Where Have All Our Champions

By Ron Green Jr.

Feature Photograph: Martin Kaymer (USGA/Steven Gibbons)

It has been 25 years since Payne Stewart leaned over that 20-foot par putt on the 18th green of Pinehurst No. 2 with the U.S. Open title hanging in the damp, gray Sunday afternoon air.

Phil Mickelson, who had celebrated his 29th birthday five days earlier, could only watch from beneath his white visor as the thousands surrounding the scene fell into a heavy hush. For a moment, the only sound came from a bird on a pine branch nearby.

Then a movie came to life.

Stewart’s putt fell in, he punched the air, hugged his caddie and, amid the combustible noise, consoled Mickelson, who would become a father for the first time the next day.

Pinehurst, where golf had already lived for more than a century, had its timeless moment and Stewart’s joy felt contagious. It was Pinehurst No. 2’s first U.S. Open and, to borrow from Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one that has led to multiple U.S. Opens and a second home for the USGA.

There is, however, a bittersweet thread that runs through the four U.S. Opens hosted at No. 2 — the men played there in 1999, 2005 and 2014 and the women followed the men in 2014. The four champions — Payne Stewart, Michael Campbell, Martin Kaymer and Michelle Wie — didn’t know it at the time, but their careers would never again touch the sky like they did in Pinehurst. In fact, Stewart and Kaymer never won another tournament, while Wie (now Michelle Wie West) and Campbell managed just one more official victory in their respective careers.

Stewart died in a plane crash four months later. Campbell struggled with the attention that came with being a major champion, and his game deteriorated. Kaymer, once the top-ranked player in the world, dealt with injuries and a loss of confidence. Wie won one more LPGA title nearly four years after her Pinehurst win, but her career never equaled her celebrity.

It’s wrong to suggest U.S. Open winners at Pinehurst are cursed — golf is hard enough without introducing the occult — but the titles the four players won there largely defined careers that took curious, even tragic turns, in the aftermath. It calls to mind one of the curiosities in the village that surrounds the golf resort involving the Magnolia Inn, which has been around since 1896.

In its original form, the Magnolia was tall enough that it blocked the view of the nearby and majestic Carolina Hotel. To remedy that, the top two floors of the inn were removed so that the Carolina stood in no building’s shadow.

By essentially cutting off the top of the Magnolia, it left the hotel with a stairway that was a series of steps that led, not to a room nor another floor, but to a wall. It became known as the stairway to nowhere and, in a sense, that has been the pathway for players after they’ve won U.S. Opens at Pinehurst. What could fairly be seen as a career springboard has instead — whether coincidentally or not — become more of a jumping-off point.

That’s not to suggest that, with five more U.S. Opens scheduled at No. 2 through 2047, something strange is going on, but it has produced a peculiar pathway from the top of golf’s mountain to whatever comes next.

Stewart’s story is tragic and familiar. He was one of golf’s stars, both cocky and charismatic, with a golf swing that angels might envy. Stewart dressed the part, wearing plus-fours and a flat cap, and there were times when his ebullience was more annoying than entertaining.

He had, however, begun to grow into a different man when he won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. Faith played a larger role in Stewart’s life and his sense of seeing beyond himself was demonstrated in the instant when he put his hands on Mickelson’s face mere seconds after breaking the left-hander’s heart on Pinehurst’s 18th green and gave him a message of joy about becoming a father.

Three months later, Stewart led the American celebration after a rowdy victory in the Ryder Cup at The Country Club outside Boston, the happiness practically dripping off him like the champagne being sprayed.

Then Stewart was gone, leaving a forever hole in the Pinehurst story, but his achievement and the spirit in which he accomplished it live on. Taking a photo alongside the bronze statue behind No. 2’s 18th green of Stewart’s reaction upon holing the winning putt — right leg kicked behind and his right fist punching the air — has become part of the Pinehurst experience for visitors.

Six years after Stewart’s win, New Zealander Michael Campbell arrived at the U.S. Open after narrowly qualifying. He’d earned his spot by birdieing the last hole in a European qualifier at Walton Heath in England, holing a 6-foot putt that would ultimately help redefine his career.

Imagine if Campbell missed and never made it to Pinehurst.

Campbell was a world-class player, having won six times on the European tour and with an admirable habit of showing up on major championship leaderboards, but like everyone else in the 2005 U.S. Open, he arrived in the immense shadow of Tiger Woods.