Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller who humiliated luckless Greg Norman
Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, who has died age 74, thought himself a ‘damn good player but not a great one’. He was a big driver with a cute short game.
Fuzzy Zoeller, golfer
Born, Indiana, November 11, 1951;
died, November 27, aged 74
Fuzzy Zoeller whistled while he worked. Grim-faced competitors might look askance as the American golfer with the easy gait cheerfully puckered his lips while walking down the fairways on the final holes of major tournaments.
In the best denouements to the big golf tournaments, tension mounts and momentum swings back and forth. The final round of the 1984 US Open at the treacherous Winged Foot course in New York was no different.
Zoeller was already finding it hard to walk because of the back spasms that would plague his later career but, in his own words, “kicked all the pain out”. In the final round he had hit four birdies in a row to go seven under par, but then dropped shots on the back nine. Australian Greg Norman charged. Zoeller’s bogey on the 17th brought Norman level. On the 18th hole Norman holed a miraculous long putt from the rough, which Zoeller believed had been for a birdie that would give Norman a crucial one-shot lead.
Then Zoeller realised he was wrong and that he could still win the tournament. It had transpired that Norman had only parred the hole and Zoeller was still level. Zoeller had resigned himself to defeat and later recalled that he waved a white towel.
Back the next day for an 18-hole play-off, Zoeller was ahead by five strokes after nine holes. This time he did not let it slip, hitting a round of 67 to win by eight strokes.
Five years earlier, Zoeller had announced himself as one of the world’s best by becoming the first player to win the Masters on debut since Gene Sarazen in 1935. As well as upsetting the odds, the 27-year-old broke with the traditional restraint of champion golfers by jumping for joy and throwing his putter high into the air after sinking a winning 2.5m putt in a sudden death play-off with Ed Sneed and Tom Watson.
Zoeller thought himself a “damn good player but not a great one”. He was a big driver with a cute short game, but it was his temperament that often made the difference, such as his ability to shrug off poor shots. “Hell, you’ve got to accept that you are going to make bogeys,” he said.
Above all, he did not overthink shots and believed in playing quickly because rhythm was all-important. “You gotta keep the pedal to the metal if you’re trying to win,” he said. “Once you get it off that gas pedal, it’s hard to get it back down.”
Above all, he said he was in the entertainment business, stopping to interact with the crowd in the galleries where there were plenty of “Fuzzy fans” willing him to win. Friendly, loquacious and never short of a wisecrack, Zoeller took a similar quickfire approach when it came to giving his opinions on the game. He always made himself available to reporters and often spoke without engaging his brain first.
When Tiger Woods caused a sensation as a young man clearly on the way to winning the Masters in 1997, Zoeller was sought out for his opinion by CNN. As Woods calmly played his final round 12 shots ahead, Zoeller was generous, gracious and complimentary about the rising star in golf, whose race was notable in a sport dominated by white men.
Then he joked about the fact that as well as getting to wear the coveted green jacket, Woods would also choose the menu at the champions’ dinner the following year. “You know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it? … Or collard greens, or whatever the hell they serve.”
Though not malicious, Zoeller’s racist and patronising remarks were a warning to sports stars everywhere that such inappropriate jokes would no longer go unpunished. His offence was compounded by the fact his comments were repeated on news networks all over America. He lost lucrative sponsorship deals but, more importantly, his reputation as a doyen of the fun and sportsmanship of golf was destroyed.
Woods accepted Zoeller’s unreserved apology when they met, but Zoeller acknowledged that he never fully recovered from his gaffe. “I’ve cried many times,” he said. “I’ve apologised countless times for words said in jest that just aren’t a reflection of who I am. I have hundreds of friends, including people of colour, who will attest to that. Still, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this incident will never, ever go away.”
Frank Urban Zoeller was born in New Albany, Indiana, in 1951. His father, Frank, was a club pro golfer. Frank Jr, who became known as Fuzzy after his initials FUZ, showed promise at golf while attending high school.
He continued to develop his game at Houston University and turned professional in 1973, but meteoric progress was hampered by his lifestyle. He earned $7300 ($11,150) on his first year on the tour, spent long before the end of it. “I had wild hair, burnt the candle at both ends, and I’ll be the first to tell you I wouldn’t do it over,” he said.
By the ’90s he was carrying more weight and a persistent back injury limited his chances of winning more majors, though he always insisted that he still had it in him to beat young players, or “flat bellies” as he called them.
He almost fulfilled that promise at the 1994 Open Championship at Turnberry. Sharing the lead into the final round after a third round of 64, he agonisingly missed a 2.5m putt on the 18th that would have tied the record for the best-ever round in the tournament. He finished third overall. Zoeller stepped back from the pinnacle of the game with 10 titles on the PGA Tour in all.
By the new millennium he was playing mainly in senior events and designing golf courses. He continued to live on a farm in New Albany, and bred cattle. He enjoyed hunting and his stag head conquests would stare out from the walls of the room where he kept an array of guns.
If he never lived down the Woods controversy, Zoeller was grateful for fulfilling his dreams. Looking at the US Open trophy, he once said: “It’s one of the greatest thrills in the world when you’re on that trophy with all the superstars of the game. You dream about things like that. And then suddenly your dream comes true and here is the history book. They can’t take that dream away from me.”
THE TIMES
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