Fuzzy Zoeller’s distinctive cool was effortless — except one regrettable time

Kind of fitting, that Fuzzy Zoeller died on Thanksgiving. No player could have had a better temperament for Skins Game golf than Fuzzy, winner of the 1979 Masters, one of the best ever played, and the 1984 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. He was loose, he was funny, he was fast and, when he was on, he could stake shots and hole putts with anybody. He won the Thanksgiving made-for-TV golf ritual in 1985 (Tom Watson was second), won it again in ’86 (Lee Trevino was second) and finished second (with Jack Nicklaus) when Trevino won the most Skins money in ’87.

Do you think Frank Urban Zoeller was intimidated, at all, playing with Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, with a camera in his face? Impossible.

Here is a list of the three greatest modern-era natural golf talents in American professional golf: John Daly; Fred Couples; Fuzzy Zoeller. He had Hall of Fame talent, but the good life, Fuzzy style, was always pulling at him. Hunting, fishing, a long series of soggy red-meat dinners, the ashtrays crowded by last call. His favorite haunts on Washington Road in Augusta were TBonz Steakhouse and Rhinehart’s Oyster Bar.

He stopped playing in the Masters in 2009, after playing 31 straight. He never stopped going to the Tuesday-night Champions Dinner. He often wore pink shirts under his green Augusta National club coat, along with a loosely knotted tie. He was not a buttoned-down guy. He would have been an outstanding lighten-the-mood Ryder Cup captain, but there was no way he could do all that coat-and-tie, say-the-right-thing nonsense that the PGA of America leadership used to demand of its Ryder Cup captains.

Zoeller’s Ryder Cup record was weirdly terrible. He was 1-4 in 1979, 0-1-1 in 1983 and 0-3 in 1985, the year he received the USGA’s highest honor, its Bob Jones Award.

Zoeller always enjoyed a reputation for being an easygoing playing partner. Fall golf was never his thing. His 10 PGA Tour wins were all in winter, spring and early summer. One of his most famous acts was waving a white flag of surrender in Greg Norman’s direction, when Norman was on his way to winning the 1984 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. (Can you imagine, golfers with a sense of humor?) Zoeller won in a playoff. His air-tight Monday 67 is probably one of the most underrated rounds of now-or-never golf ever played. Norman shot 75, five over par. That’s how hard the course was. Zoeller’s Masters win came in his first appearance, in a three-way playoff with Ed Sneed and Tom Watson. It was a Sunday so tense there was no air. Two wins in majors in two playoffs. Astounding.

Sneaky long is no longer a thing, in the age of graphite and carbon. Innumerable players, through the last days of persimmon, were described as sneaky long. Fuzzy Zoeller — steel shaft, wood head, low hands, curved back — was the sneaky longest of them. Without a hint of hit in his swing, without a bit of grunt, he could drive it out there with anybody. His swing was two waggles and go, with a slow, long and across-the-line backswing and a hugely full body turn. His paunch helped. He was strong as an ox, and he was a great shooter in basketball. In other words, aided and abetted by his superior eye-hand coordination, he could catch golf shot after golf shot on the center of the face. 

Zoeller was a great short putter. He liked to take break out of his short putts and, from five feet and in, few golfers hit putts harder. Peter Jacobsen, who likely played hundreds of rounds with Zoeller, offered this analysis of Zoeller’s short putting: “Unorthodox set up. Aimed left. Flat lie on his putter. Played a bit of a cut with his putter. But was deadly when he needed to be.”

There was not a mean bone in his body. Every player of Fuzzy’s era will tell you that. Some of his favorite practice-round partners were good-ol’-boy Southerners like Hubert Green and John Daly, or golfers of color, like Vijay Singh and Jim Thorpe. He was a central member in a generation of singular talents.

He was three months older than Ben Crenshaw. In a text Thursday night, Crenshaw offered this tribute: “I’m going to personally miss Fuzzy as a dear friend. Fuzzy had an exceptional touch, and he was so strong. You can’t win at Augusta and Winged Foot without having a sensitive touch around the greens. But what got him through many pressure-packed situations was his attitude. We shared many happy golf memories as well as time together as families. My wife and I send out love and prayers to their children.”

Zoeller and his late wife, Diane, had four children. They were a family of Hoosiers, through and through, living on a large farm in Floyds Knob, Ind., near the Kentucky border, rooting for Indiana basketball teams, identifying with America’s rural tradition. Fuzzy lived in camo. His life revolved around his family, his love hunting and fishing — and driving a tractor. He liked to say that if didn’t play golf he would have made a living doing something with a tractor.

Zoeller made millions via Kmart, selling a line of no-fuss golf clubs for 13 years. (He had his own seven-seat Falcon 100 jet.) He lost the opportunity to make millions more. If you know anything about the life and times of Fuzzy Zoeller, you likely know about the crude 20-second remark he made, one marinated in a racist trope about old Southern Black eating habits and pointed at Tiger Woods, a 21-year-old Californian with a Black father and a Thai mother. It cost Zoeller his Kmart contract and, to some incalculable degree, his public ease.

On Masters Sunday in 1997, with Woods putting the finishing touches on his historic 12-shot win, Zoeller, drink in hand and sunglasses on, stopped to talk to a group of reporters assembled near the clubhouse, including TV crews with live cameras. The ’79 Masters winner looked at the scoreboard and said, “Pretty impressive. That little boy is driving it well, and he’s putting well. He’s doing everything it takes to win. So you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it. And tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it?”

He snapped his fingers and started to walk away. Then, over his shoulder and still walking, he concluded this bit with a dismissive addendum that sealed his fate: “Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

They serve. Those were the two words that changed the course of Zoeller’s fortunes.

In November 2001, as Zoeller was preparing to go on the senior tour, Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, summarized Zoeller’s infamous comments in a story for Sports Illustrated. He said, “We’re all prisoners of our own words, captured for posterity. Growing up in Indiana in the 1950s and ’60s, as Fuzzy did, I’m sure he saw racial ugliness. Some respond to that with intellect, some with anger, some by isolating themselves. Fuzzy’s response was humor. The problem with his comments is they were funny only to a very select audience.”

Earl Woods died in 2006. Tiger Woods will be eligible to play on the senior tour come January. Fuzzy Zoeller died on Thanksgiving Day, four years after his wife. Woods will be the host of his tournament in the Bahamas next week. He won’t be playing, and his body continues to betray him. He hasn’t made a public comment about Zoeller’s death. Zoeller’s ill-considered comments from 1997 followed him right into his obits, along with the green club coat he won at Augusta and the U.S. Open trophy he won at Winged Foot. They threatened to overshadow the greatness of his golf and the effortless cool that was at the true heart of his demeanor.

Fuzzy Zoeller lived a large life. Whatever you imagine his breakfast looks like, double it. There won’t be another Fuzzy. The eating, the drinking, the smoking, the fast play, the easygoing nature. You wouldn’t say he was slow to anger because there didn’t seem to be an angry bone in his body, not in his public life, not on golf courses across the world, not at Augusta National or up and down Washington Road.  

Millions of people, he once said, “think I’m a hating man when I know in my heart I’m not.”

Millions of others know he could flat-out play, and did so with a certain distinctive style that has made professional golf the sport it is, and the game it was.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com