OAKMONT, Pa. -- Arnold Palmer and John Schlee looked at the numbers and attempted to do the brain-boggling math. It wasn't easy, since the figures, especially at a U.S. Open, just didn't jibe.
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Splashed across the bottom of the hand-operated scoreboard as they played the back nine at Oakmont Country Club was the name John Miller, who had been hastily added to the board's list of household names that included Nicklaus, Trevino, Boros and Player.
"Gee, look at Miller," Schlee said.
So they did, for several confusing and anxious moments. Palmer, who began the day tied for the lead with Schlee and two others, mistakenly believed he was leading at the time. The King finally turned to Schlee and muttered in blue language about the red numbers, "Where the f--- did he come from? What's he shooting?"
Thirty-four years later, they're still asking similar questions with an even greater degree of incredulity. Miller, in a round that many consider the greatest in the history of the game, shot a near-flawless 8-under 63 to win the Open in 1973, a performance that still has experts scratching their heads in admiration and awe.
"I don't care if the sprinklers were stuck on or the holes were six inches wide, that's a heck of a round of golf," Nicklaus said afterward.
| 63: A closer look |
| Click here for a shot-by-shot description of Johnny Miller's famous final-round 63 to win the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont. |
At perhaps golf's most punitive testing ground, Miller hit a jaw-dropping 18 greens in regulation, birdied exactly half the holes and prompted Open officials to ratchet up the difficulty so high the following year, players wanted to throttle him. With the Open back at Oakmont this week, a new generation of players are trying to come to grips with what Miller accomplished. Mostly, they cannot.
"That's an amazing round of golf," Phil Mickelson gushed. "Just a combination of it all -- how tough it is to get the ball to the hole with those greens and what a perfect ball-striking round you need to get around that course in that many under par. I don't think anybody will come close to that this year."
If ever, perhaps.
"Well, that ain't going to happen (again) in our day and age, I'll tell you that," Ernie Els said.
Els, who won the Open at Oakmont in 1994, is darned likely right. While Miller's 63 has since been matched by three other players at the Open, it still stands as the lowest round in relation to par in event history and represents the lone 63 recorded in the final round. Miller, now a popular golf broadcaster for NBC Sports, makes his living picking the right words to amplify the moment. Even after all these years, it remains a dream sequence he finds hard to articulate.
"I just happened to do it in the daytime, in the last round," he said Tuesday.
Actually, it was borderline ethereal. First, a woman approached Miller early in the week, told him she was clairvoyant and that he was destined to win. That's a first, Miller thought at the time. Then he received a letter on Sunday from a man who told him the same thing. Miller, who had shot 76 in the third round, first figured the letter had arrived a day too late.
