Epilogue

THE YEAR FOLLOWING DAD’S DEATH, I didn’t play much golf because of a back problem. Most every time I did play, I thought about a conversation we’d had maybe three years prior to his death. I don’t know what triggered it, but I told him, “When you get up there, if I get a hole in one, it’s got to be a Titleist 1. And if it’s staring up at me from the hole, I’ll know where you are, and I know you’ll be with me.” We kind of joked about it. I didn’t bring it up a lot, because we didn’t have a whole lot of conversations about him dying.

When I did go golfing after he died, I’d make sure when I played a par-3 that I had a Titleist 1 ready to go. I’d take balls out and change it out. For some reason, I wasn’t thinking about using a Titleist 1 when I ventured to Oak Hill Country Club in October 2017. I took a group of guys to the famed course in Rochester, New York, that had hosted numerous PGA Tours, U.S. Opens, and even a Ryder Cup. My brother-in-law, Brian Scott, being from Rochester, blessed me many years ago with the privilege of meeting many friends who were members of Oak Hill. I had played Oak Hill many times before and even played in a couple of member-guest tournaments with a great friend, John Post. There was even one time when Joe Huber, who was the best man at my sister Margie’s wedding, and I concocted a surprise trip for my dad to play Oak Hill. He did not know that I was going to be the fourth member of the foursome, so I surprised him in the pro shop. That became one of those great father-son moments in my life and remains one of the many reasons why Oak Hill remains a special course for me.

The course would become more special to me after my October 2017 trip, which turned out to be a divine golf trip. We were guests of John Post, who was the current club president.

The East course at Oak Hill is the championship course. We were scheduled to play it twice, on consecutive mornings. But the afternoon round on the West course turned out to be most memorable.

When we teed off, we were the last to do so for our afternoon group.

My foursome included friends Mark O’Conner, Greg Jones, and Greg Iglehart.

My back, which had been a constant source of physical pain for the previous ten years, was giving me fits on that trip. And I wasn’t playing well, either. Adding drudgery to the round—if you can possibly call any round at Oak Hill “drudgery”—the greens had just been punched and topdressed. Thus, putting was no easy task.

We approached the 14th tee, a 177-yard par 3 that has a slightly downhill green shaded by trees. I went with a 6-iron and knew I’d hit the ball well. I tracked the ball as best I could. It appeared to be slightly to the right of the flag stick. We knew my ball would be close, but we couldn’t see it land. In fact, when we approached the green, we couldn’t see any balls on the surface. Suddenly, Greg ran up to the hole and started jumping up and down. “It’s in!” he shouted. “It’s in! You made a hole in one!”

By this time, the other groups started coming up to the green high-fiving me. In the middle of all the chaos, I pulled a ball out of my pocket and noticed it was a Titleist 3. It then dawned on me that after playing the twelfth hole, I had switched out my Titleist 3 for a Titleist 1. I asked Greg if the logo and the 1 were staring up at him when he pulled it out. He paused briefly and said, “Yes, but why?”

With tears rolling down my face, I struggled for words while recounting the conversation Dad and I had years ago.

I knew where Dad was now! The Titleist 1 gave me that confirmation.

Experiencing better health in October of 2018, I got an opportunity to play at Baltusrol Golf Club, the course where White Fang had been born.

I had first played the historic course in 2005, a week after Phil Mickelson had won the PGA Championship there. My visit on October 11, 2018, came on a golf trip with seven friends from Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in Tampa. I knew much more about Baltusrol after studying what had happened during the 1967 U.S. Open and had grown more familiar with Jack Nicklaus’s victory.

I never got the chance to tour the clubhouse on my first trip, and boy did I miss a lot. The expansive Tudor-looking clubhouse and grounds are among the best that I have seen to date. Walking in the halls and rooms of the clubhouse, I felt as though I were in a golf museum. Trophy cases filled with replicas, clubs, and pictures of champions who had distinguished themselves at Baltusrol (including Mickey Wright, Jack Nicklaus, Kathy Baker, Phil Mickelson, Lee Janzen, and Jimmy Walker, to name a few) were all on display. As I circled around one hallway, I looked to my right, and there was the trophy case that was dedicated to Jack, who won not only the 1967 U.S. Open, but also the 1980 U.S. Open here. Inside that trophy case, I saw a replica of White Fang. The guys with me had heard the story of White Fang over the years. Now, they saw what it looked like.

We had a fabulous dinner, and our sponsor Jeff Bak tried to answer all the questions about Baltusrol and its history. In time, with two bottles of Faust Cabernet empty, the questions shifted to politics, where there were not many answers. Unfortunately, we were not able to stay in the rooms on the property, so we retreated to our hotel.

We teed off under cloudy skies the following morning. The heavy rain held off until the fourteenth, where we headed for shelter and waited. Once the rain stopped, we were able to finish, but we played in wet conditions, including a couple of soaked greens. As we walked down the eighteenth fairway, I couldn’t help but think of the story told to me by the Baltusrol historian, Stu Wolffe, to whom I’d been introduced two weeks prior to our trip.

Recall the final round of the 1967 U.S. Open. Nicklaus birdied five of his first eight holes to open up a four-stroke advantage over Arnold Palmer, and that is how they finished. At the par-5 eighteenth, Nicklaus had played safely with a 1-iron off the tee, but it went right and required a recovery shot from the rough. The recovery shot didn’t go very far and left him with a 230-yard shot to the green. The third shot was over water and uphill 230 yards from the green. He hit another 1-iron that has been talked about ever since. He then sank the birdie putt from 22 feet for the record score of 275 that stood for thirteen years. Wolffe told me about a man named Larry Carpenter, who had been a marshal stationed on the eighteenth fairway that day. After witnessing Jack’s recovery shot, Larry allegedly said, “That was the worst shot I have ever seen.” As the story goes, Jack heard the remark, turned around, and quipped, “I agree with you on that!”

Recently, my second cousin John Murphy told me that he and his sister, Marilyn, had attended that very opening round of the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol. John told me they had “gloriously” been a part of Arnie’s Army that day. His recount emphasizes what a remarkable round Jack had that day, given the fact that he beat Palmer, who was the 1960 champion, and the turning point marked by that outing.

John recounted the well-known story of Palmer winning the 1960 Masters. While waiting for Arnie to get to the clubhouse, Bobby Jones, arguably the greatest golfer ever, said to Cliff Roberts, the president of Augusta National, “If I had to make a putt, the man I would choose would be Arnold.”

“Two years later, the magic was gone,” John said. “Arnold lost to Jack in a playoff the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont in Pennsylvania. Arnold needed a lot more putts for the four rounds than Jack did.

“Friday of the 1967 U.S. Open, Arnold hit every fairway and every green in regulation. I think he could have shot 62 that day if he’d sunk a few putts. I’m going to my grave believing Arnold was both the greatest sports celebrity and golfer in my lifetime. Arnold smiled and winked at my thirty-seven-year-old sister. She cherished that moment forever.”

After Palmer died on September 25, 2016, Jack spoke at his funeral. They had been rivals and friends for decades. During his remarks, Jack said, “[Palmer] was the king of our sport, and he always will be. Like the great [broadcaster] Vin Scully said when he called his last game Sunday night for the Dodgers: ‘Don’t be sad because it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ Today I hurt, just like you hurt. You don’t lose a friend of over sixty years and not feel an enormous loss. But like my wife always says, ‘The memories are the cushions of life.’”

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Jack.

We ate lunch after we finished our round at Baltusrol. Before we left the club, a photographer opened the trophy case so we could take pictures of the “White Fang” replica. The original is now housed at the Jack Nicklaus Museum located on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.

Holding the “fake” White Fang (which didn’t have a pencil in the handle), I thought about the Golden Bear, Steve Nicklaus, and, of course, Dad. White Fang had brought us all together for an experience of a lifetime.