Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont by Adam Lazarus Read Free Book Online

green-side bunkers as well as his “mediocre” driving—most annoying because he and his father had worked so intently on driving during the past month.
    Although Palmer was satisfied with his four birdies (all from inside eight feet), the four bogeys were curious. For years, the press and fans had chalked up Palmer’s major championship failures to mediocre putting. And the enormous tally of three putts during the 1962 U.S. Open was well documented. On day one in 1973, however, Palmer three-putted only once, on the infamously difficult tenth, and that had come from fifty feet: Three-putts from that distance, on that green, were nothing worse than a draw.
    Overall, an even-par start to the Open encouraged Palmer, and the Army. By the time he signed his scorecard, nearly every group had completed their rounds, yet only four men broke par. The course—though toughened up only slightly since 1962—was playing as difficult as the vigilant members had hoped (the average first-round score of 76.8 was actually a half stroke higher than in 1962). And Palmer’s 71 matched his opening-round score in 1962. Eleven years older, the field stronger, and his career having been to hell and back, Palmer remained in the hunt after one round.
    The man who had dethroned Palmer as the world’s greatest golfer, Jack Nicklaus, was far less pleased by his start—at least through the first sixteen holes.
    Nicklaus had been the talk of the sporting world during the spring and summer of 1972, when he won the first two legs of the Grand Slam. Though he came up just short in the British Open, losing by way of Lee Trevino’s miraculous chip-in on the seventeenth hole at Muirfield, Nicklaus, at age thirty-two, had reached his peak. He took the scoring title, the money title, and a second PGA Player of the Year award in 1972, in addition to winning seven tournaments. Eclipsing that spectacular season seemed impossible, but when Nicklaus arrived at Oakmont in June 1973, he was on his way to doing just that.
    As his family and business ventures grew exponentially during the late 1960s, Nicklaus scaled back his playing schedule: He vowed never to be away from his four children and college-sweetheart wife, Barbara (whom he’d married at age twenty) for more than two weeks. (Barbara was currently pregnant with their fifth child.) While many touring pros played in over thirty PGA events a year to make ends meet, Nicklaus now appeared in less than two dozen, yet still regularly finished at the top or near the top of the annual money list. And 1973 was no exception. Prior to the Masters in early April, Nicklaus won twice and finished sixth or better in three of the other five events he competed in.
    Only a terrible stretch during the second round of the Masters—three bogeys, then a double bogey on the front nine—kept Nicklaus from winning a fifth Green Jacket. He shot a final-round 66 and finished tied for fourth.
    But fourth was not nearly good enough for Nicklaus at this dominating stage of his career. As he later explained, in a logic uniquely his: “Through that period of time, when I didn’t win [at] Augusta, I sort of thought the year was over. It was ... I suppose, an immature way to look at it, but ... the Grand Slam is what I was really after. I did not achieve it. But that’s what I was really after, so, if I didn’t win the first leg, then I sort of felt like, Let’s wait till next year.”
    Still, Niektaus—arguably the most insatiable competitor in golf history-battled ferociously throughout the entire season.
    “Even in ’73 I still won a lot of golf tournaments [seven],” he acknowledged. But: “I think I probably won those in spite of myself.”
    While the psychology of Nicklaus’s 1973 season remains elusive, he did stay home in Orlando for most of the two months following his disappointment at Augusta. He practiced, tended to the family, and actively oversaw his diversifying business empire (including the creation of