Free At Last

It might have come 20 years after a prime filled with more frustration than fulfillment, but what finally happened at last week's U.S. Senior Open at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., was still a blessed sight. Tom Weiskopf set himself free.

The last time he did that was in 1973. Weiskopf won five tournaments in eight weeks that summer, including the crowning glory of his star-crossed career—the British Open at Troon. Last Sunday, after a near decade-long sabbatical from competitive golf and an ambivalent approach to the Senior tour, Weiskopf found himself liberated again.

Playing with rediscovered physical and mental control, Weiskopf put together rounds of 69-69-69 and a closing 68 for a 13-under total of 275. In doing so, he overcame, by four strokes, second-place finisher Jack Nicklaus, the man who has cast a shadow over his career. He also overcame the kind of tight fairways and difficult, sloping greens that had stymied him in the past. Most of all, he overcame himself.

"I had tremendous concentration this week," said Weiskopf after clinching his victory with four birdies on Sunday. "Just everything was in slow motion for me. Never did I get mad, which is unusual. Never lost my determination to play the next shot and forget the last shot."

Few players in history have had a mind that was more confining than Tom Weiskopf's. First, there was the tyranny of all that talent—the powerful, near-perfect swing, made more majestic by the massive arc produced by his 6'3" frame. Worse, there were the comparisons with Nicklaus, generated by their shared Ohio and Ohio State backgrounds, by their length off the tee and by their closeness in age—Nicklaus is not quite three years older.

But Weiskopf was nothing like Nicklaus inside. Both are perfectionists, but Weiskopf could not tolerate his own failings. While Nicklaus's response to adversity was to try harder, Weiskopf would react with temper, becoming Terrible Tom, or with torpor, becoming the man who stopped playing the PGA Tour after 1984. "I could not accept failure when it was my fault," he said. "It just used to tear me up."

But with time and a fulfilling new career as a golf course designer, Weiskopf has escaped the forces that often defeated him. "I don't know," he mused. "Maybe it is because I am older. I just don't think that way anymore."

Since joining the Senior tour in 1993, Weiskopf has played because he wants to, not because he feels he has to. In three seasons on the 50-and-over tour he has never competed in more than 16 events a year, preferring to focus on his design business rather than ride around some inferior course for three days in a golf cart. But there are no carts at the Senior Open, nor are the courses beneath Weiskopf's standards. The Senior Open appeals to his sense of history and his appreciation of the best players against whom he competed in his prime.

These days, when Weiskopf is motivated, he is dangerous. Last August, Weiskopf saw one of his best friends, Bert Yancey, stricken by a fatal heart attack on the practice tee of the Franklin Quest Championship in Park City, Utah. Weiskopf was able to channel his grief into a steely competitiveness and win his first Senior tournament.

At Congressional, Weiskopf had another bittersweet inspiration, his wife of 28 years, Jeanne, and her recovery from breast cancer. Her illness was diagnosed a week after Yancey's death, and she has endured a lumpectomy, radiation and chemotherapy with a calm courage that gave her husband a profound lesson. "I just know it helped, just to watch this person who is always on this level," he said, indicating with a sweep of his hand an even plane. "I am peaks and valleys."