Greatest Shots: Number 17 ... Jerry Pate: 1976 US Open: There is a maxim, one that gathers strength with each passing year, that players don't tend to win Majors unless they have first learned how to lose one.
In most cases, it is true - but, for Jerry Pate, who had previously won the US amateur title, it didn't prove to be so. And, in the most pressurised of conditions at the US Open at the Atlanta Athletic Club in 1976, he produced a shot that was worthy of winning any major championship, let alone a player's first professional victory.
It was the final day, and Pate was one of just a number of players who were in with a chance to claim the title. John Mahaffey had started the fourth round in prime position. Having lost the US Open the previous year at Medinah in a play-off, Mahaffey was something of a sentimental favourite with the crowds, and he had led after the second and third rounds - at one stage by as many as six shots - but his normally steady game unravelled over the closing stretch.
When Pate birdied the 15th and his playing partner, Mahaffey, bogeyed both the 16th and 17th holes, it meant that Pate had moved into a one-shot lead. In the match ahead of them, though, Tom Weiskopf and Al Geiberger holed long par putts on the final green to give themselves a chance of at least a play-off. In fact, Mahaffey and Pate had both driven into the rough on the 18th hole, which made their tasks of making birdie and par, respectively, to win the title seem all the more unlikely.
The 18th hole at the Atlanta Athletic Club is a monstrously long par four, with a large pond guarding a green which is fast and firm and notoriously difficult to hold.
Mahaffey was 220 yards away and, from his lie in the rough, with the championship that had once seemed in his grip now slipping away with every stroke, he felt he had no option other than to attempt a miracle shot. His three-wood effort, however, was never going to succeed, and he could only watch helplessly as the ball splashed into the middle of the pond. His dream was over.
Pate, too, had been watching - and his heart must have skipped a beat as the presence of the water was reinforced. Pate's ball was sitting in the rough, but he had a reasonable lie. It was half-covered by the grass, but, crucially, was not buried.
Still, there were murmurs from the galleries when Pate reached for a five-iron. He still had 200 yards to go, over the water, to the flag. And the pin was cut near the water.
While those present wondered as to Pate's sanity, the player himself was aware that his adrenaline was pumping hard and, not only that, but he also knew that the kind of lie he had was likely to produce a flyer, that unpredictable shot that darts from the club-face and flies farther than a shot from the fairway. He also knew that, coming from the rough, he would not get any bite on the green - and, so, Pate did not aim his shot at the pin, where the landing area was small with water front and a bunker to the back, but to the longer and wider right side of the green.
After working his feet into a comfortable stance, he unleashed his swing and knew immediately that he had pulled it slightly, that it was heading exactly in the direction of the flagstick. The crowd knew it too. And, for a short number of seconds, there was silence as they waited to see what would happen. The ball avoided the water, found the green and stopped barely three feet from the hole. The crowd erupted.
As he approached his putt, Pate, somewhat dazed, and who had never won a professional tournament before, asked the then USGA president Harry Easterly, "I don't have to sink this to win, do I?"
The reply confirmed that he didn't. But sink it he did, to take the US Open title by two shots.
At the end of the series, readers will be able to vote for their Five Greatest Golf Shots Ever - the reader whose selection corresponds with the shots selected by an Irish Times panel will enter a draw to win a custom-fit Titleist 975J Driver.
