While Jack Nicklaus remained the man to beat, a few great champions emerged as the heirs to the Bear. They were the men who took on the best player in the game and won – like Lee Trevino, who grew up knowing what it was like playing for a sum of money greater than that which he could afford to pay should he lose. He rarely lost. And he often beat Nicklaus, as did Tom Watson. Thought of as a choker after his early efforts in majors fell short, Watson went on to win eight majors titles, including a famous victory against Nicklaus in the Duel in the Sun at Turnberry in 1977.
Other pretenders to Nicklaus’ crown emerged as the world’s leading golfers strove to achieve dominance. Johnny Miller was briefly the best player on the planet, but did not last at the top, as Raymond Floyd did, after settling down as a family man. For one glorious year, Tony Jacklin vanquished all-comers to win both the Open and then the US Open. Later he would be the guiding force behind Europe’s rise to Ryder Cup triumph.
While the men’s game sought its new Nicklaus, the women’s game found its Palmer in Nancy Lopez, who became the darling of the fans, her dazzling smile and attractive personality bringing much-needed attention to the LPGA.
Tony Jacklin once made a simple request of Lee Trevino. ‘Lee, is it okay if we don’t talk today?’ Jacklin said. ‘Sure, Tony,’ came the reply. ‘You don’t have to talk, just listen.’ Chatter was all part of the act for Trevino. It was his way of dealing with the nerves but his concentration over the ball was total. Few could flick the switch like that. Few played golf like Trevino. He won six majors and survived being hit by lightning. He used to say: ‘In case of lightning, walk down the middle of the fairway and hold your one-iron over your head. Even God can’t hit a one-iron.’ Later, he said: ‘When God wants to play through, you let Him.’
It was Trevino who said: ‘Pressure? Pressure is playing for $5 when you only have $2 in your pocket.’ He grew up in poverty in Dallas and never knew his father. After serving in the US Marines, he became an assistant pro in El Paso. He made money playing against anyone who would take him on. Ray Floyd, already a star by then, once arrived and was surprised to be playing the locker-room attendant who collected his clubs from his car. It was a three-day match and Floyd only just won, Trevino having had the better of the first day rounds. Floyd told his fellow tour players: ‘Boys, there’s a little Mexican kid out in El Paso. When he comes out here, you’ll have to make way for him.’
Few may have believed him. Trevino’s flat, lunging swing did not inspire confidence, according to Peter Dobereiner. ‘He gave the impression of a man who was not so much interested in practising his golf as working off some deep grudge against the balls. He was punishing them. Or, more accurately, he was identifying the balls with people and getting his own back.’ Somehow he sliced the ball with a hooker’s grip but the swing repeated, even under pressure.
Trevino was fifth at the US Open in 1967 and became the Rookie of the Year but a year later his wife had to stake his entrance fee. Trevino was the first player to score four rounds under 70 in a major and he beat Jack Nicklaus into second place. He did that four times in majors, greatness making way for greatness. At Merion in 1971 he beat Nicklaus in a playoff and he ended up with the US, Canadian and British Open titles within weeks.
At Muirfield a year later, Nicklaus was trying to become the first player to hold all four major titles at once. He finished strongly to set the target but Trevino and Jacklin were a shot ahead playing the par-five 17th. Trevino was in trouble, still off the green in four, while Jacklin had a 15-footer for a birdie. Super Mex seemed almost disinterested when he walked up to his ball but chipped in and went berserk. Jacklin three-putted. Trevino hit two great shots at the last and was champion again. Jacklin never was.
Tony Jacklin said about the 1972 Open: ‘The heart was ripped out of me. I stepped off the 18th green a shattered man, broken by what had happened. I was honestly never the same again.’ Jacklin’s success had come so swiftly that perhaps there was no foundation for dealing with such a setback. ‘Was he just a firework?’ asked Henry Cotton. ‘Well, there’s no doubt for a brief period Jacklin was a sensational golfer.’
Jacklin was the most exciting thing to happen to British golf for decades. The son of a Scunthorpe steelworker, his game developed under a hard taskmaster, the Australian Bill Shankland at Potters Bar. He was a product of his time. Ben Wright recalled him turning up for an interview in ‘gold lamé pants, gold cashmere sweater over a white polo neck and gold shoes. I thought, well, that’s great, this kid really believes in himself.’ In 1968 Jacklin was the first Briton to win on the modern PGA Tour. A year later at Lytham he ended another of those Open droughts for home champions, dating back to Max Faulkner in 1951. A slower rhythm to his swing was the key and he drove superbly, especially at the last – ‘What a corker!’ gasped Henry Longhurst on television. ‘So smoothly was Jacklin swinging, so true was his striking and so confident the stride of his jaunty figure that it seemed impossible for him to fail,’ wrote Pat Ward-Thomas.
In 1970 Jacklin became the first Briton, excluding those naturalised Americans, to win the US Open for 50 years, and Harry Vardon is the only other British golfer to have held the US and British titles simultaneously. At Hazeltine, an immature Minnesotan course, Jacklin survived a week of gales to win by seven strokes. On the last morning Tom Weiskopf left a one-word message in Jacklin’s locker: ‘tempo’. At the age of 25 Jacklin was on top of the world. After 1972, there were wins, including a second British PGA title in 1982, but he rarely again challenged at the highest level and he retired relatively early.
But he will ever be associated with the Ryder Cup. As a player, he was involved in the famous match in 1969 when Jack Nicklaus conceded him a short putt for a half on the last green that meant the match was tied (and America retained). Nicklaus said to Jacklin: ‘I didn’t think you were going to miss but I wasn’t going to give you the chance.’ Many years later the pair built a golf course they named ‘The Concession’. Jacklin became an inspirational European captain in 1983, demanding cashmere and Concorde for his players and getting the best out of Seve Ballesteros and Europe’s other emerging stars, with historic victories at the Belfry in 1985 and Muirfield Village, Nicklaus’s own course, in 1987. ‘Jacklin had three great gifts,’ wrote David Davies, ‘a magnificent golf game when wholly interested in the project at hand, a superb talent for captaincy and an unerring instinct for getting up people’s noses. He is beyond doubt the best captain the Ryder Cup has seen.’
When Ray Floyd brought out ‘The Stare’, then beware. Floyd was from the Hogan school of golf. Jolly, he was not. Even in a practice round, there had to be something on it; dollars were exchanged. In competition, he had an intense focus that helped him hole putts under pressure. ‘When he gets that look in his eyes,’ said Lanny Wadkins, ‘he’s hard to handle.’ His wife, Maria, said: ‘I’ve seen Raymond win without it, but I’ve never seen him lose with it. I know then they are going to have to beat him, he’s not going to falter.’
Meeting Maria and getting married were the pivotal moments in Floyd’s career which saw him win on the PGA Tour from 1963 until 1992, the year he became the first player to win on both the regular and senior circuits in the same season. Floyd started hitting balls aged four at the driving range owned by his father, a former military man. Once he began competing, he quickly became a winner on tour but other delights of the lifestyle appealed more. ‘Winning tournaments meant nothing to me,’ he said. ‘I thought the tour was just one big ball, travelling from Miami to Los Angeles to New York and all those other exciting places.’
He added: ‘I don’t really care what people think about my lifestyle. I’m a bachelor and if it makes me a playboy to be seen with a different girl every now and then so be it. I can’t see me finishing 18 holes and hurrying back to the motel to practise putting on the rug.’
But becoming a family man changed everything, although not until after quitting one tournament mid-round in 1974 and skulking in a hotel room for two days. ‘Maria jumped on me like a tiger,’ Floyd said. ‘It helped put my life in proper focus. From that moment on, I was a more mature, patient and responsible man.’
Floyd had won the 1969 USPGA, but he won three more majors and many more regular events in the second part of his career. In 1976 he won the Masters by eight strokes, equalling Jack Nicklaus’s then record score. He used a five-wood for approaches at the par-fives and was 14 under for those 16 holes. Ten years later, Floyd won the US Open at Shinnecock Hills by two from Wadkins. Even then, there were bombers and shot-makers and ‘Tempo Raymondo’ and Wadkins were in the second camp. Wadkins said at the start of that week: ‘This course ought to reward golf shots and guys like myself and Raymond are among the few people out here who can make our four-irons talk.’
Floyd lost a playoff for the 1990 Masters to Nick Faldo and was second to Fred Couples two years later. It was playing with the competitive Floyd in the 1991 Ryder Cup that helped the laidback Couples become a champion. In 1993 Floyd was picked at the age of 51 for his ‘heart and guts’, said captain Tom Watson.
‘There is no better way to become an overnight, instant, presto matinee idol in golf,’ wrote Dan Jenkins, ‘than to put yourself somewhere back in the Allegheny hills – about 12 coal mines and six roadhouses behind everybody trying to win the 1973 US Open, including a modest cast of Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Julius Boros and Tom Weiskopf – and come cruising along with your blond mane flapping in the breeze, young, handsome, trim and knock them all sideways with a sizzling round of golf that you’ve somehow pulled out of nowhere.’
For a brief period, Johnny Miller was the best player in the world. He had been a prodigy ever since finishing eighth as an amateur in the 1966 US Open, or perhaps since his father started calling him ‘Champ’. But in 1973, Miller produced his record 63 at Oakmont, perhaps the least forgiving course in America. It was a sensation. ‘What the hell is Miller doing?’ Palmer asked his playing partner after looking at the leaderboard. ‘I didn’t even know Miller made the cut,’ said Weiskopf.
Miller won eight times in 1974 and four times in 1975, the year he and Weiskopf pushed Nicklaus all the way at the Masters. Miller hit his irons superbly. At the time, no one hit the ball closer to the hole so consistently. ‘When I get going it’s like I’m in a trance,’ he said. ‘I know what’s going on around me but I can black everything out. It’s like I’m hypnotised. I can see things that are going to happen. I feel like I’m going to birdie every hole. It was sort of golfing nirvana. I’d say my average iron shot for three months in 1975 was within five feet of my line, and I had the means for controlling distance. I could feel the shot so well.’ At Birkdale in 1976, Miller scored a 66 in the final round to beat the 19-year-old Seve Ballesteros. The Spaniard’s career was just getting going, Miller never won another major, and did not win a regular event for four years.
Like Ray Floyd, once he became a family man, his priorities changed. But unlike Floyd, his golf suffered. He worked hard on his ranch and his body got stronger but he lost the feel in his swing. He suffered from the ‘yips’. The ambition was no longer there. ‘When I got to the mountaintop, I kind of looked at the scenery and wondered, “Now what?” When Jack got there, he said, “Where’s the next mountain?”’
Miller took up television commentary in the 1990s and proved popular with viewers, less so with players since he was not afraid to criticise. But in 1994 he entered the AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach and beat Tom Watson and Tom Kite for the title. ‘This isn’t right, this is a fluke,’ he said. ‘I’m not a golfer, I’m a television announcer. I’m a grandfather for crying out loud.’
Hale Irwin was the perfect US Open player, calm and focussed, but even he could not keep his emotions in check at all times. When he holed a big, breaking putt from over 45 feet at the 72nd hole at Medinah in 1990, he did something very un-Irwin-like. He set off running around the green, like a ‘possessed teenager at a disco,’ someone said, slapping hands with the entire front row of the gallery. Irwin was 45 and had never before expressed such emotion on the golf course. He ended up in a playoff with Mike Donald and the next day Irwin won it at the 91st hole to become the oldest winner of America’s national championship. Dan Jenkins wrote: ‘It’s worth noting that Hale became the only guy ever to win US Opens wearing glasses (1974), braces on his teeth (1979), and contact lenses (1990).’
‘The thing that triggered it,’ Irwin said of his celebratory scamper, ‘was the volume of noise. When I looked over and saw the crowd going wild, I got caught up in the excitement and my instinct was to share it with them. It changed how the world looked at me.’
Irwin was known for playing gridiron football in college, playing well on tough courses, winning US Opens and hitting memorable two-irons under pressure. Excitement, he was not known for. He played alongside Seve Ballesteros for the last two rounds and it made quite a contrast. Irwin could not believe someone could be so wild off the tee and still win. ‘I don’t know what image is,’ Irwin said. ‘I suppose it’s some sort of chemistry or style. Some people have it, some don’t. Palmer was interesting because he was so aggressive, free-wheeling, a hitter. So is Ballesteros. He’ll hit it over any lake on the golf course because the public comes to see him do it.’
Irwin won what was called the ‘Massacre at Winged Foot’ in 1974 with a score of seven over par. It was the year Sandy Tatum, chairman of the USGA’s championship committee, said: ‘We’re not trying to embarrass the best players in the world, we’re trying to identify them.’ Of his college football career, Irwin said: ‘I was undersized, under speed, under everything. But I had the determination to get it done. The intensity that I had to play at allowed me to compete with others with better skills.’ When he got out on the golf tour, he said: ‘I relished the harder courses because I just felt I was going to try harder.’
Irwin remains the most successful winner on the Champions Tour and in 1997, despite the disparity in prize money, he won more on his circuit than Tiger Woods did for topping the money list on the regular tour. He won two World Match Plays at Wentworth but is remembered for missing a tap-in putt, literally of two inches with the putter hitting the ground and bouncing over the ball, during the third round of the 1983 Open. He lost by one to Tom Watson the next day.
When it comes to a late, romantic, major win, nothing, not even Jack Nicklaus at the 1986 Masters, would have compared with Tom Watson winning the Open in 2009 at Turnberry. At the age of 59. Feeling a sense of spirituality and living off the memories of 1977, he birdied the 17th as he had 32 years earlier. No one dared believe it would happen until he marched down the 18th fairway like the Watson of old, victory within reach. And that’s when it went wrong. An approach over the green, a bobbled putt up the bank, a dribbled championship putt from eight feet that exposed an old Watson. A crushing sense of deflation and anti-climax hung over the playoff, won admirably by Stewart Cink. ‘It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?’ Watson said. ‘It wasn’t to be. It tears at your gut, as it has always torn at my gut. The dream almost came true. Almost.’ Looking around at his inconsolable listeners, he added: ‘This ain’t a funeral, you know.’
There was a time when the man from Kansas City, via Stanford University, made ‘Watson pars’, scrambling from everywhere, ramming in putts or making the one back if necessary. He might have matched Harry Vardon’s record of six Open titles at St. Andrews in 1984 but for overcooking his second at the 17th and losing to Seve Ballesteros. Ironically, it was only after he had won three times that Watson truly fell in love with links golf, having been educated in the art by his friend Sandy Tatum on trips to the likes of Ballybunion and Dornoch, in all weathers, a simple pencil bag over the shoulder. ‘He has a real reverence for the game, which adds to the distinctive quality to watching him play,’ Tatum said. ‘Verve, heart, intelligence and imagination are characteristics that have added so much to his career.’
In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was the best player around, notably defeating Nicklaus at the 1977 Masters and then again at that summer’s Open at Turnberry. They played together for the last two rounds: Watson 65, 65; Nicklaus 65, 66. It was the ‘Duel in the Sun’ and on the last day Watson holed a huge putt at the 15th to get level, birdied the 17th and hit a sublime seven-iron to two feet at the last. Nicklaus was in a bush off the last tee but smashed it onto the green and holed his own monster putt. Suddenly Watson’s putt was no longer a gimme, but he holed out anyway. They left the green arm-in-arm. ‘I’m tired of giving it my best shot and coming up short,’ Nicklaus told the champion. Hubert Green was third, 11 strokes back.
Then, at the 1982 US Open, Watson chipped in, improbably, from thick rough for a birdie at the 17th and beat Nicklaus again. Nicklaus told him: ‘You little son-of-a-bitch, you’re something else. I’m proud of you.’ Watson had seen a leaderboard on the 17th and thought: ‘It’s just me and Nicklaus, and I always beat Nicklaus.’ Few thought that, fewer did it.
The fairytale ending to Nancy Lopez’s career would have been to win the US Women’s Open in 1997 but instead she finished as runner-up for the fourth time. The first time she had been an 18-year-old amateur in 1975. Now she was 40 and a hero to the players she was competing against, not least the champion, England’s Alison Nicholas, who knew full well her greatest triumph also had her pegged as public enemy number one. ‘I’d love to have won the Open,’ Lopez said. ‘But I’ve had enough good things in life that I won’t be shattered because I don’t.’
Lopez grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, and was a sensation when she turned professional. She won nine times in her rookie season in 1978, including the first of three LPGA Championships. It was a streak of five victories in a row that made her a star to the wider world. The next year she won eight times. ‘They have the wrong person playing Wonder Woman,’ said Judy Rankin. Mickey Wright said: ‘Never in my life have I seen such control from someone so young.’
Her effect on the woman’s game was like of that Arnold Palmer on the men’s game in the 1960s. Lopez’s appeal was far more than simply being a fierce competitor. ‘She is a physically appealing woman, with dark hair, brown eyes and a warm, dazzling smile. She was God’s gift to the LPGA,’ wrote Liz Kahn. Dottie Pepper said: ‘As good as Nancy has been on the course, she has been even better off the course. There is something very genuine about her. Nancy, like Arnold Palmer, related to people. She didn’t just relate to the gallery, she related to her competitors. She beat you but she beat you with a smile on her face.’
Inevitably, she could not keep winning at the same rate. But she determined that however she played, she would keep on smiling and not hide from the attentions of media or fans. ‘It is always hard to put on a public face and sometimes I want to freak out, but it is important to me to keep a good image. My image reflects on me, my husband, my family, my life. Everyone should be good in public.’
Lopez, whose mother died young, also said: ‘Before I was what I am now, I wasn’t anything. I wanted to win for my parents because they sacrificed a lot for me to play golf. They were always there when I needed them and I wanted them to be proud of me. I couldn’t do anything except play golf to repay them.’ She married for the second time to baseball star Ray Knight and they have three daughters. Two of her three majors arrived after becoming a mother. ‘I’ve never felt a career is more important than a family, or life in general. Some professional athletes are so tied up with themselves they forget what got them there. I want to be remembered as a person who appreciated what was done for me.’
‘He’s the Arnold Palmer of Japanese golf,’ said Greg Norman when he introduced Isao Aoki at the 2004 induction ceremony for the World Golf Hall of Fame. ‘To travel from your home shores, where the culture is different, the language is different, is not an easy task.’ Aoki was the first player from his country not just to travel around the world but also to do so successfully. It was watching Palmer on television that spurred him to travel. ‘He was my idol,’ Aoki said. ‘My dream was to see the world.’
No Japanese player has come closer to winning a major championship than Aoki, at the US Open at Baltusrol in 1980. Aoki broke the record for the championship’s four-round total but, alas, so did Jack Nicklaus, who won by two strokes. Although Aoki had won the World Match Play at Wentworth in 1978, and was runner-up the following year, he was not well known in America. For US observers, his novel putting style was a surprise.
Despite being over six feet tall – he was nicknamed ‘Tower’ after the Tokyo Tower – he once used a putter whose shaft was too long for him. So he pushed the clubhead as far away as possible, meaning the toe of the putter lifted into the air and he hit right on the heel. The putter may have been discarded but the style remained a lifelong success. Dan Jenkins noted: ‘Aoki would have looked like the best clown act in town, except the ball kept going into the hole.’ Both players birdied the last two holes, both par-fives, and that Nicklaus had had to work so hard was part of the satisfaction of winning a fourth US Open. ‘I kept telling myself no matter how perfect he is, he will make a mistake in 72 holes in four days,’ Aoki said. ‘But I was wrong.’
Aoki won in Japan for over two decades but his best year was in 1983 when he won the Hawaiian Open, the European Open at Sunningdale and his first Japan Open. He was the first Japanese to win on both the US and European tours. Sometimes, he did not need his famous putting. In the World Match Play in 1979 he holed in one at the second hole, winning a holiday home at Gleneagles, and he won the ’83 Hawaiian Open by holing a wedge shot from 128 yards for an eagle.
Aoki went on to have success on the Champions Tour in America and is a familiar figure as a commentator for Japanese television. In 2011 he was joined in the World Golf Hall of Fame by Masashi ‘Jumbo’ Ozaki, one of three golfing brothers and Japan’s most prolific winner with over a hundred domestic victories but only one overseas, in New Zealand. While Ryo Ishikawa, a teenage star, may develop into his country’s finest player, it is Aoki who has led the way. ‘He’s influenced all the modern day Japanese players,’ said Larry Nelson. ‘They’ve gotten better and better since he started playing and winning outside his country.’
