Roll, Rattle & Shake
Gauging Major pressure through the years
Charging for glory when all seems lost or collapsing to ignominy from a commanding position are among sport’s dominant, recurring narratives; and nowhere is the burning pleasure, pain or shame felt more acutely than in the crucible of golf’s Major championships
When it came to mounting a charge or collapsing from near impregnability, it’s fair to say Arnold Palmer copyrighted the patent for Major championships. The King’s supreme 65 in the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills (Denver, Colorado) vaulted him over 14 players. The 54-hole leader Mike Souchak, who started seven shots ahead, was relegated to a share of third place, three back, without doing an awful lot wrong. Meanwhile, the support cast blown away by the regal whirlwind included 47-year-old Ben Hogan and a barely-outof-teens amateur called Jack Nicklaus.
Six years later, Palmer squandered a seven-shot lead over the back nine of the U.S. Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. Billy Casper was the beneficiary, catching the King over 72 holes and dethroning him in a playoff.
While winning is never easy, the fact is losing can be sickeningly simple. Collapses, meltdowns, implosions, chokes—call them what you will—are horrible, embarrassing and about as pleasant to witness as a car crash. On the other hand, charges through the field and come-from-behind victories are among sport’s biggest thrills.
For some reason, those twin imposters from Rudyard Kipling’s stoic poem If, triumph and disaster, surface more at golf tournaments than most other sporting events. And with the potential for agony or ecstasy cranked up even further, there’s no place for such extremes like a Major championship.
On the face of it, the explanation is self-evident. The more prestigious the title, the more lucrative the benefits, the more desperate a player is to win; and the more intense the pressure, the more likely it will all go disastrously wrong through an excess of desire or the power of negative thinking.
But Murphy’s Law, not to mention the law of the jungle, cannot be discounted from this process either. Momentary lapses in concentration, hubristic excesses of confidence and downright bad luck can also play a part in the outcome, as can internal fortitude, burning hunger and clarity of focus when pressure’s flames reach boiling point.
The Masters, with its “risk and reward” DNA, has a penchant for this sort of drama, acted out annually on an Augusta National stage bedecked by camellias, azaleas, sweetness and treachery.
Rory McIlroy’s fall from grace in the final round in 2011 is still vivid in the memory. Instead of a coronation, we witnessed a metaphorical decapitation. Three and a half rounds of flawless beauty were followed by a couple of hours of unadulterated filth. To be fair, the baby-faced Irishman swiftly turned it around and blitzed the field two months later in the U.S. Open at Congressional (Bethesda, Maryland)—a testament to the indomitability of his talent, class, and youth.
Five years later, Jordan Spieth imploded when seemingly booked in for bed, breakfast and a second Green Jacket. His nemesis was the infuriating little crosswind par-3 12th, and unsung Englishman Danny Willett breezed into the vacuum created by the defending champion’s quadruple-bogey 7.
We need not cast our minds back too far to recall other high-profile Augusta collapses. Who could ever forget Greg Norman’s Sunday conversion of a six-shot lead into a five-shot defeat at the hands of Nick Faldo in 1996? Talk about turning wine into water!
Then there was Ed Sneed’s dribbling away of a three-shot advantage over holes 16, 17 and 18, and subsequent playoff capitulation to Fuzzy Zoeller, playing in his first Masters in 1979. Prior to that, Ken Venturi, as a greenhorn amateur, ballooned to 80 in windy conditions to surrender a four-shot lead over the final round in 1956 to seasoned pro Jack Burke, Jr.
The two most electrifying charges through the field over the past half-century crackled with 40-something know-how and nostalgia. In 1978, Gary Player, aged 42, galloped to his third Masters with a closing 64 that clearly inspired his playing partner, one Seve Ballesteros, to greater things. And in 1986, Jack Nicklaus, aged 46, gave the young thrusts the ultimate lesson in closing the deal with a 65 for the ages. Sometimes those with deep experience and a track record to match can turn Memory Lane into Madison Avenue via Magnolia Lane.
During his pomp, Palmer won four Masters, but one that got away gnawed for the rest of his days because it had been so avoidable. In 1961, leading by one, he split the 18th fairway and then allowed himself to be distracted by a friend offering premature congratulations from the gallery. A bunker-to-bunker, double-bogey six resulted from a careless approach shot moments later, and handed Player his first, somewhat unexpected Green Jacket.
With due respect to Palmer, though, Norman is the perfect case study for this text. He has two [British] Opens to his name but he never won any of the American Majors despite numerous chances. In addition to his 1996 Masters debacle, his final round 10 years earlier, with the benefit of hindsight, was an omen for his entire career. After a doublebogey at the 10th sent him spiraling below the Nicklaus slipstream, he birdied 14 through 17 and needed par up the last to force a Shark-Bear playoff. But after a perfect drive, he carved his approach right and failed to get up and down.
Nevertheless, 1986 saw Norman at the peak of his powers. He topped the PGA Tour money list that year and led all four Majors going into the final round; but he won only one—the Open at Turnberry (Ayrshire, Scotland), albeit by a five-shot margin.
In the PGA Championship that year at Inverness (Toledo, Ohio), he frittered away a four-shot lead and then watched forlornly as the gauche Bob Tway holed out from the sand trap in front of the 18th green. If that misfortune was not enough to suggest a curse hovered over Norman, the Masters eight months later was snatched from his grasp by an even freakier turn of events, with local man Larry Mize sinking a 50-yard chip for an improbable birdie 3 at the second extra hole.
Despite such gut-wrenching twists of fate, the Shark kept resurfacing for further punishment. In the 1989 Open at Royal Troon (Ayrshire, Scotland), he surged through the field with a closing 64. Norman sustained that impetus over the first three holes of the playoff but he was so pumped up that his monster drive up the 18th found a pot bunker no one else had come within 20 yards of reaching all week. In a blink, the Claret Jug went instead to Mark Calcavecchia.
Retribution of sorts came when another final-round 64 at Royal St. George’s (Sandwich, Kent, England) in 1993 enabled Norman to overtake 54-hole leader Faldo and bag his second Open. How Faldo made him pay less than three years later down in Georgia!
But still the blond Australian didn’t give up, finishing third in the 1999 Masters after catching eventual winner Jose Maria Olazabal with just five holes to play only to fold over the home stretch, and leading the 2008 Open at Royal Birkdale (Southport, Lancashire) until well into the final round. Aged 53 at the time, and (temporarily) love-struck by tennis ace Chris Evert, a tie (break) for third was his reward for this romantic swansong.
For some reason, frailty at the death often lingers longer in the memory than a catastrophic, almost choreographed collapse from, say, nine holes out. Take the spectacular self-destruction of Jean Van de Velde on the final hole of the 1999 Open at Carnoustie (Angus, Scotland): The genial Frenchman had been cruising and needed no worse than a double-bogey 6 to emulate his compatriot Arnaud Massy’s 1907 success. Yet, after tangling with a grandstand stanchion, thick rough, the Barry Burn and a greenside bunker, he holed out from 12ft for a bizarre, Pyrrhic 7 that squeaked him into a playoff subsequently won by home favorite Paul Lawrie.
Three other never-to-be-forgotten glottal stops in the gloaming involved short putts for victory that went astray, along with their perpetrators’ equilibrium.
In 1947, Sam Snead, who like Phil Mickelson never won the U.S. Open despite a plethora of close calls, was tripped up by an act of gamesmanship when standing over a tiddler on the final green of a playoff at St. Louis CC (Missouri). Just as he was about to pull the trigger, his opponent Lew Worsham asked whether he was sure he was away. After a measurement confirmed Snead’s initial impression, the Slammer missed and then, grinding his teeth, watched Worsham tap in for victory.
Faldo’s first Masters came in 1989 courtesy of an extraordinary lapse by playoff opponent Scott Hoch who aimed left on a downhill 2-footer on the 10th for victory and obligingly pulled it. Faldo, as was his wont, made Hoch pay with a winning birdie on the very next green.
But of all the botched short putts a golfer would love to take again, the daddy has to be the one that Doug Sanders faced on the 72nd green at St Andrews (Fife, Scotland) in the 1970 Open. Sanders, a prime candidate for the unwanted “best golfer never to win a Major” tag, thought his moment had come as he prepared to slot home. Then, as he settled over his ball, he spotted something on his line. Thinking it was a loose impediment, he went to brush it away only to realize it was a blemish in the grass. The subsequent jab right consigned him to an 18-hole playoff with eventual winner Nicklaus, and a lifetime of contemplating what might have been. Years later, Sanders confessed he often went five minutes not thinking of that putt.
Miss in haste, repent at leisure, or so a similar, pithilyworded phrase goes! Hubert Green, who hurriedly missed a 3-footer that would have forced Player into a playoff in the 1978 Masters, was denounced by purists for that singular instance of competitive looseness. But 10 months earlier, he had courageously played most of his final round en route to victory in the U.S. Open at Southern Hills (Tulsa, Oklahoma) knowing a death-threat phone call had been made against him.
Just as Snead was about to pull the trigger, his opponent Lew Worsham asked whether he was sure he was away
Sanders’ main rival for the poisoned Majors’ bridesmaid bouquet is probably Colin Montgomerie. The angry Scot derives scant consolation from his five runners-up finishes, but at least he wasn’t the only victim of possibly the biggest multiple pile-up of vanities at any Major—the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot (Mamaroneck, New York). In addition to Montgomerie, Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and Padraig Harrington all made a monstrous mess of the closing hole while Australia’s Geoff Ogilvy hijacked them all by thinning a chip onto the pin and into the hole from over the back of the 17th green and then holding his nerve down the landing strip.
There is a rich tradition embracing such instances of outrageous luck—think Nicklaus hitting the pin at pace to finish stiff on the 17th green at Pebble Beach (Monterey, California) in the 1972 U.S. Open; think the Bear getting his comeuppance 10 years later on the same green in the same championship when Tom Watson chipped in, also at express speed; and think Lee Trevino with all his off-thegreen hole-outs en route to the 1972 Open at Muirfield (East Lothian, Scotland).
These are the quirks of fate that leave their victims gasping for whatever lies twixt cup and lip, but even the greatest players can succumb. Tiger Woods, arguably the finest front runner the game has known, was himself on the receiving end of a lack-luster day in August 2009 as Y.E. Yang overhauled the Great One’s two-shot 54-hole lead in the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National (Chaska, Minnesota) to become Asia’s first Major champion.
Ernie Els, the Big Easy who invariably found competing with Woods a little hard, proved the value of patience acquired through experience in the 2012 Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes (Lancashire, England). The South African, then 42, overhauled a six-shot final-round deficit, mainly because Adam Scott displayed poor course management down the stretch. Gutted though he was at flunking his first Major, the Australian swiftly regained his composure, learned some lessons and won the Masters the following April in a playoff.
The PGA Championship has also seen its share of impressive comebacks. At Oakmont (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in 1978, John Mahaffey shot 66 to make up seven shots on Watson and went on to win a three-way playoff. Meanwhile, four other PGA winners came from six shots back—Bob Rosburg (1959), Lanny Wadkins (1977), Payne Stewart (1989) and Steve Elkington (1995).
Despite this late-comers litany, the one last-round charge in a Major that almost rivals Palmer’s Congressional effort was achieved in 1973 at Oakmont when Johnny Miller’s 63 catapulted him over 11 players, including Palmer who shared the lead after round three and finished in a tie for fourth.
“I didn’t even sniff missing a green,” Miller joyfully recalled. Like Palmer in 1960, his sense of smell was heightened by just the faintest whiff of victory.
“I didn’t even sniff missing a green,” Miller joyfully recalled