STRANGER THINGS
THE CIRCLE
OF SEVEN
BACK-TO-BACK U.S. OPEN
WINNERS IN TOURNAMENT
HISTORY
Willie Anderson (1903-05)
John McDermott (1911-12)
Bobby Jones (1929-30)
Ralph Guldahl (1937-38)
Ben Hogan (1950-51)
Curtis Strange (1988-89)
Brooks Koepka (2017-18)
28
“But I never brought it up. I told my team that morning,
I will never bring up the back-to-back, ever. It was a big
day for Brooks, and for the history of the game.”
—Strange on Koepka’s back-to-back U.S. Open wins
Suddenly, the ghosts of consecutive
Open winners Willie Anderson (1903-05),
John McDermott (1911-12), Bobby Jones
(1929-30), Ralph Guldahl (1937-38) and
Hogan began shuffling chairs in their
exclusive locker room.
But when Strange backpedaled to a Sat-
urday 73 to fall three behind the leader Kite,
“there wasn’t one mention of Ben Hogan
in Sunday’s paper,” Strange says, “because
apparently Strange wasn’t going to win.”
Ah, but the narrative dramatically shift-
ed when Kite drove his ball into Allen’s
Creek on the fifth hole, then missed a
short putt for a triple-bogey 7. While Kite
flailed his way out of contention with two
more bogeys and two doubles, Strange,
true to his reputation, played perfect,
patient, relentless U.S. Open golf.
“My exact thinking Sunday was, if Kite
shoots even par, I have to shoot 3-under
just to hopefully get part of a playoff,
and I’d already done it that week,” says
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 9
Strange, who recalls getting a thumbs-up
from Richmond Times-Dispatch sports
editor Bill Milsaps on the 10th hole, his
signal that he was the new leader.
“But there really wasn’t huge pressure
to do it, because nobody expected me to
win anyway. Tom was such a steady player.”
Strange was as well. He made 15 straight
pars and still led by one as he came to No.
16, which he birdied, his first bird in 35
holes. That provided a two-stroke lead that
buffered his three-putt bogey on the last.
Nonetheless, it clinched what turned
out to be Strange’s 17th and final PGA
Tour victory.
KOEPKA JOINS THE CLUB
In his time, Strange personified the most
successful U.S. Open players—talented,
yes, but with laser-focused mental ability
to grind through difficult patches under
pressure. Koepka displays all of those traits,
Strange says, which is why he is bullish on
vsga.org
In ’88, Strange got up and down from
the sand on the 72nd hole—he calls that
bunker shot the most important of his
career—to force an 18-hole playoff Mon-
day against Nick Faldo. Strange, ranked
fifth in the world at that point, whipped him
by four shots to secure his first major and
ease (somewhat) the pain of squandering a
three-shot lead late at the ’85 Masters.
It also allowed Strange, a Norfolk native
raised in Virginia Beach, to join fellow
Virginia Golf Hall of Famer Lew Worsham,
the 1947 champion, as the only Virginians
to win the U.S. Open.
The victory was one of four for Strange
in ’88, when he became the first player to
win $1 million in a single year. The fol-
lowing June, Strange arrived at Oak Hill
still in fine form at age 34. He hadn’t won
yet in ’89, but he had logged six top-10
finishes in 14 events.
“Did I think I would win again?” Strange
says. “I don’t know. I just wanted to defend
well. I never stood on the first tee and said
‘This is my week.’ I wasn’t Jack Nicklaus.
If I got going and gained momentum and
started really believing in myself, then I
hoped by the weekend I could be part of
the story line.”
That’s exactly how Strange’s story
played out.
After an opening 71, Strange surged to
the top of the leaderboard on Friday. He
birdied the first two holes, holed a wedge
for an eagle at the par-5 4th, posted a 64
that tied Hogan’s course record and led
Tom Kite by one.