Oakmont Memories

Watching the US Open being held at Oakmont Country Club just outside of Pittsburgh brought back a TON of memories the last few days and I’d like to share a few.

The 1978 PGA Championship was held at Oakmont while I was living in Pittsburgh. At the time my buddy Tod Jeffers was working at WMAJ a radio station in State College. Tod and I had quite a scam going. Tod was the sports director for the station and he would write to the PGA and USGA for media credentials to some of their golf tournaments and he would regularly get two (one press and one photographers – oddly enough, they never asked why a radio station needed a photographers pass). The 1978 tournament at Oakmont was one of the first where we pulled this little act (btw – they have wizened up and no longer give out press credentials to radio stations outside of a 50 mile radius of the tournament site).

The access that the credentials provided us was incredible. Not only could we enjoy the numerous benefits of the press tent but we also had access to the course. The way that most media covered the tournament was to sit in the media tent and watch the tournament on TV (more on that later). Then, following competition of their round, each player would come into the interview tent and handle and questions by the media. Rarely did they venture onto the course. Not Tod and I though. We would spend the day on the course walking along with the players.

Friday was the first day that we hit the course. I took a vacation day from work. Because hosting a major championship in town was such a major deal many of our office sales team took customers to the tournament so there were a lot of fellow IBMers at Oakmont. Early in Fridays round Tod and I decided to follow Jack Nicklaus. After Jack’s tee shot on two, Tod and I are strolling up the second fairway about twenty feet behind Jack and his caddy when I here this voice yell “Yo Fall”. I look over and there’s the IBM Branch Manager, Scotty Theissen, behind about five rows of spectators lined up along the fairway. Scotty was about 6’6″ so he stood out from the crowd and could get a good view from behind the others. As soon as I see him, Scotty says “you’d better write a good story” (the press credentials back then were a little different than today – today you hang a placard off of a belt loop, then you had a yellow armband that said PRESS – so Scotty was obviously commenting on the armband). My first thought was “I hope he isn’t upset that I took a day off to come to the tournament”. When I got to work the following Tuesday (more later on why I wasn’t in on Monday), he called me into his office and his comment was “How did you pull that off? I’m impressed.” I think his opinion of me jumped a couple of notches that weekend.

What Tod and I would do for the most part was tag along with the official group that walks along with each golfer. Normally, you’ll have 2-3 golfers, their caddies, a scorer, a standard bearer, a rules official, and maybe a few photographers. The group of us would walk just behind the golfers, and when we got to the green we’d find a spot near the exit walkway and kneel down so we wouldn’t block anyone’s view. We’d do the same thing on the tee when the golfers would tee off.

During one of the rounds, Tod and I were following Tom Watson. We walked up to the 15th tee and before we even got a chance to kneel down a guy standing directly behind me started mouthing off to his friend next to him “Goddamn press. I wait here for hours to see Watson tee off and they come stand right in front of me”. Without hesitation, and with a totally straight face I turned around to him and said “Hey buddy, you’re out here having fun. I’m out here trying to make a living. Cut me a break.” Jeffers had a hard time keeping a straight face.

I mentioned the press tent before. It seems like nothing today with the way that modern technology has advanced but I was really impressed with the IBM computer systems at Oakmont. Remember, there were no PCs then and computers ran in heavily air conditioned back rooms – also there was no such thing as wireless access. At Oakmont though, IBM had wired the entire course. A data entry person would sit just off of each green and they would enter players scores as they completed each hole. That would be immediately transferred back to the main computer that sat in a refrigerated trailer just outside of the press tent. In the press tent there were a series of terminals hooked into the mainframe so that the press could check on the stats at any point in time.

One of the afternoons, Tod and I were in the press tent when we heard a roar go up out on the golf course. A hole in one roar at a major tournament is different than any other. It was immediately obvious that someone had sunk one somewhere out on the course (actually from the direction it came, we were reasonable sure it was hole #8. I walked over to one of the terminals and typed in the request for current stats for #8. Sure enough within seconds, up popped a 1 next to Gil Morgan’s name (the eighth hole is the one that’s playing at around 270-280 for this tournament – Morgan dunked his tee shot on the fly for his one with the hole playing at 242). At the time that absolutely amazed me. Of course, with today’s technology, the exact same data, and much, much more, is instantly available to everyone around the world via the internet but in ’78 that was quite impressive.

By Sunday, Tod and I pretty well had the course mapped out. We knew exactly where to stand to get on camera – and we did. All the TV shots came from fixed cameras on the tees or behind the greens – there were no roving fairway cameras then. Since we could walk with the players, we would make sure that we stood behind the players so that they were always directly between us and the camera on the hole. That meant that we got on MANY times.  There was one memorable shot that I can remember quite well.   It came on #3 when Johnny Miller put his shot onto one of the mounds between the church pew bunkers.   Johnny stood on top of the mound to take his shot and Tod and I were directly behind him.   Because the camera shot was a telephoto from behind the green it looked like we were about two feet from him when the reality was we were a good 20-25 feet.

About an hour or so after the tournament was over I got a phone call from Mother and she went on to repeat the following conversation she had with Dad to me.

DAD (from the TV room watching golf): “Eileen – get in here!”

MOM: “What? Why?”

DAD: “I think I just saw your son on TV”.

MOM (now in the room with him): “Where?”

DAD: “Wait a second until this guy tees up. He’ll be standing right behind him.”

MOM (with the camera now on us): “Well. I don’t know. That sort of looks like him – I guess it could be… Wait a minute. That’s definitely he’s friend Tod next to him so it must be.”

My own mother doesn’t recognize me but recognizes Tod.

John Mahaffey won the tournament in a three-way playoff with Tom Watson and Jerry Pate shooting a 276. Mahaffey made up 7 strokes on Watson over the last 14 holes to take the title. Tod and I followed Watson around for the final nine but not didn’t hang around for the playoff.   In those days, tradition called for dropping the ropes behind the final group as they came up 18.   The fans who rushed in behind the players were quite careful to respect the players space but they had no such concern for us “media” types.  It was too much work fighting our way through the masses to get inside the ropes coming up 18 and we knew it would be the same way for the playoff so we bailed (in those days the playoffs weren’t set up just for TV either – players went right onto the first tee and played from there – the didn’t follow any of the weird playoff formats we have now).

So while the tournament ended on Sunday for most of the participants, it didn’t for us.  Another tradition for the majors is that on the Monday following the tournament, the host course is open to the media for free play.  THAT was an opportunity that Tod and I were not about to pass up.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature did not cooperate.  Come Monday and it was pouring rain.  We went out and tried to play anyway but it was just too much and we had to quit after nine.  Still it was an incredible experience, one that I would love to repeat sometime.

Tomorrow, I’m going to be able to relive part of it but it won’t quite be the same.  Randy Woolridge and I are headed to Oakmont to watch the Sunday round.  The bad news is that we don’t have press credentials.   The good news is that we have VIP privileges (Randy got the tickets from a big time banker friend in Pittsburgh) which includes access to the Pittsburgh Steeler corporate hospitality tent located just off of the eighteenth hole.  I’m looking forward to the experience and will report back on Monday.