Kind of an adjustment, that Fuzzy Zoeller died on thanksgiving day. No player could have a better temperament for him Game Skins 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 hit with anyone. He won the made-for-TV Thanksgiving golf ritual in 1985 (Tom Watson was second), won it again in ’86 (Lee Trevino was second) and finished second (to Jack Nicklaus) when Trevino earned the most money from the Skins in ’87.
Do you think Frank Urban Zoeller was scared at all, playing with Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, with a camera in his face? Impossible.
Here is a list of the three greatest natural golfing talents of the modern era in American professional golf: John Daly; Couples Fred; Fuzzy Zoeller. He had Hall of Fame talent, but the good life, Fuzzy style, always appealed to him. Hunting, fishing, a long series of juicy red meat dinners, crowded ashtrays from last call. His favorite haunts on Washington Road in Augusta were TBonz Steakhouse and Rhinehart’s Oyster Bar.
He stopped playing the Masters in 2009 after playing 31 times in a row. He never stopped going on Tuesday nights Dinner of Champions. He often wore pink shirts under his green Augusta National club coat, along with a loosely knotted tie. He wasn’t a buttoned up guy. He would have been an outstanding Ryder Cup captain, light-hearted, but he couldn’t afford to do all the coat-and-tie nonsense that the PGA of America’s leadership required of its Ryder Cup captains, frankly.
Zoeller’s Ryder Cup the record was surprisingly 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, its Bob Jones Award.
Zoeller has always enjoyed a reputation for being a quiet partner. Fall golf was never his thing. His 10 PGA Tour wins were all in the winter, spring and early summer. One of his most famous acts was waving a white surrender flag at Greg Norman when Norman was en route to winning the 1984 US Open at Winged Foot. (Can you imagine, golfers with a sense of humor?) Zoeller won in a playoff. His tight 67 Monday is perhaps one of the most underrated rounds of golf now or ever played. Norman shot a 75, five over par. That’s how hard 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 major league wins in two playoffs. amazing.
Dirty length is no longer a thing, in the age of graphite and carbon. Countless players, over the last few days of the date, have been described as tall and dirty. Fuzzy Zoeller – steel shaft, wooden head, low hands, curved back – was the tallest scoundrel of them all. Without a hint of swing in his swing, without a lick, he could slug it out there with anyone. His swing was two-swing, with a slow, long, full-line backswing and an extremely full body swing. His shooting helped. He was strong as an ox and was a great basketball shooter. In other words, aided and abetted by his superior hand-eye coordination, he could catch golf shot after golf shot in the center of the face.
Zoeller was an excellent shortstop. He liked to lay off short putts and, from five feet and up, few golfers hit their putts harder. Peter Jacobsen, who likely played hundreds of rounds with Zoeller, offered this analysis of Zoeller’s short putter: “Unorthodox placement. Headed left. Lay flat on his putter. Played with his putter a bit. But was deadly when he needed to be.”
There was not 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 southpaws like Hubert Green and John Daly, or black players 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 message Thursday night, Crenshaw offered this tribute: “Personally, I will miss Fuzzy as a dear friend. Fuzzy had an incredible touch and he was so strong. You can’t win at Augusta and Winged Foot without having a great touch around the green. But what got him through a lot of pressure-filled situations was his attitude toward my wife, and we shared a lot of love for me, as well as we shared mine together. and prayers for their children.”
Zoeller and his late wife, Diane, had four children. They were a family of Hoosiers, living on a large farm in Floyds Knob, Ind., near the Kentucky border, rooting for Indiana basketball teams, identifying with the rural tradition of America. Fuzzy lived at home. His life revolved around his family, his love of hunting and fishing – and driving a tractor. He liked to say that if he wasn’t playing golf he would be making a living doing something with a tractor.
Zoeller made millions through Kmart, selling a line of noiseless golf clubs for 13 years. (He had his own seven-seat Falcon 100 jet.) He missed the opportunity to make millions more. If you know anything about the life and times of Fuzzy Zoeller, you likely know about the crude 20-second commentary he did, a racist romp about the old eating habits of Southern blacks and directed by Tiger Woods, a 21-year-old Californian with a black father and Thai mother. It cost Zoeller his Kmart contract and, to some extent, his public convenience.
On the Sunday of the 1997 Masters, with Woods putting the finishing touches on his historic 12-shot victory, Zoeller, drink in hand and sunglasses on, stopped to speak to a group of reporters gathered outside the clubhouse, including live television camera crews. The ’79 Masters winner looked at the scoreboard and said, “Pretty impressive. That little guy’s driving it and he’s doing it. He’s doing whatever it takes to win. So you know what you guys do when he comes in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy. And tell him not to serve the fried chicken next year?”
He snapped his fingers and started walking away. Then, over his shoulder and still walking, he finished this with a dismissive addendum that sealed his fate: “Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”
They serve. Those were the two words that changed the course of Zoeller’s fortunes.
In November 2001, as Zoeller prepared to go on the senior tour, Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, summed up Zoeller’s infamous comments in a story about Sports Illustrated. He said, “We are all prisoners of our words, caught up to posterity. Growing up in Indiana in the 1950s and 1960s, as Fuzzy did, I’m sure he saw racial ugliness. Some respond to it with intellect, some with anger, some with isolation. Fuzzy’s response was just a funny comment to the audience.”
Earl Woods died in 2006. Tiger Woods will be eligible to play on the Senior Tour in January. Fuzzy Zoeller died on Thanksgiving, four years after his wife. Woods will host his tournament in the Bahamas next week. He won’t play and his body keeps betraying him. He has not made a public comment about Zoeller’s death. Zoeller’s ill-advised comments from 1997 followed him right back, along with the club green he won at Augusta and the US Open trophy he won at Winged Foot. They threatened to obscure the magnificence of his golf and the easy calm that was at the very heart of his demeanor.
Fuzzy Zoeller lived a great life. Whatever you imagine his morning looks like, double it. There won’t be another Fuzzy. Eating, drinking, smoking, fast game, quiet nature. You wouldn’t say he was slow to anger, because he didn’t seem to have an angry bone in his body, not in his public life, not on golf courses around the world, not at Augusta National or up and down Washington Road.
Millions of people, he once said, “think I’m a hateful man when I know in my heart I’m not.”
Millions more know that he could play without a hitch, and he did so with a certain distinctive style that has made professional golf the sport it is and the game it was.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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