I went for the green, pounding a 3-wood right on the screws. The ball drifted a little too much, though, and settled in the heavy rough just off the green, about pin high. All I still needed to do was make a solid little flip chip and a putt for birdie; that just might be enough.

I don’t recall being particularly concerned about the chip shot. I mean, U.S. Open rough is like no other, but, frankly, I was used to playing out of the longer grasses where careful players seldom ventured. Even so, this week the rough was giving me nightmares. I took my stance and aimed at the pin and drew back my wedge. The unimaginable happened. I stubbed the shot. The ball popped up and settled in the rough mere inches from where it had been. The gallery around the green groaned and then grew so eerily quiet I swear you could hear the blood pumping angrily through my veins. I glared at the ball and tried again, producing another poor effort that left the ball eight feet from the cup. Instead of an excellent shot at birdie I now had to scramble like crazy for par. I missed the putt, grazing the right edge of the hole. I’d turned a surefire birdie into bogey, which under the circumstances
felt like a double bogey. Even worse, it gave Nicklaus just the opening he needed.

He birdied nine and 11, and when I bogied the par-3 13th, we were tied for the championship. Jack made a great recovery from the bunker on 17 and nearly holed a birdie at 18 to finish with 69 and a seventy-two-hole total of 283.