Palmer bites the cherry

During a practice round at Cherry Hills last month Mike Reid shot a sparkling 60. The intention was to assess the sort of clubbing adjustment he would need to make for his challenge in the rarified atmosphere of the Sprint International Tournament at Castle Pines, which is also on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado.

Since then, Arnold Palmer has celebrated his 70th birthday - last Friday to be precise. And when he spoke 39 years ago of a round of 65 at Cherry Hills having championship-winning potential, one of his closest friends scoffed at the idea. It would do nothing for him, said golf writer Bob Drum, who added dismissively: "You're too far back."

Palmer made such a huge impact on the US Open of 1960, however, that his achievement has been preserved for posterity. Among the engraved plaques recording some of the game's heroic deeds is one beside the first tee at Cherry Hills, commemorating Palmer's drive of 346 yards to the heart of the green. The achievement gained a certain piquancy when Arnie and his design associate, Ed Seay, were given the contract to remodel the course in 1977.

In mile-high Denver, the thin air allows the ball to fly about 10 per cent further than normal. But, with an overall length of 6,888 yards, Cherry Hills remained a formidable challenge when the US Open was held there for the first time in 1938. That was when the USGA, knowing that the club had financial problems, demanded a $10,000 bond to ensure that the event actually went ahead.

It was, in fact, the first time the championship was staged west of the Mississippi river and with Ralph Guldahl winning by six strokes, it went so well that the USGA returned there in 1960. Incidentally, among those players to miss the half-way cut of 154 - 14 over par - were promising young practitioners named Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret on 156.

Hogan was among those who made the return journey to Denver where, for 70 of the 72 holes, it looked as if he might eventually secure the title for an elusive, fifth time.

During the early months of 1960, however, all the golfing talk was about the swashbuckling Palmer and his penchant for mounting tournament-winning charges, while hitching up his pants and squinting into the setting sun. He had done just that to capture the 1960 US Masters by a stroke from Ken Venturi and by the time June came around he had also won the Palm Springs Classic and the Texas Open, along with the Baton Rouge and Pensacola tournaments.

So it was that he had five titles to his credit in 1960 alone when he went to Cherry Hills which had been lengthened to 6,994 yards since the 1938 staging. Most players relished the extra distance they gained at altitude, but there were others who experienced headaches from the thin air. Among them was Hogan who, at 47, decided to carry a small oxygen canister with a breathing apparatus.

Indeed a total of 38 players took between 12 and 14 litres of oxygen daily in the locker-room, while portable tanks were set up around the course. The entire exercise was supervised by a physical therapist employed by the club.

In view of his exploits in the final round, it was richly ironic that Palmer should have experienced problems with the first hole, from the outset. In fact he never had a par there over the four rounds and started with a double-bogey six after pushing his drive into a ditch which ran parallel with the fairway.

At the end of the first round, Mike Souchak led with a 68 from Jerry Barber and Henry Ransom on 69. The gifted young amateur, Jack Nicklaus, was tied 12th with six others on 71 while Palmer was tied 19th with 15 others on 72.

By the halfway stage, Souchak was on 135 and three strokes clear of Doug Sanders. Nicklaus was tied 11th with three others on 142 and Palmer had improved to a share of 15th place with six others on 143 - one over par. The cut was made on 147.

It was a time when 36 holes were played on the Saturday and when they went to lunch, Souchak still held the lead on 208 after 54 holes; Nicklaus was on 211 and Palmer remained in a share of 15th place, now on 215 with eight others. He would need to make up seven strokes on the leader and pass 14 players.

Lunch consisted of a cheeseburger and iced tea in the company of Venturi, Bob Rosburg, golf writer Dan Jenkins and colleague Drum, who was reporting the events for the Pittsburgh Press, Palmer's local paper. "I wonder if Souchak can hold on," mused Venturi. "I don't see why he can't," said Rosburg. Who then added: "But it's a funny game."

Suddenly, Palmer decided to throw in his tuppence worth. "I may shoot 65," he said. "What would that do?" Angered by Drum's contention that he was too far back, Palmer, with a phrase straight out of a John Wayne western, snapped: "The hell I am." Before adding: "A 65 would give me 280 - and 280 wins Opens." "Yeah," said Jenkins, "when Hogan shoots it".

BY then, Palmer had pushed back his chair and begun to stalk out of the room. At the doorway he stood and looked back. Drum teased: "Go on boy. Go make your seven or eight birdies and shoot 73." Arnie said nothing, but a determined look spoke volumes for his thoughts.

Having failed to drive the first green in the three previous rounds, Palmer knew he had no option but to try again. This time the ball flew arrow straight and bounced through a strip of rough protecting the entrance to the putting surface before coming to rest 20 feet from the hole. The eagle putt slipped past the target but he had a tap-in birdie.

Then came a chip-in birdie at the second, before a wedge approach landed within a foot of the hole at the 348-yard third. Meanwhile, the leader, Souchak, had also thrown caution to the winds by attempting to drive the first. In his case, however, it led to a double-bogey six which became the start of a slippery slope, culminating in the final round of 75 and a dramatic tumble down the leaderboard.

But Palmer was on fire. With an 18-footer at the fourth he had started his round with four successive birdies to be two under par for the championship. The chase was on. As the news swept through the course, large crowds deserted Souchak and his partner Sanders and went to join Palmer who was in the two-ball directly ahead, in the company of Paul Harney.

As Robert Sommers wrote in his beautiful book The US Open: Golf's Ultimate Challenge: "With every putt that fell, the cheers grew louder and spectators poured in from every direction, caught up in the frenzy of one of the wildest days the Open had ever seen. Before it was over, 10 men would have their chances to win and when it finally ended, they had seen the coronation of Arnold Palmer, the emergence of Jack Nicklaus and the last gasp of Ben Hogan, three men who were the best of their times."

In the event, after a mundane par at the long fifth, Palmer sank a 25footer to birdie the short sixth and a six-footer at the seventh to be six under for the round. Then came his only bogey, at the uphill, 233-yard par-three eighth, where a two-iron tee-shot was pulled into a greenside trap from where he failed to get up and down, missing from three feet.

Still, he went on to reach the turn in 30, by which stage he had made up no fewer than six strokes on Souchak. But a more menacing challenge was developing up ahead. As Palmer stood in a greenside trap at the eighth, Nicklaus was heading towards the 10th tee, having negotiated the outward journey in 32 to be five under par for 63 holes.

However spectacular Palmer's play, it seemed he was incapable even of catching his rivals, much less surging clear of them. But the first telling sign came when Souchak bogeyed the ninth to lose the lead for the first time. Then Nicklaus, with a one-stroke lead after the 12th, missed from 18 inches at the next where he was not sufficiently experienced to know that he could have repaired a pitch mark between his ball and the hole.

Hogan, meanwhile, was three under par at the turn and after enduring miserable luck on the greens, which had become his lot at that stage of his career, a 20-footer eventually found the target at the 15th. At four under par for the championship, he was level with Palmer and Jack Fleck and a stroke ahead of Nicklaus. Effectively, he was right in the thick of things.

It is bitterly ironic that the great man's undoing should have been an ill-judged wedge shot at the long 17th. In a desperate attempt to get as close to the hole as possible, so as not to place undue pressure on a frail putting stroke, Hogan was crushed to see the ball spin back into water.

Completing a manoeuvre which Jean Van de Velde abandoned at Carnoustie two months ago, Hogan took off his shoes and socks and popped the ball out of the water and onto the green, but he missed the putt to run up a bogey six. Needing a birdie on the last for 280, he found water again, leading this time to a triple-bogey seven and a round of 76 for an eventual share of eighth place.

Palmer, meanwhile, had shot safe, par figures since a birdie at the long 11th. And on seeing Hogan's collapse, he knew the final threat was gone. With pars at the final two holes, he secured the 65 he had targeted on the first tee. In the process, he had proved Jenkins wrong: somebody other than Hogan had shot 280 in the US Open, and won.

Back in the locker-room, the Hawk slumped down on a seat, tired and dejected. After some moments, he uttered the prophetic statement: "I played 36 holes today with a kid who should have won this thing by 10 strokes." Later, on hearing this, Nicklaus remarked: "If I'd been putting for Mr Hogan, he would have won by 10."

As it was, the sensational 20-year-old shot a total of 282, which was the lowest by an amateur in the history of the event. He also became the first amateur ever to break par on aggregate, in a US Open.

It took only two years for Hogan to be proved right. On June 17th, 1962 in a play-off at Oakmont, Nicklaus beat Palmer by three strokes to win his first professional tournament, which just happened to be the US Open. Palmer would never repeat his triumph of Cherry Hills. But egged on by the teasing of a golf-writer, his seven-stroke comeback to win, was, and remains, the biggest in the history of the championship.