On the Sunday that he would win the 1976 Masters championship, Raymond Floyd walked into the locker room, sorted through some telegrams
from well-wishers, told some reporters that he had slept peacefully the night
before, then went to his locker.
He set a cup of Coke on the floor. Going through his belongings in the
locker, he accidentally knocked a box of golf balls off a shelf. The box
landed on the Coke, crushing the top of the cup, but the drink didn’t turn
over. Floyd, smiling, said, “I drop a dozen balls on my Coke and don’t even
spill a drop. See how good I’m doing this week?”
How good he was doing was leading by eight strokes with one round to
play, a lead he would protect through the long afternoon. When he slipped
into the green jacket awarded the champion, he had tied Jack Nicklaus’s
record 271 for seventy-two holes, the record that had moved Bobby Jones
to say Nicklaus “plays a game with which I am not familiar.”
Floyd made a career of dropping golf balls on Cokes without spilling a
drop, so to speak, defying the odds. He defied golf’s calendar, winning at
an age thought to be too young and winning at an age thought to be too
old. He went from being one of the PGA Tour’s playboys to being the
father of Golfweek’s “Family of the Year” in 1994. He graduated from hothead to leading citizen in the golf community.
Thanks to his wife, he conquered an attitude problem that threatened to
drive him off the Tour, and he became one of the great players of the
century.
None of this was easy.
Floyd won the 1969 and 1982 PGA Championships, the 1976 Masters,
and the 1986 U.S. Open, as well as eighteen other events on the PGA Tour.
He had twenty-one top-ten finishes in majors, including a second in the
PGA Championship and a second and third in the British Open.
He won fourteen times on the Senior PGA Tour, four of the victories
coming in senior majors—two Senior Tour Championships, the Tradition,
and the Senior Players Championship. He played on eight Ryder Cup
teams and captained another.
If there was one moment, one event, that defined Raymond Loran
Floyd, it was his selection to play on the Ryder Cup team in 1993 at the
age of fifty. Floyd was already into his second season on the Senior PGA
Tour. No man had ever competed in the Ryder Cup competition at that
age, but Tom Watson, captain of the team, chose Floyd. Watson said he
was looking for “heart and guts” when he made the selection.
He was also choosing a man who in 1992 had become the first to win
on the PGA Tour (Doral Ryder Open) and the Senior PGA Tour in the
same year (three times) and with his Doral Ryder Open win joined Sam
Snead as the only players to win on the PGA Tour in four decades. Floyd
justified Watson’s confidence, winning three points for the United States
in the Ryder Cup matches and helping to secure a victory over the European team.
Floyd’s father, L.B., was a career army man. Raymond was born at Ft.
Bragg in North Carolina. He started whacking golf balls around at age four
or five at the driving range his dad owned, and by the age of seven, his dad
said, little Ray was hurting business because so many customers would stop
hitting balls to watch the kid.
Raymond’s first love was baseball. It wasn’t until he won the National
Jaycee Junior Championship in 1960 that he got serious about golf. After
high school, he gave college a brief try at the University of North Carolina, fulfilled his military obligations, and then set out to play professional golf.
82 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
On March 17, 1963, Floyd went into the final round of the St. Petersburg Open in second place, three shots behind Dave Marr. Floyd had been
on the Tour for four months and hadn’t won a dime. On that sunny Sunday afternoon, though, he shot 69 and won $3,500, the first deposit in
what would become more than $17 million in prize money.
The champion was twenty years, six months, and thirteen days old.
Only Johnny McDermott, Gene Sarazen, Charles Evans, Jr., Francis
Ouimet, and Horton Smith had won at a younger age. After his win at St.
Petersburg, Floyd said, “A lot of people told me I played well enough to
win a lot of money. I guess I finally believed it. I came here with the hope
of winning, not just making the cut.”
He won despite having to scramble much of the day, but history would
show that asking Raymond Floyd to scramble was like throwing a rabbit
into a briar patch. Over the years, though his swing was not classic in style,
he had all of the skills necessary to win, but he excelled in two things: the
short game and the ability to concentrate. He could play all of the little
shots around the greens, and he was an artist with the putter.
During the 1982 PGA Championship, which he won in Tulsa, he said,
“I love it when somebody comes up and says, ‘All I saw was rear ends and
elbows, you down there pullin’ the ball out of the cup all day.’ I tell him
that’s where I was aiming. I want that reputation, because putting can
make up for a lot of bad swings.” As a senior, Floyd reflected: “Throughout my career I’ve always had a fabulous short game, and I’ve always been
a good putter. I tend to putt well under pressure. I think I focus better.”
The concentration revealed itself in what fellow competitors called “the
Stare.” When Floyd was in the hunt, and especially when he was leading,
he would get a fixed look in his eyes, as if he were seeing nothing but the
next shot. It was obvious from their comments that the look chilled his
competitors.
After the win in Pensacola, Floyd won only once over the next six years.
In 1969 he won three times. He blew away Ken Venturi’s seventy-twohole record in the American Golf Classic at the tough Firestone Country
Club course by seven strokes. Floyd also won the PGA Championship that
year on the testing National Cash Register Course in Dayton, with police
escorting his group after threats of a civil rights demonstration. “I’ve had
a couple of police escorts before,” he cracked, “but never on a golf course.”
Perfect Balance • Raymond Floyd 83
After the big 1969 season Floyd went another six years without a victory. Winning so young had made him think it was easy, he said, and it
took him several years to understand that it wasn’t. He later admitted,
“Winning tournaments meant nothing to me. I thought the Tour was just
one big ball, traveling from Miami to Los Angeles to New York and all
those other exciting places.”
It was during those early years that he developed a reputation for partying heartily. One writer even credited him, or charged him, with bringing back the bacchanalian days of Walter Hagen. In later years Floyd would
agree that he hadn’t left much undone, that there was nothing in the back
of his mind that he wished he had done. “I’m not proud of it,” he said,
“but that’s the way it was.”
It wasn’t as wild as advertised, though, said Floyd. He became friends
with Doug Sanders and Al Besselink, colorful tour stars who knew their
way around the hot spots, and with Super Bowl quarterback Joe Namath,
who had a reputation as America’s most eligible bachelor, and Floyd’s reputation for night life grew.
Then, in 1973, he met a pretty brunette named Maria Primoli. They
married after a whirlwind courtship. The marriage would produce two sons
and a daughter and a new Raymond Floyd. In 1974, Floyd was playing so
poorly in Jacksonville that he decided to pull out midway into the second
round. Maria told him no, that he couldn’t go through life pulling out of
tournaments. He withdrew anyway, and they spent the next two days
thrashing out their clash of wills. “Maria jumped on me like a tiger,” said
Floyd. “It helped put my life in proper focus. From that moment on, I was
a more mature, patient, and responsible man.”
The next year he broke his winless streak, and in 1976 he blitzed the
Masters, opening with a 65, following with a 66, then putting together a
pair of 70s on the weekend. He was fourteen under par on the sixteen par
fives, using a five-wood and his outstanding fairway woods game to great
benefit. He beat Ben Crenshaw by eight strokes and left the rest of the field
in his dust. Tom Weiskopf, a fellow competitor, labeled it “one of the greatest feats this game has seen.”
“That’s a great feeling walking up that amphitheater on the eighteenth
at Augusta with everybody applauding you,” said Floyd. “After you’ve won
a tournament, you have sort of a warm glow. When I was a bachelor, I used
84 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
to celebrate some after I’d won. Now I usually have my family with me,
and we don’t do much different than what we would normally do, but you
enjoy everything you do more. When you win, you’re kinda king for a
week. If a man doesn’t cherish winning, doesn’t appreciate the thoughts of
winning, he won’t be a winner.”
Floyd won his third major championship in 1982, another PGA Championship. The venue was Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa. The
weather was brutally hot. He opened with a 63, which he said was “a marvelous round of golf, probably the best round of golf I’ve ever played, anywhere. With it coming in a major, and on a golf course like this, it’s
something I’ll remember forever.”
One particularly memorable aspect of it was the stretch of holes from
the seventh through the fifteenth, when he had nine straight threes. The
63 matched the best round in tournament history. He shot 69 on Friday,
and his 132 total set a new record for the halfway mark in the PGA. On
Saturday he shot 68, his 200 total setting another record and his five-stroke
lead tying one. Confident, he said, “I’m a good player from in front. I don’t
think I’ve ever lost a tournament when I’ve had a big lead. By big lead, I
mean three or four shots.” He began shakily on Sunday but finally regained
control of his game and won.
For all the records he had broken over the years, though, and all the titles
he had won, nothing was quite as remarkable as his victory in the 1986
U.S. Open over the rugged Shinnecock Hills course in Southampton, New
York. For one thing, his best finish ever in a U.S. Open had been a sixth,
and in twenty-two starts he had managed only two top-ten finishes, a shortcoming that he had analyzed at great length without coming up with a satisfactory answer. He had won tournaments on courses where Opens had
been played but never the one he had dreamed of winning since childhood.
Another thing, he was three months shy of his forty-fourth birthday. No
one that old had won the national championship.
There was also an uncharacteristic collapse still fresh in his mind. The
previous Sunday, he had led the Westchester Classic with nine holes to play
but had bogeyed seven of the last nine. On the drive from Westchester to
Southampton that night, he and Maria talked at length about it and concluded he should make it work for him as a learning experience. “We took
a bad experience and turned it into a good one,” he said.
Perfect Balance • Raymond Floyd 85
It was especially helpful on the first day of the Open, when cold, windy,
rainy weather was blowing scores out of sight. Floyd was determined to
keep control of himself, and he got around in 75, a good score in those
conditions.
That day, and in the three days to follow, he focused on keeping things
in sync, never letting anything bother him. He even walked with the same
rhythm he had in his swing.
He followed the 75 with a 68 and a 70, and on Sunday, with ten players leading or sharing the lead at one time or another, he closed with a 66,
under extreme pressure, on a golf course so tough it will make your clubs
bleed, to win by two strokes. He never smiled, not when he was making
birdies, not when he was quick-stepping up the eighteenth fairway to a
standing ovation from the gallery, not until he dropped the last putt.
“Raymond had that look in his eyes,” said his old friend and competitor Lanny Wadkins. “When he gets that look, he’s hard to handle. There’s
probably none better than him in that situation. We’ve been partners in
Ryder Cup matches and played a lot of money matches as a team, and we
haven’t lost a lot. We’re a lot alike. When I think of him, I think of playing with Ben Hogan one time in Fort Worth. We were joking around and
having a good time, and Hogan said, ‘I don’t like to play jolly golf.’
“I’ve never forgotten that, and I think Raymond and I are the same way.
When we’re playing golf, we aren’t very jolly. Raymond’s a good door
slammer. It’s great to see him win.”
Maria saw “the Stare” too. She said he passed her between the tenth
green and eleventh tee, made eye contact, but never acknowledged her presence. “That was the first time this week his eyes were glazed, the way they
get when he’s mentally in gear,” she said. “He didn’t even see me. I knew
then they were going to have to beat him; he wouldn’t falter.”
She was holding a telegram. It read: “Dear Raymond, I knew it was in
the making. It was just a matter of time. Congratulations. Arnold Palmer.”
On Saturday, someone had asked Floyd if this might be his last good
chance to win an Open, given his age. “Believe me,” he said after Sunday’s
round, “the conversation I had with myself last night after those questions
was pretty stern. I said, ‘I’d better get on with it.’”
