Johnny Miller: This Year’s Memorial Tournament Honoree

2016 Memorial Tournament honoree Johnny Miller deserves every bit of recognition he gets for his contributions to golf.

Johnny Millet is in the golf spotlight again this week. Every year, Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament is centered around one person who has made an outsized contribution to the game of golf. This year that person is Johnny Miller.

According to the tournament’s website, this is the Golden Bear’s way of helping to immortalize the achievements of the legends of the sport.

It makes sense, then, that the Captains Club has decided to recognize Johnny Miller as this year’s Memorial Tournament honoree. The World Golf Hall of Famer is one of the game’s most famous faces and will be remembered for his amazing skill on the course as well as his role as NBC Sports’ lead golf analyst, a position he continues to hold to this day.

In honor of Miller’s big day, let’s take a look back at how he got there. As a player, the California native is mostly known for his great play in the mid-1970s, but there have been plenty of highlights spread throughout the last 40 years.

Miller was born in San Francisco and quickly found success as a junior golfer. In 1963, he was invited to join the storied Olympic Club as a member of its junior team, and he won the U.S. Junior Amateur the following year. After enrolling at Brigham Young University, he continued his amateur success, tying for eighth and finishing as the low amateur at the 1966 U.S. Open, played on his home course.

After graduating college in 1969, the 22-year-old Johnny Miller joined the PGA TOUR. While he didn’t experience immediate success, he won within his first three seasons, netting his first victory at the 1971 Southern Open Invitational. He also tied for second at that year’s Masters and for fifth at the U.S. Open at Merion, establishing himself as a big-stage performer. The next year, he won the Heritage by a stroke over Tom Weiskopf.

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Heading into the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont, Miller was a good player with two professional victories and four major top 10s, but he would leave the week as an unforgettable part of the game’s folklore. After signing for a 76 in the third round, Johnny Miller sat six strokes off the lead, shared by a group of four players that included Arnold Palmer and Julius Boros.

On Sunday, however, he unleashed one of the finest rounds in the history of tournament golf. Miller birdied the first four holes of the day and four of six after making the turn to move all the way to five-under par. When all was said and done, Johnny Miller was able to sign for the first 63 in major championship history, good enough for him to hang on for the victory on a day when just three others broke 70. He needed just 29 putts on the day and hit all 18 greens in regulation, hitting his approach to within 15 feet on ten occasions.

With the major monkey off his back, Miller went on a torrid run over the next two years. He logged eight PGA TOUR victories in 1974 and four in 1975, pushing his career total to 15. Over this stretch, he regularly outgunned legendary players like Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Billy Casper and Ben Crenshaw. Then, in 1976, he delivered another dominant major performance, this time at the Open Championship. Trailing by a stroke heading into the final round, he closed with an impressive 66 that allowed him to win by six over Nicklaus and a 19-year-old Seve Ballesteros.

After notching 18 wins in his first six PGA TOUR seasons, Johnny Miller began a decline from which he would never recover. He won just seven more times, a big departure from his established rate of success. Even so, his ball-striking remained pure, and he certainly has plenty of good memories from his non-peak years. In 1981, he outlasted Ballesteros in a nine-hole sudden death playoff at the Million Dollar Challenge to become the world’s leading money winner for that year. In 1994, he turned back the clock and won at Pebble Beach despite the fact that he was semi-retired to pursue his broadcasting career.

Speaking of his broadcasting career, Johnny Miller has attracted just as much notoriety in the booth as he has on the course. While insightful, he is also known for his blunt remarks – remember, this is the guy who said Rocco Mediate looks like a guy who cleans pools for a living. At any rate, he’s still regarded as a guru of golf – a few years ago, Miller revealed that Tiger Woods, in his early days on tour, had once asked him for advice with his short irons.

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With a career like that, there’s little wonder why Miller is being honored at this year’s Memorial. He excited us with his impressive major triumphs and dominant runs, and he’s continued to entertain us on an almost weekly basis thanks to his work with NBC Sports. When it comes to understanding the sport of golf and communicating that understanding to a wider audience, there’s no one quite like Johnny Miller.