From a Trevino victory for the old boys to Tiger’s ding-dong battle with Sergio, here’s half a dozen to savour
1) Julius Boros (Pecan Valley, 1968)
Languor, not anger. There’s the secret of golf, right there. No point getting all het up, it’ll just play havoc with your rhythm. Look at Colin Montgomerie, who spent most of his career wanting it that little bit too much, and invariably lost the run of his motor skills when push came to pull. Darren Clarke was the same, until the penny belatedly dropped, and so he sauntered round Sandwich last month without a care in the world, the old boy popping the Auld Claret Jug under his arm at the end of a lovely day out in the country, easy as you like. There is a reason why Lee Westwood has suddenly decided to approach the task of putting with the easy-going hit-and-hope method favoured by his 10-year-old son, and why Luke Donald has taken to whistling jaunty tunes before he addresses the ball.
Jack Nicklaus, it should be remembered, used to sing Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head to himself as he eased around the course, racking up major after major, Burt Bacharach and Hal David putting a relaxed glide in his stride. But perhaps the most famously calm of them all was Julius Boros, a 14-stone Hungarian-American who won two US Opens and a PGA between 1952 and 1968. His wife once noted that, no matter how late they would be for an engagement, Boros would never quicken his “stately pace”. That’s not to say he dawdled on the course – he would rarely take a practise swing, or spend much time fretting over the line of his putts, and he would address the ball with his muscles in constant motion – but he never panicked, and that attitude served him well in San Antonio, Texas, at the 1968 PGA Championship when, aged a stately 48, he held off Arnold Palmer, Bob Charles and Billy Casper to become the oldest major winner of all time. It’s a record that still stands.
Palmer shot a final-day 70, missing seven birdie putts on the way back, but Boros kept it together and went one better with a 69. “The most relaxed swinger on tour,” noted the Guardian’s Alistair Cooke of Boros. “He swept his drives, flicked his irons, and smartly stroked his putts … He putted with the nonchalance of an old gentleman practising on the living-room rug. Whatever nerves were tingling were relieved by frequent cigarettes.” A lot of lessons here, then. So don’t be surprised to see Donald sucking one down if he’s still in the hunt at the turn come Sunday.
2) Lee Trevino (Shoal Creek, 1984)
Another victory for the old boys. Lee Trevino was 44 when he triumphed at Shoal Creek in 1984. He won by four strokes from Gary Player – who was 48. Lanny Wadkins, joint second alongside Player, was a whippersnapping 34. It was a stellar leaderboard: between them, the three had 15 majors to their name – Player nine, Trevino five, Wadkins one – while in fifth spot sat Seve, who had another four himself. Player carded the round of the week – a course-record 63 on the second day, which got him right into the mix after a miserable opening-day 74 – but when it came to the crunch, it was Trevino and Wadkins who traded the big blows.
The start of the final day was a mixed bag for Supermex: he birdied the 1st and the 3rd to establish a two-shot lead over Wadkins, but was soon pegged back. Play was then suspended for a thunderstorm, doubly worrying for Trevino, who had been struck by lightning a few years previously. He went indoors and gorged on chocolate-chip cookies. When play resumed, Wadkins soon took the lead, and seemed to have closed out the tournament on the par-three 16th: Trevino had put his tee shot into a bunker, while Wadkins hit his approach to 12 feet. But Trevino got up and down while Wadkins missed, and when the latter got himself involved in all sorts of tree-related bother down 17, the jig was up. Trevino holed a 15-foot putt on the last for a 69, to become the first-ever player to win a major with four rounds under 70.
Trevino celebrated his win – Darren Clarke will appreciate this – by bowling around the clubhouse holding a glass of beer in each hand. “Can you get me a funnel?” he was heard to ask.
3) Bob Tway (Inverness, 1986)
Of all Greg Norman’s near misses in the majors, two in particular stand out as examples of ludicrous bad luck: Larry Mize’s sudden-death chip-in to claim the 1987 Masters, and Bob Tway’s greenside bunker shot that won the 1986 PGA. There’s no questioning Norman’s ill fortune at Augusta at the hands of Mize, but Tway holing out from the sand at the Inverness club in Toledo doesn’t quite tell the whole story.
Norman infamously led all four majors in 1986 going into the final round, but would only win the Open. Here he held a four-stroke lead over Tway at the start of day four, and he still had it at the turn. Then the wheels, not for the first time in a major, and certainly not for the last, came off. He took six to Tway’s four on 11, dropped another at 13, and then sent his tee shot at 14 into trees. The pair were level.
Tway stuttered over the final four holes. On 15, he hit his second shot into the gallery and needed a delicate chip downhill to nine feet to save his par. On 17, he pushed his approach into thick nonsense and somehow chipped to two feet to save par, when leaving the ball in the rough looked the odds-on outcome. Then on 18, he hit a comedy tee shot into deep rough down the right, then found a bunker at the front of the green, 10 yards short of the flag.
Norman – who like Tway had parred 15, 16 and 17 – had traversed the final hole straight down the middle. He was just off the front of the green in two, his second having spun back off the putting surface. With Tway facing a nightmare bunker shot, the green sloping down towards the hole, the Great White Shark was the strong favourite. But Tway splashed a recovery of delicate brilliance out from the sand, and as the ball trickled into the hole he began to leap up and down in celebration.
Norman still had a chance to tie, but his birdie chip went 10 feet past. He finished two shots behind Tway, having taken 76 shots over his final round. Tway – the first man to win the PGA with a birdie at the last – would be named PGA player of the year, having won three other tournaments and tied for eighth at both the Masters and the US Open. At the time, this was no flash in the pan. Tway’s bunker shot not only masked Norman’s bottle job, but his own hot brilliance that season, and that afternoon.
4) John Daly (Crooked Stick, 1991)
The Californian rookie John Daly was the ninth alternate for the 1991 PGA at Crooked Stick near Indianapolis, and only got his place when Nick Price pulled out at the last minute when his wife went into labour. Daly had no time for a practice round, but no matter: he borrowed Price’s caddie and hit a first-round 69, ending the day two shots off the lead. Daly followed that with a 67 to lead the tournament at the halfway mark. Three shots behind him were the first and third players in the world rankings, Ian Woosnam and Nick Faldo. One or the other was expected to burst through the field and snatch the prize.
Nobody expected the fairytale that followed. Although as fairytales go, it lacked a certain sense of wonder. Nothing more would be heard from Woosnam or Faldo. Daly’s final two rounds were 69 and 71, and relatively drama-free. He won by three strokes, his nearest challengers being decidedly average: Bruce Lietzke, Jim Gallagher Jr, Kenny Knox, Bob Gilder and Steven Richardson. As tournament narratives go, in itself it was nothing out of the ordinary.
But Daly had come from absolutely nowhere, without question at the time the most unheralded major winner in history. He himself was something else, a mould-busting working-class hero, scraping a living so he could marry his fiancée in Las Vegas later that year. And nobody hit it as long, his driver pointing directly at the ground at the end of his backlift, his ball carrying where other notoriously long hitters like Woosnam’s finished. “Goodness gracious, what a coil, what an unleashing of power, unbelievable power,” cooed Jack Nicklaus. “Jack has been my idol all my life,” replied Daly. “Thank you Jack.”
5) Tiger Woods (Medinah, 1999)
The tournament in which Sergio García, 19, made his mark. He shot an opening-day 66, the highlight of which was a Seve-esque wedge through a gap in the trees on 14 to set up a birdie. He followed it up with a tired 73, but bounced back in the third round with a 68; he’d be two strokes off the lead going into the final day.
The leaders were future Masters champion Mike Weir – who’d take a final-round 80, so no more of him – and the 1997 Masters champion Tiger Woods. Tiger was looking for his second major, and was well set after opening rounds of 70, 67 and 68. Steady as you like, and when he birdied the 11th hole of his final round to go five clear, that seemed to be that.
But García was in the group ahead, and he was about to apply some pressure. Woods dropped a shot at 12, and as he waited on the par-three 13th tee, he saw Garcia hole a birdie putt, punch the air, and look back up at him. “Tiger, you’re going to have to play well,” thought Sergio.
Tiger did not play well. Not immediately, anyway. He ran up a double-bogey five at the short hole, and suddenly his lead was only one. García dropped a stroke on 15, but then on 16 played the shot of his life: a 189-yard six-iron with a wide open face from behind a tree, a hit-and-hope with eyes wide shut, followed by a sprint up the fairway and a leap to see the ball reach the green to set up his par save. He held his heart “to make sure it was still beating”.
Woods would drop one more shot on the way in, but it was enough to win by one stroke. Garcia was waiting to embrace him as he sank the winning putt. “This is the future of golf,” said Ben Crenshaw, agog. He was half right. Woods, to date, has won another 12 majors. García has turned 30 and is still waiting for his first.
6) Yang Yong-eun (Hazeltine, 2009)
At which Tiger Woods finally failed to win a major he had been leading after 54 holes. Just over three months later, he crashed his SUV into a fire hydrant outside his house. At which point did arguably the greatest golfer in history lose his aura? Forget what the gossip columnists say, you know at which point Woods lost his aura.
