THE DESERT FOX GOT THE BETTER OF
JOHNNY MILLER returns to Birkdale this week, 41 years after his great victory over Seve Ballesteros and Jack Nicklaus at the Lancashire links.
The American’s win came three years after he’d finished runner-up to Tom Weiskopf at Troon, and it was the culmination of three years playing some unbelievable golf.
“I was the best player in the world back then,” he told me in the inimitable ‘tell it as it is style’ that has made him famous as an analyst for NBC Television.
In 1974 and 1975, Miller won 12 tournaments. And between 1971 and 1980, he was the only player outside Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson to win the title of top money-winner on the US Tour.
He won the 1975 Phoenix Open by 14 shots, and the Tucson Open by nine closing with a 61.
The Open presented a new challenge to the eight wins he’d had in the Californian and Arizona desert that earned him the title of Desert Fox.
But he took to links golf like a duck to water.
“I have great memories playing in The Open,” he recalled.
“When I won at Birkdale, they were having a drought so you had to land the ball 10, 15, 20 yards short of the green.”
Miller played the last two rounds at Birkdale with the leader, a 19-year-old Seve Ballesteros, and watched close up as Seve struggled manfully with the rigorous test the course presents.
“He played pretty good on Saturday, but on Sunday Seve was just all over the place,” Miller continued.
“I guess the thought of a 19-yearold winning The Open was probably, at that point, too much for him because he just started hitting it all over those giant sand dunes.
“The big thing about Birkdale is that it’s surrounded by those dunes and