Fitting that Fuzzy Zoeller died on Thanksgiving. No player could have had a better temperament for Skins Game golf than Fuzzy, winner of the 1979 Masters, one of the best ever played, and the 1984 US Open at Winged Foot. He was loose, he was funny, he was fast and when he was on he could putt shots and hole putts with anyone. He won the made-for-TV Thanksgiving Golf Ritual in 1985 (Tom Watson came in second), won it again in ’86 (Lee Trevino came in second) and finished second (with Jack Nicklaus) when Trevino won the most Skins money in ’87.
Do you think Frank Urban Zoeller was at all intimidated playing with Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, with a camera in his face? Impossible.
Here is a list of the three greatest modern natural talents in American professional golf: John Daly; Fred Paren; Vague Zoeller. He had Hall of Fame talent, but the good life, Fuzzy style, always tugged at him. Hunting, fishing, a long series of soggy red meat dinners, the ashtrays overflowing at last call. His favorite places on Washington Road in Augusta were TBonz Steakhouse and Rijnhart’s Oyster Bar.
He retired from playing in the Masters in 2009 after playing 31 consecutive matches. He never went to the Tuesday night Champions Dinner again. He often wore pink shirts under his green Augusta National club jacket, along with a loosely knotted tie. He was not a button-down man. He would have made an excellent Ryder Cup captain, but there was no way he could do all the coat-and-tie, say-it-right nonsense that the PGA of America leadership always demanded of its Ryder Cup captains.
Zoeller’s Ryder Cup record was strangely terrible. He was 1-4 in 1979, 0-1-1 in 1983 and 0-3 in 1985, the year he received the USGA’s highest honor, the Bob Jones Award.
Zoeller always enjoyed the reputation of being an easy playing partner. Fall golf was never his thing. His 10 PGA Tour victories all came in the winter, spring and early summer. One of his most famous acts was waving a white flag of surrender in Greg Norman’s direction as Norman was on his way to winning the 1984 US Open at Winged Foot. (Can you imagine that, golfers with a sense of humor?) Zoeller won in a playoff. His airtight Monday 67 is probably one of the most underrated rounds of now-or-never golf ever played. Norman shot 75, five over par. That’s how tough the course was. Zoeller’s Masters victory came in his first appearance, in a three-way playoff with Ed Sneed and Tom Watson. It was a Sunday, so tense that there was no air. Two wins in majors in two playoffs. Amazing.
Secretly long is no longer a thing, in the age of graphite and carbon. Countless players were described as secretly tall during the final days of Persimmon. Fuzzy Zoeller – steel shaft, wooden head, low hands, arched back – was the sneaky tallest of them. Without a hint of hit in his swing, without a bit of grunt, he could ride it with anyone. His swing consisted of two waggles and go, with a slow, long backswing down the line and a huge full-body twist. His stomach helped. He was as strong as an ox and he was a great shooter in basketball. In other words, aided by his superior hand-eye coordination, he could catch wave after wave on the center of the face.
Zoeller was a great short putter. He liked to break away from his short putts and from five feet away, few golfers hit putts harder. Peter Jacobsen, who probably played hundreds of rounds with Zoeller, provided this analysis of Zoeller’s short putting: “Unorthodox alignment. Facing left. Laying flat on his putter. Played a bit of a cut with his putter. But was deadly when he needed to be.”
There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. Any player from Fuzzy’s era will tell you that. Some of his favorite practice round partners were good Southerners like Hubert Green and John Daly, or golfers of color, like Vijay Singh and Jim Thorpe. He was a central member of a generation of special talents.
He was three months older than Ben Crenshaw. In a text Thursday evening, Crenshaw offered this tribute: “I will personally miss Fuzzy as a dear friend. Fuzzy had an exceptional character and he was so strong. You can’t win at Augusta and Winged Foot without having a sensitive touch around the greens. But what got him through many pressure situations was his attitude. We shared many happy golf memories and time together as a family. My wife and I send love and prayers to their children.”
Zoeller and his late wife Diane had four children. They were a family of Hoosiers, through and through, living on a large farm in Floyds Knob, Indiana, near the Kentucky border. They supported Indiana’s basketball teams and identified with rural American tradition. Fuzzy lived in camouflage. His life revolved around his family, his love of hunting and fishing – and tractor driving. He liked to say that if he hadn’t played golf, he would have made a living doing something with a tractor.
Zoeller made millions through Kmart and sold a string of trouble-free golf clubs for thirteen years. (He had his own seven-seat Falcon 100 jet.) He lost the chance to make millions more. If you know anything about the life and times of Fuzzy Zoeller, then you probably know about the crude 20-second comment he made, a comment marinated in a racist trope about old Southern black eating habits and aimed at Tiger Woods, a 21-year-old Californian with a black father and a Thai mother. It cost Zoeller his Kmart contract and, to some extent, his public comfort.
Fuzzy Zoeller, two-time major champion, dies at age 74
By means of:
Zephyr Melton
On Masters Sunday in 1997, as Woods was putting the finishing touches on his historic 12-shot victory, Zoeller, drink in hand and sunglasses on, stopped to talk to a group of reporters gathered at the clubhouse, including TV crews with live cameras. The ’79 Masters winner looked at the scoreboard and said, “Pretty impressive. That little guy drives it well and he sets well. He does whatever it takes to win. So you guys know what you do when he comes in here? Give him a pat on the back, congratulate him and enjoy it. And tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it?”
He snapped his fingers and started walking away. Then, over his shoulder and still walking, he concluded this piece with a contemptuous addendum that sealed his fate: “Or collard greens or whatever they serve.”
They serve. Those were the two words that changed the course of Zoeller’s fortunes.
In November 2001, as Zoeller prepared for the senior tour, Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, summarized Zoeller’s infamous comments in a story for Sports illustrated. He said: “We are all prisoners of our own words, recorded for posterity. Growing up in Indiana in the 1950s and 1960s, as Fuzzy did, I am sure he saw racist ugliness. Some respond with intellect, some with anger, some with isolation. Fuzzy’s response was humor. The problem with his comments is that they were only funny to a very select audience.”
Earl Woods died in 2006. Tiger Woods will be eligible to play on the senior tour in January. Fuzzy Zoeller died on Thanksgiving Day, four years after his wife. Woods will host his tournament in the Bahamas next week. He doesn’t want to play and his body keeps betraying him. He has made no public comment about Zoeller’s death. Zoeller’s ill-considered comments from 1997 followed him into his obituaries, along with the green club jacket he won at Augusta and the US Open trophy he won at Winged Foot. They threatened to overshadow the majesty of his wave and the effortless coolness that was the true core of his demeanor.
Fuzzy Zoeller lived a big life. Whatever you imagine his breakfast to be like, double it. There will be no more Fuzzy. The eating, the drinking, the smoking, the fast play, the easy going nature. You wouldn’t say he didn’t get angry easily because there didn’t seem to be an angry bone in his body, not in his public life, not on golf courses around the world, not at Augusta National or on Washington Road.
Millions of people, he once said, “think I am a hating man, when I know in my heart that I am not.”
Millions of others know that he could play his heart out, and he did so with a certain signature style that made professional golf the sport that it is, and the game that it was.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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