Watching runaway leader Brooks Koepka wobble then recover to win the US PGA Championship for the second successive year, I started doing some research.  Shock!  Horror!  Surely not?

First of all, I thought I heard someone say that no one ever had lost a 7-shot lead in the last round of a major championship, so I scurried upstairs and rooted out ‘A Golfer’s Life’ by Arnold Palmer with James Dodson.  Hadn’t Arnold once been seven shots ahead with nine holes to play in the US Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco and, to the horror of his adoring Army, ended up losing in the 18-hole play-off to Billy Casper?

He had indeed.

Playing with Casper, who’d been US Open champion in 1959, Palmer admitted that he was more worried about Jack Nicklaus, who was a couple of strokes further behind but in reality he was so unworried by either of his pursuers that he started thinking about beating Ben Hogan’s Open record, set in 1948.  “In retrospect, it was the biggest mental error of my career.”

Palmer reflected:  “In daring to think about breaking Hogan’s record, I violated the very rule Pap [his father Deacon] had spent all those years drilling into my head – never quit, never look up, and, most of all, never lose focus until you’ve completely taken care of business.”

Palmer describes in gruesome detail how his lead started dwindling, recalling the last nine holes “like some ghostly newsreel playing in my head”.   Playing the 18th, Casper and Palmer were level, tied, on the same score, whatever the correct terminology is these days.  Casper splits the fairway with his drive, Palmer, taking a 1-iron for accuracy, hoicks it left into thick rough.  “Walking down the fairway, shaken to the core, I doubt if I have ever felt as alone or as devastated on a golf course.  I know what a train wreck the world is witnessing, but I tell myself that I am still in the thick of it.  I can glance at faces in the gallery and see their shock and grief, too.”

Palmer has to hole a slippery, sidehill 6-footer for his par.  “As Bill and I shake hands, all I really feel is a sense of deep relief and perhaps a bit of disbelief at what has just happened…….I sign my card and walk slowly to the press tent, where a hundred unanswerable questions await…..”

Casper won the play-off with a 69 to Palmer’s 73.  “In the high drama of my collapse, it’s sometimes forgotten that Bill Casper played almost flawless golf down the stretch……..I didn’t just lose the 1966 US Open – Bill Casper’s brilliant play won it.”

Arnold Palmer was an icon, a superstar who transcended golf and was adored by millions.  He had a long and distinguished career but his seven major titles were condensed into the years between 1958 and 1964.  “The same go-for-broke kind of play that won me seven majors perhaps cost me at least that many more,” he said.  “But that’s life and that’s golf.”

Fortunately for Koepka, Dustin Johnson couldn’t quite manage flawless at the end but it was a damned close-run thing.  With the confidence (deserved) of someone who has won four of the last eight major championships that he’s played in, Koepka didn’t see why he couldn’t reach double figures in major titles.  The odds, however, are against him.

Jack has 18, Tiger has 15 and Walter has 11.  Walter?  Walter Hagen, a showman supreme, never knowingly undersold,  who won two US Opens, four Opens and five US PGA Championships between 1914 and 1929 and didn’t know what a major was.   The PGAs were all matchplay and the Masters, started in 1934, came a little too late for the Hagen heyday.  Next come Ben Hogan and Gary Player with nine and Tom Watson with eight.  Palmer, Bob Jones (legendary amateur), Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead and Harry Vardon are credited with seven and Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino have six…..You get my point.

In these days of mega money, when a couple of wins – or even none at all – can make a careful player with no expensive addictions more than comfortable for life, majors have become the measure of a golfer, almost to the point of obsession with some.  They are, when all’s said and done, a bit of an artificial, modern construct but there’s no denying that they are exciting and in most years the biggest events of the season.

Meanwhile, further south, in North Carolina, in the more sedate surroundings (Bethpage Black during a tournament is about as sedate as bedlam) of Pine Needles Lodge and Country Club, Helen Alfredsson was winning the second US Senior Women’s Open.  The Swede kept her nerve to win by two shots from long-time friends and adversaries Trish Johnson and Juli Inkster.  Go to usga.org and look at the pictures; the old dolls are as competitive as ever; winning still feels wonderful; losing not so wonderful.  They’re trying their spikes off and having a ball; catching up with old friends; trying to beat the heck out of them; salving the aches and pains with gels or whatever; cranking the swings into serious action.  JoAnne Carner, aged 80, missed the cut but walked all 36 holes…….Far be it from me to insert the words PGA, John Daly, arthritic knee and buggy at this point.

Finally, across the Atlantic, at Rosses Point, God’s own country as Dad invariably called it, James Newton from Macclesfield won the Flogas Irish Amateur Open Championship by five shots from Conor Purcell, of Portmarnock.  Newton started the final round five shots ahead of the field and was still five ahead at the end despite starting with three bogeys and having a triple bogey at the 16th.  It was that sort of day, with lots of wind and rain (sorry Dad!) but the inimitable Pat Cashman, photographer extraordinaire, set up a wonderful trophy pic as the cloud enveloped Ben Bulben yet again.

 

 

Well, I’ve enjoyed my first visit to the famed Bethpage Black, an awesome public golf course on Long Island, where keen golfers sleep in their cars overnight to have the chance of procuring an early tee time.  With a cranky back and advancing years I’m not sure I’d be flexible enough to manage that before attempting to negotiate a course that seriously challenges you mentally and physically no matter which tees you play off.

Last week Bethpage Black hosted the 101st PGA Championship, the first time for a few decades that it wasn’t necessary to fight high August temperatures and threatening thunderstorms.  Hooray for the new date in May, even if it did mean wearing a few extra layers.  The players still had plenty of battles on their hands, the first being how to cope with a penal A W Tillinghast design that favours diagonal hazards (because it challenges the better players the most), angled elusive greens that repel golf balls as opposed to gathering them and brutal rough.  Throw in to the mix gusting winds and raucous New York sports fans and it becomes a mental test just to survive, never mind contend and ultimately triumph in a major championship.

That was the examination paper that the 156-man field faced and it was Brooks Koepka who dominated, then wobbled slightly with four consecutive bogeys late on Sunday before regaining his balance and clinching his fourth major in less than two years.  To say he was impressive would be an understatement and despite his final round lead shrinking from seven to one his immaculate play over the first 64 holes afforded him enough of a cushion to outlast the fast-finishing Dustin Johnson.

Matt Wallace, a 29-year old Englishman, was the best of the European contingent, finishing joint third with Jordan Spieth and Patrick Cantlay.  He had thrust himself into the Ryder Cup conversation last year with three wins in very short order in 2018 but was overlooked in favour of players with more proven pedigree.  Well, he’s set about polishing up his credentials very nicely indeed.  He has already proved he has a winner’s mentality.  He won five consecutive events early in his career on the Alps Tour, then won on the Challenge Tour before graduating to the European Tour where he now has four victories.  Mind you, he missed a golden opportunity to add to that total a couple of weeks ago at the British Masters at the glorious Hillside golf course where he finished runner-up to Sweden’s Marcus Kinhult.  He seemed a little jumpy and fidgety that week but this was a much more polished performance on a grander stage.  Of course, it does help to have the vastly experienced Portrush man, Dave McNeilly, on the bag.

Wallace couldn’t have played in front of two more different galleries in the last two weeks.  Firstly, the hugely supportive, knowlegeable and respectful golf fans at Hillside and then, well, then there’s the New York sports fan.  There never seems to be actual silence during any shot.  The best you can hope for is a low level buzzing but this can lead quickly to jeers and chanting if you produce a mediocre shot or look, as Koepka said, “as if you’re half-choking it away”.

They cheer madly for good shots no matter which quarter they come from but your eardrums are constantly at risk from random shouts bellowed out by individuals seemingly trained to develop enormous lung capacity.  This could get seriously out of hand at the Ryder Cup which is scheduled to be there in 2024.  I asked Matt was he ready to pencil his name on to the team sheet for 2024 knowing now what the atmosphere was likely to be.  His response?  “I looked in the mirror this morning and told myself I belonged out here.  I didn’t necessarily feel that at the start of the week, but now I do.  I want to be there.”

Don’t forget your earplugs.

The only other notable finishes from a European perspective came from two of Ireland’s best, Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy, who finished in a tie for eighth spot with four other players on 1 over par.  Lowry opened with a lacklustre 75 but was 4 under for his final 54 holes, an effort bettered only by runner-up Dustin Johnson who was 5 under.  That was a heck of an effort and Lowry is bubbling with confidence again and the pep is back in his step.

McIlroy too can take a lot of pride in sticking in so well in the face of adversity.  I followed him the first two days and he was 7 over after 29 holes and well out of reach of making the cut.  At that time a top eight finish would have seemed unfathomable but a 69, 69 weekend was impressive.  Realising that his best stuff is oh-so-close he is choosing to be encouraged by that and keep his frustrations at bay as best he can – more evidence that this phenomenally talented player is continuing to mature.

And so the major caravan will roll in to Pebble Beach in a little over two weeks’ time when we will do it all again.  And after that…..Portrush!