Read Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont for Free Online Page A

returned to Latrobe to seek his father’s advice. The work paid off as Palmer tied for sixth place. Four years later, only a month before his much-anticipated return to Oakmont, they hoped for even greater results.
    “I worked pretty hard,” Palmer vividly recalled thirty-five years later. “I put a great emphasis on driving, and I practiced my irons a lot. The thing that I should have done was go to Oakmont and putted on the greens more. I didn’t do that as much as I should have.”
    By the end of May, Palmer was ready to test his game on tour. A strong 68 at the Kemper Open in Charlotte put him within a stroke of the lead after day one, but he played the final three rounds at even par to fall out of serious contention.
    “I’m discouraged by my scoring, but not my game,” Palmer said.
    The next day Palmer flew to Ashland, Ohio, and donated his services to help raise money at the Johnny Appleseed Boy Scout Golf Jamboree, where he not only bought a new putter that he liked, but tied the course record before flying back home.
    While most tour regulars traveled to Philadelphia for the IVB Classic, Palmer continued his solitary preparation under Pap. Mostly he practiced at Latrobe Country Club, but a week before the Open, he joined former Pittsburgh Pirates stars Dick Groat and Jerry Lynch for a few holes at Oakmont before going off by himself to practice on the course.
    Palmer may have gone eleven years without setting foot on Oakmont, but he felt like nothing had changed.
    “I feel very much at home here.”
    In fact, he felt so much at home at Oakmont, so intimately connected to his childhood memories, that he made a surprising decision just before the championship began. He would forgo the use of either eyeglasses or contact lenses during the U.S. Open, aids that he admitted had become critical to him in recent years in order to judge distances, both on the greens and from the fairways.
    “I probably should wear them but I’m not,” he said. “The fact I know the course as well as I do should make up for not being able to see at a distance.”
    While that week’s tour stop wrapped up on Sunday in Philadelphia, Palmer fired a solid one under 70 at Oakmont in his final practice round before U.S. Open week officially began.
    By late morning on Monday, the 150-man field started arriving at Oakmont to register. All of the PGA tour stars were there: Nicklaus; the new “people’s champion,” Lee Trevino; red-hot Tom Weiskopf, winner of three of his last four tour stops; and Australia’s Bruce Crampton, who had already won three times during the 1973 season. Representing the new breed of “young lions” were the former collegiate sensations Lanny Wadkins and Jerry Heard, the current U.S. Amateur champion, Vinny Giles, and the reigning three-time NCAA champion, Ben Crenshaw. Sixty-one-year-old Sam Snead, fifty-three-year-old Julius Boros (a two-time U.S. Open winner), and forty-two-year-old Billy Casper (also a two-time U.S. Open winner) spoke for the previous generation of stars.
    But amid all these great players of past and present, Palmer was undeniably the star.
    During the practice rounds, children and adults alike crowded excitedly beside him wherever he walked, begging for autographs. The enormous galleries that followed the King’s every move continuously shouted words of encouragement whenever he hit a shot or simply passed by. More ambitious members of the army even managed to sneak in a quick photograph with Palmer as he made his way around the course or into the clubhouse.
    The reporters who gathered at Oakmont acted much like the fans, craving every minute they could spend with the King. While experts agreed that Jack Nicklaus was the greatest golfer who ever lived, many still believed that Palmer had an honest chance to win the 1973 U.S. Open. In light of his victory in the Bob Hope, where he had outlasted a direct challenge from Nicklaus, his close familiarity with Oakmont, and his dead-serious