What Weiskopf was, and could have been

Dave Hill was a tough PGA Tour customer and a naturally-occurring source of hard truth. He was once asked about Tom Weiskopf, the 1973 British Open champion who died on Sunday, at 79.

“If you put Jack Nicklaus’ head on Tom Weiskopf’s shoulders,” Hill said, “you’d worry the world.”

That was Weiskopf’s never-ending story. Even the high praise fron Hill included two things: a qualifier and a reference to Nicklaus, who preceded Weiskopf by three years at Ohio State and floored his way to 18 major championships, with Weiskopf often under his wheels.

The prime example was the 1975 Masters. Weiskopf led by one when Nicklaus surveyed a 40-foot putt on No. 16, set up by a weak tee ball. Nicklaus got over the ball and got this insane idea that he might actually make that putt. He did, held the putter over his head while sprinting off, and then Weiskopf, playing in the group behind Nicklaus, made bogey. Nicklaus won this unsurpassed Masters by one stroke over Weiskopf and Johnny Miller.

“I had to walk through the Bear tracks to get to my ball,” Miller said.

“The next year CBS set up Nicklaus to try the same putt 100 times, and he came up empty. It didn’t matter. Weiskopf lived the rest of his professional life cleaning and bandaging that wound.

“I’ve thought about it a thousand times,” he said. “It went up a slope and broke into the middle of the hole. I refuse to believe luck or some cosmic force had anything to do with it. It was pure skill all the way.”

Weiskopf won 16 tour events and dominated that British Open, at Troon, from wire to wire. He also won a U.S. Senior Open, with runnerup Nicklaus hanging around to congratulate him, and was on two Ryder Cups. He should be in the World Golf Hall of Fame, with four runnerup finishes at Augusta and eight other Top Five finishes in majors, and a proud career as a worldwide course designer. But just as Ernie Els will always wonder why Earl and Tida Woods didn’t put a tennis racket in their son’s hand, Weiskopf shivered in the shadow of a man who was seven inches shorter.

Weiskopf was in the CBS booth with Jim Nantz when Nicklaus, at 46, was in the process of stalking his sixth Masters title. Nantz asked Weiskopf what could be going through Nicklaus’ mind. “If I knew the way he thought,” Weiskopf replied, “I would have won this championship.”

For his part Nicklaus said Weiskopf was as talented as anyone he played with. When Weiskopf could break free from his own stern demands, he was a force. At Troon he hit 11 one-irons and never missed a fairway or a green with any of them, and he one-putted 21 holes on Saturday and Sunday.

But then Tony Lema saw Weiskopf’s pro debut at the Western Open, just a couple of weeks before Lema would win the 1964 British Open at St. Andrews. “I wish I had all the money that you’re going to win on tour,” Lema told him.

Indeed, Weiskopf was the fourth man to reach $2 million in career earnings and the seventh leading money winner when he quit playing fulltime. In ‘73 he was easily the world’s best player, with five PGA Tour wins, one of which was a World Series of Golf conquest of Nicklaus.

He was 6-foot-5 and fearsomely long. On the 72nd hole of that 1975 Masters, his drive outdistanced Miller’s by 50 yards, before he missed an 8-foot bid to tie Nicklaus. He was a prisoner of his own talent and the obligations therein, and he could not forgive himself for bad shots.

“I was like an artist who wanted to throw away his canvas after a mistake and you can’t do that in golf,” said Weiskopf, who admitted he could have used some sports psychology back then.

“I should have won twice as many tournaments as I did, easy. I wasted my potential. The most persistent feelings I have are guilt and remorse.”

He kept going back to a Ryder Cup in which he was paired with Nicklaus. The two discussed a putt Nicklaus faced. When it went awry, Weiskopf said he couldn’t believe the Bear missed it. “I didn’t miss it,” Nicklaus said, straight-faced. “It just didn’t go in.”

Weiskopf never developed that sort of creative denial. He had a distant relationship with his dad Tom, who was a railroad worker near his Cleveland home. The two became closer when his dad fought cancer, and died in early ‘73. At that point, father told son to make things a little easier on himself, and that’s when Weiskopf blossomed.

The two shared an uncontrollable taste for alcohol. In the son’s case it cost him a marriage to Jeanne, a former Miss Minnesota and one of the most popular golf wives. wives. On the second day of the new millenium, Weiskopf declared himself an ex-drinker and remained so until his death, from pancreatic cancer. He considered that his second major championship.

“If you ever wonder if you have a drinking problem, you do,” Weiskopf said.

His architecture work, usually with Jay Morrish, set him apart. He didn’t have to compete head-to-head with Nicklaus anymore, he could find his own masterpieces. The firm designed Loch Lomond, former home of the Scottish Open, and it did TPC Scottsdale, still home of the Phoenix PGA Tour event. Troon North, also in Scottsdale, might have been Weiskopf’s best.

He tried hard to make the courses fun for the mediocre masses who actually carry the golf industry. For the pros, he was one of the forerunners of the driveable par-4, inspired when Weiskopf realized so many of St. Andrews’ par 4s were within his range.

He remarried, and he and Laurie settled in Big Sky, Montana. There he could put golf in the perspective he preferred: a nice alternative to hunting. Weiskopf once blew off a Ryder Cup for a hunting trip. He always said golf wasn’t the most important thing to him, just the most frustrating, and it took him decades to come to terms with the Bear who knocked.

“Trying to beat Jack was like draining the Pacific Ocean with a teacup,” he said. “The last four holes were always murder. The crowds, the fatigue….the realization that Jack wasn’t going to make a mistake. All of it hits you at once. Jack had a look on his face that expressed deep suspicion in your ability to handle this, and in the end I rarely could.”

The hope is that, at some point, he realized it was almost as rare to find the golfer to handle Tom Weiskopf.