U.S. Open: Ranking the 25 Most Dominant Performances in History
By Bill Felber
3. Tony Jacklin, 1970, Hazeltine, -3.12
The best British player of his generation, Tony Jacklin approached the game with a stoicism that enabled him to handle a Hazeltine course that flummoxed his fellow competitors. They tied into the relatively new and untested layout as unfit for a U.S. Open, laden with too many artifices and tricks.
But while most of the chief contenders turned in opening rounds in the mid 70s, the reigning British Open champion produced a 71-70 to take the 36-hole lead by three strokes over Dave Hill.
Jacklin steadily built that advantage over the weekend, posting two more 70s in a tournament where every other member of the top 10 had at least one round of 75 or higher. That ran his final advantage to seven strokes over Hill, with Bob Charles one more stroke behind in third.
But it wasn’t entirely a cakewalk. Bogeys at the seventh and eighth holes on Sunday reduced Jacklin’s lead to three, and he drove into the rough on the ninth, a long par four. His iron left a 25-foot putt, which Jacklin rammed home. When it fell, “I said to myself, it is all yours,” he remarked afterward.
It also made Jacklin the first Britisher to win the U.S. Open since Ted Ray a half century earlier.