Speaker 1: This episode of Frida Egg Stories is brought to you
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Speaker 2: The Frida Egg requires a different technique. What you need
Speaker 2: to do is actually square the face so it'll dig
Speaker 2: down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right
Speaker 2: out onto the green. Here's the thing. Playing out of
Speaker 2: a buried lion of bunker is completely different than playing
Speaker 2: out of a nice, clean lion a greenside bunker.
Speaker 3: You need to be aggressive on any shop, whether it's
Speaker 3: sitting cleanly or it's Frida Egg.
Speaker 1: Well, we've all faithd it, the dreaded Frida Egg.
Speaker 4: Not to be feared, though.
Speaker 2: It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
Speaker 1: So are you recording on your on your zoom i
Speaker 1: am recorder?
Speaker 3: It is rolling?
Speaker 1: Okay, So if we could just get started with the
Speaker 1: with local rules.
Speaker 3: Okay. Do you want me to say local rules? Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: local rules. Do not take this book too seriously. It
Speaker 3: is about grown men, most of whom are in a
Speaker 3: living by swinging long sticks in small balls. In other words,
Speaker 3: it is about golf, and golf is neither a microcosm
Speaker 3: of nor a metaphor for life. My name is Jeremy Shapp.
Speaker 3: I host a few shows at ESPN outside Lines in
Speaker 3: the sixty and my father Dick Shapp, wrote a book
Speaker 3: about the nineteen seventy four US Open at Wingfoot. The
Speaker 3: name of the book has become synonymous with not only
Speaker 3: that tournament, but also with the course of which always played.
Speaker 3: The name of the book was Massacre Foot.
Speaker 2: All right, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: I can hear you? How you doing.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, let's see. I'm hayl Irwin, longtime PGA Tour
Speaker 2: professional and an advocate of great golf for everyone.
Speaker 1: So Wingfoot nineteen seventy four. Can you just tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about seeing and playing that course for
Speaker 1: the first time that week?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, try to put some of those nightmares away.
Speaker 1: So this is Friday Egg Stories. I'm Garrett Morrison. Today
Speaker 1: we go back to a time of woundcore balls and
Speaker 1: persimmon headed drivers, the time when the USGA handed the
Speaker 1: winner of its marquee event a check of thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars instead of two million. The nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: US Open, held at Wingfoot Golf Club has become a
Speaker 1: touchstone in the debate over what a golf championship should be.
Speaker 1: Depending on your perspective, It's either the US Open at
Speaker 1: its best or the US Open at its worst. It's
Speaker 1: now known as the Massacre at Wingfoot. That term comes
Speaker 1: from the classic book by Dick Shapp, from which his
Speaker 1: son Jeremy Shapp will be reading some passages in this episode.
Speaker 1: This week, the National Championship returns to the West Course
Speaker 1: at Wingfoot, So it feels like a good time to
Speaker 1: consider what it means for a tournament venue to be
Speaker 1: insane difficult, and what it takes to pass that kind
Speaker 1: of test.
Speaker 3: The attack upon Wingfoot is about to begin. One hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty men, the most gifted golfers in the world,
Speaker 3: are about to assault the West course of the Wingfoot
Speaker 3: Golf Club. It's a lovely site for a battle. Eighteen
Speaker 3: holes of gently rolling greenery in Mamaroneck, New York, half
Speaker 3: an hour's drive northeast of Manhattan, in the heart of
Speaker 3: affluent suburbia.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy four, Wingfoot Golf Club was over fifty
Speaker 1: years old, and the West course had already hosted two
Speaker 1: US Opens and a US Amateur. The credentials of this
Speaker 1: aw tilling House design were well established. So was it
Speaker 1: a tilling House intention to build a tough championship course A.
Speaker 5: One hundred percent from day one.
Speaker 6: You might be aware of the famous quote that you said,
Speaker 6: I was given a simple instruction, give us a man's
Speaker 6: sized course.
Speaker 1: This is Neil Reagan.
Speaker 5: I'm the historian at Wingfoot Golf Club.
Speaker 1: And Neil is telling me about the first US Open
Speaker 1: at Wingfoot West in nineteen twenty nine, when the course
Speaker 1: was only a few years old. Going into the tournament,
Speaker 1: the newspaper headlines had a theme.
Speaker 6: Bobby Jones thinks it's going to be a great driving contest.
Speaker 6: Wingfoot is called the most difficult course ever chosen. This
Speaker 6: is the week before the US Open, not the week after.
Speaker 1: During the Championship, the writer Obi Keeler was on the grounds.
Speaker 6: Obi Keeler, you know, Obie Keiller was Bobby Jones's best
Speaker 6: friend and biographer.
Speaker 1: With him in the gallery was aw Telling Hast.
Speaker 6: They met on the course and they talked, and they
Speaker 6: watched a lot of golfers, and he had a classic
Speaker 6: short article about it.
Speaker 5: He says.
Speaker 6: One of the most deeply interested spectators was a mister
Speaker 6: A W. Telling Hast, a distinguished looking gentleman with a
Speaker 6: carefully waxed mustache who was to be seen in all
Speaker 6: parts of the golf course at all times, but not
Speaker 6: at the same time, or something very much like omnipresence
Speaker 6: Tilling Hast.
Speaker 1: It seems to the great deal of talking.
Speaker 6: They say, it's a tough course. He said to me,
Speaker 6: but you will notice that the scores of parr are
Speaker 6: being made not too frequently.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 6: The man who scores par at Wingfoot will have shot
Speaker 6: par golf if you know what I mean. Tilling has
Speaker 6: rejoinder to one spectator's comment was a bit of a classic.
Speaker 6: The spectator said, they're having a bit of trouble with
Speaker 6: your golf course. I saw one fellow take three strokes
Speaker 6: in the same bunker, and tilling hast said, possibly the
Speaker 6: trouble is it with the bunkers.
Speaker 1: After seventy two holes, Bobby Jones and al Espinoza were
Speaker 1: tied at six. Over the next day, Jones beat Espinoza
Speaker 1: in a thirty six hole playoff by twenty three strokes.
Speaker 1: The greatest golfer of the era had won in dramatic fashion.
Speaker 1: But not everyone was happy with the first wing Foot Open.
Speaker 6: After the open, one newspaper column this wrote a very
Speaker 6: long article saying it was too tricky.
Speaker 5: It was too difficult to them.
Speaker 6: They would hit the fairway and have to hit over
Speaker 6: a bunker when they got on the green.
Speaker 5: They had undulations on the green. It wasn't like other courses.
Speaker 6: There were many other articles in the newspapers about how
Speaker 6: difficult it was, how it was called the hardest course
Speaker 6: in the country.
Speaker 5: So yes, its reputation was there from day one.
Speaker 1: One thing I've heard is that the nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: US Open, where Johnny Miller shot sixty three in the
Speaker 1: final round, famously had some influence on the severity of
Speaker 1: the setup at Wingfoot. Do you think there's some truth
Speaker 1: to that?
Speaker 4: One hundred percent? One hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Mark Moulvoy was at Wingfoot in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 4: Yep, my name is this Mark Moulvoy. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 4: I was one of the golf writers for Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 4: well behind Dan Jenkins.
Speaker 1: And you heard that the USGA was determined not to
Speaker 1: give up another sixty.
Speaker 4: Three and they're not going to do that again. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, hey, I can go set up wing Foot
Speaker 4: tomorrow myself where no one's going to break three hundred. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm serious, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Three hundred On the eve of the nineteen seventy four
Speaker 3: US Open. Wingfoot is a sterner challenge than ever. The
Speaker 3: course has been linked in Bunker's added trees, planted, all
Speaker 3: the little touches that please the USGA and chill the
Speaker 3: golfer who hopes to break.
Speaker 1: Or equal par So, what made the USGA set up
Speaker 1: of wing Foot in nineteen seventy four, so severe.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: First, the course was playing as a par seventy of
Speaker 1: six nine and twenty one yards, which wouldn't be long today.
Speaker 1: But back then, and this.
Speaker 2: Is nineteen seventy four, before we really had the advance
Speaker 2: and technology and the equipment.
Speaker 4: They played with ballata balls.
Speaker 2: We have a golf ball that doesn't go as far.
Speaker 4: They played with per simmon heads.
Speaker 2: We're using wooded headed drivers.
Speaker 4: I would bet that at that time that opened in
Speaker 4: seventy for the head of a driver was probably one
Speaker 4: hundred fifty or sixty see seeds. Today it's for sixty.
Speaker 2: We don't have all the ingredients that today's players have
Speaker 2: in terms of technology. Man like Arnold.
Speaker 6: Palmer, who was very long, had struggles reaching the eighteenth
Speaker 6: grade in two.
Speaker 5: So it was a very long course.
Speaker 2: For the day.
Speaker 1: Second, if you missed fairways, you were in trouble.
Speaker 2: So it was ay start with a relatively long golf course.
Speaker 2: Number two, the rough was due for the any rough
Speaker 2: that I have ever played my career.
Speaker 4: Roof was too high. You couldn't do anything out of
Speaker 4: the rest.
Speaker 2: The grass did grow long, very long, and when I
Speaker 2: say I went off to the side of the second green,
Speaker 2: and I started pulling up grass and it did not
Speaker 2: stop it about a foot. It kept going.
Speaker 4: Gary play a shankd to shot on the fourteenth holl
Speaker 4: from the left Roughee shanked a shot across the fairway.
Speaker 4: But when you looked across Gary in the left rough
Speaker 4: there you can always not see Gary because the roof
Speaker 4: was so high, and Gary, of course is a diminutive
Speaker 4: to say the least.
Speaker 1: And third, once you managed to get to the green,
Speaker 1: your work was far from over.
Speaker 2: And once there, now you've got contours, and generally speaking
Speaker 2: the greens might break a little bit from back to front,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of contours in between.
Speaker 6: And then the greens were super fast for that era
Speaker 6: seventy four open and went for uc balls. Trick went
Speaker 6: past the cup and going another five and six feet,
Speaker 6: and then a five or six foot quite A bare
Speaker 6: foot is never a straight button never.
Speaker 2: So I think most people when they play wing foot
Speaker 2: will be surprised at how well you have to read
Speaker 2: the greens to shoot any kind of acceptable score.
Speaker 1: So really, what made wing foot such an exacting test
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four was pretty simple. In order to
Speaker 1: have much of a chance at par you had to
Speaker 1: hit the green in regulation in order to have much
Speaker 1: of a chance at hitting the green, and regulation you
Speaker 1: had to drive it long and straight, hole after hole
Speaker 1: after home with no letup.
Speaker 2: But that's we saw a course that was unrelenting. It
Speaker 2: was going to fight you at every turn, and if
Speaker 2: you made a birdie, it would get back at you.
Speaker 3: At every Open, at least a dozen frustrated professionals vowed
Speaker 3: that they will never never again play in a US Open.
Speaker 1: Early in the week at Wingfoot, the contestants began to grumble.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of doom and gloom in the
Speaker 2: locker room after those first one or two rounds of practice,
Speaker 2: because no one was coming back with a lot of
Speaker 2: confidence in being able to see very many birdies out there.
Speaker 2: It was a very very difficult golf course, and it
Speaker 2: was palpable.
Speaker 1: And the target of the player's hire was a familiar one.
Speaker 3: Hidden behind these gripes is the belief, sometimes expressed and
Speaker 3: more often implied, that the USGA, which is the governing
Speaker 3: board of American amateur golf, is intent upon embarrassing the pros,
Speaker 3: upon spotlighting the flaws, not their flare.
Speaker 1: Part of the story here is that in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: competitive pros were just becoming independent. It was only five
Speaker 1: years before that they had broken away from the PGA
Speaker 1: of America and they.
Speaker 4: Had a bitter battle, and the pros essentially seeded from
Speaker 4: the PGA and formed the PGA Tour. Well, I think
Speaker 4: that they were looking for some support from the USGA.
Speaker 1: It didn't get it, So the fledgling PGA Tour was
Speaker 1: on its own and more and more inclined to view
Speaker 1: the USGA as an opponent.
Speaker 4: I mean they just felt that, you know, it was
Speaker 4: too much of an amateur operation.
Speaker 3: Tuesday, two forty pm, a pair of young pros are
Speaker 3: standing outside the clubhouse, engaged in a favorite pastime, complaining
Speaker 3: about the USGA. I wouldn't even play in a USGA events,
Speaker 3: as one of them, if it wasn't the Open. This
Speaker 3: would be a great tournament if the USGA didn't run it,
Speaker 3: says the other pro let me re phrase that this
Speaker 3: is a great tournament in spite of the USGA.
Speaker 1: So what did you What did you make of the
Speaker 1: complaints about the setup?
Speaker 2: Well, I might answer that question with the question, let's say,
Speaker 2: do you hear from the players of note ever any
Speaker 2: complaining about the golf course. Probably not. You hear the
Speaker 2: players that complain the most are the ones that at
Speaker 2: least likely to win a golf tournament. So I think
Speaker 2: when you start putting barriers around what is acceptable to you,
Speaker 2: you've really locked yourself in to a non competing position.
Speaker 2: And I remember after the second practice round saying to myself,
Speaker 2: if seventy percent of field is checked out, I mean
Speaker 2: you could just there were players that just weren't capable,
Speaker 2: and you can hear them talking. So if I can
Speaker 2: be thirty percent field, I might have a chance.
Speaker 3: Wednesday, eleven thirty am, three USGA officials, each tucked in
Speaker 3: a blue blae, each with a pipe tucked in his mouth,
Speaker 3: or holding a conference to explained the course to the press.
Speaker 3: What we try to do, says Sandy Tatum, is not
Speaker 3: to confound the best golfers in the world, but to
Speaker 3: find out who they are.
Speaker 2: And I didn't grow up in a country club environment.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a very small town of southeast Kansas.
Speaker 2: We had a little nine hole sand green golf course
Speaker 2: and I just pictures over here on the wall of
Speaker 2: that little course. And when we moved to Colorado, when
Speaker 2: I was fourteen, I caddied at a local municipal golf course.
Speaker 2: I'd make two dollars to seventy five cents and then
Speaker 2: I'd go pay the green spees of two dollars and
Speaker 2: twenty five cents. That'd leave me fifty cents to buy
Speaker 2: a hot dog or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: Pale Irwin quickly became an excellent golfer, but he ended
Speaker 1: up going to college for football at the University of Colorado.
Speaker 1: He was an All Conference defensive back, and it was
Speaker 1: on the football field that he developed his mo mindset
Speaker 1: as a competitor.
Speaker 2: Here was a case where playing college football sort of
Speaker 2: undersized under speed. I mean everything I did was under
Speaker 2: the norm kind of gave me a little bit of
Speaker 2: an attitude towards You're not going to beat me. You know,
Speaker 2: I may lose, but it won't be from lack of effort.
Speaker 1: He knew he had to play not only harder, but smarter.
Speaker 2: You'll always hear you perhaps you know, sorry, you have
Speaker 2: to read your keys, and my keys were generally speaking,
Speaker 2: the offensive linement, the center, two guards, and most of
Speaker 2: the time they will give away the play just by
Speaker 2: their stance, the way they acted and what you watch
Speaker 2: on film enough and then you get in the game
Speaker 2: and you see it firsthand. You start picking up the
Speaker 2: little idiosyncrasies, whether it be the eyes might move, or
Speaker 2: the head or the way the hand goes down on
Speaker 2: the ground or something that you pick up. You you
Speaker 2: have to have those clues. And that's what I think
Speaker 2: I was good at was anticipating and recognizing those clues and.
Speaker 1: Wing foot Taylorwin saw a big, fast offensive line.
Speaker 2: And I'm respectful of not only my opponent, but the
Speaker 2: opponent for this golf course. I'm respectful of that man.
Speaker 2: With that respect comes the recognition that I've got to
Speaker 2: pay attention to some of the details. You had to
Speaker 2: put the ball in the fairway, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you hit an iron off the tee because now you're
Speaker 2: left with such a long second shot. It just doubles
Speaker 2: up on how difficult that second shot becomes. So got
Speaker 2: hit fairways, got to hit greens, and keep the ball
Speaker 2: under the hole. It does not matter. I'll trade a
Speaker 2: thirty fit or a ten foot downhill button for a
Speaker 2: thirty fit uphill, But every time, just put the ball
Speaker 2: under the hole. Don't worry where the flag is. If
Speaker 2: the flag is twenty two pass on and six in
Speaker 2: the right. So what, let's hit it in the middle
Speaker 2: of the green. Okay, it's twenty Let's just try to
Speaker 2: hit it twenty and you know, just find those areas
Speaker 2: in which to hit the ball. So I felt like,
Speaker 2: for me, that could give me a reward. It throw
Speaker 2: me a bone that if I hit a shot that
Speaker 2: was on the green and I'm within thirty feet the hole, Hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: with success. So that's just the way I kind of
Speaker 2: played my game, and I've always played my game. That's
Speaker 2: why I've never relied upon a caddy. For all the
Speaker 2: advice that today's caddies seek to throw at their players,
Speaker 2: Oh it put me to sleep. I've got a play
Speaker 2: faster than that. I haven't got time to be ridden
Speaker 2: in bedtime storage.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen seventy four, Hail Irwin was a twenty
Speaker 1: nine year old pro with an NCAA championship and two
Speaker 1: wins at Harbortown to his name. But he brought a
Speaker 1: lot more than just that resume to the Wingfoot Open.
Speaker 1: He also brought experience with opponents much scarier than any
Speaker 1: golf course, and he brought a self confidence rooted in
Speaker 1: self reliance rooted in a childhood of sand greens in
Speaker 1: two seventy five per.
Speaker 2: Loop are Mike Talon seeing it better than anybody else,
Speaker 2: so walks out there on the grass. No, does my
Speaker 2: confidence in myself? Is it any less than Jack Nicholas
Speaker 2: would have. No. I have a belief in myself that
Speaker 2: what I'm doing for me is the proper thing to do.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's not to say that hailer Win was
Speaker 1: unaffected by the severity of wing.
Speaker 2: Fut By the time we got to Thursday and they
Speaker 2: called your name on the first team, and you're thinking, oh, no,
Speaker 2: here we go. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to post this.
Speaker 3: Car Thursday one, eight pm. After driving into the rough
Speaker 3: then hitting a five iron twenty feet above the first hole,
Speaker 3: Jack Nicholas gently taps his putt toward the cup. The
Speaker 3: ball slips past and rolls down the incline, leaving Nicholas
Speaker 3: a full twenty five foot putt coming back. What an
Speaker 3: embarrassing way to start the opening.
Speaker 2: Fut pass And your words spread very quickly on the
Speaker 2: first day with Jack Nicholas four putted the first you
Speaker 2: put it right off the green. You know, that's like wildfire,
Speaker 2: and now you get an idea of what you're in for.
Speaker 2: If you hadn't suspected already, now you know so.
Speaker 4: Anyway, in the fourth hall, the pin was sort of
Speaker 4: in the center of the green, but right center, just
Speaker 4: in from the from the fringe. Projecked a beautiful iron
Speaker 4: in there, about ten or fifteen feet right of the
Speaker 4: whole three part of that sucker.
Speaker 1: The best golfer in the world finished with a five
Speaker 1: over seventy five seven PM.
Speaker 3: Jack Nicholas comes into the press ten without complaints or excuses.
Speaker 3: The course didn't play any tougher than other open courses,
Speaker 3: Nicholas says, the greens are the course you're scared of
Speaker 3: every putt. I wish we've played a course like this
Speaker 3: every week. We'd learn how to put Later on Thursday,
Speaker 3: a motorist attempting to leave the Wing Foot Golf Club,
Speaker 3: takes a wrong turn and accidentally drives across the first green.
Speaker 3: He does no damage at all. The green holds up
Speaker 3: like asphalt.
Speaker 1: No one broke. Part of that first day, Gary Player
Speaker 1: held the solo lead after an opening seventy and three
Speaker 1: shots behind him. Hail Irwin was playing a study game.
Speaker 2: So I thought, for me, if I can go out
Speaker 2: and stay positive, even with a bogie, I know I'm
Speaker 2: going to make that, but I know others are going
Speaker 2: to make them too. So let's stay in the game.
Speaker 2: Forget what happened on the last and this is something
Speaker 2: that should happen all the time. But forget about what
Speaker 2: you've just done. Let's think about what you have.
Speaker 1: To do on Friday. Playing in the morning, hail Irwin
Speaker 1: doesn't make many scores he has to forget. He finishes
Speaker 1: with a seventy and by the middle of the afternoon
Speaker 1: holds the lead at plus three. One shot. Behind him
Speaker 1: are two twenty four year old toms Kite and Watson.
Speaker 1: Tied with hail Ierwin are Ray Floyd, Gary Player, and
Speaker 1: one other very familiar name.
Speaker 3: Friday, five point thirty six pm, as Arnold Palmer walks
Speaker 3: toward the seventeenth t the division of his troops begins
Speaker 3: to applaud What did he just do? Someone I think
Speaker 3: he just breathed A cynic replies.
Speaker 1: You're in the final group on Saturday, and in front
Speaker 1: of you is the pairing of Gary Player and Arnold Palmer.
Speaker 1: What do you remember of the atmosphere around that group
Speaker 1: ahead of you. What was the what was the venue
Speaker 1: like at that time?
Speaker 2: Well, obviously anytime you have Arnold Palmer in contention, it's
Speaker 2: going to create a lot of dynamics. Now as a competitor,
Speaker 2: I like seeing that in front of me, because if
Speaker 2: it's behind you, now it's running up on you all
Speaker 2: the time. If you're in it, you have to kind
Speaker 2: of concern yourself with what's going on around you. When
Speaker 2: it's up in front of you, then it's your better.
Speaker 1: Saturday, you played, You played a great round of golf
Speaker 1: on Saturday.
Speaker 2: I played very well on Saturday, Yes.
Speaker 1: Which was quite an accomplishment on that day.
Speaker 3: Saturday to ten pm. Dave Stockton comes out of the
Speaker 3: scorers tent after adding up all seventy eight strokes. I
Speaker 3: can't believe people want to say I see the golf
Speaker 3: they're seeing here, he says. I know they want to
Speaker 3: see birdies, but the USGA doesn't want to see birdies.
Speaker 3: This course makes me feel like a fool. I'm exempt
Speaker 3: again next year, but I'm not going to play the Open.
Speaker 1: Dave Stockton did play the US Open the next year,
Speaker 1: and the year after that, and each of the seven
Speaker 1: years after that. Anyway. On Saturday at Wingfoot, Stockton is
Speaker 1: hardly the only player to have trouble. Gary player shoots
Speaker 1: seventy seven. Ray Floyd shoots seventy eight, and when Hale
Speaker 1: Irwin arrives on the sixteenth tee, he's three over on
Speaker 1: his round and in front of him are Wingfoot's brutal
Speaker 1: closing holes.
Speaker 2: Well, a number sixteen for the members is a par
Speaker 2: five and for us it was a par four, and
Speaker 2: they move the tee up maybe five yards.
Speaker 1: There he hits a three iron to seven feet and
Speaker 1: holds the putt.
Speaker 2: Now seventeen is again another one of those holes that's
Speaker 2: relatively straight away, quite a narrow fair away.
Speaker 1: He rolls in a twenty foot or for.
Speaker 2: But then you've got the kicking the tail in eighteen.
Speaker 2: Where you think, where's a braither hole on this golf course,
Speaker 2: there is none.
Speaker 1: Four hundred and forty eight yards dog leg left and
Speaker 1: a green guarded by deep bunkers and a massive false front.
Speaker 2: So if you were on the front of green, it
Speaker 2: would roll off the front. The flag was on the left,
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit towards the front, and I hit
Speaker 2: my ball just short and left of the green at
Speaker 2: a let's just say a pitch shot that one doesn't
Speaker 2: want to have, So I, okay, keep it under the hole,
Speaker 2: don't pitch it long, don't pitch keep it, keep it
Speaker 2: under those So I pitched it up there five or
Speaker 2: six feet pretty much under the hole and made that.
Speaker 1: It was a great up and down, a true US
Speaker 1: Open car.
Speaker 2: Here. I've had a really good fanny shot, positioned myself
Speaker 2: well for the Sunday round, and I was glad to
Speaker 2: get that round over with.
Speaker 1: Going into Sunday's final round, Taylor Win was two shots
Speaker 1: ahead of Arnold Palmer and one behind young Tom Watson,
Speaker 1: who had posted a sixty nine. At that point, Watson
Speaker 1: hadn't even won a regular PGA Tour event, but his
Speaker 1: talent was obvious.
Speaker 2: You could see this young man was going to be
Speaker 2: the next superstar. There was no doubt. He was still
Speaker 2: wet behind the ears, I guess if you wish, in
Speaker 2: terms of competitive experience, but it was going to he
Speaker 2: was going to drive that off very quickly. But you know,
Speaker 2: as I'm thinking of the round, I'm thinking, Okay, Arnold
Speaker 2: still a very effective player, maybe the twilight of his
Speaker 2: really competitive career, but still Arnold Palmer Tom Watson, the
Speaker 2: new up and coming star. But it just comes boiling
Speaker 2: back to me.
Speaker 1: It comes boiling back to Hailerwin and what he's going
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Sunday, one PM. I'm nervous, says Hailor Win, but I'm
Speaker 3: not shaking with anticipation.
Speaker 2: You're playing for a Nichel championship, so there's there's greater pressures.
Speaker 2: There's greater and you just name it. It's there. You're
Speaker 2: one of the last ones to leave the locker room,
Speaker 2: You're one of the last ones the practice area.
Speaker 3: One twenty four pm. My only philosophy, says Tom Watson,
Speaker 3: is I like my position.
Speaker 2: So all these things tell you that there is something
Speaker 2: important going on, and even if you try to close
Speaker 2: the door on all that, it's still there.
Speaker 3: One PM. Kail Or Win closes his locker. Excuse me, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: he says, I have work to do.
Speaker 2: If you don't feel it, then why are you there?
Speaker 2: And I tried to accept that. I tried to embrace
Speaker 2: that because that is what's competition's about. That's why you're there.
Speaker 3: One twenty six pm. Tom Watson closes his locker. Do
Speaker 3: you like all the attention? Someone asks Watson, nots. Yes,
Speaker 3: he says, I do. I'd like to give this kind
Speaker 3: of interview every week.
Speaker 2: I tried when I get to the first t, and
Speaker 2: now I'm the t. Now you have to blank out.
Speaker 2: Now you have to get focused on where am I
Speaker 2: trying to get this ball? Now is the time to
Speaker 2: play golf and not go through all the what ifs.
Speaker 2: He's too late for that.
Speaker 1: On the front nine, Arnold Palmer's putter betrays him and
Speaker 1: he goes from six to ten over. He's out of it.
Speaker 1: Behind him walking to the ninth green, Tom Watson and
Speaker 1: hailer Win are tied at six over.
Speaker 3: For seventeen PM.
Speaker 1: So could you tell me about that putt at nine?
Speaker 2: Well, I forget how many lumps and bumps there were
Speaker 2: between me and oh, let's call it fourteen or fifteen.
Speaker 3: From thirty five feet away over a ridge, Hailorrwin curls
Speaker 3: his putt into the cup.
Speaker 2: But there was a lot of go up a little hill,
Speaker 2: down up a little hill, and down to another.
Speaker 3: So and as the ball falls he breaks into a
Speaker 3: happy little dance, his first sign of emotion all day.
Speaker 2: So, if you're fortunate enough to make a putt like that, okay,
Speaker 2: you had the skill set to do it, but maybe
Speaker 2: more importantly, you had the luck set to get a
Speaker 2: ball like that into the hole.
Speaker 3: For eighteen PM, Hailerwin's wife is beaming fifteen hundred miles
Speaker 3: away in Kirkwood, Missouri, near Saint Louis, in their new home.
Speaker 3: Sally Jean Irwin is sitting next to Pack Crates and
Speaker 3: her sleeping two and a half year old daughter, Becky,
Speaker 3: watching the Open on television. Sally Jean is eight months pregnant,
Speaker 3: which explains why she's not at wing foot. Three weeks ago,
Speaker 3: Hailerwin woke up one morning and told his wife he
Speaker 3: had just had a dream that he won the US Open.
Speaker 1: As for Tom Watson, he misses his birdy pet on
Speaker 1: number nine and drops one shot back of hail Irwin.
Speaker 3: Four point thirty three pm, A spectator behind the tenth
Speaker 3: green points at Tom Watson, nods his head knowingly and
Speaker 3: says he's choking.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, another young, talented but winless pro, Forrest Feesler, has
Speaker 1: clung to even parr on his round, which means he's
Speaker 1: suddenly in contention.
Speaker 2: You have to think about what you're doing at this time.
Speaker 2: What Tom Watson does He does what Forest Feesler does,
Speaker 2: he does with Arnold Baumer, all of them. Let's worry
Speaker 2: about Hailer what's going to be doing.
Speaker 3: Four point fifty two pm. Tom Watson hooks his t
Speaker 3: shot on the twelfth hole into the woods and a
Speaker 3: spectator says that's it for Watson.
Speaker 1: Standing on the fifteenth tee, halor Win has a three
Speaker 1: shot lead over Forrest Fessler, but within minutes he's given
Speaker 1: one of those shots up.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, like anything, there could have been a
Speaker 2: bit of nerves. But bear in mind, even if you're
Speaker 2: just playing this on a casual Saturday with your friends,
Speaker 2: these are hard golf holes.
Speaker 3: Five forty one pm. On the sixteenth hole, hailor Win drives.
Speaker 2: Into the rough and given the circumstances, are you going
Speaker 2: to hit that perfect, relaxed shot that you have with
Speaker 2: your buddy on Saturday playing for a dollar in asshaule.
Speaker 3: Five forty four pm hailer Win hits his second shot
Speaker 3: into a bunker on the right side of the green.
Speaker 2: No, you've got the factor in the nerves. You've got
Speaker 2: to factor in the anxiety.
Speaker 3: Five forty seven pm. From the bunker, Hailer went last
Speaker 3: within eight feet of the pin on the sixteenth, he
Speaker 3: walks onto the green, sites his putt very carefully and misses.
Speaker 3: He now has two straight bogies and he's seven over,
Speaker 3: only a stroke in front of Boris Wesler.
Speaker 2: But mind you, I was the only one making those bogies.
Speaker 2: Everybody else was making them as well. So it's not
Speaker 2: like you're, well, I'm gonna match your par with my bar. No,
Speaker 2: he'sa I'm gonna match your bogue with my bog.
Speaker 3: E five point fifty two PM. Forrest Wessler misses his
Speaker 3: fifteen foot attempt to save par on the eighteenth hole.
Speaker 3: As he comes off the green, he shakes his head. Man,
Speaker 3: this course really takes it out of you mentally, Fessler says.
Speaker 3: It just does things to your mind.
Speaker 1: But Hayler Win still needs to stop the bleeding. And
Speaker 1: on his drive on seventeen.
Speaker 2: I just lost my legs and I got over it
Speaker 2: and I pulled it just into the left rof.
Speaker 1: So you're you're in the rough on seventeen. Could you
Speaker 1: basically take me home from there?
Speaker 2: Well, again, when you're in the rough, you're not going
Speaker 2: to reach the green, and so I just took out
Speaker 2: a I think it might have even been a forwood.
Speaker 2: I think it choked down on it, and I chopped
Speaker 2: it to where I had I think my yard was
Speaker 2: like one hundred and two yards or one hundred and
Speaker 2: three yards, and again I thought, don't hit it long,
Speaker 2: don't hit it past the hole. And I hit a
Speaker 2: good shot, perhaps ten feet or so from the hole.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately I got there and it was quite a left
Speaker 2: to rights breaking putt, and I'm thinking to myself, Okay,
Speaker 2: we need to make this putt.
Speaker 3: Six oh two pm, Hilerwin lines up his twelve foot
Speaker 3: putt on seventeen and a reporter kneeling behind him says
Speaker 3: he'll never make it. It breaks a foot. He makes
Speaker 3: the putt and breathes a deep sigh of relief.
Speaker 2: When that went in. That was such a big relief
Speaker 2: because now I can play the last hole, not conservatively,
Speaker 2: not have to play it dynamically. Let's put it that week,
Speaker 2: you have to put one shot on another.
Speaker 3: Six four pm. Charged up equally by his putt on
Speaker 3: seventeen and the huge gallery lining the eighteenth hole from
Speaker 3: tee to green, hail Or Wins senses drive straight down
Speaker 3: the middle of the fairway, and.
Speaker 2: So when I hit my drive right where I wanted
Speaker 2: to in the fairway, and then I could see the
Speaker 2: big board up at the green, and I did see
Speaker 2: where I had a two shot lead. But now, don't
Speaker 2: hit it to the right. Cannot miss the green to
Speaker 2: the right, and I've got one hundred and ninety four yards.
Speaker 2: I believe it was Win's a little off the left,
Speaker 2: the green setting up there a little bit. It's a
Speaker 2: two iron shot. Today's people say, what's a two iron?
Speaker 4: Nobody has a two iron in their bag. How many
Speaker 4: pro carrie at two iron?
Speaker 2: Yeah, today's player might say, well, that's just a six iron. Well, guys,
Speaker 2: go back to where I was, break that two iron
Speaker 2: out of your bag and try to hit that shot.
Speaker 4: Well, only it was a two iron. The clubhead was
Speaker 4: about the size of the fall.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I remember distinctly all the things I've forgotten. I
Speaker 2: remember distinctly telling myself a nice smooth backswing, make sure
Speaker 2: you get the clubs set, and I on the ball
Speaker 2: the instant there was contact. It was a solid contact.
Speaker 2: I know it was a good shot. And so when
Speaker 2: I looked up and the ball was flying just a
Speaker 2: little bit left of the hole, and the wind brought
Speaker 2: it right over the top of the flag. I knew
Speaker 2: then that it was over.
Speaker 3: Erwin hits the two iron and the ball stops, running
Speaker 3: nineteen feet from the pin. As Irwin strides toward the green,
Speaker 3: he raises both hands above his head like a victorious boxer.
Speaker 3: The gallery booms out its applause and Erwin waves his vizor.
Speaker 3: Erwin plays the nineteen footer the way a champion should.
Speaker 3: He strokes the ball to within an inch of the cup.
Speaker 3: He taps in, and Hailerwin is the nineteen seventy four
Speaker 3: United States Open champion.
Speaker 1: Hailerwin finished with a score of two eighty seven seven over,
Speaker 1: second place Forrest Fessler nine over, and tied for fifth
Speaker 1: at twelve over forty four year old Arnold Palmer and
Speaker 1: twenty four year old Tom Watson. Palmer would never again
Speaker 1: place that high in a major, whereas Watson would recover
Speaker 1: quickly from his Sunday collapse. The next year he won
Speaker 1: the first of his five Open championships. But for now
Speaker 1: he had failed the test that was wingfoot in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four and Haylor went alone had.
Speaker 2: Passed after I had won. You know, I remember thinking
Speaker 2: to myself and the confines of my room that evening
Speaker 2: that I'd finally achieved what I've been trying to do,
Speaker 2: and that's to be a player on the international stage.
Speaker 2: To be successful in the world of golf, and to
Speaker 2: do that you have to establish yourself as a winner
Speaker 2: in major championships, and I had achieved my goal.
Speaker 1: Taylor Win continued to do well at US Opens. He
Speaker 1: won two more, and he went on to become one
Speaker 1: of the best older golfers of all time, winning forty
Speaker 1: five tournament some seven majors on the senior tour. He's
Speaker 1: now seventy five and just recently he gave up the
Speaker 1: competitive game.
Speaker 2: That's thirty five years old. I don't know as I
Speaker 2: can go out there and play with the same intensity
Speaker 2: that I once did, because you need intensity in your
Speaker 2: own way. You need that because if you don't have it,
Speaker 2: I don't care what you're in. It's a job you have.
Speaker 2: If you don't attack it with intensity. If you just
Speaker 2: back off of that and say, you know, I think
Speaker 2: i'll let that fly this morning, I'll get that later
Speaker 2: later it comes and you don't do it, that's the
Speaker 2: signal it's time to step back big time. Because unless
Speaker 2: you can deal with that in between, and that well,
Speaker 2: he's good, but not like he used to be.
Speaker 4: That's not me.
Speaker 1: He still follows golf and he sees that since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, PGA Tour players have gained a great deal
Speaker 1: more power, that their complaints about courses and setups carry
Speaker 1: a great deal more weight. And he here's what some
Speaker 1: of them have been saying about US open venues, like
Speaker 1: say Shinnecock Hills twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: I thought we could be on the edge, but we've
Speaker 2: surpassed it. Unfortunately, they've lost the golf course. I think
Speaker 2: we're we're making a fatal mistake if we don't distinguish
Speaker 2: the good from the average, the best from the good.
Speaker 2: The delineation amongst the best and the others generally takes
Speaker 2: place with the difficult golf course. The best players complain
Speaker 2: about the conditions. No, I think that when you start
Speaker 2: complaining about the conditions of the golf course, now you're
Speaker 2: setting yourself up for failure because now you're admitting I
Speaker 2: can't play that golf course. And one of the things,
Speaker 2: as we talk here so forty six years later about Wingfoot,
Speaker 2: it still carries the prestige it still carries the talk
Speaker 2: what tournament or what club wouldn't want that? And I
Speaker 2: don't buy into this. Let's treat the players with let's
Speaker 2: pamper them, let's use the kid gloves because they're complaining. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I just I don't go into it. I think the
Speaker 2: players of today hit the ball so far, and if
Speaker 2: they're that talented, they should be able to play any
Speaker 2: golf course, no matter how it's set up as an
Speaker 2: organization or as an organizing committee or as a tournament venue.
Speaker 2: I would want my golf course to pursuent itself with
Speaker 2: some teeth so the best players in the world are
Speaker 2: tasked to play better golf.
Speaker 1: This was the tenth episode of Friday Stories. It was
Speaker 1: produced and hosted by me Garren Morrison, with editing and
Speaker 1: engineering by Jay Verick and transcript assistants from Jay Fischel.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Andy Johnson. Many thanks to Neil Reagan,
Speaker 1: Mark Moulvoy, Jeremy Shop, Hail Irwin, and of course to
Speaker 1: you for listening.
Speaker 6: H m h.
Speaker 3: M hm hm.
Speaker 4: You know it's maybe a couple of stretches, a little
Speaker 4: push up. He never did any serious exercise. Yeah, what
Speaker 4: hold on a minute, problem.
Speaker 5: What what's the word bagel.
Speaker 2: F A T A L.
Speaker 4: My wife fent some conference call. They're playing bridge or something.
Speaker 1: Fatal, so you're you're the household spellar.
Speaker 4: Huh oh yeah, believe me. They shoot. They play bridge
Speaker 4: all freaking day on this computer thing. All of her
Speaker 4: friends from Florida shoot is not real anyway,