Heeeeere’s Johnny: Part II of Golfweek’s exclusive interview with Johnny Miller
Johnny Miller wants to make one thing perfectly clear: he hasn’t done an interview all year.
“If nothing else you have a rare interview,” he says.
For 29 years, if someone was choking during an NBC telecast you better believe he was going to let the viewer know. When he retired in 2019, he said he tried to emulate former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, who hung up his microphone for ABC’s Monday Night Football and disappeared from the spotlight.
Miller is more than happy to turn up for a golf fundraiser if he believes in the cause and still manages to do a few corporate gigs, but only the Fortinet Championship at his beloved Silverado Resort & Spa, where he is part of the ownership group and typically does a stint in the broadcast booth as well as hosts the trophy presentation, brings him around the life he’s done his best to leave behind.
Editor’s note: For Part I of the Q&A, click here.
GW: As kind of the poster child for analyzing choking under pressure, do you think this newer narrative of elite individual athletes citing mental illness for withdrawing and poor play is justified?
Johnny Miller: Oh, man, that’s a good question right there. You know, the trouble with valuing excuses or validating excuses is it makes more excuses. We never had any excuses in our era. Even injuries, they didn’t have the program (medical exemption) now where you get a year or something to get back – I was with Zac Blair a couple days ago at the Cougar Classic raising money for BYU golf. He had a little shoulder injury, but I was watching him hit balls and he’s still not back, and he’s perfectly healthy.
If you’re not doing too well and then you, quote-unquote, get injured, it’s a good way to have some time off to gear up for a clean slate where you’re not behind the 8-ball trying to make the top 125. So, I don’t know. In some instances, it’s a good program, but I don’t know if some people take advantage of it or not.
GW: I saw on the ticker recently on Golf Channel that it was the 50th anniversary of your first victory at the Southern Open. What do you remember about it?
Johnny Miller, 23, reacts as his putt for a bird falls in on No. 18 at the Southern Open Championship at Green Island Club in Columbia, Ga., on Sept. 12, 1971. (AP Photo)
JM: Well, I remember that it was the grainiest greens I’d ever seen in my life, and I had hardly putted on a grainy green in my life, a real grainy, slow green. I did something pretty unusual. I locked my hands that week, which added loft, which helped to get on top of the grass when you putted so the grain didn’t grab it, and I putted really well doing it that way.
It gave me a lot of confidence to win by five and shoot that last-round 65. That became sort of a signature of mine, when I had a lead or whatever, I think I had one of the best – until Tiger, I might have had the best percentage with a lead on the last day, a 74 percent win percentage. That was the start of being sort of tough on the last round of tournaments when I had a chance to win.
GW: I did a Google search and I found a story that said you weren’t going to play the Southern Open in Columbus, Georgia. You were supposed to be fishing in Montana that week with Jerry Heard, and then when you won, you said, “Now maybe they don’t have to introduce me as that fine young golfer from California anymore.”
JOHNNY MILLER: Yeah, that’s right. That’s true. I started in ’69 in May, and made cuts and stuff, then that 1970 played pretty good and so I was improving all the time. I wasn’t in any rush whatsoever. I wasn’t like thinking, wow, when am I going to win? I never felt that way.
GW: Did you ever have a better round than your 63 at Oakmont?
Johnny Miller, takes over the early lead at the 1973 U.S. Open Golf championship at Oakmont.
JM: The thing is people say, he came from behind, six back, but if you look at the guys who were in front of me, literally every great player in golf, there was Weiskopf and Nicklaus and Palmer and Trevino and everybody was in front of me, but after I birdied the first four holes, it was like, I got so jazzed, literally the hair on the back of my neck (was standing up), I was thinking, damn, I was six back, birdied the first four holes and the leaders are probably going to be gagging a little bit trying to win the U.S. Open. I went through a little bit of a choking spell where I three-putted from 20 feet straight uphill and left a couple 12-footers short, and then it sort of pissed me off after eight when I three-putted. But I was hitting every fairway. My average iron that day was probably four or five feet off line. I never had a downhill putt. Put it under, near the hole every single hole. It was like a magic round. It was like somebody up there was – I was a streaky tee-to-green player, but these irons were pretty consistent, but I was a streaky putter especially. But that day was crazy good.
If you could have seen the round, it was like, that course is tough. That’s one tough course. Lanny shot 65 that day and there was like one 67 or 68 and maybe one 69. It wasn’t like everybody shot in the 60s.
That was the best round I ever played. As far as perfect ball-striking, the 61 I had at Tucson when I won by 14 at Phoenix and then I won by nine at Tucson, the last round I shot 61. I’m playing with Tom Watson and as we walked off the green he goes, that’s the greatest round of golf I’ve ever seen. Now, Tom Watson does not say that to anybody.
GW: How many majors do you think you should have won?
JM: Well, I had several close calls, but I didn’t really get into the major-itis. I wanted to win majors, but I just wanted to win. I didn’t care what kind of tournament it was. You have to understand that majors were always the most important, but Jack Nicklaus made them like super important. I won the World Open in 1974 in a four-man playoff at Pinehurst, it was the biggest purse of the year. It was a major. It had rough six inches high, and beat Nicklaus and Frank Beard and Bob Murphy, and then I lost in a playoff to Watson at the World Open another year (1979). Those were majors but they just don’t call them majors. Those were great tournaments. That was like winning the Players Championship, I guess.
I never really got into like my year is ruined because I didn’t win a major. Like Gary Player thought he should have got Player of the Year when I think he won two majors in ’74 and I won eight tournaments, and the biggest tournament in Japan I won, too, but he was upset that he didn’t get Player of the Year that year. Maybe he was right, I don’t know. But I just didn’t put all my eggs in four baskets.
GW: Last time we talked you said that Tiger winning the Masters reminded you of a boxer with one more victory in him. Do you think he can come back from his latest injuries?
Tiger Woods celebrates after making a putt on the 18th green to win The Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports)
JM: Well, that first quote you’re talking about, it’s a boxing saying that all great super champions always have one last great fight left in them, and that’s what you saw with Phil. You talk about out of nowhere, Phil hadn’t been in the top 25 and he wins the PGA, which is crazy.
And then Tiger winning that Masters was amazing. He’s so unusually, fantastically good and he has so much talent that you can’t rule him out. Same thing with Phil. Phil is so full of talent that he can miss 10 cuts in a row and then win the [next] tournament.
I wouldn’t count Tiger out, but it could be that he likes being a normal person. Does that make sense? There’s something about picking up your kids at school and doing stuff with them and teaching them how to play golf – I went through that same thing with all my kids. It softens you. There’s some part of it that’s very healing in itself to be able to stay home and not have all the pressure. When he comes back, he’s got so much pressure on him. It’s like, he’s got to deal with that. He knows he has to deal with that, all the interviews. Geez, how come you didn’t win this week? That kind of thing. I don’t know if he’s willing to face that music or not. I don’t know if he wants to come back and try to be great again. I just don’t know. You’d have to talk to Justin Thomas on that one because he doesn’t let the public know that, right?
GW: You mentioned Phil winning; did you think a 50-year-old would win a major?
Phil Mickelson poses with the Wanamaker Trophy after winning the 2021 PGA Championship. (Photo by Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports)
JM: Well, I thought Phil would be probably a good candidate, and he’s hitting it farther than he’s ever hit it before, and he’s worked out and he’s in better shape than probably he was in his prime.
I think the PGA win made Phil think, I’ve got to win all the time now. That’s not happening, right? So that’s frustrating. You win, and you think, hey, I’m going to win a bunch of tournaments now that I broke the ice. That was just an amazing performance is what it was. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen again for Phil. If I was guessing I would say probably won’t happen again.
GW: You said you haven’t watched a ton of golf, but have you had a chance to see Collin Morikawa’s iron play? It’s pretty sublime.
JM: He’s got a beautiful swing, just his positions in his swing are so perfect. It’s like Louis Oosthuizen, just sort of turn, hold it, boom. Just so simple. It’s like Gene Littler, you wouldn’t remember him, but it was just turn, turn. Al Geiberger, turn, turn. There was nothing going on. It was such a simple action.
GW: Do you think his iron play will be in the Johnny Miller-Tiger Woods territory?
JM: It could be. Even when I was 12 years old, if I hit a 5-iron 12 feet left or right of the hole, I was pissed. I mean, I was going at the pin is where I was trying to hit it most of the time. Never aimed away from the flag, which is probably the reason I only won two majors. Maybe I should have played more smart golf. And Tiger learned to play smart golf from Jack. I just couldn’t resist. Lanny Wadkins and I were great with the irons, and my problem was I was just wanting to have too much fun, go at the flag. I just don’t know how motivated he is compared to Phil and Tiger and whether he’ll just keep at it or start having a family and kids like I did. I got where I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go out there on Tour that much. I played a very limited schedule, didn’t work on my game when I went home. I just went fishing all the time. I mean, I was worse than (Bruce) Lietzke. I’m still about a +2 handicap in fly fishing. That’s one thing I can do pretty good is fly fish. Unfortunately, that probably screwed up my career a little bit.
For me, if I wasn’t playing a tournament, it was a little boring, all the preparation. That was my weakness is I just didn’t practice.
GW: What do you make of Jordan Spieth’s reemergence, because it’s hard sometimes once you start losing it. There are guys that never get it back, right?
JM: I think he was just trying to win all the time instead of just go through the process of putting yourself in position to win. I’m not sure exactly why, but he got where his driver wasn’t good. People don’t realize the reason why people go into slumps: sometimes it’s burnout, but a lot of times you stop hitting it in the fairways. The driver is the reason why people get into big slumps.
David Duval got where he couldn’t hit two fairways, let alone one. He’d be in the wrong fairway half the time. And that’s what happened to me is I was playing Army golf: left, right, left. It’s like a Marty Fleckman who was supposed to be a superstar; he got where he could not hit a driver. He was hitting 2-irons off the tee. That’s what happened to Spieth. He’s learned now how to play that cut. He’s playing like a little hold-on cut and that’s changed everything for him.
GW: Why is the golf community, particularly the PGA Tour, so Republican and conservative heavy?
JM: Wow, these are all good questions, but they’re sort of, they’re elusive answers. I don’t really know. That’s a good question. Why would that be? That’s one of those ones, I don’t know if I know the answer to that. I never really gave it that much thought, but you’re right, it is true, though. I don’t know.
GW: What’s the biggest regret in your career?
JM: I think my biggest regret is that I just didn’t work on my game. I should have realized I had a special talent, good enough to be in the top couple, two or three best in the world, and I should have honored that. I just enjoyed being home so much. If it wasn’t for fishing, I would have been a lot better golfer, that’s for sure.
If you missed part I of the Miller interview, click here.
