Playing Partners
Ballroom dancing or threelegged race? Pairs aren’t always partners
Or three, or four? A few golfers play the game with tunnel vision, oblivious to their playing partners and opponents. The majority, though, are hypersensitive to the presence and quirks of others. And not every outcome is harmonious and gracious, as Paul Trow discovers
GGOLF HAS BEEN A BLUEPRINT FOR COMPANIONSHIP for more than four centuries, yet not every on-course association has proven a recipe for social concord. Proximity hasn’t always meant placidity, off-course friendships haven’t always translated to on-course felicity—and vice-versa.
Case in point: One of the greatest on-course partnerships in history, one that essentially established St Andrews as the “home of golf.” Back in the 1840s alternate-shot foursome was the preferred format, and its supreme exponents were the resident professional Allan Robertson and his worthy assistant Tom Morris. They ran a shop, with Robertson as boss and paymaster and Morris as everything else. They gave lessons, repaired and made clubs, oversaw the course superintendent duties, and managed the caddies’ roster. Nothing of a golfing nature occurred in the Auld Grey Toun beyond their ambit.
The heartbeat of their hegemony, though, was an unassailable record in match-play over dozens of matches for purses and wagers put up by local lairds. According to legend, they never lost. On that basis, Robertson must surely have valued Tom as gold dust, especially as each victory cemented their fame and, more importantly, rang the tills. Alas, a rather airy matter proved otherwise.
Robertson, whose livelihood depended on making and selling “featherie” balls, caught Morris playing one day with the cheaper and more efficient gutta percha ball, made from the sap of a Malayan rubber tree. Their friendship and success counted for nothing as Morris was fired on the spot for disloyalty and banished from St Andrews, going on to become head pro and superintendent at Prestwick.
The “guttie” eventually eclipsed the “featherie” and Morris blossomed into golf’s eminence grise, eventually hatching a plan to bring the better pro players across Scotland together for a one-day, 36-hole tournament, with a red Moroccan leather belt as the prize. Thus was born golf ’s first Major—the template for all that followed.
Bad for Robertson, the breaking of his “team” nonetheless proved good for golf, even if it exposed the challenges of on-course relationships—challenges that grow exponentially as team sizes increase. Consider captains in Ryder, Solheim or Presidents Cups, trying to make pairs from teams of 12. It’s not as simple as having the players use the playground method of “I’ll take so-and-so,” and “I’ll buddy up with so-and-so.” With personality and strategy both at issue, wild blunders are sure to be made—such as saddling Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson with each other, as U.S. captain Hal Sutton did so disastrously at the 2004 Ryder Cup. On the other hand, imagine 2018 Ryder Cup Captain Jim Furyk’s frustration when, after watching the pairing of Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed combine for a record of 8–1–3 across two Ryder Cups and the 2017 Presidents Cup, the dynamic duo suddenly split in 2018—and in very playground fashion: “The issue’s obviously with Jordan not wanting to play with me; I don’t have any issue with Jordan,” Reed said at the time, adding that he was “blindsided” by Furyk pairing him with Tiger Woods. “Blindsided my ass.” The New York Post quoted another [anonymous] member of Team USA as saying. “He begged to play with Tiger.” And you can almost hear the bell signaling it’s time for recess.
Friendship and success together counted for nothing; Tom Morris was fired on the spot
Beyond teams, often the mere presence of a particular person in a group at a stroke play tournament can inhibit his (or her) partners, not to mention opponents in match play. Witness how many worthy competitors have folded in the company of Tiger Woods, and before him Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan.
As his career blossomed, no one could have gone to greater lengths than the gentlemanly Palmer to put his playing companions at ease, but he couldn’t help the fact that the gallery—invariably the largest on the course for any single group—was interested in only one player. The moment Palmer had putted out they rushed to the next tee regardless of whether the other players had finished the hole. No matter how hard the King tried to quell his subjects the task usually proved impossible.
Nicklaus was far sterner in his tactics, often slowing down the pace of play when it was his turn, knowing that the delay might heighten his opponent’s anxiety. He was superb at getting inside the head of a fellow player, and perhaps his greatest victim was Tom Weiskopf, a fellow long-hitting
Ohioan nearly three years his junior. There’s a long list of Nicklaus–Weiskopf moments in which the Golden Bear seemed to triumph via the force of his presence, but one of the most notable, certainly, was in 1980. Out early in the first round of that year’s U.S. Open at Baltusrol, NJ, Weiskopf played the round of his life, a seven-under-par 63 to lead the field by three. Near the end of the day, as he relaxed in the clubhouse, Weiskopf heard that one of the late finishers had matched his score. When he learned the culprit was Nicklaus, his shoulders visibly sagged. Three days later, Nicklaus was crowned national champion for a fourth time while Weiskopf finished 37th, and never contended in a Major again. Years later, Weiskopf spoke for his whole generation: “As you looked at Jack on the first tee, you knew that he knew that you knew he was going to beat you.” Nicklaus’ take on his dominance was more nuanced, believing that for whatever reason he was able to play his natural game in the heat of battle for longer than his contemporaries.
Another Nicklaus ploy (not specifically visited on Weiskopf) was to play “cat and mouse” with his rivals over club selection. The classic instance of this came late in the final round of the 1978 Open Championship at St Andrews. New Zealander Simon Owen, alongside Nicklaus, held a one-stroke lead over the great man and was on a roll. Both were safely on the 16th fairway, Nicklaus the shorter by 20 yards. His 9-iron approach landed short of the green but ran up to within 6ft of the pin, persuading Owen not to hold back with his wedge. The resulting 2-shot swing, after Owen’s ball had bounded through the green and into a divot, was all it took to secure the Bear’s third Claret Jug.
Nicklaus wasn’t immune from the effects of on-course pairings, either, evidenced in problems he had with the wisecracking Lee Trevino. After missing a six-footer on the 72nd hole that would have won him the 1971 U.S. Open at Merion, PA, Trevino found himself in an 18-hole playoff with Nicklaus. The tension on the first tee was broken when the ever-playful man pulled a rubber snake from his golf bag and held it up for the crowd to see before tossing it at his opponent. It certainly lightened the mood but it might also have softened Nicklaus’ competitive steel as Trevino galloped to a three-stroke victory. The showman Walter Hagen would have laughed that off, but what Woods would have made of such a prank is another matter altogether. When he accompanied the yellow-clad Sergio Garcia in the final round of the 2006 Open at Royal Liverpool he was merciless. He laid up behind his adversary time and again only to fire approaches in close, often with long and mid irons. No wonder the headline writers played around with “cat and canary” images afterwards.
Considering Woods’ Ryder Cups, though, a curiosity on playing partners comes to light: While his singles ratio is on the plus side, his fourball and foursomes results are disastrous—19 defeats in 28 attempts with a variety of
“As you looked at Jack on the first tee, you knew that he knew that you knew he was
going to beat you”
partners. Clearly the long-time world No.1’s intimidating presence affects both friend and foe, making the conundrum of on-course relationships all the more vexing.
Palmer, Nicklaus and Trevino were all far more productive partners. With Nicklaus, though, there was always an edge. While following the afternoon fourballs on the first day of the 1981 Ryder Cup at Walton Heath in Surrey, England, I found myself standing by one of the greens alongside Nicklaus and Watson. The pair of them were bickering like children, Nicklaus complaining about the lies Watson had given him during the morning foursomes and Watson moaning about the Bear’s heavy-handed putting. It was an extraordinary conversation on which to eavesdrop, made more so by the fact they had comfortably beaten Peter Oosterhuis and Nick Faldo 4&3. The pursuit of perfection is clearly not to be compromised, even by a workmanlike win over worthy opponents.
That same afternoon, I fell into conversation with Trevino while watching a match involving Jerry Pate. Trevino said he was running the rule over Pate because he would be partnering him the next day. Paraphrasing his words, the gist of what he told me was that Pate had all the talent in the world but wasn’t the brightest of tacticians, so he (Trevino) had been assigned to his case. Needless to say, Trevino and Pate duly chalked up two emphatic second-day wins.
Ballesteros, deprived of his injured partner and compatriot Jose Maria Olazabal, shepherded and chivvied mild-mannered Englishman David Gilford into playing like a man possessed during the 1995 Ryder Cup at Oak Hill, NY. Four years earlier, a clearly intimidated Gilford was blown away while partnering Faldo at Kiawah Island, SC. By all accounts, Faldo barely spoke to his junior partner en route to 7&5 foursomes thrashing. Of course, Faldo’s preference for his own bubble served him well during his jousts with Greg Norman, most notably in the final round of the 1996 Masters and the third round of the 1990 Open at St Andrews. The scoring differential in the former was 67-78 and in the latter 67-76— both in Faldo’s favor.
Whether it’s an odd slight splitting the likes of Robertson and Morris, a who-knows-what between a duo like Spieth and Reed, or the proximity effects of certain personalities (intentional or otherwise) throwing players off their games, there’s no question that as much as golf is a game played together—and though the likes of a Ryder Cup might be “one for all”—in the end competitive golf is more often one for one, and it always has been.
Consider Sam Snead and Ben Hogan. Fierce rivals, they surely would have been a formidable pairing, and yet it never happened. The sangfroid between them was summed up once when Snead, waiting to be taken to a tournament, was asked by his driver whether he’d like to be joined in the car by Hogan. “Not particularly,” he replied.
Woods’ intimidating presence can affect both foes and friends at his side— not ideal in team matches