Forget La La Land. If you had said there would be a pair of 62s on day one of the US Open at Los Angeles Country Club, you probably would have been laughed out of Tinseltown and told you were living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
The brace of eight-under cards by Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele to get things cracking in the 123rd edition of this storied old championship on Thursday generated the kind of gasps of delight not heard in this vicinity since the saucy soirees at the Playboy Mansion, which backs on to the 13th, were in full swing.
US Opens, which tend to be battles of golfing attrition where every par is a prisoner, are not supposed to surrender so tamely. Fowler and Schauffele’s barnstorming rounds were the first 62s recorded in US Open history and equalled the major record set by South Africa’s Branden Grace in The Open at Royal Birkdale back in 2017.
Until amazing Grace came on the scene to lower the mark, it was good old Johnny Miller who had set the standard with a thrilling 63, which others would equal but never dip below.
Fifty years ago, he mounted a rousing closing-round charge at the US Open of 1973 at Oakmont which should have been accompanied by the din of thundering hooves as he claimed a spectacular victory.
That score stood the test of time for half a century in America’s national championship until Fowler and Schauffele got in on the low-scoring act the other day. Miller probably kicked the tele in a brassed off huff.
As the third men’s major of year heads into its final round today, the movers and shakers at the sharp end would not mind replicating Miller’s final day heroics. That is easier said than done, of course. His US Open record may have gone but the magnitude of his major moment remains. And Miller knows it.
“I shot a 63 on the Sunday and it was enough to win the US Open,” said Miller, who would also win The Open in 1976. “There will be guys that will shoot 61 or 62, but can they do it on Sunday to win? That’s what makes the round what it is. It wouldn’t have done any good if I finished second. It was like somebody was helping me up there. It was not a normal round.”
The golfing gods have always worked in mysterious ways. For Miller, there was also a mere mortal in the gallery – well, we think she was a mere mortal – whose clairvoyance remains seared on his mind.
“I had a lady that came up to me on Monday after the practice round,” he recalled. “She was on 18th green, and she says, ‘you’re going to win the US Open; I’m never wrong. You don’t have to worry, you’re going to win’. She was there on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”
But what about the Saturday when Miller slithered out of contention with a damaging third round 76? “I never saw her again after that,” he said with a chuckle. “I was a little bit down, not because she wasn’t there, but I was starting to believe her, that I was going to win. I went to practice on Sunday and I was not very hopeful at all. I wasn’t even a little bit hopeful that I had a chance because I saw the guys that were in front of me on the leaderboard.”
Six shots behind with 18 holes to play, and with heavyweights such as Palmer, Nicklaus, Player and Trevino ahead of him, Miller mounted a mighty reeling in job. He just about left scorch marks on the Oakmont turf with a rampaging burst of four birdies in a row to start and he kept his foot to the floor to win by a single shot.
“It was almost a perfect ball-striking round,” he said of a day he has replayed so many times he will have to get his memory converted to digital to preserve the footage.
The pressure will be cranked up today as the contenders parry and joust for the prize and prestige of major glory. That pressure is par for the course. “I thought the greatness of golf is the choke factor,” Miller said. “I don’t care if you’re playing for a milkshake or $5 Nassau. It’s about whether you can make that putt to win.”
Somebody will get asked that $3.6million question tonight.
