Feasting on the Tour

Johnny Miller is only 27--old enough to have been a golf pro for six years but too young to have lost his self-confidence. "I may be remembered as the best front runner who ever played the game," he says. "When I get out in front, it's usually bye-bye, baby." A case of locker-room braggadocio? The record backs him up. In the Professional Golfers' Association's first two tournaments this year, Miller's performance has been astonishing. By the time the players arrived in Pebble Beach, Calif., for the third event last week, Jack Nicklaus was grumbling: "All I've heard about since I got out here is Johnny Miller."

Small wonder. In Phoenix three weeks ago, Miller led from the start; he finished a startling 24 strokes under par and set a new tour record with his winning margin of 14 shots. Down in Tucson, he knocked 25 strokes off par and coasted home nine shots in front of his nearest competitor. Not only that: he won the last two tournaments he had entered in 1974 by eight and seven strokes.

Conceding Nothing. His two victories in the Arizona sun added up to $70,000 and offered impressive evidence that he has displaced Jack Nicklaus as the lord of the links. Nicklaus admits, "Nobody's ever played on the tour as well as Miller is playing now," but he was conceding nothing as he jetted into Pebble Beach for the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am and his first confrontation with Miller this year.

Regardless of the outcome in California, Miller's performance has reached an awe-inspiring consistency. Last year he won the first three tour events and finished with eight victories and a single-season prize-money record of $353,021. With the title of No. 1 money winner at stake in September, he shot down Nicklaus with a birdie on the second hole of a four-way sudden-death playoff at the World Open.

He has accomplished this with a swing that Nicklaus and other pros admire as "the soundest on the tour." (As a teen-age caddy, Miller spent more time practicing his swing than following the customer's ball, and earned a reputation as a poor bag bearer.) His iron play is phenomenal, time and again delivering the ball stiff to the pin, and he putts with the boldness and confidence that once distinguished the play of a not yet forgotten superstar--Arnold Palmer.

Miller says a major ingredient in his success formula is inspiration. "I have to be inspired to play a good game. I have to go out and say, 'Hey, this is a good tournament. I have to beat these guys.' " To spectators it seems more a case of concentration than inspiration. When putting, Miller wants his caddy kneeling close behind him, motionless, to block out any slight movement that peripheral vision might pick up.

He pays meticulous attention to the technical aspects of his game and scrupulously follows about a dozen checkpoints. Each round he continually reviews such things as the balance of his body weight, the pressure of his grip on the club, the rhythm of his backswing and the placement of his feet. He makes adjustments, if necessary, on the spot.

The biggest adjustment he has had to make is to his celebrity status and wealth. Though he is generally good-natured, the press of fans and reporters sometimes nettles him ("My private time is mine. I'm not a Lee Trevino type who needs to tell jokes"). Miller now commands up to $10,000 for a personal appearance or exhibition, and advertisers woo him night and day. Sears, Roebuck has introduced a line of clothes called "the Johnny Miller Collection," and he has appeared in television commercials for Beautyrest mattresses. He has turned down legions more. "I can be oversold too," he says. No doubt, but the income from the endorsement offers he accepted boosted his 1974 earnings to an estimated $700,000.

Major Championships. An elder in the Mormon Church, Miller is a family man who neither drinks nor smokes. His principal indulgence is a Porsche Carrera racing car, which he says he has driven at up to 140 m.p.h. He owns a condominium in Hilton Head, S.C., but calls home a new $300,000 house bordering the tenth green at the Silverado Country Club in Napa, Calif. He met his wife Linda while attending Brigham Young University on a golf scholarship, and says that he prefers weekends at home with her and their three children to the grind of the tour.

Nonetheless, Linda Miller knows her husband will not have many weekends home this year. Not only will he be out making a run at tour stops like those in Arizona; he will also be going after the major championships that truly establish a golfer's reputation. So far he has won only one, the 1973 U.S. Open. How will he do in this year's Masters, Open, P.G.A. and British Open? He likes his chances in all of them. "I'm more experienced now. I make fewer mental errors and I don't choke as much as I once did. My choking point is probably higher than Nicklaus'."

And his appetite for success remains healthy: "I'm happy now because I'm hungrier for tournament wins than I thought I'd be. For a while there I didn't know if I had that drive." With Miller taking so large a portion from the pot, other pros may have a hungry season.

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