The Look and Substance of Raymond Floyd
The Look and Substance of Raymond Floyd
Thirty years ago, he was key in an American Ryder Cup road win
This week in Italy, what happened 30 years ago in England is still on many minds. That was the last time the United States won a Ryder Cup in Europe. In Rome, the Eternal City, the U.S. will try to break a drought that has seemed to go on for an eternity.
One of the reasons the Americans prevailed, 15-13, in 1993 at The Belfry was the presence of Raymond Floyd.
At age 51—still the oldest golfer on either side to play in a Ryder Cup—Floyd delivered as a captain’s pick. He went 3-1-0, matching Corey Pavin and Payne Stewart as America’s leading point-getters, with a pair of wins partnering with Stewart and a crucial singles victory over Jose Maria Olazabal. Another player born in North Carolina, Davis Love III, received much of the attention for his 1-up win over Costantino Rocca, but it was Floyd who clinched the retaining and winning points for the U.S.
It was Floyd’s eighth and final Ryder Cup, and his win over Olazabal came in his 31st match; he is one of eight Americans to play 30 or more matches. Floyd’s record was 12-16-3, not quite what you would have expected given his talent, but his last appearance lingers as an example of what he could accomplish.
If you grew up in North Carolina during the 1960s and 1970s, playing and following the game, Floyd was a very familiar name, boldfaced in the agate scores, featured on local television sports segments, celebrated as the Fayetteville native who made it to the highest level of his sport and who, after his long, fruitful career was over, compiled the finest record of any golfer from the Old North State. If you lived only 40 miles from Floyd’s hometown, in Southern Pines, as I did, he was an even bigger deal.
When there was a tour event in the Pinehurst area, he was a golfer you had to find. He moved around the Country Club of North Carolina (U.S. Pro Match Play) or No. 2 Course (World Open/Hall of Fame) with a distinctive strut-walk, confidence and purpose in every step. After an old-school waggle, he started an effective swing that was all his: club sharply to the inside then up on the backswing. “My swing may not be classic,” Floyd once said, “but it works for me. I know it’s not beautiful. I wouldn’t want anybody to emulate it.” From the look of a home movie of my swing around age 13, I did try to copy him but the imitation didn’t reach my scorecards.
During the 1986 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, which featured one of the most crowded leaderboards in major history with 10 players, some of them A-listers, held a piece of the lead during a memorable final round. Floyd emerged as the winner, giving himself a bit of breathing room with a birdie on the par-5 16th hole. “Not too shabby for an old boy,” ABC’s Peter Alliss said when the putt dropped, as Floyd went on to become the then-oldest U.S. Open champion at age 43. Stewart, one of the golfers who Floyd beat in that Sunday dogfight, said, “He knows how to tune himself in and tune out everything else.”
That description made more sense back then, when we were still fiddling with dials on a radio, but Floyd could get in the zone, all right. His fellow North Carolinian, the stock-car legend Dale Earnhardt, was “The Intimidator,” but the nickname would have been a perfect fit for Floyd.
“If I was known for something, it was "the stare," a wide-eyed look I'd get when I was near or in the lead,” Floyd wrote in Golf Digest in 2009. It was the result of being in a zone-like mental state, and what a peculiar feeling it was. I’d feel very light on my feet, almost like I was floating. When I had an important chip, I could see the ball coming off the club and landing on the green perfectly. The different shot options whirred around in my mind like little movies. The stare was my way of letting my imagination take over my conscious thought.”
A handful of years before Floyd won the U.S. Open—to go with two PGAs and a Masters—my role at the Pinehurst tour event had been upgraded from teenage volunteer standard bearer to fresh-out-of-college public relations person for the 1981 Hall of Fame Tournament. The event had been in doubt because of lagging sponsorship dollars, its status in jeopardy until a couple of months before the scheduled September dates. We didn’t have much of an operating budget and were scrambling to get some television commercials done to promote the tournament.
During a trip to the PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club in
August, I was on a mission to snag a few pros to appear in the TV ads. Floyd, who had won three times in 1981 (Doral, TPC (the last one at Sawgrass Country Club), Westchester) was at the top of my list. Eager and anxious, I approached him between holes during a Tuesday practice round.
It was clear within seconds that I’d made a big mistake. In that mis-timed moment, Floyd didn’t care for me or about an event in his home region. I wasn’t competing against Floyd, but I got the stare and then some. It was his “office,” he was busy, and I was bothering him as he prepared for a major championship.
I’ve never forgotten how short he was to me that hot summer day, but rare is the winner who doesn’t expose a sharp edge now and then. That exchange has been offset by more pleasant ones over the years, including a lengthy phone interview a quarter century after the “War by the Shore” as I was working on an oral history of that emotional 1991 Ryder Cup for a British magazine. Dealing with reporters wasn’t Floyd’s favorite thing. To those outside the media, he was usually considerate and generous, a big tipper.
,It has been 60 years since Floyd was a rookie on the tour and won the St. Petersburg Open when he was 20. “I believe every part of my game is sound,” he told a Raleigh newspaperman after that breakthrough victory in March of 1963. “Of course, it all could stand some polish.”
Floyd could always chip and pitch like a dream, skills honed through full days playing as a child and teenager, sometimes in money games against adults. His short game saved him in brutal windy and wet weather on the opening day of that ’86 U.S. Open, when he hit just five greens in regulation and scrambled to a 75 that was only a handful of strokes off Bob Tway’s first-round lead. It was his mindset rather than technique that required refinement to allow him to become of the finest players of his era. He began to apply himself more fully to his career after he married Maria Fraietta in 1973, after she told him his less-than-dedicated approach wasn’t the way to go.
He was a runaway winner at the 1976 Masters, shooting 17-under 271 thanks to the way he tore up the par 5s by reaching them in two with a trusty 5-wood from clubmaker Bert Dargie. “I’m tired of being a mediocre player,” he said afterward. “I want to win lots of tournaments, to get on with the program.”
Floyd did just that, winning 15 PGA Tour events after slipping on a green jacket. The last of his career, his 22nd win, came at Doral in 1992 when he was 49. And he had a great shot at Masters No. 2 in 1990, losing a playoff to Nick Faldo.
Floyd and Olazabal were all square through 11 holes of their singles tussle in 1993 at The Belfry when Floyd kicked it into gear. As golf writer Larry Dorman described the match in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Floyd “summoned something from way, way back. The man who hadn’t won a singles match since beating Peter Oosterhuis a dozen years ago, peeled off three straight birdies. He did it the way he used to peel 20s off his bankroll back when he was a kid enjoying the high life.”
Floyd hit a 2-iron to four feet at the 12th, holed a mid-range birdie putt on the 13th, then tapped in for a 2 at the par-3 14th after his 5-iron tee shot hit the flagstick. “I just felt like we needed something like that to happen,” Floyd told Dorman. “It was time for it to happen.” What happened led to a 2-up victory over Olazabal, a pivotal point in the American victory, its last in what has developed into golf’s most scrutinized away-game.
Golfweek’s Adam Schupak reported that Floyd attended Thursday afternoon’s opening ceremonies in Rome. He is 81 years old, long retired from competition. This weekend, the much younger men on the U.S. team could use the steel and stare of his enduring heyday. Floyd only attended UNC-Chapel Hill for a semester, but he had a PhD in golf, as he demonstrated three decades ago in the Ryder Cup and on so many other occasions.