Duel in the Sun
Reviewed by John Turnbull
JULY 16, 2005 archive
In reviewing Corcoran’s book I admit to strong bias. Jack Nicklaus became an icon for me early in childhood. Like Tiger Woods, I committedNicklaus’s major-championship record to memory, I tried to copy Nicklaus’s golf swing down to the waggles and signature head cock, and I paced the room while watching Nicklaus in competition. Family members knew that I required seclusion when Nicklaus was on television. I would not have wanted anyone present when I concocted odd ritualistic actions in desperate hope for Nicklaus’s success. I remember saying to myself, “If Jack makes this two-footer, I’ll touch my lips to the gold-plated urn on our mantelpiece.” If he made the putt, I would do so.
Tom Watson, as an usurper to Nicklaus, was my sworn enemy. When he defeated Nicklaus in the 1982 U.S. Open -- denying Nicklaus a record fifth U.S. Open title by chipping in for birdie on the 17th hole at Pebble Beach -- I wept. This would not be surprising, except that I had just finished my freshman year in college. The lure of Nicklaus to me was and remains strong. Last year I clipped a picture of Nicklaus flipping a cicada off his sleeve during a senior-golf event. I thought he was flipping the bug with uncommon grace and style.
Watson outdueled Nicklaus many times in a five- or six-year period, beginning in 1977 at the Masters and continuing that year -- as chronicled in Corcoran’s book -- in the British Open at the Ailsa course at Turnberry. In some ways, I found myself grateful that much of Corcoran’s text concentrates on placing the 1977 event in historical context. In fact, narrative of the tournament itself does not begin until page 144; the duel, per se, holds off until page 162. I thanked Corcoran for sparing me a lengthy, painful replay of Nicklaus missing two crucial short putts, enabling Watson to claim the trophy on rounds of 68-70-65-65, with Nicklaus one shot behind (68-70-65-66). The action itself, the thrilling shot-making from both players -- which enabled the two of them to finish ten shots clear of the next pursuer -- serves in Corcoran’s treatment almost as a denouement, which may frustrate some readers. For me, however, it seemed like a parental gesture, shielding me from hurt. I found myself wanting to compare Corcoran’s tale with the account from the dean of golf writers, Herbert Warren Wind. This became especially relevant after Wind’s death on May 30 of this year. I consulted the anthology of Wind’s golf writings, Following Through: Herbert Warren Wind on Golf (Ticknor & Fields, 1985). Wind’s account, as it usually did, would have appeared in The New Yorker months after the tournament. At several thousand words, his articles were stately and disengaged; he did not frequent the hospitality tents but roamed the fairways in a trademark tweed cap. The chapter “Nicklaus and Watson at Turnberry” too treated the sensational golf with understatement, as if Wind knew that a stroke-by-stroke recap would not service in this case. Wind, not given to exaggeration, writes that “I cannot remember a head-to-head battle that can begin to compare with the one that Nicklaus and Watson waged two days running.” Wind’s treatments work so well because of his command of language and his iconoclastic eye. He describes his drive back to his lodging in Ayr after the first night of the tournament: “The road winds through Scottish countryside at its tranquil best. You drive past soft-green sloping fields, some of them thick with Ayrshire cows, others punctuated with hayricks, which in this part of Scotland have a sort of ziggurat shape. . . . When you cross the Doon River, you know you are bearing down on Ayr and the heart of Robert Burns country.”
Corcoran does not match Wind for melodiousness, but his research and interviews are prodigious. Perhaps Corcoran’s most significant achievement is documenting the relatively low stature of the British Open among American professionals until the pioneering visits of Arnold Palmer. The overseas trip was rigorous when Palmer made his first foray in 1960, and even players of Palmer’s stature were required to qualify for the Open. Prize money often would not cover the cost of travel. Argentinean Roberto De Vicenzo, whom Corcoran has interviewed, recalls a boat trip to Liverpool in 1949 that took seventeen days.
Also, Corcoran’s service is in seeking out -- a quarter-century later -- some of the secondary players and eyewitnesses to the Turnberry duel. He speaks, for example, with former Nicklaus caddie Angelo Argea, who relates that Nicklaus rarely sought his advice on reading greens. Of the crucial short putt that Nicklaus missed at the 17th hole of the final round, Argea says, “I’m still a good reader of greens. I really wish Jack would have asked me sometimes.”
By the end of Corcoran’s recounting of the golf tournament, one partly understands why such competitions retain such a hold on human imaginations. On the 18th hole of the final round, with Nicklaus trailing by one shot, he badly mis-hits his drive into prickly gorse, such that his swing is impeded and an “animalistic” effort is required to dislodge the ball and to propel it toward the green. “Nicklaus drew the club back to fully parallel,” Corcoran writes, “and lashed into the ball. . . . The lead edge of Nicklaus’s club acted like a scythe, and it disinterred a large clump of grass at its roots.” Although Nicklaus’s effort and the long putt he converted for birdie ultimately were in vain, Scottish spectators immediately recognized the miraculous nature of Nicklaus’s stroke. Recalling a British wedding custom, individuals stopped by Nicklaus’s large divot and dropped coins into the hole, “until a small pile of coins lay in the divot in the hope they might coax a miracle from the Fates.” The vignette takes on particular charm with Nicklaus, 65, poised to play his last British Open, and likely his last major tournament, this week at St. Andrews. The Royal Bank of Scotland has minted a £5 note in tribute to Nicklaus, bearing his argyle-sweater-clad image from the last of his British Open victories in 1978. In sport, Nicklaus now has both metaphorical and literal currency.
Corcoran, Michael. Duel in the Sun: Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus in the battle of Turnberry. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.215 + vi pp. $14.95 (pbk.). ISBN 0-8032-6451-8. Originally published under
the same title by Simon &Schuster, 2002. 224 pp. $24.00 (hbk.). ISBN
0-7432-0310-0.
Copyright © 2005 by John Turnbull.