We all know from his television commentary with NBC America that Johnny Miller can talk for the talk, but for a time in the mid-1970s he also walked, probably better than anyone else who has set foot on a field of Golf.

Everyone he competed against, and that included Nicklaus, Watson, Weiskopf and Trevino, knew that if Miller got hot, he was unbeatable, and that even on a bad day he was still pretty good. Nicklaus said of him: ‘The player who consistently hits his shorts will get closer to the hole than anyone I’ve ever seen was Johnny Miller in his prime. There were parts of his game, particularly the short irons, that were better than mine.’

Meanwhile, Watson, who played with Miller when he shot 61 in the final round to win the Tucson Open in 1974, said, “That was the best round of straight-hitting golf I’ve ever seen.” To which Miller replied: “For the last 12 months I have played better than anyone in the world.”

And so he had, but his was a swift and improbable rise to prominence, followed by an even quicker fall, if not to mediocrity, then at least to fallible human standards.

When he was 10 years old, his older brother, with whom he was very close, drowned while swimming in the Pacific, and his body was not found for several weeks. To help Johnny cope with the devastating loss, his father installed a rug in the basement where the grieving boy could play golf all day if he wanted to. It paid off to such an extent that in 1966, at the age of 20, Johnny went to the US Open in San Francisco with the intention of getting a job caddying. On a whim he entered the final standings and took the field as a player, before finishing eighth.

He went on to win 24 US Tour titles, with eight of his wins coming in one season, 1974, and one of those wins, the Tucson Open, was by 14 strokes, against one of the strongest fields of the year. He also won two Majors, the 1973 US Open at Oakmont, considered one of the toughest venues in America, and the 1976 Open at Royal Birkdale, where he bested a 19-year-old rookie named Seve Ballesteros. . But it was the US Open that really made his name, as he won it with a final round of 63, which is still the best last round ever to win a Major, and could have been even better.

He later said: ‘So I birdie the first four and immediately start gagging. I know exactly what’s going on, too. I hit him eight feet over fifteen and cut him short, right through the heart. On the eight, I hit a big 4 wood there, 30 feet below the hole. I leave my birdie putt three feet away and then miss that one.

‘I just kept hitting hard: three feet, four feet, nine feet. If Watson had been betting on me, he might have been a 58.’

Late-round or weekend charges were a Miller specialty because in addition to that memorable last day at Oakmont, his 1976 Open win came courtesy of a fourth-round 66, and the year before, in one of the Greatest Masters ever, he failed to catch Jack Nicklaus by one stroke, having played the weekend at 65, 66.

Miller said that composure comes from knowing that even your worst shot is going to be pretty good, and for a time in his heyday if he ‘missed’ an iron more than four feet from the line, he would get angry. His swing was so grooved and pure that he could hit an 8 iron, say, 7, 8 or 9 iron from distance, with some slight alterations that were almost imperceptible to spectators. This was a trick he liked to reserve for those players who were trying to see which club he was using on a par three hole. So, he’d deliberately hit an 8-iron at 9-iron distance, then watch with delight as the other guy airmailed the green.

During those glory years between 1973 and 1976, Miller had it all: blonde good looks, a talent to burn, and an innate curiosity about life, golf, and people, which she has continued to display in her television work. But of all the golf games that have shimmered in our sky, his was the brightest but shortest-lived, and as soon as magical talent appeared, it was gone.

There are three main reasons. First, he suffered from yips his entire life, despite being as good a putter as anyone when he was on a streak, so to compensate, he simply hit his approach shots even closer to the pin. He freely admits that the reason he has only played twice on the US Champions (Seniors) Tour is that he still fights the yips. So bad are they that he, even in his prime, he once painted a dot on the underside of the putter grip and, instead of looking at the clubhead, he stared at the dot throughout the entire stroke. .

He confesses that his worst moment was in a 1977 match against Jack Nicklaus for the television series Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf. He matched Nicklaus shot-for-shot, except sadly, embarrassingly, on the greens, where he three-putted seven times. He said: ‘It was as if he was holding a snake in my hands. I couldn’t make a footer. There is no worse feeling than standing in front of a short putt, knowing that you have no chance of making it.’

Second, he says he spent a winter working on his ranch in Utah cutting down trees and when he got back on the course, his swing was gone due to muscle buildup and loss of flexibility. He also believes that trading clubs from MacGregor to Wilson in 75 immediately moved him back two notches and is certainly the reason for one of his best pieces of advice, which is still good today, which is: “Once you find a game of sticks, like, stay with them until they fall apart.

Third, and probably most important of all, he is a devoted family man and always felt that the narrow, obsessive world of top-level sports, with its endless suitcases and hotel rooms, was tedious and unhealthy for a sane man. He grew bored with the traveling lifestyle of the Golf Tour and always had interests much broader than 72-hole tournaments. He is a committed member of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), has six children, and resents being away from them for long periods when they were young.

When he transitioned to television analyst, he achieved immediate notoriety by using one of his favorite words: ‘strangle.’ Miller confesses to being a true authority, since it is a phenomenon that he has studied with great interest all his life, since he believes himself to be a world-class choker.

He says: ‘I’ve drowned so many times over the years it’s a joke. For me, it wasn’t the result of a character flaw, it wasn’t that I lacked courage. Choking is not like that at all, it is simply stress that manifests itself mentally and physically.

In 1990 when he made his debut as a commentator on the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. His good friend Peter Jacobsen faced a 225-yard shot over the water from a downhill position on the 18th at Pebble Beach. Miller studied Jacobsen’s body language, and everything else, before saying, “This is absolutely the easiest shot to choke on I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The comment created an immediate furor: Jacobsen refused to speak to him for five months, only relenting after seeing a tape of the incident, and almost before he warmed up his announcer’s chair, Miller was hearing loud screams to get him fired. Now it’s hard to imagine the uproar: After all, he didn’t say that Jacobsen was a chokeman, or that he would succumb to the pressure, just that the ingredients were there for it to happen. Over the next few weeks and months, an unfazed Miller continued to call it as he saw it and American viewers began to realize that hearing an honest opinion was a refreshing change from the bland, harmless drivel they are usually served with.

He has never minced words and the directness he has shown throughout his life, which he happily carried into the commentary booth, has earned him as many enemies as friends. But to be fair, he’s not abusive or vindictive in his comments, just as brutally honest as he’s ever been and in American society, especially on TV, blunt speaking is the exception rather than the rule.

His closest equivalent in sports commentary is probably John McEnroe, but Miller has an advantage even here because throughout his career his game was not only staggeringly good but his behavior was exemplary. Thus, when he singles out Tiger Woods, for example, for using audibly (and repeatedly) on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach at the US Open, he cannot be accused of hypocrisy because he has never been heard to swear at a golf course. and yet fewer golfers have had more justification to indulge in some epithet.

And Miller has remained as brutally outspoken as ever. In March 2004, Craig Parry defeated Scott Verplank in a playoff for the Doral Championship in Miami by hitting a 6-iron from 176 yards on the first extra hole. Miller said the Australian’s swing was a 15-handicap swing and would have made Ben Hogan vomit. Parry was so outraged that he filed an official complaint with the US Tour, but Miller was unrepentant and his ability to make such comments, then refuse to back down when they cause a furore, is probably why he remains the most successful American player who does not. they have been offered the Ryder Cup captaincy.

And it was the Ryder Cup that got him into more hot water. During the infamous 1999 game in Brookline. Captain Ben Crenshaw, acting ‘on a hunch’, chose an out-of-form Justin Leonard to partner Hal Sutton for the second fourball of the afternoon (they subsequently halved their match with Olazábal and Jiménez). Miller responded by saying, “My hunch is Justin needs to go home and watch it on TV.” Leonard was furious and was joined by Davis Love and Jim Furyk, who said, in effect, that Miller didn’t believe in them and that he wasn’t rooting for the home team like he should.

Miller told them to take a walk, noting that his job is not to act as a cheerleader but to offer an honest opinion. He was also outspoken in condemning the behavior of the American fans, who abused Colin Montgomerie, his wife and father, and generally behaved like a rabble, later slamming Team USA when Justin Leonard holed an outrageous putt in his singles match again José María Olazábal.

He told Golf Digest: “If Tom Lehman had done what he did in the Ryder Cup 10 years ago, he would have been banned from the Ryder Cup for life, or at least for a Cup.” He was off the charts. He was out of control.’

Miller was always in control, and in his butt he was as good as anyone who has ever hit a golf club.

Johnny Miller on:

His own game: ‘I had a stretch there for a few years where I played a bit of golf that bordered on the twilight zone. I can remember that he was literally upset because he had to kick.’

Colin Montgomerie: ‘Sometimes the guy has no filter between his heart, his brain and his mouth but his opinions are not detrimental to the game.’

Retief Goosen: It’s the worst three-putt in golf history’ (after he failed to go down in two from 12 feet on the 72nd hole at the 2001 US Open; he subsequently won the playoff).

Peter Oosterhuis (1973 Masters leader after 54 holes): “You’ll probably get a good night’s sleep, the two and a half hours.”

The Greatest: ‘When Jack Nickalus plays well, he wins, when he plays poorly, he comes in second. When he’s playing terribly, he’s third.