30 AUGUST 2019 | golf australia
IN MY
OPINION EXCLUSIVE BY GEOFF OGILVY | GOLF AUSTRALIA COLUMNISTA SPECIAL OPEN INVITATION
IT’S BEEN 13 years now since I won the
US Open, but the benefi ts from what is the
highlight of my career so far keep on coming.
Every fi ve years or so, the United States
Golf Association hosts a reunion of champions
during US Open week. It started at Merion in
2013, where the likes of Bill Casper, Arnold
Palmer and Jack Fleck – all no longer with
us, sadly – were in attendance. This year we
headed to Pebble Beach for a game of golf at
nearby Cypress Point and a dinner – which 32
of the 36 surviving champions attended.
You won’t be surprised to hear that I had
a great time. It was pretty special for a golf
history tragic like me to be around guys like Jack
Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson
and Tiger Woods. You don’t see those guys in the
same room at the same time very often.Anyway, we started with that round at
Cypress Point. Anyone who wanted to play
was welcome and most of those not in the
fi eld for Pebble did so, 16 in all. Man, it was
cool. We teed-off around 7.15 on the Tuesday
morning. Jim Nantz of CBS, who lives on
the Monetary Peninsula, was there to be the
“starter.” It was very informal, with Jim being
“normal” rather than employing the television
persona we are all familiar with. It was just him
introducing some friends.
The fi rst group was Jack, Gary, Tom Kite
and Hale Irwin. The only people watching
were some Cypress members, who came to
celebrate the occasion. It was very intimate.
And funny. When Jack and Gary were
teeing-off, Lee was behind the tee giving
them some good-natured abuse. “Why arewe putting the slowest player in the group off
fi rst?” he asked, in reference to Jack.
Watching, I had this great sense that those
guys have been doing things like that for 50
years or more. They are old friends as well
as competitors – and it showed. It was just
like it would be if I was playing with Louis
Oosthuizen, Adam Scott and Branden Grace.
We’d be giving each other shit on the tee and
having a great time.
The best thing though, was seeing these
legends of the game behaving just like you
and me. We treat them all – quite rightly – with
such reverence that we forget that, at the end
of the day, they are just guys, just golfers, like
the rest of us. So to see them being “normal”
was so cool. It emphasised too just how long
we can all play the game and have to be the