16

OPEN HEAT

Jeff Sluman was walking onto the practice tee at Oakmont Country Club. Davis Love III was walking off.

“Hey, Slick, what do you think?” Sluman said.

“I can’t wait till tomorrow,” Love answered. “By then, I may be able to hit a ball on one of the greens.”

Sluman laughed. “I told you. It’s harder than Chinese geometry—Mandarin or Szechuan.”

It was late Tuesday afternoon of U.S. Open week, June 14, and the temperature had cooled from the high 90s to the low 90s. The entire Pittsburgh area was in the midst of a record heat wave and Oakmont, the venerable old club that was hosting its seventh Open, was broiling. Combine the heat, which was expected to last all week, with a golf course that many of the players—Sluman and Love among them—thought was as hard as any they had ever played, and you had conditions about as brutal as anyone on any tour in the world would face all year.

All of which left the U.S. Golf Association—the governing body for national golf championships, pro and amateur, in the U.S.—and the Oakmont members walking around with wide grins on their faces. There is no tournament in the world that thrives on sadism like the Open. The USGA selects difficult golf courses, then lets the rough grow knee-high, cuts the greens so that they’re practically white by week’s end, and then sits back and giggles watching the world’s greatest players thrash and crash for four days.

Some call it the world’s greatest test of golf. Others call it trick golf, courses made so unfair that it is as much luck as skill that determines the winner. The Open’s list of winners includes most of the great names in the game’s history (Sam Snead being the most notable exception). But it also contains names like Sam Parks Jr. (a club pro who won at Oakmont in 1935), Jack Fleck, Orville Moody, and Andy North. Fleck and Moody each won one tournament—the Open. North won the Open twice and won only one other time during his career.

Of course Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus each won four Opens, and Lee Trevino launched his career when he won at Oak Hill in 1968. He came back three years later to beat Nicklaus in the famous “snake” playoff at Merion. Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson won only once, but each would call his victory—Palmer at Cherry Hills in 1960, Watson at Pebble Beach in 1982—the most dramatic of his career.

It takes a certain kind of player to win the Open. John Daly will probably never win it because Open golf courses invariably are set up to take the driver out of your hand and force you to hit irons off the tee to make sure you find the fairway. Beyond that, winning the Open takes patience, patience, and more patience. As the players say, if you don’t want to grind for four days, don’t even bother showing up.

You have to accept the crazy bounces and five-foot putts that roll eight feet past. You can’t moan about a bad shot because, as Curtis Strange says, “You start feeling sorry for yourself and you’ll turn a bogey into double or worse in no time.”

Open week is very often hot and humid, the pressure builds each day, and every mistake is magnified, especially on Sunday afternoon. In 1994, all the elements were at their most difficult. The USGA had heard whispers after the ’93 tournament at Baltusrol that the rough lacked its usual bite, so it had made certain no one would make that comment again. The greens, always fast at an Open, were faster because the members at Oakmont take great pride in the speed of their greens. Many of them could be heard during the week saying repeatedly, “The greens are much faster when we play our member-guest.”

Having hosted six Opens previously, Oakmont was full of lore and tradition and stories. Ben Hogan had beaten Sam Snead here in 1953, and Nicklaus had beaten Palmer in a playoff in 1962, a tournament that marked the arrival of the chubby twenty-two-year-old rookie as Palmer’s successor on the game’s throne. Eleven years later, Palmer had made his last real run at an Open, leading on the final day before Johnny Miller came out of nowhere to shoot 63 and win the tournament. The members were still grumbling about Miller’s 63 and the soft greens that allowed him to fire at the flags all day. Ten years later, the tournament ended on Monday because of rain and Larry Nelson broke Tom Watson’s heart with a 60-foot putt on the 17th green to beat him by one shot.

Nicklaus, Palmer, Miller, and Nelson were all in the field. Nicklaus had earned his way in by winning the Senior Open (and an automatic exemption) in ’93. The other three had received exemptions from the USGA. Remarkably, Palmer’s invitation had caused some controversy.

Unlike the Masters and the PGA, which declare their champions exempt for life, and the British Open, which unofficially makes its champions exempt for life, the U.S. Open gives a champion a ten-year exemption—period. Palmer had played in Open qualifying seven times after playing at Oakmont in ’83 and had failed to make the field each time. Now, at sixty-four, the USGA had invited him back, to a course that was twenty miles from where he had grown up in Latrobe, and a place where he had twice almost won the Open.

It made sense to almost everyone. One exception was Frank Hannigan, the former executive director of the USGA, now a columnist for Golf Digest and a commentator for ABC. Hannigan is one of the great curmudgeons of all time, a wickedly funny man with a caustic sense of humor that can sting anyone, anytime. Hannigan didn’t think Palmer belonged in the tournament and had said so in Golf Digest. He couldn’t make the cut, he might embarrass himself, and that exemption might be better used on another player.

Seve Ballesteros agreed. Ballesteros hadn’t won a tournament since 1992 and, at thirty-six, had become a shadow of the swashbuckling genius who had won five major titles. Although he made several putts over hill and dale during the team matches at the Ryder Cup, he had hit the ball so poorly, especially during his singles loss to Jim Gallagher Jr., that a cruel joke had circulated through the golf world after the weekend was over.

“Did you know that there were two Scandinavians on the European Ryder Cup team?”

“Two?”

“Yes, Joakim Haeggman, who’s Swedish, and Seve, who’s Finnished.”

Ouch. Ballesteros was furious when the USGA announced three sponsor exemptions—Miller, Nelson, and Palmer—in March. He was shocked and angry that he hadn’t received one and couldn’t understand why Palmer had gotten one when everyone knew Palmer couldn’t play anymore. As if to back up his case, Ballesteros went out and won a tournament. By year’s end, he had come all the way back to finish third in the European Order of Merit.

Did Ballesteros belong in the field? Probably. He had not won the Open, but the only time he had come close had been at Oakmont in 1983. And, the fact was, people still wanted to see him play. Which was the same reason Palmer belonged in the field no matter how much Frank Hannigan disagreed. He didn’t belong every year, and if Ballesteros didn’t qualify in 1995, he didn’t belong either. But a one-shot deal, sure, why not let them both play?

The USGA finally relented and invited Ballesteros in late May. Just to make certain no one thought they had been bullied into inviting him, they also invited Ben Crenshaw. Their message was that Ballesteros and Crenshaw, although they hadn’t qualified, had both played well recently—Crenshaw had won in New Orleans—and that was why they were invited.

Sure. And the greens really were faster at the Oakmont member-guest, and the traffic getting across the lone two-lane bridge that led from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the club wasn’t going to be that bad.

“You know the first time I played here in 1942, they hadn’t built the Pennsylvania Turnpike yet,” Palmer said during a joint press conference with Nicklaus on Tuesday.

Nicklaus leaned close and whispered in Palmer’s ear. “Yes, Jack,” Palmer said, “they did have cars back then.”

Even Frank Hannigan giggled at that one.

Lee Janzen was on the range late Wednesday afternoon, his longtime teacher Rick Smith a few feet behind him as he hit balls. As Janzen drilled one shot after another, Smith shook his head and said, “The only advice I’ve given him all week is to make sure he stops at every red light driving home. There’s nothing I can tell him to make him hit it better than this.”

Twenty-four hours before he began defense of his Open title, Lee Janzen had again become the talk of the golf world. After eleven months of struggling, he had suddenly exploded back into everyone’s consciousness in two weeks. First, he had shot a final-round 66 at the Kemper Open to finish fourth—his first top-twenty finish since Baltusrol—and then he had strung 69–69–64–66 together at Westchester on one of the more difficult courses on tour to beat Ernie Els and win the Buick (Westchester) Classic.

Life was good again. And now, people were wondering if Janzen couldn’t do the near-impossible and win the Open back-to-back. After all, a course like Oakmont, which put a premium on driving the ball straight and making a lot of tough putts, was a Janzen type of golf course.

“I’m just happy knowing I can play again,” he said. “You get to a point where you actually wonder if you’re ever going to play well again.”

Janzen hadn’t gone through anything that Jeff Sluman, Billy Andrade, or John Cook hadn’t gone through in the last year. The difference was he had gone through it as the U.S. Open champion. He couldn’t shoot 73 and just head for the range. He had to talk to the media, shake hands with sponsors, and spend time with his agent. At times, he felt he was not living up to the title he had won: U.S. Open champion.

The turning point had come after the Masters. First, he forgot to commit to Hilton Head, a mistake many players periodically make. Sometimes, players show up on-site thinking they have committed to a tournament only to find out they haven’t. Janzen had never done anything that careless before. To him, the mistake was symptomatic of the fact that his mind wasn’t as sharp or as focused as it should be. He was distracted, perhaps by fatherhood, perhaps by being the Open champion, perhaps—most likely he thought—by the fact that he lacked confidence in his new clubs.

At Greensboro the next week, he finally decided he had to go back to playing forged-blade irons even if it made the Hogan Company unhappy. He certainly wasn’t doing the company or himself any good by finishing 34–cut–cut–35–30 since Doral. He had missed more cuts (four) during the first eight weeks of 1994 than he had missed in all of 1993. He had finished in the top ten in seven of his first sixteen tournaments in 1993, none of his first ten in 1994.

“I just figured things couldn’t get any worse,” he said.

Things didn’t turn around right away, although his twenty-second-place finish at Greensboro was his highest since he had been twentieth in the short-field Mercedes Championships in January. He finished sixtieth at the Memorial and thirtieth at Colonial but, slowly, he thought he was beginning to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Of course he had thought that in the past and it had just been another train.

The two weeks before the Open would be critical, not only because Janzen didn’t want to go into his defense being asked why he hadn’t had a top-twenty finish in a year, but because the two tournaments leading to Oakmont—Kemper and the Buick Classic—were played on two of his favorite golf courses, the TPC at Avenel and Westchester Country Club. If he couldn’t get something going at those two places, courses that put a premium on driving the ball straight and chipping and putting, then he was in trouble.

There were signs of life on Saturday at the Kemper when he pieced together a 68 to sneak onto the bottom of the leader board. Sunday, on a humid, cloudy day that brought back memories of the last day at Baltusrol, he suddenly started making the birdies he hadn’t made for months. He had four in eight holes before a bogey at the ninth slowed him down.

All of a sudden, everything was different. His caddy, David Musgrove, who had worked for Sandy Lyle during Lyle’s glory years, saw a difference in the way he was walking and sounding and looking. “The jaw is starting to come out again,” he said.

The jaw was locked firmly in place on the back nine. Janzen was shouting at shots while they were in the air, waving them to go in the right spot, and resolute even when he got into trouble. Still three under for the day through sixteen holes, he hit a perfect four-iron at the par-three 17th that floated just over the water to a soft landing eight feet left of the pin. He rolled in that birdie, then at 18, one of the toughest holes on the golf course, he hit a seven-iron second shot that slammed to a halt one foot right of the flag. Janzen tapped in for a birdie and a 66. “I misread the seven-iron,” he said, a huge grin on his face. “I thought it would go another foot left.”

He hadn’t won, but he had finished tied for fourth and the feeling was back. He knew he could make birdies in bunches again and he could knock down flags with his irons. He did that for four straight days at Westchester, holding off Els on the final day with a 35-foot birdie putt at the 15th that gave him the lead for good.

The timing could not have been better. Not only was the Open coming up, but Golf World was running a feature on him which showed him literally disappearing off the page. When he arrived at Oakmont Tuesday morning, his buddy Rocco Mediate said he had a game for them: Nicklaus and Palmer. Standing on the first tee, Nicklaus turned to Palmer and said, “What do you think, should we take these two kids on?”

“Will they give us shots?” Palmer asked innocently.

“Give you shots?” Janzen said. “Are you kidding. Didn’t you know I’ve disappeared from the game?”

He could joke about it… now.

At any major tournament the days leading up to Thursday always produce some kind of controversy. At the Masters it had been Mac O’Grady, the former player and longtime tour gadfly claiming that he knew for a fact that seven of the top thirty money winners on the PGA Tour were taking beta-blockers, a drug that slowed one’s heart rate. A slower heart rate kept you calmer and made a smooth golf swing easier to execute.

Nick Price had taken beta-blockers once, under medical supervision, and he said they had hurt his golf because he couldn’t get an adrenaline rush when he needed one. What’s more, he hadn’t slept very well at night because he didn’t use up as much energy as he normally did during the day.

At the ’94 Open, O’Grady wasn’t around to stir anything up, so most of the talk focused on the golf course and the recurring question about whether the USGA made its courses unfair. Greg Norman stirred things up a little when he said that he didn’t like a golf course that took the driver out of your hands and that was what Oakmont did.

One person who wasn’t engaging in any of the pretournament rhetoric was Curtis Strange. It had now been five years since his historic back-to-back Open victories and, even though he had played some good golf in the past twelve months—eight top-ten finishes—he was almost a ghostlike figure at Oakmont. He wasn’t one of the pretournament favorites, he wasn’t stirring up any controversy, and he wasn’t one of the Grand Old Men à la Palmer and Nicklaus.

But he was playing pretty good golf. Since the Masters, he had struggled with his game, playing well for two weeks—tenth at Houston, fourteenth at Memorial—then playing poorly for two—missed the cut at Colonial, missed the cut (by a mile) at Kemper.

He couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was. Sarah’s health was much better; she felt 95 percent recovered and had learned to adjust to what had happened to her by not going a thousand miles an hour, twenty-four hours a day. Almost every day she put aside two hours in the middle of the day to relax. Occasionally, Curtis would notice her slipping back into her routine of saying yes to everyone and everything and he would lecture her. She knew he was right and—most of the time—she listened.

With Sarah feeling better, there was no reason for Curtis not to be able to focus on improving his game. The problem was, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his golf swing. During his golden years in the 1980s, he had constantly relied on two swing thoughts: keep the left shoulder behind the ball and be certain to release the club on the follow-through. If he did those two things he would almost always hit the ball well. “Those two thoughts worked for me for about eight years,” he said. “I might tinker a little, but everything revolved around those two thoughts.”

For most of four years, he had been searching for something that would replace those thoughts because they didn’t seem to work anymore. Each week, he tried something new. In the weeks leading to the Open, he was changing his thoughts daily, sometimes more often than that. He knew that was far from ideal, but he hadn’t yet hit on anything he felt comfortable with.

He went out to practice on Monday afternoon and ran into Arnold Palmer and Paul Goydos on the back nine. Goydos felt as if he had landed on Fantasy Island. There they were, stalking the fairways of Oakmont: Palmer… Strange… Goydos.

A couple of months earlier, Goydos had been in a group at dinner that included Tom Watson. He had listened intently as Watson told stories about U.S. Opens and British Opens and Masters past, about victories and defeats and moments of glory and infamy. Walking out of the restaurant that night, Goydos shook his head and said, “Well, I’ve finally figured out the difference between Tom Watson and me. He dreams about winning another major; I dream about playing in a major.”

Goydos had fulfilled his dream, although it hadn’t been easy. He had birdied the thirty-sixth hole of Open qualifying to get into the tournament right on the number the day after the final round of the Kemper. On that same day, Billy Andrade had three-putted the last two holes of his afternoon round and missed qualifying by one shot. Andrade had charged a 15-foot birdie putt on 18, thinking he needed to make it to avoid a playoff. He was right, but when he missed coming back, he didn’t even make the playoff.

When Goydos arrived at Oakmont, he was told that you had to sign up for tee times in order to get on the golf course for a practice round. He looked at the Monday sheet and saw Palmer’s name listed, so he wrote in his name next to it. Thus the historic pairing was made: Palmer in his 130th major and Goydos in his first.

By the time he ran into Palmer and Goydos, Strange had decided it was time to clear out his mind. (Maybe he had been reading Norman’s Zen book.) He was going back to basics: left shoulder behind the ball; release the club and a weak grip so he wouldn’t chance losing the ball to the left too often. He played in with Palmer and Goydos and when they were done, Palmer looked at him and said, “You know, the way you’re hitting the ball there’s no reason you can’t win here.”

“Come on, Arnold, don’t start.”

Palmer was serious. “You know you’re still not yet forty,” he said. “You have a lot of good golf left in you. I had a couple of great chances to win majors when I was your age. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do the same thing.”

Strange appreciated the pep talk. He appreciated it less when Palmer said almost the same thing to the media and picked him as one of the favorites. Fortunately for him, no one was really listening. They were more interested in hearing Palmer tell stories about his fifty-two years of playing Oakmont than in picking any winners.

He had been assigned the same wooden locker—number 108—that he had been assigned at all his previous Oakmont Opens. Right across from the locker was his portrait. Three lockers down was Nicklaus and across from his locker, his portrait. Of course no one lingered in the locker room for too long since it was not air-conditioned. Nostalgia went only so far when the temperature got close to 100.

It was already close to 90 on Thursday when the tournament started at 7 o’clock in the morning. Unlike at regular tour events, which send players off the first tee and the 10th tee on Thursday and Friday in order to save time, all four majors insist that everyone plays the golf course from hole 1 to hole 18 each day. At the Open, that meant a first tee time of 7 A.M. and a last one of 4:20.

It also meant that when play slowed to a virtual halt in the afternoon because of the heat and the lightning-fast greens, rounds were taking more than five and a half hours. That meant play couldn’t possibly be completed before dark even on two of the longest days of the year. The USGA was saved the embarrassment of being unable to complete a round for no reason other than slow play by evening thundershowers that gave them an excuse to bring the remaining golfers in about an hour before dark. That way they were able to list weather as the official reason why the round hadn’t been completed.

“The pace of play is absurd,” Palmer said after he finished his first round in five hours and thirty-five minutes on Thursday evening. He grinned wickedly. “Heck, in ’62 we never took more than four and a half hours even with Jack playing as slow as he did back then.”

Palmer and Nicklaus had become friends over the years, but every once in a while the little knives would come out. Nicklaus often said he would never play in the major championships after he became noncompetitive because he wouldn’t want to embarrass himself. “Arnie can do that,” he said. “I can’t.”

Nicklaus had been embarrassed for most of the year, but on opening day at the Open, he went from Olden to Golden one more time. His morning round of 69 made him the leader until Tom Watson, playing in the afternoon, came in one shot better at 68. “I looked up at the board and figured if Nicklaus can do it at fifty-four, why can’t Watson do it at forty-four?” he said. Ernie Els—at twenty-four—had also shot 69, as had Hale Irwin and a New Zealander named Frank Nobilo. John Daly, who had insisted all week there was no reason for him not to hit the driver on most holes, hit it hither and you all afternoon and shot 81. The good news was that he didn’t withdraw.

Watson and Nicklaus, who finished his round by draining a 50-foot putt at 18 to one of the loudest roars ever heard, were the story of the day. But that was only because Strange botched the 18th hole, making a double-bogey six after pushing his drive into jail.

Until then, Strange had been cruising along at three under par, playing just the kind of golf Palmer had watched him play on Monday. He felt confident and relaxed and, being a Virginia boy, the 97-degree midday heat (not to mention the sky-high humidity) didn’t really bother him. “I sort of like it,” he said, “because I know it’ll bother some other guys.”

He was two under at the turn and you could see the old look in his eyes. Nine holes on Thursday prove nothing at a major championship. If they did, Jumbo Ozaki would probably have as many major titles as Nicklaus because he always seemed to play the first nine holes at every major in 32. Ozaki was a very good player, a man who had become incredibly rich by dominating the Japanese Tour. Everything he wore was silk, and he could hit the ball as far as anyone on the American tour with the exception of Daly. But he never seemed able to go the distance when he got out of Japan. One day ABC flashed a graphic on Ozaki that said, “Has won 48 tournaments worldwide.” It failed to mention that 47 of the 48 had come in Japan. Still, the graphic was right; Japan is in the world. And Ozaki was certainly quite wide.

He went out in 32—of course—and came back in 39. Of course. Strange, after turning in 34, three-putted 11 to drop to one under and walked off the green talking to himself. But he came right back to birdie the long par-five 12th and the short par-three 13th. By now the word was out that Curtis was in red numbers and the crowd walking with his group, which also included Nick Price and Ben Crenshaw, had swelled. Price was en route to shooting 76–72 to miss the cut and was about as close to being truly angry on the golf course as he would ever get.

It was Strange the crowds wanted to see and Strange who caused ABC to send its number one foot soldier, Bob Rosburg, to join the threesome. Rosburg, the 1959 PGA champion, had been ABC’s original foot soldier and had become a tour legend in that role. Rosburg had never seen a shot he didn’t think was impossible. “That’s dead, Jim, he has absolutely no chance” had become his trademark. Rosburg had been imitated so often that McCord had looked at a lie one day during a CBS telecast and said, “Oh boy, he’s got a Rosburg here.”

Hearing Rosburg’s name mentioned on CBS, Chirkinian had screamed into McCord’s headset, “Don’t you ever say that again!” Of course everyone watching knew just what McCord was saying.

Now Rosburg was talking about Strange as he lined up his second shot at the 14th. “Curtis just hasn’t been as angry the last few years as he used to be,” Rosburg said. Strange’s seven-iron floated right—way right. “Sonofabitch!” he yelled in frustration as if on cue. “Looks to me like Curtis is back,” Rosburg said.

He was. He bogeyed 14, but then birdied 15. He was three under and leading the tournament when he reached 18. The bad drive and an ill-conceived second shot led to the double bogey and left Strange steaming. But not that steamed. It was still 70, no one was going to do a whole lot better than that, and he knew everyone was going to have a bad hole before the tournament was over. He hit balls in the heat for a long time in the afternoon and then took Sarah to dinner.

To her amazement, when they returned home, Curtis went right to sleep. No tossing and turning, no mental review of the round, even the double bogey. Just exhaustion and sleep. It hadn’t happened more than a handful of times in eighteen years of marriage.

It rained Thursday night, which mercifully slowed the greens a little bit on Friday. Tom Watson had predicted before the tournament that there would be more rounds in the 90s than in the 60s. He had exaggerated. But there had been only five rounds in the 60s on Thursday and thirteen in the 80s. God only knew what Jeff Wagner might have shot.

The rain did nothing to cool things off and the haze and heat were still hanging over the course when Arnold Palmer hit his tee shot at 10 A.M. to begin his 115th and final round at the U.S. Open.

Palmer had shot a respectable 77 on Thursday, dousing any fears that he would come out and not be able to play the golf course at all. He had finished in typically melodramatic fashion at 18, putting his second shot into a bunker 80 yards in front of the green, then hitting a wonderful shot to about ten feet. It was almost dusk, but the grandstands around 18 were still packed, everyone having waited for Arnie to arrive.

After Rocco Mediate missed his birdie putt, he walked up to mark, since he still had four tricky feet left. Palmer looked at him and said softly, “Your call, Rocco.” Mediate looked at him. Palmer repeated himself. “Your call.” Then he winked. Mediate understood. Palmer had every intention of making his putt and when he did, he knew the place was going to go nuts. Mediate wasn’t ready to deal with his putt yet. He told Palmer to go ahead.

Palmer shrugged, looked his putt over, and blasted it into the back of the cup. Pandemonium. Palmer took his hat off and bowed to his disciples. Mediate had a grin as wide as the Pennsylvania Turnpike (wider than some places) on his face. “He just knew he was going to make it,” he said later.

Mediate managed to coax his putt in and Palmer put an arm around him and said, “It’s bedtime.”

Palmer felt good about his round. He had broken 80 and he was still nominally in the hunt for the cut. “If that putt doesn’t go in, it’s back in the trap I’d just hit it out of,” he said, laughing. “Tomorrow, if I can have a reasonably good round, I can make the cut. That was my goal starting out.” He grinned the famous grin. “After that I’ll worry about winning the tournament.”

Palmer, Mediate, and John Mahaffey—who had won the PGA at Oakmont in 1978—began their second round with a large, appreciative gallery trailing them. As the day wore on, the gallery kept growing almost as if the Pied Piper was weaving his magic. Which is exactly what Palmer was doing. He knew this was an ending for him and he wanted to savor every second of it. He walked the fairways, his head on a swivel, nodding, smiling, doffing his hat over and over again. He hit some very good shots and came to the turn only two over par for the day, which put him at eight over for the tournament. The cut was looking like it would be six over. What if Arnie could somehow sneak a couple of birdies in on the back nine…

Stranger things have happened. But the heat just wasn’t going to allow it. By the time Palmer’s group reached the 10th tee at 12:35, the temperature was again close to 100. Palmer insisted the heat “wasn’t that bad,” but you could see it getting to him, slowly but surely, as he struggled through the last nine holes.

On the 10th green, a woman sitting by the green waved Palmer over. “Arnie, I love you,” she said. Palmer winked.

“Would you like to trade hats with me?” she asked. “Yours is getting soaked.”

Palmer, who wears hearing aids away from the golf course, walked closer to her and asked her to repeat the question. When she did, he peered down and looked at the hat. It had a Great White Shark logo on it. Palmer shook his head when he saw that. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ll keep this one.”

He was starting to fade now. A bogey at 10 and a bogey at 12 ended all talk about the cut. But at 13, he nailed a gorgeous six-iron right at the flag. It stopped six feet above the hole as the army, evoking memories of the past, roared. Walking off the tee, Rocco Mediate looked at John Mahaffey and said, “How about that shot?”

Mahaffey laughed. “He’s just unbelievable, isn’t he? Always has been.”

Mediate shook his head again. “Amazing. Just being here for this is an honor.”

Mediate was in the midst of an amazing round himself. He had been out all year with back problems. He returned at Westchester and surprised himself by making the cut. He had started the Open with a 74 on Thursday but was four under par on his second round. Unfortunately, he was starting to feel pain in his back again. By the end of the round he could barely bend over to tee up his ball. He would make the cut, struggle through the third round, withdraw, and be out for six more months. But as he and Mahaffey walked onto the 13th green, they were two more members of Arnie’s Army. The only difference was that they got to be inside the ropes.

In the movies, Palmer would have made the birdie putt. In real life, he three-putted, the first putt slipping four feet past, making the second one too tough. Palmer walked onto the 14th tee, shook his head, and said, “That’s just terrible.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to get better. Palmer had one more birdie chance at 14, just missing a 15-footer. After that, as the heat pounded away, he couldn’t putt. He three-putted 16 for bogey and 17 for double bogey. He was frustrated because he wasn’t playing better, but the army didn’t care. They just wanted to be part of this, to cheer his every step.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, his face flushed from four and a half hours in the sun, he stepped onto the 18th tee, took a deep breath and a long sip of Gatorade. He made a crack about the color of the Gatorade, pulled out his driver, and hit it right down the middle.

The march began. People were screaming and waving and trying to get any view they could. This was a moment they wanted to hold onto. Palmer—as always—understood. He walked slowly, still making eye contact everywhere he could. The only moment of quiet came when he settled over his second shot. Once again, he hit the ball solidly and it bounced onto the front of the green. He had hit the last green of the last round in regulation.

Now came the last walk. Mediate and Mahaffey peeled off so that Palmer had the fairway to himself. The exhaustion and the emotion were all beginning to kick in and as the cheers got louder and louder and somehow even louder, he could feel himself choking up, tears starting to well in his eyes. On the 10th tee, a few yards left of the 18th green, the players and caddies and marshals who were there stopped what they were doing, turned around, and joined in the applause.

Palmer was so drained by the day and the moment that he could barely draw his putter back. He three-putted for bogey and 81, but it didn’t matter. After he holed out, Mediate put an arm around him and said softly, “All this is because of you.”

Palmer knew. He knew this was thank you for more than forty years of memories and for all the winks and smiles and waves. And it all caved in on him. When Mark Rolfing tried to talk to him for television, Palmer choked up halfway through the interview and couldn’t finish.

He told the USGA people that the heat had gotten to him, that if they gave him a few minutes he would come into the media tent and talk for as long as anybody wanted him to talk. He did come in and he did start to talk. But he was still overwhelmed. He paused, trying to regain his composure. The silence in the huge interview room was deafening.

“You know I’ve just been so lucky,” he said, the words coming very slowly. “I have had such a great life. I played okay. I won some tournaments, a few majors. To have people treat me the way they have has just been wonderful…”

He stopped, picked up a towel, and wiped his eyes. He took another deep breath and opened his mouth again. No words came out. He stopped and buried his head in the towel, sobbing. The only sound in the room was the whir of the air-conditioner. Palmer picked his head up. “I think, that’s about all I have to say,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

He stood up to walk to the door. The laws of journalism say that applause is inappropriate at the end of a press conference—or at any time, in fact. But there are occasions when the laws of humanity outweigh the laws of journalism. Without any hesitation, everyone in the room jumped to their feet and applauded. The ovation was warm and heartfelt from a group that had benefitted from Palmer’s presence for more than forty years. He was the star who always returned phone calls, always had that extra minute for that one last question, always came up with the quote you really needed.

Palmer stopped at the tent exit and smiled to acknowledge the applause. Then he walked back outside into the heat. Even with an escort, it took him fifteen minutes to make his way through the phalanx of people to the locker room. Naturally, he insisted on signing every autograph.

When he finally got upstairs and collapsed in front of locker number 108, there were still a few reporters left. “You know, it’s incredible,” he said. “In any other sport, I would have been booed for the way I played today. Instead, I get that kind of ovation. I really am lucky to have been a golfer.”

The flip side of that doesn’t even need saying.

The two stories that everyone was talking about on that second day had nothing to do with the tournament leader board. Palmer was the story of the morning and early afternoon, O.J. Simpson the story from that point on.

There was bitter irony in the fact that almost at the very moment that Palmer was walking up 18, the Los Angeles Police Department was declaring Simpson a fugitive from justice. Palmer and Simpson had been partners on Hertz commercials for years, had played golf together, and had been friends. The night before, someone had asked Palmer if he had talked to Simpson since the murders and Palmer shook his head. “I haven’t, but I just can’t believe he’d have any part in something like this.”

Of course no one could believe it, which was why the entire country sat transfixed that night as Simpson and his friend A1 Cowlings staged their slow-motion chase through Los Angeles County.

On Saturday morning, there just weren’t all that many people discussing the fact that Colin Montgomerie had shot 65 on Friday to lead the U.S. Open by two shots over four players.

One of those four was John Cook, who had also shot 65 on Friday, finally putting together the great round that he had been searching for all year. Mr. Happy was actually feeling happy again. He had finished third at the Memorial Tournament, opening with a 67 in which he finally made several long putts. “I’d almost forgotten how good that feels,” he said that afternoon.

He played the first forty-five holes of the Memorial without a bogey and was the leader midway through the third round. But, like the rest of the field, he ended up getting blown away by Tom Lehman, who shot four straight 67s to shatter all the tournament records and win by five shots. It was Lehman’s first victory on tour and built on his performance at the Masters.

No one was surprised to see Lehman win after his two near-misses at the Masters. Robert Wrenn, who had been on tour for ten years, shook his head when he thought about Lehman’s first two Masters and said, “A third and a second out of the box at that place. They ought to at least give him a green shirt.” Lehman had plenty of green—dollars—after the Memorial.

Cook ended up losing second to Greg Norman down the stretch but wasn’t the least bit disappointed. He came back the next week with a ninth at Colonial and arrived at the Open feeling confident. He even took a slightly different approach, flying in late Tuesday because he wanted to see twelve-year-old Kristin’s piano recital and eight-year-old Jason’s All-Star Little League baseball game.

“It meant a lot to them to have me there, especially since I miss so much with the travel,” he said. “And I figured there just wasn’t that much for me to know playing extra practice rounds. The rough is high, the greens are fast, there’s no room for error. I knew that before I got here.”

Cook started slowly Thursday and had to work hard to get to the clubhouse in 73. But Friday, he came flying out of the box, birdieing three of the first six holes. On number one, he hit a six-iron to the green and watched the ball hit and stop. The rain had slowed the golf course down. Instead of playing bump-and-run links golf, the players could fire at the pins a little more.

He did just that all morning and the result was that he shared the low round of the day with Montgomerie and David Edwards. Nicklaus, after a fast start, shot 70. That put him three shots back of Montgomerie. Curtis Strange and Ernie Els were one shot back of Nicklaus, at 140, and Tom Watson was at 141.

The cut came at 147—five over—as it turned out. That meant that Price was gone at 148, Nick Faldo was gone at 148, and Lee Janzen was gone at 148.

The latter two were shockers for different reasons. Faldo simply didn’t miss cuts in majors. The last time had been the PGA in 1986, meaning that he had made twenty-eight straight cuts. The whole week was a struggle for him. He hated the heat and he wasn’t wild about the golf course. But the problem, he knew, was with his game. He couldn’t make the ball do what he wanted it to do. “If you know you can’t afford to hit the ball in the rough and you hit it there anyway, something’s very clearly wrong,” he said. All the hours working with Leadbetter had not produced a click. And his putting was still horrendous.

In fact, Faldo would have made the cut if he had putted better. Down the stretch on Friday, he missed a 10-foot birdie putt on 15, a 4-foot par putt on 16, and an 8-foot birdie putt on 17. Not certain if the cut would be five or six, he hit an iron off the 18th tee and his second shot came up just short of the green. He missed chipping in by inches, then walked into the scorer’s trailer.

“Is the cut five or six?” he asked.

“Looks like five” was the answer. Jeff Sluman, who had played with Faldo, saw all the color drain out of his face. “I think he really thought it was going to be six,” Sluman said. “He was shocked.”

No more shocked than Janzen, who showed up at the golf course on Thursday and didn’t feel an ounce of adrenaline. Here he was beginning defense of his title, coming off a victory, and, like Morales in A Chorus Line, he felt nothing. He was exhausted. He sleepwalked to a 77, fought back the next day to reach five over for the tournament, then made a late bogey to miss the cut by one. He had still made the cut in only one Open. No one had an Open record like Janzen: cut–cut–win–cut.

What happened to Janzen is not uncommon. Golf is so imprecise that you can’t plan a schedule that guarantees you will peak at exactly the right moment. Just as Greg Norman wished he could have bottled his game at the Players so he could take it to the Masters two weeks later, Janzen would have liked to have put some of his Westchester birdies on hold for Oakmont. He couldn’t, because the game won’t let you decide when you will hear the muse. It comes and goes, often for reasons you can’t understand or explain.

Everyone was a bit bleary-eyed on Saturday morning, perhaps from watching the white Bronco on TV all night, perhaps from the heat. As is always the case on an Open course, players were mixing birdies with bogeys and the occasional double bogey, no one able to sustain any real momentum.

Except for Ernie Els. Paired with Strange, the young South African spent the first hour of the third round acting as if he intended to shoot 59. He birdied one and two, then rolled in a 20-foot putt for an eagle at four. A few seconds later, he knocked his second shot to three feet at number five and tapped that in for a birdie. He was five under after five holes, seven under for the tournament, and in the lead. Strange, who was going along just fine at one under for the day and three under for the tournament, was shell-shocked. “I knew he was good,” he said later. “I just didn’t know how good.”

Els came back to earth after that, but now he was the leader and everyone had to chase him. Watson, only one under starting the day, raced out in 32 to get to five under. If it was possible, the heat was worse than it had been all week. Walking down the 10th fairway, Watson was stopped by a USGA official. There had been a mix-up in the scorecards at the turn and Watson needed to recheck his card. He paused, checked, and signed. Then he rolled a 50-foot putt to within a foot and tapped in for par.

Grant Spaeth of the USGA breathed a sigh of relief. “I figured he’d three-putt and it would be our fault,” he said to Dick Stroud, another USGA official.

Watson’s putter had been behaving well. But on the back nine, it began to cough. A missed four-footer for birdie at 12, then a six-footer for par that slid low at 15, and a five-footer (set up by a poor chip) that cost him another bogey at 16. That dropped him back to three under, four behind Els. Watson looked frustrated and tired. But on 18, after a huge drive, he planted a wedge four feet from the flag. This time the putt went in—barely—and he had a 68 that put him at four under. Els would finish with a 65 and have the lead at seven-under 206, followed by Nobilo and Irwin at 208, and Montgomerie (after a 73) at 209 along with Watson and Loren Roberts (who had come out of the pack with an early 64). Strange was one shot farther back after his third straight 70. John Cook, after getting to five under on the front nine, had struggled on the back. He was at 211 with several other players.

It was a classic Open leader board. The leader was a future star, who was perhaps about to announce his arrival as a current star. There were a couple of foreigners no one knew much about (Nobilo and Montgomerie), a gaggle of past Open champions in their forties (Watson, Irwin, and Strange, who was still seven months from forty), and a longtime journeyman making a bid for late stardom (Roberts).

The heat and the pressure would all come into play on Sunday. Strange was still on the range at 7 o’clock Saturday night, still hitting balls, wanting to be certain that he left no stone unturned at this stage. Sarah sat in the bleachers and waited patiently for him to finish his work, content knowing that he was content. He was four shots back of Els but felt he had a real chance to win. He had analyzed the leader board carefully. After playing with Els, he knew the kid was capable of getting on a roll and leaving everyone in his dust.

But this was the last round of the Open, and that didn’t happen very often. Neither Nobilo nor Montgomerie had been through the crucible on the last day of a major either. Watson could go either way. He was a streak player. Irwin made him nervous. He had been a hot player for several months, he had three Open titles, and he loved tough golf courses like this one. Roberts was also inexperienced.

As for Strange, well, he had been solid for three days. But there was one difference, he thought, between what he had done and what the others had done. “They’ve all had a hot streak,” he said. “I haven’t had one yet. If I can string a few birdies together, I can be right there.”

He shook his head. “I wondered if I could get in this position again,” he said. “It feels good just to have a chance.”

He hit one final drive into the gloaming and looked up at Sarah. “This is the way it used to be,” he said. “It’s nice.” Then he laughed. “And the best news of all is I won’t have to stay up all night watching that white Bronco drive around.”

It was after 8 o’clock by the time Strange left the putting green. For a third straight night, he slept soundly.

It is often said that the toughest eighteen holes in golf are the last eighteen at a U.S. Open. The combination of the heat, the rough, the greens, and the pressure leaves everyone drained even before the last round begins. Once it starts, it only gets worse.

Watson admitted on Saturday night that he was exhausted. “Linda and I went to the movies last night and I was so tired I could barely get out of my seat,” he said, smiling. “I was dragging the last few holes today. These old bones are weary.” Then, more seriously, he added: “I’m forty-four, I don’t know how many chances I have left.”

No one ever knows how many chances he is going to have to win a major. Certainly it was reasonable to assume that Els would have dozens, but once upon a time when Jerry Pate won the Open at twenty-two and Hal Sutton won the PGA at twenty-three they were considered locks to win several. Pate had spent most of the next ten years being injured, Sutton had spent most of his next ten years getting married. He had earned the nickname “Halimony,” and had just gone down the aisle for the fourth time early in the year. He had been married a lot more often than he had contended in majors subsequent to his PGA victory.

Sutton’s reputation as a ladies’ man was legendary. One afternoon during the summer of ’94, Sonya Toms, wife of young pro David Toms, walked into the bag storage room at a tournament looking to get something out of her husband’s bag. Like Sutton, Sonya Toms is from Louisiana and she is, to put it mildly, a stunning woman.

When she walked into the bag room, she ran into one of the tour’s veteran caddies, a man known to everyone simply as Sampson. When Sampson spotted Sonya Toms, he introduced himself and said, “Aren’t you married to David Toms?”

“Yes I am,” she said.

“You’re from Louisiana, aren’t you?”

“Why, yes, I am.”

Sampson shook his head in amazement. “How in the world,” he asked, “did old Hal Sutton miss you?”

Given the pressure, it wasn’t all that surprising that Els would hit a wild hook off the first tee. What was a bit shocking was when USGA rules official Trey Holland (a urologist from Zionsville, Indiana, in real life) completely botched the subsequent ruling, granting Els relief because there was an ABC camera crane between his ball and the green. Holland didn’t realize the crane could be moved, so he let Els move his ball. On ABC, Frank Hannigan expressed amazement that Holland could so clearly blow his first call of the day.

On Sunday at the Open, everyone feels pressure. A chagrined Holland later admitted to Rosburg that he should have had the crane, rather than Els’s ball, moved.

Even with Holland’s help, Els still made bogey on number one. Up ahead, Strange was doing what he had hoped he would do: getting on a little hot streak. He had gotten a scare at the first green when his 15-foot birdie putt rolled four feet past the hole.

Disturbed by the low scores on Friday and Saturday—Roberts’s 64 and a bevy of 65s and 66s—the USGA had decided to roll the greens an extra time on Saturday night.

The players who had gone out early on Sunday had come back to the clubhouse with warnings about the speed of the greens. Paul Goydos, who made the cut and ended his first major in a tie for forty-fourth place, told several people that the golf course was completely different than it had been the last two days.

“The greens are right on the verge of being completely gone,” he said. “They’re so hot and dry they’re starting to look white.”

A number of the contenders, most notably Tom Watson, were extremely upset about the change. “If Mother Nature changes the golf course in mid-tournament, fine, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Watson said later. “But if it’s a man-made change, I don’t think that’s right.”

Watson was disturbed enough that when he walked into the scorer’s trailer after finishing his round, he asked Judy Bell, a USGA vice president, what had been done to the greens. When Bell didn’t answer him, Watson started to repeat the question. Then he looked up and saw the ABC camera and microphone that were positioned in the trailer. He swallowed his tongue and walked out, angry and tired.

Hale Irwin, who knew all about tough U.S. Open courses after having won the tournament three times, didn’t have as visceral a reaction as Watson, but he did write a letter to Reg Murphy, the president of the USGA, when the tournament was over. After thanking Murphy for all the hard work the USGA put into the event, Irwin said, “Did you really want to make the golf course that hard?”

“I just thought it took something away from the golf,” Irwin said later.

Strange didn’t really care if the greens were double-rolled or triple-rolled. As far as he was concerned, the harder the conditions were, the better it was for him. He had been through the Toughest Eighteen enough times that he figured a white-hot golf course was going to hurt others more than it hurt him.

But as he looked at the four-foot par putt at number one, he wasn’t feeling quite so confident. The putt was straight downhill, and he could see that there wasn’t a single blade of grass on the green that would slow the ball if it didn’t hit the cup. “The odds were good if I missed, I was going to miss the one coming back,” he said. “Because it might easily have gone ten feet past. I knew I had to make it because if I started the day with a damn four-putt, things probably weren’t going to go my way after that.”

The putt clipped the side of the hole and dropped in. Strange breathed a sigh of relief. Given that reprieve, he proceeded to birdie three of the next four holes. When his three-footer dropped at number five, he was six under par for the tournament and, since Els was one over for the day, he was tied for the lead. Strange looked at the leader board and felt a chill go through him. There was lots of golf to be played, but he had put together the hot streak he needed. The game was on.

It stayed on throughout the stifling afternoon. Els made a nervy eight-foot putt at number four to take the lead back at seven under. Montgomerie, who had seemed the most likely candidate to fade in the heat, given his florid complexion and fairly ample girth, birdied the fourth and then rolled in a 30-footer at the sixth. That got him to six under just as Strange was missing the green at the par-three eighth and making a bogey. Now it was Els at seven, Montgomerie at six, and Strange at five.

Watson was fading, perhaps because of exhaustion, or perhaps because of another balky putting Sunday. He missed the green at number one and made bogey, came back with a 35-footer at number four, but then missed another green at six and bogeyed to drop to three under. He never made a move after that.

With the crowds screaming for Watson to make a move, his playing partner, Loren Roberts, was going almost unnoticed. How unnoticed? During the first five holes, ABC managed to show every one of Watson’s swings. Roberts first appeared on camera on the sixth tee. He was plugging along at even par for the day when he missed the green at eight and caught the bunker. A bogey seemed likely and that would be the end for Mr. Roberts. Except for one thing: Roberts holed the bunker shot for a birdie. Watson saw his eyes light up. “On the last day of a major, sometimes one shot will get you going,” he said. “That was the one shot for Loren.”

A birdie at the par-five ninth got Roberts to six under. Now everyone was on the seesaw. Els bogeyed and Montgomerie birdied. Montgomerie led by one. They swapped places again. Roberts bogeyed 10, but birdied 11. Els was seven, Montgomerie and Roberts six.

Strange knew he was running out of holes. He had made a disappointing par at the ninth. Standing on the 10th tee, he and caddy Craig Cimarillo had a long conversation about what club to hit. The 10th is one of the toughest driving holes on the course. It has a narrow landing area, and if you end up in the rough, there is no chance to get to the green. Strange had bogeyed the hole Friday and Saturday. Cimarillo was convinced he needed to chance a three-wood to get the ball far enough down the fairway. Strange didn’t want any part of the rough.

He won the argument—naturally—and hit a solid two-iron down the middle. But Cimarillo’s concern about being too far back was justified. Strange’s five-iron second shot came up short and he had to work hard to make a bogey. Now he was three back with just eight to play.

Strange didn’t panic. He swished a 15-foot birdie putt at 11 and pumped his putter for emphasis. Two back. Lots of time left. He parred 12. At the par-three 13th, with 166 yards to the front, he chose a six-iron. As soon as the ball came off the club, Strange knew he had made a horrible mistake. The ball went right of the green and right of the bunker to an almost impossible spot.

“Oh God no, not now,” Strange said.

It was a shot he never would have hit at his peak in the ’80s and he knew it. “I didn’t believe in my swing enough in that situation,” he said. “Sometimes, when you haven’t been in the hunt for a while, you don’t trust your swing at key moments the way you need to. It was the kind of shot I’ve hit at times the last few years, the kind where I just want to go hide my head somewhere because I’m so embarrassed. It was just a pure flame-out right, a terrible shot.”

Again, he had to work for bogey. Again, the deficit was three. Again, he came back with a birdie on the next hole. He checked the leader board as he waited for Steve Lowery to putt out. Roberts was now at seven, Els and Montgomerie at six. Strange and Cimarillo looked at one another. They both had the same thought: five was going to be the number. If Strange could play the last four holes even par, he would do no worse than a playoff. Why they both thought that at that moment, neither could explain, but they did. They knew that 15, 16, and 18 were tough holes, easy holes to bogey under pressure.

As they walked onto the 15th tee, Cimarillo said softly, “Next two holes is the deal.”

Strange didn’t need to be told that. They had to wait on the tee for the group in front of them, just as they had waited on 13. And, just as on 13, Strange made a swing he regretted, pushing his driver into the deep rough. He had no choice but to lay up and his wedge came up 20 feet short. The par putt was inches short. Now pars wouldn’t be good enough.

He was talking to himself on the 16th tee, imploring himself to suck it up for the last three holes. He couldn’t play safe now and hit the ball at the middle of the green. His three-iron started at the flag, but sailed left into the bunker. Another bogey. Cimarillo had been right. Those two holes had been the deal. He parred 17, then made a brilliant birdie at 18. A satisfying finish, though not the one he had dreamed about. He shook his first and waved his hat to the crowd. He had played well, shooting four straight rounds of 70. That made him the first man to shoot four straight sub-par rounds in an Open at Oakmont.

He knew he wouldn’t win, though. Els was six under through 16, Roberts was six under through 17. A few minutes after Strange walked off the green, Montgomerie tapped in his final putt for a 70 that put him at 279—one shot better than Strange. That made it official. Strange couldn’t win. At the USGA’s request, he went to the interview room to talk about what had gone right and what had gone wrong.

He had lost the Open, for all intents and purposes, with two swings: the six-iron at 13 and the driver at 15. The bogey at 16 was the product of having to try and make birdie. He hadn’t been under that kind of pressure in so long that his swing wasn’t quite as solid as it needed to be.

While Strange talked, the melodrama continued on the 18th. Roberts had now become the crowd’s darling because he was the last American hope. Montgomerie was in at 279. Strange was at 280, John Cook at 282. Greg Norman, who had lurked on the fringes of contention all week but never really made a move, was at 283 along with young Clark Dennis. Watson would join them there shortly.

Roberts needed a par at 18 to finish at 278—six under. Els was two holes back, also at six under. As Roberts walked onto the 18th green, having hit his second shot just over the putting surface, the outdated “USA” chant went up in the grandstands. Foreign players were dominating the Masters and the British Open and had won two of the last four PGAs. The Open was the last bastion of American dominance. Only one foreigner—David Graham in 1981—had won the Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970. That string was in serious jeopardy. Roberts was the last hope.

His chip from behind the green rolled four feet past the cup. If he made the putt, Els would have to birdie 17 or 18 to win, or par them both to tie. Montgomerie would be eliminated. Roberts is known on tour as the Reverend One Putt, because of his silky smooth putting stroke. Knowing what was at stake, he took plenty of time looking the putt over. Maybe too much time. The stroke he put on the putt was anything but silky. After staying calm all day, he couldn’t get the putter through the ball one last time. The putt was a weak push, short and right. Loud groans enveloped the green as Roberts tapped in.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Roberts said later. “I had trouble getting the putter back. I knew what the putt meant.”

Now the tournament belonged to Els. He had gotten another lucky break at 17, when his drive had gone way left behind the grandstand. This time, Dr. Holland knew what he was doing when he awarded him a favorable drop because he had no choice—the ball had landed in a clearly marked-off drop area. Els got such a favorable drop that he almost made birdie. Even so, the par left him with a one-shot lead as he walked to the 18th tee. Roberts’s 18th-hole bogey was on the board to the right of the tee, so Els could see that a par would win the tournament.

Only he wasn’t looking.

Golfers often say that they play against the golf course, not one another. There is certainly truth to that. But not on the last day of a tournament—especially a major—not on the last nine holes and certainly not on the 18th tee of the U.S. Open. The notion of just playing your game is fine on Thursday, Friday, maybe even Saturday. But not on Sunday. And not on Sunday at 6 P.M.

Els didn’t look. So he foolishly took his driver out, thinking he needed a birdie to win, and hit a wild hook left that was reminiscent of his drive at number one. With no camera cranes around, Els couldn’t turn to Dr. Holland for help. He pitched onto the fairway and caught his first bad break of the day—the ball landed smack in the middle of a divot. That made it almost impossible to chip close and he didn’t, leaving himself 20 feet for par. The putt stayed low all the way. No chance. Now Els had to make a four-footer for bogey just to tie Montgomerie and Roberts.

Els is young and he had made an immature mistake on the tee. But he also has the guts of a champion. Even unnerved, he rolled in a putt almost identical to the one Roberts had missed. He was at 279 with Roberts and Montgomerie. Strange and Cimarillo had been right back on the 14th green. The number was five.

It would be the first three-way U.S. Open playoff since Julius Boros had beaten Jacky Cupit and Arnold Palmer in 1963. Strange watched the wild finish as he was cleaning out his locker. Sarah was waiting outside. She had called home shortly after he finished to tell her parents that she was changing her plans. Originally, she had planned to fly home that night while Curtis went on to an outing on Long Island the next day. “I just can’t leave him,” she told her parents. They understood.

He had missed the playoff by one shot. Intellectually, he knew that it was silly to what-if. After all, what if he hadn’t made his 12-foot par putt at 17 or the birdie at 18? Then he would have been three shots out of the playoff. Anytime you hit 280 shots in a golf tournament, there are going to be a few you want back. What if Els had looked at the scoreboard at 18? He might easily have finished at six.

But those were all ifs and buts. The bottom line was that Strange had played his heart out and needed exactly one shot back. He didn’t have it. He stood up to go meet Sarah. “I really wish,” he said softly, “that someone had finished at six or seven. Right now, I’m okay. But I know tonight, it’s really going to hurt.”

Sarah already knew that. Which is why she was staying.

The eighteen-hole playoff may be the biggest anachronism in sports today. It is a complete anticlimax and almost always produces golf that ranges from mediocre to awful. The players are drained and exhausted. They have built to an emotional peak on Sunday, then they have to come back Monday and start from the first hole again.

Every other major has abandoned the eighteen-hole playoff. The Masters and the PGA go to sudden death, the British Open has a four-hole format that may be the best tiebreaker of all. By playing four holes you eliminate the notion that one lucky shot—or one poor one—will decide the title but you still give everyone the climax they want on Sunday evening.

The USGA insists on eighteen holes, claiming it is the truest test. What is seventy-two holes? An untrue test? And so, everyone has to come back on Monday. Except a lot of fans don’t—can’t—and many of the volunteers who give up a week in their lives to work at the tournament also have to return to work.

Oakmont ’94 was a classic eighteen-hole playoff—only worse. The winner—Els—triple-bogeyed the second hole. Montgomerie, exhausted by the heat, was never a factor, shooting an embarrassing 78. Roberts led much of the day, but couldn’t hang on down the stretch.

Roberts did make a couple of gutsy putts, first at the 18th to tie Els at 74 and extend the playoff into sudden death (how come sudden death is okay after ninety holes but not seventy-two?) and then on the first sudden-death hole, the 10th. America missed that putt since ABC cut away for an update on O. J. Somehow that was appropriate, since the playoff was the same kind of endless water torture that the white Bronco chase had been.

Roberts finally put everyone out of their overheated misery by making a bogey on the 11th hole and Els was the youngest U.S. Open champion since Jerry Pate in 1976. It was a thudlike ending after four days of tension and suspense. The moral of the story is simple: golf tournaments are meant to be played in four days. Period.