Authors: Gil Capps
SOME YEARS LATER
, Frank Chirkinian wanted to re-create Nicklaus’s putt on the 16th. It had taken on its own life. “Everybody tried that putt every year,” says Roger Maltbie, who happened to hole a similar putt in the third round in 1987—but not at that moment Nicklaus did. They cut the hole in the same location, put a mark where the ball was, and had Nicklaus hit the same putt. Again, Tom Weiskopf watched. “I don’t know how long he stood there, an
hour, and hour-plus,” says Weiskopf. “He never came close to making it. That’s how hard that putt was.”
It was another cruel reminder of how fate and fortune play a role in one’s life. Weiskopf said that night he wouldn’t let the finish of the 1975 Masters bother him, but it did. “A long time,” responds Weiskopf when asked how long it took to get over that Sunday. “I don’t know if I could really define it. A long time. Years. Years. It just never leaves you.”
“For Weiskopf to be so close and always second to Nicklaus no matter what, that had to be a cross to carry I’m sure,” says Scully.
“He hurt and suffered by never winning,” says Wright. “For years he would talk about it (’75 Masters), how it killed him, really killed him.”
Victory in the 1975 Masters could have meant a more confident, results-oriented Weiskopf. “Had he won, it might have propelled him to a few greater things,” says Ed Sneed. Jack Nicklaus feel likewise: “It would have made a tremendous difference because he struggled to win.”
Others aren’t so sure. “I don’t know if it would’ve changed a lot,” says Maltbie. “I think he would’ve been driven by the same demons.” Kaye Kessler agrees, “I’m not sure it would’ve been different, because Tom is Tom.”
Later that summer, Weiskopf enacted some revenge on Nicklaus in a playoff for the Canadian Open, a tournament Nicklaus would finish runner-up in six times—the only significant event of the period that he never won. On the first playoff hole, Weiskopf had two feet for birdie and victory. He smiled, prompting Nicklaus to needle him, “What are you laughing at, you’ve got a lot of golf to play.” Weiskopf said, “There’s no chance I’m going to miss this one.” And he didn’t. “You’d have thought he’d inherited a billion dollars,” says Wright, who remembers being with him that day. “It meant so much to him to beat Nicklaus.”
After 1975, Weiskopf added only four more victories in his PGA Tour career. He was in the final-day hunt at a couple of U.S. Opens
but never contended in another Masters. He shot a 63 in the opening round of the 1980 U.S. Open in Baltusrol, only for Nicklaus of all people to shoot the same number later in the day. For more than two decades, the trio of Miller, Weiskopf, and Nicklaus would be the only players to shoot 63 in a U.S. Open.
In 1978, he relocated his family from Columbus to Scottsdale, Arizona, a move he wished he’d made years earlier. Weiskopf thought about retiring several times until deciding to end it at the 1984 Western Open, the tournament in which he made his professional debut twenty years earlier and at which he won his final Tour title in 1982 with a birdie on the final hole. While he would play occasionally, his career as a touring professional was over at age forty-one. “In a way it (’75 Masters) probably had a lot to do with me retiring,” says Weiskopf. “I just had to move on in a different way.”
Instead, he took up a vocation that suited his personality to a tee—golf course design.
“I loved it. You’re holding the purse strings in a lot of ways,” says Weiskopf, who started in partnership with Jay Morrish in 1983 and went out on his own in 1994. He may not have been emotionally involved in every tournament he played, but he was in every course he designed. “It’s lonely, which is nice, you’re by yourself out there,” he says, no longer having to answer to a flock of press every day.
Now one of the game’s most respected golf course architects, the nickname Rembrandt is now a compliment.
Weiskopf has created more than sixty courses around the world in ten different countries, with celebrated layouts such as Troon, TPC Scottsdale, and Loch Lomond in Scotland. His biggest claim to fame was bringing the drivable par four back in vogue. “You hope you’re leaving something of enjoyment for people in the future,” he says.
Once he turned fifty in 1992, Weiskopf played the Champions Tour only sparingly. He won four times, including finally nabbing that elusive USGA championship—the 1995 U.S. Senior Open over
Nicklaus, after finishing second to him two years earlier when he couldn’t make a putt. The victory at Congressional Country Club, where Weiskopf made the decision to turn professional three decades earlier, was made more special by Nicklaus returning greenside to congratulate him. “It means so much to me,” Weiskopf told Nicklaus of his gesture.
The most significant milestone in Tom Weiskopf’s life, however, didn’t occur until the new millennium.
“January 2, 2000, I woke up, and on that day I quit drinking and started skiing all in the same day. And have never had a sip since,” he says, having done it cold turkey without the assistance of any programs or rehabilitation clinics. “I do have a good constitution,” he adds. “When I make up my mind, I can do just about anything that I’m capable of doing, good or bad.”
Weiskopf wishes he would’ve stopped sooner. It was a contributing factor in the demise of his first marriage in the late-1990s. Now, he is able to deal with people and situations much easier.
“In a lot of ways, he’s not the person that everybody used to know,” says Ed Sneed. Chris Roderick, a long-time friend and business partner concurs, “He’s more at peace with himself.”
“Why me?” is no longer asked as frequently. A mellower Weiskopf splits his time between Scottsdale and Bozeman, Montana—re-married in 2007 to his new wife Laurie, sober, and comfortable with his life and himself.
“Things don’t bother me like they used to,” he says. Not even his place in the game.
Critics panned him as the biggest waste of talent the game had ever seen. If you separate perception from the reality of his achievements, Tom Weiskopf’s record is quite remarkable. At the end of 2013, just fifty players in the game’s history had more PGA Tour wins than Weiskopf and his sixteen titles. He won a major championship—something only 210 different players had achieved in 154 years. In
1981, he became the fourth player to pass the $2 million career earnings mark; and when he decided to quit playing full-time in 1984, he stood seventh on the all-time career money winners list.
Sixty-eight top-three finishes in his career stack up to the tallies of others who came just after—all whom played longer and are in the World Golf Hall of Fame: Ben Crenshaw (60), Lanny Wadkins (57), Curtis Strange (50), Nick Price (50), Hubert Green (40), and Larry Nelson (30). Even Johnny Miller totaled just 51. Maybe some of those players got more out of their careers than Weiskopf, but if not for that putt by Nicklaus, is there any doubt that Tom Weiskopf would be in the Hall of Fame?
And really, should one putt, one major win that didn’t happen, keep someone out when his record and contributions to the game say otherwise.
Weiskopf had a significant influence on the modern game. His swing was emulated by youngsters such as Vijay Singh and Ernie Els. His name is still brought up in any conversation that leads off, “the best I ever saw...” If the Hall of Fame is truly for people who’ve succeeded at the highest level and contributed to their sport, then Weiskopf’s name should be called.
“It doesn’t mean that much to me,” he says of the recognition. “It would mean a lot more to some people I could think about who were instrumental in various ways. I would be honored, but I don’t expect it.”
Weiskopf had a career others would dream of. Was he really an underachiever? “I’ve read stuff that people have said,” admits Weiskopf. “Do I know that I was an extremely talented guy? Yes. Was I an emotional guy? Of course I was. That was just me. That was my makeup. I can’t change the past. The future’s always a mystery. All that’s important is right now.”
Jack Nicklaus says Weiskopf was “probably as talented a golfer as I’ve ever seen. Maybe he wasn’t in the right place, the right time, to really have the reward I thought his talent deserved.”
“If only I could be recycled,” Weiskopf says. “There’s one problem with playing this game of golf: when you finally figure it out you’re too old to play it.”
For a long time, Weiskopf thought about the 1975 Masters constantly. Now, it’s only when early April rolls around or when someone asks him about the subject. “Now you see, Gil, I hadn’t thought about those last four holes at Augusta until you asked me those questions today,” he says while overlooking the finishing hole at Silver-leaf, one of his award-winning designs in Scottsdale.
Weiskopf remembers little of the great shots he struck during the week. Instead, only five holes on Sunday stick in his head: 11, 15, 16, 17, and 18.
Would winning that Masters have changed his life? “I’m sure,” says Weiskopf before hedging his answer. “But maybe not. Maybe not.”
Asked to describe his lasting memories from the 1975 Masters, Weiskopf ponders to find the words: “Haunted comes to me first. Flashback. For years, I would remember those holes. I will never forget that. But there’s other memories, too, just as hurtful that might not be related to golf. But that’s all part of the journey that we’re on.”
Each year, Weiskopf sits down and watches the tournament on television. From 1984 to 1996, Weiskopf moonlighted as a commentator for CBS at the Masters. He hasn’t been back to Augusta National since the final one he worked.
In 1986, he uttered one of the most honest comments in golf television history. As Nicklaus went through his pre-shot routine on the 16th tee during his final-nine charge, a rookie announcer named Jim Nantz brought in Weiskopf to ask him what was going through Nicklaus’s mind. Weiskopf replied, “If I knew the way he thought, I would have won this tournament.”
JUST AS NICKLAUS
did after his first Masters appearance, Curtis Strange followed up his with a win in the prestigious North & South Amateur in Pinehurst four weeks later by defeating George Burns in
the 36-hole final, 2 up. Strange felt like he became a better player from his experience at Augusta and playing with Nicklaus, a memory as clear today as in 1975. He continued his stellar amateur play and returned to the Masters in 1976 to capture low amateur honors, finishing tied for 15th. Strange went on to become the leading American player in the 1980s. Frequently, his mind wanders back to the 1985 Masters, a tournament in which he had shot 80 in the first round but by the 10th tee on Sunday was seven under and holding a four-shot lead with nine to play. Strange then got ahead of himself and going too fast. He hit shots in the water on holes 13 and 15. “I felt so bad afterwards I knew I didn’t want to ever do that again,” says Strange. “That hurt for a long time.” Always keeping that day in the back of his mind, Strange used that experience to his advantage, particularly at the 1988 and 1989 U.S. Open, when he fulfilled another of his father’s dreams, winning the national championship on Father’s Day weekend.
Gary Koch turned professional later that year and won six times in his career. Roger Maltbie learned from Johnny Miller that “you can’t make too many birdies.” The rookie won back-to-back starts in July and drove down Magnolia Lane for the first time in 1976. “It was everything I thought it might be and more,” he says. “One of the great memories of my life.” In the 1987 Masters, Maltbie led at the halfway point only to finish one shot out of a playoff.
Gary Player kept jetting around the world, returning to play at Augusta each year until 2009 for his record fifty-second Masters start. He added one final major championship at the 1978 Masters, birdying seven of the last ten holes when no one paid him any attention.
Three weeks after the 1975 Masters, Arnold Palmer won the Spanish Open—his last win on a regular tour anywhere. Palmer would never seriously contend in another major championship on the weekend. Four years later, he turned fifty and was the pied piper of the new Champions Tour. Year after year, he returned to Augusta
National, staying in the limelight for a record fifty consecutive Masters until 2004.
In New Orleans five weeks later, Billy Casper captured the last of his fifty-one career PGA Tour wins. He still goes back each April for the Masters Club dinner. “It hasn’t changed in all those years,” he says. “You still have the same feeling when you turn onto Magnolia Lane.”
Of all the people to have heartbreak befall them at the Masters since Weiskopf, the cruelest may have happened to, of all people, Ed Sneed. With three holes to play in 1979, he led by three shots. Without hitting a single shot that he considered poor, Sneed bogeyed 16, 17, and 18. He lost in a playoff to Fuzzy Zoeller.
“We sort of commiserated on it,” says Sneed of his bond with Weiskopf’s Augusta misfortunes. He went through the same emotions, received the same types of letters from President Ford, Ben Hogan, and complete strangers. “It’s a tough thing to go through,” says Sneed. “You can be a little overly philosophical about it. It is not a life and death situation. It is not a tragedy. At the same time, you never forget those things. You always wish you could’ve won.”
Friday, June 27, 1975, remains a date three headliners from the Masters two-and-a-half months earlier will never forget. It had been overcast during the second round of the Western Open at Butler National Golf Club just west of Chicago before a storm suddenly appeared. The grouping of Bob Dickson, Tony Jacklin, and Bobby Nichols was playing the 4th hole along Teal Lake. On the other side was the 13th hole where Mike Fetchick, Jerry Heard, and Lee Trevino were. Just after 4:00 p.m., a bolt of lightning struck around the water.