Open goes to a strange new place and thus it takes on a strange quality. To which Pate said, "Well, I can make the putt, anyhow."Įvery so often the U.S.
"Are you sure I've got two putts to win?" he kept asking Harry Easterly, the USGA president. Jerry oozed success the first time I laid eyes on him."Īs Pate took his triumphant stroll to the last green, under the care of USGA officials, he had only a moment of doubt about the outcome. The Jean Georgian goes at the ball with beautiful rhythm and a high finish, and the amateur Vinny Giles, who serves as a financial adviser to several of the better young pros, was saying Sunday evening, "He's always had the best swing I'd ever seen on a young player. It has to be said of Pate that he has one of the best swings on the tour, not totally unlike that of Johnny Miller, who, incidentally, has now taken one fewer major championship than Pate. "I guess this proves a match-play guy can't play golf," Pate said, with considerable satisfaction. Amateur at match play, and having lost four matches in the Walker Cup when he had been expected to carry the load for the good old U.S.A., Pate couldn't wait to speak to some of the USGA officials he knew when he walked off the 72nd hole. Having been a bit sensitive about winning the U.S. "All I did was hit a shot two feet from the hole and win the Open," he said. "I had to go for it," said Pate, who became the youngest Open winner since 1962, when Nicklaus was also 22. And after everything else that happened-all those putts Geiberger sank and the rush Weiskopf made with a streak of three straight birdies on 12, 13 and 14-it was down to that last shot from the last player on the last hole. Pate had then saved pars with good, teasing putts on the 16th and 17th greens. Ben Crenshaw, for example, double bogeyed it the last three rounds, and the last time took him out of competition. Meanwhile, Pate had birdied the par-3 15th over still more water, another hole that had been crushing people throughout the tournament. I'm exhausted." Alas, the rough got him for a bogey at the 16th, he three-putted for another at the 17th and then the lake got him for a third at the 18th. Mahaffey had played wonderfully but he had kept saying, "I give up too much yardage.
With four holes remaining last Sunday Pate was two strokes behind Mahaffey, whom he had been chasing forever. Then he looked up at the huge crowd, gave a game grin, shrugged and waited for Jerry Pate to finish it off. When he went into the water on the final hole, his chances to win vanishing with his ball, he held together well enough to chip across the water close to the hole and sink the putt, the bogey giving him a tie for fourth with Butch Baird. In Atlanta his 70-68 gave him the 36-hole lead, and when he added a 69 on Saturday he was two ahead of Pate, three ahead of Geiberger and four up on Weiskopf.Īnd he played well Sunday, or at least for most of it. Last year he lost the Open in a playoff with Lou Graham and, by his own account, it had taken him half a year to regain his composure. His third straight round under par after an opening 71, a 277 and the $42,000 check that is never as important in the Open as that gold medal. He got there in one, a closing birdie of all things. And since Mahaffey, just a moment before, had lost his gamble with a wood club from out of the same rough, Pate had two putts to win. Which turned out to be just about two feet away from the flagstick. Instead he ripped into a five-iron and right away you knew it wasn't going anywhere but into the history books. There were also some 30,000 people looking like a football crowd at Pate's University of Alabama as they huddled in grandstands bordering the lake that had already swallowed John Mahaffey.Īnd now Pate was about to go into the water, too, because only immortals like Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus are expected to win an Open at such an age. There sat Pate in the rough and there was the water and there were the pines and there was the green about 190 yards away. They were safely off the premises and tied at 279, one under par for 72 holes. The scene was set for Pate to gouge something disastrous out of the bionic Bermuda rough and make a bogey or possibly something worse and send the tournament into an 18-hole playoff on Monday among himself and Weiskopf and the quiet Geiberger, or maybe between Weiskopf and Geiberger only. In the end, with the Sunday evening sky beginning to match the brooding darkness of the Atlanta Athletic Club's sprawling water hazards, it was Pate who struck the winningest shot on the final hole that any Open has ever produced.
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