Oscars For Three Stars

Lee Trevino is a fellow who should inspire these youngsters to make the effort. Lee is the straightest driver on the tour, using a swing that when broken into pieces seems mechanically flawed but as a whole is one of the most effective and efficient actions in golfing history. Supermex is also a keen strategist and an excellent putter, and he is an intense competitor when he cares, as he certainly did when he won last year's PGA and World Series. But none of those qualities would earn him bus fare without his deep basic understanding of what he himself—not Sam Snead or me—has to do to hit a golf ball. Given that understanding, plus his capacity for working on his game, his unorthodoxy becomes immaterial. Hubert Green, three times a winner last year and a much-underrated player, is similar to Trevino in possessing this kind of self-knowledge, although he is Lee's complete opposite in terms of method.

I was asked a couple of times last year how I felt about Gary Player breathing down my neck in terms of major championship wins. Gary's 1974 Masters and British Open victories give him a total of eight in 16 years. Eliminating my two U.S. Amateurs (a tournament Gary never had the opportunity to play in), I have won 12 majors in 13 years. Gary is four years older than I am, but he still has a lot of winning golf left in him, and the desire to produce it. So do I, which could make it an interesting race, except I think both of us are going to have too many problems in other areas to worry about each other.

Just how competitive the tour has become today, in comparison with my early days as a professional, is exemplified by my own 1974 performance. I failed to win a major championship; I won only two tournaments, as opposed to seven in both 1972 and 1973; and I finished a distant second in money winnings to Miller after heading the list for three consecutive years. (If I had won the World Open playoff, instead of Johnny, we would have been fighting down to the wire for this honor.) Yet my scoring average for the year was 70.1 strokes per round, as compared to 69.81 in 1973, 70.23 in 1972 and 70.1 in 1971. Curiously, Miller's average this year was also 70.1.

Last year was definitely disappointing for me, as much in terms of lack of improvement as in lack of achievement. Until this year I could fairly say that I had improved some phase of my game every year since I turned professional. An honest assessment of 1974 indicates at best a status quo. I drove the ball straight when I had to, which was chiefly when the design or condition of the course demanded it. At other times I drove less well than in the past three years, which caused me to miss more greens, and in turn to do more chipping. I have never been a great chipper, but in 1974 I was worse than ever despite a lot of practice. As a result my putting, which also was not at its best last year, came under heavy pressure, and too frequently it failed to bail me out.

Despite all these problems the record book shows that in 14 of 19 starts I finished in the top 10 and I was in the top five nine times. Most notably in my own mind, I had a real chance to win the Masters, the British Open and the PGA, and managed to finish in the top 10 in all four majors, despite playing plain lousy golf at Winged Foot in the U.S. Open on a course whose design and ultrademanding condition I loved. Looking back now on these and other tournaments, I can see definite evidence that professional golf is getting tougher and tougher. In past years, final rounds of 69, 70 or even 71 frequently gave me victory, but this year time and again I'd finish with that sort of score only to lose to someone else's closing round of between 65 and 68. That represents a challenge I shall be energetically responding to in 1975. In fact, I can hardly wait.