Authors: Gil Capps
So long Heard, Wadkins, Jones, and Simons. Johnny Miller’s fame and talent had outpaced the Five Young Thunderbirds. Just three days later at the next Tour stop in Akron, Ohio, Miller fully comprehended his new standing in the world of golf. Hitting balls on the practice range, veteran Bert Yancey strode up to him and said, “You’re the U.S. Open champion now, make sure you act like it,” turned, and walked away. The comment floored Miller, who tried his hardest to lengthen his stride. But winning the national championship with the greatest final round ever didn’t boost his confidence like many believed it had. That came later in the year.
As U.S. Open champion, Miller was selected to represent the United States in the World Cup of Golf. The other American to complete the two-man team would be the year’s PGA champion—Jack Nicklaus. The two had become friends since the 1966 U.S. Open, but they had never displayed their games in front of one another for an entire week. “To play with Jack that many days.... I always thought Jack was up here (as Miller lifts his hand above his head), and I was somewhere closing in on him (his hand lowers to his neck line), maybe,” Miller says.
Thanksgiving week, they traveled to Las Brisas in Marbella, Spain, where, despite five weeks off, Miller was laser-like with his irons, hitting shots so close that the soft, spiked-up greens didn’t matter. In the second round, he fired a course-record 65 in which every approach shot landed inside fifteen feet. The U.S. team went
on to win by six shots, and Miller captured the individual title by three over Gary Player. Nicklaus finished four back. “I thought, Nicklaus hits his driver a little longer and his 1-iron a little better,” Miller says, “but starting with the 5-iron on down, I was better than him.” That 3-wood Nicklaus hit seven-and-a-half years earlier at San Francisco Golf Club had been erased from Miller’s mind. In its place was Las Brisas. “I thought, ‘I’m ready to beat this guy. I
can
beat this guy’,” states Miller. “The 1973 World Cup was really the turning point for me. That’s what ’74 was all about—a springboard off that World Cup.”
Indeed, the boost of confidence that Miller acquired that week, added with his new Nicklausesque putting stroke and U.S. Open victory earlier in the season, changed the game of golf for the next year and a half. In the sixteen months to come, Johnny Miller would shoot eight rounds of 65 or lower, notch sixteen top-ten finishes, win eleven times, and confirm Larry Miller’s premonition twenty years earlier.
AMAZINGLY AFTER
the World Cup, Miller didn’t pick up a club until the first week of January 1974, when he drove down from Napa to the season opener at Pebble Beach. There was no rust on his game as he won the rain-shortened Bing Crosby National Pro-Am by four strokes. The next week in Phoenix, Miller shot all four rounds in the 60s and birdied the final three holes to win by one over Lanny Wadkins. Then the week after that, two hours down the road in Tucson, Miller opened with a course-record 62 and led wire-to-wire for a three-shot victory. Three events played, three wins, and another mark in the record book: the first player in PGA Tour history to win the first three events of a season. Inexplicably, he took off the next week at San Diego.
In late March, he led wire-to-wire again at Hilton Head. In April, he stormed back from nine down after the first round to win the Tournament of Champions. Four more sub-70 rounds at
Westchester in August set a tournament record of 19 under par. A course-record 63 at famed Pinehurst No. 2 in September led to a playoff victory over Nicklaus, Bob Murphy, and Frank Beard. A resounding eight-shot win on his home course at Silverado at the end of the month rounded out the year. In the end, the tally was eight PGA Tour victories (not counting a late season win at the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan as well)—the most in one year since Arnold Palmer captured the same number in 1962.
Miller led the money list with a then-record $346,302 and was named PGA Player of the Year. There were more cover photos on
Sports Illustrated, Sport
, and
The Sporting News
, along with stories in general news publications such as
Time
and
People
. All celebrated one of the greatest seasons in golf.
“I was at the top of my game physically, finally really strong and in great shape,” says Miller, who used working on his ranch and duck hunting as exercise routines. Now twenty-seven, Miller hit the ball as far as nearly every pro and had a clubhead speed of 117 miles per hour with what were heavier clubs at the time, a far cry from his teenage years. He says, “When I was winning, I would feel a sense of weightlessness. I remember being over the ball and feeling as light as a feather. I could do anything I wanted with the ball.”
He had reached the pinnacle of his profession, but little did anyone know Johnny Miller’s interest in golf was waning. “By ’74, I was starting to realize, hey, I’m playing really good—one of the top players in the world—but I don’t want to do this every week,” Miller says. His third child, Casi, had been born in July, and his priorities resided at home where he was more interested in being a good dad and a good husband. He often cited two church sayings: “No amount of success can compensate for failure in the home” and “The most important work you’ll ever do is within the walls of your own home.”
“The golf tour was in total conflict with trying to do that,” asserts Miller. “On the one side I loved it; on the other, I resented it keeping
me from my kids.” His priorities were family, church, teaching, Boy Scouts, and ranching. What’s really important in life? Remember Ronnie? He decided to cut down his schedule to mimic Nicklaus’s. After playing thirty events in 1972, he played just twenty-two in 1974. Only the West Coast events and the year’s first three majors intrigued him. And golf didn’t even come close to Miller’s love of fishing. In fact, he began picking certain tournaments to play not because the course suited his game, but because they had excellent fishing on site. “It’s amazing I won as much as I did,” Miller says, “because I was just doing it in my spare time.”
The other problem was that he was playing too well. “I was a little cocky,” Miller admits, “a little too cocky.” Why practice when you’re hitting it so good? While at home, Miller rarely touched a club, sometimes going weeks between hitting balls. Before going to a major, he would hit a few dozen balls or play nine holes. That was it. Miller had fallen out of love with the process that had driven him to the top of his sport. “It was boring to tell you the truth,” he confesses.
“I should’ve had somebody there to kick me in the butt,” Miller says. “My dad could have done it and said, ‘You know you are on track to really be a great player—a fifty-win player—but you’ve got to practice and work on your game’.” Not a single friend or family member confronted him. He was doing too well.
It’s hard to believe during the greatest year of his career, Miller was no longer doing any of the things that brought him to this point. Remember Larry Miller’s axioms: “If you’re willing to do things no one else is doing, you’re going to be better than the rest” or “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to be willing to do what no one else is willing to do.” “I definitely had screwed all that up,” Miller says. “Instead of depositing money into the bank account, I was now just withdrawing off all those years of putting in.” The principal in the Johnny Miller Golf Account was being eaten away. “I was going bankrupt,” he says, “but I was going broke slowly.”
Miller didn’t even practice the parts of his game that needed work: chipping and putting. He was a poor chipper, using an improper technique with too much acceleration on shots around the greens. When Miller missed greens, he didn’t have a short game to fall back on. That shortfall was magnified in the majors, and his putter felt the brunt of the pressure. The bigger the event, the more important it was, the more jittery Miller got on the greens. “I was still just a little too dang nervous in the majors putting,” confesses Miller. “That was my Achilles’ heel.”
He may have been everyone’s Player of the Year in 1974, but his performances in the four majors that season were in sharp contrast to his other tournaments. He finished 15th at the Masters, tied for 35th in defense of his U.S. Open title, 10th at the British Open, and tied for 39th at the PGA Championship. In sixteen rounds, he broke 70 just once. His scoring average in the majors was a pedestrian 73.3; in his other eighteen PGA Tour events that year, it was a sizzling 69.5. Gary Player won two of those majors in that season, finished top-ten in the other two, and would gladly tell anyone that he bettered the Player of the Year by thirty-nine shots in those four championships. And Jack Nicklaus chimed in: “Eight victories is certainly good for the bank balance, but what I bet is on his mind as he looks back—and forward—is his major championship record.”
Miller realized the lack of a big title in 1974 left a void in his otherwise stellar season. He knew he should have won a major. In 1975, he was determined not to let it happen again.
AT THIS POINT
, Johnny Miller was the ultimate golfing enigma. No one knew it, but the world’s best player at the time put virtually no work into his game. Still, he was winning. And when he wasn’t, he was shooting a 64 or 65. He didn’t know when—sometimes, it was in a pro-am or practice round—but he posted a low score at least once a week whenever he played. “I was never sure what I was
going to do,” says Miller, who admits it made him a bit skittish. “But I could get hot quicker than anyone else.
“In those days, one round a week was going to be low. That’s all there was to it. It might be in the pro-am; it might be in practice. There was going to be one day I was going to turn the lights on. It was going to happen.”
And that’s why on Saturday, April 12, he didn’t think he was out of it.
In fact, Miller had already shot rounds of 63 or lower seven times on the PGA Tour—the same number as Nicklaus, Palmer, and Weiskopf in their entire careers combined. Of course, a 63 at Augusta National was a bit far-fetched. But a 63 at Oakmont had been as well. At least a 64 or 65 was necessary to get back in contention at this Masters. He was eleven back after all.
“In my mind, any day could be a good round, and one round could win an event,” states Miller. “It was like having a big club in my bag that nobody else had.”
The paradoxes abounded. Miller was shaky on the greens, yet he could shoot a 63 at any time. He rarely practiced, yet he had been the game’s hottest player the previous year and a half. Golf was the lowest of his priorities, yet he really, really wanted to win the Masters, to validate his career, stick it to Nicklaus, Player, and the likes of Kenneth Denlinger, and leave no doubt as to who was the game’s best player.
There was one certainty. On this day, Miller desperately needed that fifteenth club to show up in his bag. There was still a little principal left in his account. But time was running out.
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o golf fans, Willie Peterson had the best job in the world. For one week every year, the forty-five-year-old was the caddie for Jack Nicklaus at the Masters, his portly figure and raspy voice exalting balls toward the hole. He carried a big, white bath towel draped over his arm that he’d wave in the air every time Nicklaus made a putt. He could have been a cheerleader on the sidelines in Athens, Knoxville, or Tuscaloosa. It looked like such fun.
Nicklaus’s regular caddie on Tour was Angelo Argea, a curly-haired Greek from Las Vegas who first caddied for Nicklaus at the 1963 Palm Springs Classic, which they won. Argea became his regular Tour looper in 1968, but he couldn’t caddie in the Masters. Neither could Miller’s caddie Andy Martinez or others. Outside caddies were not allowed to work the tournament. The same held true at the time for all three major American championships. Only local caddies were allowed inside the ropes, no professional tour caddies. Because of this rule, many players became dependent on themselves.
In 1975, all of the caddies who worked at Augusta National Golf Club were black. They strode the grounds in their club-issued long-sleeved white jumpsuits, green caps, and Converse Chuck
Taylor white canvas shoes. They shagged balls on the practice range for their players, and, on the course, they picked the ball out of the hole for them. Multiple forecaddies sat by each green to assist with play. Before players arrived at the green, they would fix pitch marks in the greens. After they left, they would rake bunkers as necessary. The caddies would jump for joy and run around to celebrate good shots; they would throw their hands up and stomp around to commiserate bad ones. They added excitement, flare, and energy to the tournament. “They loved it,” says Bob Kletcke. “A month before they’d get all fired up, and they’d stay fired up until a month afterward.”
Even with Nicklaus’s talent, the caddies initially avoided him like the plague. Pappy Stokes was the dean of Augusta National caddies, winning five Masters with four different players—the most of anyone—and got assigned to Nicklaus in 1959. “Jack was paying good money, but he’d go out there at 7:00 in the morning and come back at night,” said Stokes, who gave him up. The line to pick him up wasn’t long. He hit too many balls on the range. He practiced too much on the course the week before. He took too long. But Peterson, who’d caddied at Augusta National since he was a teen, didn’t mind. He was given Nicklaus’s bag in 1960. “I knew I had a winner,” said Peterson. “I figured he’d win ten Masters before he was through.”
Like Argea, Willie Peterson was more a bag toter than a caddie. “As long as he’s there on time to carry the bag, that’s all I’m asking,” said Nicklaus. The only trepidation he had about Peterson was that one day he would be so overcome with excitement that he would hit a ball while swinging his towel. He rarely gave Nicklaus—or Mr. Jack as he called him—direction or advice. Nicklaus did his own thinking, pulled his own clubs, and figured his own calculations. He even created his own rudimentary yardage book—a club scorecard with notes on it. (A professionally measured and charted yardage book of Augusta National wasn’t produced until 1983.) Beside each
hole, Nicklaus had jotted down approach shot distances—measurements to the front and back of each green in yards. It was a concept noted amateur Gene Andrews utilized in the 1950s, and Nicklaus picked up the idea from Deane Beman in 1961. “Last ridge 222–250,” he wrote beside the 2nd hole. “Last tree on right 190–235,” he wrote beside the 13th. The only hole at Augusta without a note was the 12th—the yardage there was always 155 yards from the ball washer. Nicklaus didn’t feel the need to chart the greens. He had them memorized. “This man doesn’t miss a trick,” said Peterson.