Golf

GOLF

Jack is Back

"These are interesting times," Jack Nicklaus mused. In the 1980s the Golden Bear was, by many accounts, growing old and losing his competitive edge. At forty his drives were not as prodigious as they once were, his legendary concentration often seemed to wane at critical junctures, and even his fans feared that their hero invested too much of his time and passion into the business and architectural ventures that cluttered his schedule. Furthermore, critics of the game described a professional tour overrun by country-club clones with mechanical swings and little imagination. Even golf's veterans shook their heads: "Pro golf is dull," grumbled Tommy Bolt, "It's a chorus line of blond towheads you can't even tell apart." Ironically, the blond Nicklaus himself had once been condemned as a talented player with few charms, especially when he dared to challenge golf's reigning demigod, Arnold Palmer, in the early 1960s, Now, the tour looked to Nicklaus for an infusion of character, and during the summer of 1980 he gave the game what it yearned for. After a two-year winless streak and endless tinkering with his swing mechanics and short game, Nicklaus unexpectedly seized control of the U.S. Open at Baltusrol Country Club with an Open-record 63 in the first round. He went on to lead the tournament from start to finish, wrapping up his fourth Open championship with birdies on the seventy-first and seventy-second holes to maintain his two-shot lead over Japan's Isao Aoki. In the process Nicklaus won over fans and competitors alike; cries of "Jack is back!" filled the gallery between shots, and in the locker room old rival Lee Trevino shouted at the television screen as he watched Nicklaus stalk up the eighteenth fairway, "Get away and let the big dog eat!" The title was Nicklaus's eighteenth major championship, five more than anyone else in history. But he was not through. In August the rejuvenated Nicklaus routed the field in the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) Championship, winning by seven shots on the treacherous Oak Hill course in Rochester, New York. By claiming two major titles in 1980, Nicklaus accomplished an incredible feat. He had won majors in four different decades dating back to his 1959 U.S. Amateur Championship, solidifying through longevity what he had already confirmed in countless moments of competitive excellence: that he was the greatest golfer the game had ever known. And he still was not finished.

Watson

Despite Nicklaus's stunning reemergence, the early years of the decade belonged to Tom Watson. In the mid 1970s Watson endured a reputation as a choker after letting two U.S. Open titles slip from his grasp, but in 1977 he bested Nicklaus in two thrilling matches at the Masters and the British Open and thus gave notice of his ascendancy. By the 1980s it was apparent that Watson's occasional failures were largely a product of being in contention nearly every week. Each year he seemed to set a new season-earnings record, gathering PGA Player of the Year honors in 1977 through 1980, 1982, and 1984 (more than any other golfer in history), and winning a total of eight major championships between 1975 and 1983. But in many ways Watson's legacy is indelibly linked to a single shot played at the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Capturing the Open title had become Watson's obsession ("Just winning money is not enough.…I must win the U.S. Open to be considered one of the great players"), and so when he came to the second-to-last hole tied once again with Nicklaus, Watson resisted the conservative approach into the center of the green and instead fired a two-iron toward the seventeenth's perilous pin placement. The gamble failed, and his ball settled in the deep Open rough between the green and the rocky shores of the Pacific Ocean. Watson faced a shot that demanded the nerves of a surgeon: a delicate wedge shot out of the viney grass to a slick green sloping away from him. When Watson's caddie whispered nervously, "Get it close," Watson responded confidently: "I'm not trying to get it close. I'm gonna make it." And he did, sending him into an ecstatic victory dance around the green's perimeter, at the conclusion of which he swung and pointed at his caddie and exclaimed, "Told ya!" Making a birdie when a bogey seemed inevitable, Watson had the Grail in his clutches, and when he birdied the final hole for good measure, he had staggered the Golden Bear once again. Watson's playing partner that day, Bill Rogers, rated the shot afterward, "He couldn't have hit a better shot if he'd dropped down a hundred balls." To which Nicklaus chimed in, "Try about a thousand." For many Watson had stared down the ghosts of blown opportunities past, or, as Thomas Boswell wrote afterward: "Golf allows its champions to develop genuine dignity. They play completely alone, more free of owners, managers and teammates than even professional boxers.…Because of their solitude—each reaches moments like Watson's at the seventeenth when he is framed by nothing but sky and history—great golfers seldom find it possible to hide their bedrock character, even if they would prefer it."

Senior Tour

Nicklaus's "comeback" at the age of forty would prove to be a portent of things to come. One might argue that the 1980s represented golf's "gray years," a period during which established figures such as Raymond Floyd, Lee Trevino, and Hale Irwin, all in their forties, wrested one last major championship from the young and hungry. Even the venerable Arnold Palmer, fifty-three, opened the 1983 Masters with a bit of magic, a four-under-par 68, and briefly tantalized those members of "Arnie's Army" longing for one last charge from their hero. Significantly, the decade gave the game's legendary names new life in the form of a tour of their own. The PGA Senior Tour grew out of the popular success of the "Legends of Golf" tournament, a team event begun in 1978 that not only brought the likes of Sam Snead and Billy Casper out of retirement, but showed that they could still play scintillating golf. In 1980 the United States Golf Association established the U.S. Senior Open for players fifty-five years of age and older (the minimum age was dropped to fifty in 1981 to coincide with PGA Seniors Tour entry age), and the inaugural event was won by Roberto de Vicenzo at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, New York. By 1987 the PGA had scheduled a circuit of thirty-seven Senior tournaments. Two years later there was a "Senior Slam" in place, consisting of the U.S. Senior Open, the Senior Players Championship, The Tradition, and the PGA Seniors' Championship. Financially, the Senior Tour was a colossal success. Capitalizing on the popularity of their members, including by 1990 such players as Trevino, Nicklaus, Palmer, Gary Player, and Chi Chi Rodriguez, the tour was driven financially by large-scale corporate sponsorship and by the revenues generated from two-day Pro-Ams before each tournament, in which amateur golfers paid thousands to play and socialize with their idols. As a result many of the Senior Tour's stars, such as Bob Charles and Jim Dent, earned nearly as much in one year on the fifty-and-older circuit as they had during their entire PGA careers. Still able to break par but unwilling to undergo the rigors of the regular tour, older golfers reveled in the opportunity to reclaim their competitive fire. The once gruff Billy Casper showed up for each round in brightly colored knickers and argyle plus fours, while the rejuvenated Trevino gushed, "This is the most fun I've had with my clothes on." Even Nicklaus, who initially dismissed the tour by asserting that "the problem for me is that the guys who are competing are the same guys I have beaten for thirty years," warmed to the challenges offered and in 1991 won three quarters of the Senior Slam.

European Invasion

During the decade golf increasingly distinguished itself as an "international" game. While there had long been a coterie of skilled foreign-born golfers laboring on the PGA and Ladies PGA (LPGA) tours, the 1980s saw a notable shift away from the customary dominance of American players. On the women's circuit Britain's Laura Davies and Sweden's Liselotte Neumann won U.S. Opens in 1987 and 1988, and Ayako Okamoto of Japan was selected as the 1987 LPGA Player of the Year after leading all female golfers in earnings. South Africa's Sally Little continued to win frequently on the women's circuit and captured three different major championships during the decade. On the men's tour the presence of international players was even more pronounced. European players won nearly half of the Masters and British Opens contested during the 1980s, and Australians David Graham and Greg Norman each captured one major during that span. It was perhaps Seve Ballesteros from Spain who best exemplified the challenge to the supremacy of U.S. players on the American tour. Ballesteros was a handsome and compelling figure, attacking each course with youthful exuberance, daring, and an endless arsenal of imaginative shots. At times it seemed like Ballesteros won every tournament with a cunning shot from a strand of trees, the wrong fairway, or an out-of-the-way parking lot. By the age of twenty-one he had used his precocious talents to capture victories on four different continents (including the 1979 British Open), and a year later he became the youngest champion ever at the Masters. By contrast, Nick Faldo of Great Britain was a model of consistency, negotiating a golf course with almost geometric precision. Fittingly, Faldo won the 1987 British Open by parring every hole in the final round, while his competitors struggled in the gorse and brambles that penalize the wayward. Perhaps the most telling sign of the European preeminence came in the Ryder Cup series, a biannual team competition pitting an American squad against a contingent of golfers from Europe. When the Europeans captured the cup in 1985, it was their first victory since 1957. They proved the feat was no fluke by winning again in 1987, and, after a tie in 1989, retained the cup into the 1990s.

For Old Time's Sake

If Nicklaus's victories in 1980 surprised those who thought his best golf was behind him, then his winning the Masters at the age of forty-six must have seemed unthinkable. When the tournament began he was 160th on the money list, had missed three of seven cuts (and withdrawn from a fourth), and was once again said to be anxious about his business interests. He began the final round five shots behind the leader, Greg Norman, and had eight players ahead of him on the leader board. Nevertheless, on 13 April 1986 the Golden Bear roared again. Having missed a series of makable putts on the front nine, Nicklaus suddenly caught fire, shooting a phenomenal 30 on the back nine for a round of 65 to win his sixth green jacket. With the crowd exploding with each stroke and their shouts resounding through the azaleas, the rest of the field came unglued. The title was safe only after Ballesteros hooked his iron shot into Rae's Creek on the fifteenth and Greg Norman pushed his approach shot into the bleachers on the eighteenth. The unfolding scenario reconfirmed the power of Nicklaus's sheer presence during a stretch run at Augusta. But for the Golden Bear himself his extraordinary play and the gallery's adoration led to an unexpected consequence: he began to struggle with powerful emotions during his round. Four or five times he fought back tears and had to lecture himself, "We have to play golf. This isn't over.…What I really don't understand is how I could keep making putts in the state I was in." Moreover, he admitted that he often failed to see the ball land because of his weakening eyesight. "I'm missing the pleasure of seeing my ball finish," he said. The golfing world, on the other hand, celebrated the flight of each drive and the curl of each putt. As Rick Reilly wrote afterward, "It is a trick no other golf god has pulled, not Palmer or Hogan or Snead or Sarazen. Nicklaus had beaten young men at a young man's game on young men's greens and beaten them when they were at their youthful best."

ALMOST IMMORTAL

The appeal for most occasional bowlers (and the thorn in most professional bowlers' sides) is that bowling is a sport anyone can play welll Bowling began the 1980s as one the most popular participant sports in the country. Three out of every eight Americans were sanctioned league bowlers in 1980. Its popularity flagged over the next ten years, however, due in part to the fact that the public increasingly perceived it as a recreational rather than an athletic practice. Many believed that lanes were so oiled and grooved that any hack off the street could stroll into an alley, drink a few beers, chew the fat, and still post a high score. The gap between "Joe Bowler" and bowling legend Earl Anthony was perceived as decreasing, and the American Bowling Congress (ABC) grew anxious about the standards within which bowling scores were considered legitimate. The effort to maintain the integrity and stature of bowling as a sport was perhaps never more clear than in the curious case of Glenn Allison. Allison stood with one foot in each bowling world. He was a retired professional bowler—winner of four ABC championships and five Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) titles—who, as a liquor store manager and league member, rolled three consecutive 300 games on his girlfriend Jessie's birthday. The 900 series on 1 July 1982 was the highest score in bowling history, surpassing the 886 total Allie Brandt bowled in 1939. Allison's "gift" (he had told Jessie he would bowl a 300 game for her moments before his first strike sent the pins crashing) was witnessed by an awestruck alley full of spectators, bowlers, employees, and family members who celebrated the accomplishment with enthusiastic abandon. The general manager at La Habra 300 Bowl later mounted Allison's portrait over Lanes 13 and 14 and put his name on the pinsweeps which guard the now-hallowed ground. The ABC was not nearly as enthusiastic. After inspecting the lanes the organization's representative refused to sanction the 900 series, citing lane-dressing conditions that were not "in compliance with Article 7, Section 3" of the bowlers rule book. Despite assurances from local inspectors, appeals from Allison, and complaints from critics of the ABC (including many members of the professional tour) who had long contended that lane-dressing standards were vague and arbitrarily policed, the Congress did not waiver. Although never officially recognized, Glenn Allison's feat remains for many a significant achievement. "I think it's a remarkable feat," said Earl Anthony. "It's like a golfer hitting three or four straight holes in one." For his part Allison felt that he needed the sanction in order to secure a spot at the top of the bowling world. "The 900 series, if it were sanctioned, that's something that could never be broken," said Allison. "I would always be at the top of the record books, and as far as I'm concerned that would make me immortal." The claim to immortality was later made by Thomas Jordan who rolled an ABC-recognized 899 (and a four-game total of 1,198) in New Jersey in 1989. But for many bowling fans, Jordan's near-perfect score is only a reminder that perfection's name is Glenn Allison.

Sources:

Frank Deford, "Frank Deford Goes Bowling," Sports Illustrated, 68 (25 January 1988): 50-59;

John Garrity, "Thrice Perfect, Once Scorned," Sports Illustrated, 57 (15 November 1982): 76-90.

Saturday Slam

One of the men caught in the wake of Nicklaus's Augusta run was Greg Norman, who was only just beginning a summer of amazing golf and astounding misfortune. By the mid 1980s Norman was being touted as another in the long line of "Bear-apparents." In the 1984 U.S. Open he nearly broke through with a major win, losing an 18-hole playoff to Fuzzy Zoeller after the two had tied after 72 holes. But in 1986 it appeared that Norman, called the Great White Shark for his blond locks and his tales of deep-sea fishing off the Australian coasts, had positioned himself for greatness. Norman led each of the four major tournaments going into the final rounds, but could secure only one victory. The press dubbed the impressive feat the "Saturday Slam," but for Norman it amounted to a trail of disappointment. He seemed to lose each tournament in some new, excruciating manner. Nicklaus's tremendous back nine momentarily stunned the normally resolute Norman, and after he double-bogeyed the par-four tenth hole, it seemed as if his chances were slipping away. "When we got to the fourteenth hole, there were only about fifty people left in our gallery," said Norman afterward. "They were all up with Nicklaus.…I told Nick [Price, Norman's playing partner], "Let's wake these people up and show them we're still here.'" And he did, reeling off four straight birdies to tie Nicklaus, who had finished his round. On the last hole, needing only a par to force a playoff, Norman's four-iron approach shot careened into the bleachers to the right of the green, and he had to settle for a bogey and second place. In the final round of the 1986 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, Norman's putting stroke abandoned him and he shot a 75, as Raymond Floyd emerged from the pack to win. To his credit Norman dominated the field at the British Open that summer and earned his first major title. The jinx seemed to be over. But in August Norman saw the PGA Championship ripped from his grasp when Bob Tway holed a shot from a bunker beside the eighteenth green to beat the Shark by a stroke. As if 1986 were not torturous enough, golf's furies victimized Norman once again at the 1987 Masters, where Larry Mize sank an improbable 140-foot pitch on the second hole of sudden death to take victory from Norman. In the history of the game, no golfer had ever made a shot from off the final green to win a major title.

Pat Bradley

While Norman saw his chance at the Grand Slam crumble, Pat Bradley nearly accomplished the rare feat on the ladies' tour that same summer. By the mid 1980s the LPGA tour was flourishing, bolstered by the charismatic rise of Nancy Lopez and Jan Stephenson in the late 1970s, and the continued fine play of JoAnne Carner, the tour's reigning matriarch. In a period of seeming parity Bradley won three legs of the women's slam in 1986—the LPGA Championship, the Nabisco Dinah Shore Tournament, and the du Maurier Classic—and finished an impressive fifth in the U.S. Women's Open. Excluding Bobby Jones, who inspired the notion of golfs Grand Slam when he won the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, British Open, and British Amateur in 1930, only three other professional golfers had captured three-quarters of the prize: Ben Hogan (1953) on the PGA Tour, and Babe Zaharias (1950) and Mickey Wright (1961) on the LPGA. Having already triumphed in the U.S. Open in 1981, Bradley also became the first woman to win all four majors in her career. Before the summer of 1986 Bradley's reputation bore a certain similarity to Norman's, for though she possessed remarkable concentration—her peers referred frequently to "the Stare" to describe her otherworldly intensity during competition—she had garnered notoriety as a frequent bridesmaid. Critics pointed to her remarkable record of 21 wins and 42 second-place finishes to attest to both her preeminence on the tour and her purported lack of a "killer instinct." But that summer Bradley won tournaments as dramatically as Norman lost them. At the LPGA Championship, for instance, Bradley birdied the last hole with a twelve-foot putt that left runner-up Patty Sheehan pounding her fists on the ground in frustration. At the du Maurier, Bradley found herself nine shots back after thirty-six holes, only to shoot a 67 followed by a 67 to gain a sudden-death playoff with Ayako Okamoto, whom she ousted with yet another birdie on the first playoff hole. In the only major that eluded her, Bradley struggled to a 76 in the first round, only to play herself back into contention with rounds of 71, 74, and 69. By the end of the year Bradley had put together one of the greatest seasons any golfer had ever known: five victories (three of them majors) and six second-place finishes. She was the LPGA's leading money winner, its Player of the Year, and the recipient of the Vare Trophy for low stroke average.

Repeat

No one had won the U.S. Open in consecutive years since Ben Hogan returned from a near-fatal car accident to grab the crown in 1950 and 1951. Tom Watson nearly accomplished the repeat in 1983, finishing second to Larry Nelson, but for many a defending champion the rigors of the Open (slick greens, narrow fair-ways, unyielding rough, intense pressure) seemed to dissolve quickly any visions of grandeur repeated. Few would have pegged Curtis Strange as the man to accomplish such a feat before the 1988 Open. The tour's leading money winner in 1985, 1987, and 1988, Strange was widely regarded as one of the best golfers in the world, but he won mostly in the small tourneys. Many fans cringed at the memory of Strange's collapse at the 1985 Masters, when he lost a commanding lead in the final round, twice hitting approach shots into the water on the back nine. But in 1988 Strange played himself into contention in the second and third rounds of the Open, and despite losing two shots to par on the final day, gained an eighteen-hole playoff with Nick Faldo when he artfully escaped a greenside bunker on the final hole. In the Monday playoff Strange putted extraordinarily well and defeated the usually steady Faldo. Having finally "broken through," Strange was considered one of the favorites entering the 1989 Open at Oak Hill Country Club, and he did not disappoint. However, even after a spectacular 64 on Friday, Strange and the rest of the field found themselves on Sunday chasing Tom Kite, who had broken par in each of the first three rounds. Kite, heir to the "best golfer to never win a major" tag previously attributed to Strange, struggled mightily during his final round, never quite recovering from a triple-bogey on the fifth hole. Meanwhile, Strange performed with Hoganesque calm and precision. Beginning his round with fifteen straight pars, Strange watched the rest of the field wilt in the heat of competition. When he birdied the sixteenth with a fifteen-foot putt, Strange pushed his lead to two shots and coasted to his second consecutive Open victory. Entering the press tent after his victory, Strange broke the stoic demeanor that had carried him through the day's travails and shouted, "Move over, Ben." Curtis Strange had earned the right to share the pedestal with the great Hogan.

Sources:

Thomas Boswell, Strokes of Genius (New York: Douhleday, 1987);

Rhonda Glenn, The Illustrated History of Women's Golf (Dallas: Taylor Publishing,1991);

Steven Goodwin, The Greatest Masters: The 1986 Masters and Golfs Elite (New York: Harper & Row, 1988);

Dan Jenkins, Fairways and Greens: The Best Golf Writings of Dan Jenkins (New York: Doubleday, 1994);

George Peper, Grand Slam Golf (New York: Abrams, 1991).