‘I am something of a traditionalist’: Hale Irwin on grit, the U.S. Open and golf’s evolution
Hale Irwin, pictured in his Scottsdale home, relishing a Hall of Fame life.
Mark Peterman
Hale Irwin lives in the desert outside Scottsdale, in a sprawling, low-slung, cream-colored home, a wing of which is given over to the spoils of his Hall of Fame career. Scores of silver trophies gleam in glass display cases. Triumphal images crowd the walls. In one corner of a sun-lit room, beneath an inscribed photo of Irwin with his friend and pro-am partner, George W. Bush, stand three large golf bags, each emblazoned with the words Ryder Cup, an event that Irwin starred in on five occasions. But the equipment in those bags are the clubs he used in the championship that most shaped his reputation, the U.S. Open, which he won three times.
The last of those titles came in 1990, when Irwin was 45, making him the oldest-ever winner of the tournament, a mark that still stands. But the first of those wins remains the best known. Irwin claimed it 50 years ago this month, in the suburbs of New York, on a course with slender fairways, sloping, rock-firm greens and rough longer than Cam Smith’s mullet — a sadistic setup that doubled as the backdrop for what became known as the “Massacre at Winged Foot.” After four torturous rounds in that 1974 U.S. Open, a then-29-year-old Irwin staggered off the 18th green on Sunday, having outlasted the likes of Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. His winning score of seven over seems more impressive in retrospect, given not just the brutal course conditions but also the sticks that he was wielding, which today look like primitive gardening tools.
“See how slick this grip is,” Irwin said one recent morning, pulling out the driver he played that week at Winged Foot, a wooden-headed MacGregor Eye-o-Matic with a sweet spot the size of a penny. He turned the club over in his hands, then added, “They don’t make them like these anymore.”
They don’t make them much like Irwin these days, either. On the cusp of his 79th birthday, his dark hair turned silver, the speed well down in his upright swing, Irwin is not the last of his generation. But he is a prototype from the bygone era of a pre-entourage, pre-coddled PGA Tour. With the possible exception of Lee Trevino, no living legend of his vintage better embodies the gritty ethos of a time when the game was filled with bootstrapping, self-taught stars who flew commercial and spent their spring breaks digging answers from the dirt with non-titanium clubs, not sunbathing with their peers.
Even among the scrappiest of his rivals, Irwin stood out for his fire and focus, a competitiveness that was baked in early. Growing up in Kansas, the elder of two sons born to a homemaker and a traveling salesmen, Irwin excelled at multiple sports before enrolling at the University of Colorado. He shined on the golf team. But a football scholarship paid his way.
On that note, how do you think today’s players would fare on the Winged Foot setup you faced in 1974?
Oh, they’d beat seven over.
Is that at all because they’re better athletes and better golfers? Or is it purely because of the equipment?
They’re not better athletes. They’re in better shape. And with the clubs today, they hit it so far. I saw one of the new-model drivers recently — it looked like a truck tire. The one thing I favor from my era is I like to see shots that you had to manipulate. That’s the way I played. I hit it as low as I could and high as I needed to. Today, you just hit it. And if you’re debating between an 8-iron and a 9-iron, you just hit the 9 or maybe even a wedge.
In 2020, Bryson DeChambeau won at Winged Foot with a bomb and gouge approach. Did it bother you to see the course cut down to size like that?
I watched that on television and I didn’t remember some of the holes I saw. They’d widened some greens and made the entry into a number of them wider. A lot of the trees had been trimmed back instead of hanging down so low you had to duck under them. Not to say it was an easy golf course. But it was easier to play than it was in 1974. I know because I went out and played it after [the 2020 U.S. Open].
The rough was plenty deep when DeChambeau won, though.
I’m not saying he wasn’t impressive. You can’t say a 350-yard drive is not impressive. But you can say it is very different. When you talk about a hole like the 17th, where they’re taking it over the trees on the drive, we couldn’t have sniffed that in our day.
Which then leaves a wedge in.
In 1974, a wedge was my third shot on a par 5. What I can tell you for certain is I have never seen rough like I saw that year. It was just so long and tough. Even if the ball nestled on top of it, the grass would still wrap around the hosel. And the greens. When the best player in the world putts off the green on the 1st hole, you know things are getting serious. It was definitely the toughest conditions I ever came across where the weather wasn’t a factor.
At the time, a lot of people thought the USGA had overcompensated in response to Johnny Miller’s famous 63 at Oakmont the year before. Miller himself suggested the Winged Foot setup was almost a kind of payback. Do you think that’s what was going on?
I don’t know. Maybe there was a bit of that. Johnny played a heck of a round. But there’d been rain that week at Oakmont and the greens were very receptive. In part, maybe the USGA didn’t like what had happened. There was probably some turmoil from within. But, as much as anything, I think it was just that Winged Foot presented an opportunity to set up a very rigorous test. It was more, “This course is a bear, and we can make it even more so. Let’s see what we can do.”
You’ve often told the story about all the complaining about the setup you heard from other players — you figured you had them beat before the tournament even began.
The pall was so thick in the locker room after Monday and Tuesday, you could have cut it with a knife. I concluded that 70 percent of the field had checked out.
Was there anything particular someone did or said?
I wish I could remember something specific. It was just a general defeatist attitude. You could sense it. And no wonder. They knew they were about to get their butts handed to them. We all were.
But your attitude seemed more optimistic. Or, at least, determined. Was that something you were born with or was it a mindset you had to develop over time?
I’m sure it was in the DNA. I’ve been around sports my whole life, and I never liked to do anything halfway. Just to dibble and dabble in something seemed like a waste of time to me. But there’s also something my dad always said: “Don’t start something you can’t finish.” That was my mantra. Whatever it is, give it your best shot.
Your dad introduced you to the game. Did he also teach you the finer points of the swing?
Not so much. My dad would take small clubs, cut them off and wrap them with electrical tape and off I’d go. We were in [Mickey] Mantle country, near the Oklahoma line, and baseball was probably the sport I played best. But golf intrigued me. It was something I could do on my own, and I enjoyed that. I didn’t play any tournaments. Our local course was a nine-hole sand-greens course. There wasn’t even a pro. My mom would take me out there with a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. I’d hit some shots, look for balls and get poison ivy, and then she’d come back and get me for baseball practice.
But football was what got you through college. Do you think you could have made it in the NFL?
There was a team or two that expressed some interest. At one point, I heard that Vince Lombardi wanted to talk to me. That got my attention, but… I was six-feet tall and 180 pounds, quick over a short distance but slow by any other means. At Colorado, I was getting beat up pretty good. I was playing two-ways, quarterback and defensive back. After my sophomore year, I almost quit the team because I hurt my shoulder. I told my coach, I’m not sure I’m ready for this. But I could also hear my dad’s voice in my ear: “Don’t start something you can’t finish.” The older I get, the more I believe in that philosophy.
Was getting knocked around on the field what convinced you to ultimately go all in on golf?
That putt was an error in judgment. It wasn’t anger. I went up to knock it in left-handed and I stuck the putter in the ground. It didn’t look like a stroke. But I knew it was. My approach is just to move on. It doesn’t enter my life much. And if it does, it’s in and out. There’s too many good things in life. Why dwell on the bad?
You also had a good chance in 1984, when the Open returned to Winged Foot.
I was leading going into the last day, playing with Fuzzy [Zoeller]. It was a pro-Fuzzy crowd. But really, I wasn’t playing great. I was fighting it. My dad was dying of prostate cancer, and I was hoping I could make it one more win for him, 10 years since my first time around at Winged Foot. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I built a mountain I couldn’t climb. But I learned from it.
When you won the U.S. Open again, in 1990 at Medinah, it seemed to come out of the blue. Did you have any inkling that something good was about to happen?
At that point, I was what you would call a player of past repute. I’d just started my design company. I could still hit shots, but I wasn’t playing great. At the end of 1989, though, I did a little exercise where, on some yellow-lined paper, I wrote down things I remembered from the tournaments I’d won. That got me thinking as a player again. It got me back on to what made me good.
Which was?
I’ve looked for that paper. I wish I still had it. But I’ve always told people that I’ve learned the most from the things I do well, not from things I do badly. If you focus on what you do well, it takes the negativity out of your thinking. For me, that’s my posture, alignment and tempo. If I put those three things together, everything else tends to fall into place. So, when the 1990 season came, I could feel it coming. I was hitting shots. It’s not as if I couldn’t play.
When you drained that long putt on 18 and did your victory lap, did you think you had done enough to win?
Not outright. But I’d achieved my objective. On the 10th tee of that final round, I was one shot out of the top 15. When I birdied the 11th, finishing in the top 10 became my goal. When I birdied 12, top 5 became the goal, and so on. I use that story when I talk to kids because I want them to understand, it’s the same person who was standing on the 11th tee. Always have a goal. But then be prepared to reevaluate it.
Another event you played well in was the Ryder Cup. But you never got the captaincy. Was that a disappointment? Was it a job you ever lobbied for?
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