No one, including Rocco, is sure when he found time to get schoolwork done, but he did — barely. Matlock had a rule that players had to maintain a C average to play, and Rocco did that — barely. Matlock only had four players fail to graduate in twenty-three years at Florida Southern, and Rocco was one of them. “He was only ten credits short,” he said, laughing twenty-four years after Rocco finished his senior season of golf. “I guess he’s not going to go back and get them at this point.”
In the fall of 1983, Rocco’s second semester at Florida Southern, Matlock brought in a late recruit named Lee Janzen. He had spotted Janzen during a junior tournament that summer and, knowing he was planning to go to Brevard Junior College in the fall because no four-year school had recruited him, offered him a partial scholarship. Janzen jumped at it because of the school’s golf pedigree and enrolled two weeks after Matlock offered him the chance to come to school.
Rocco’s roommate that fall was Jim Wilhelm, one of the more popular players on the team. “We used to hang out in Jim’s room a lot,” Janzen remembered. “When Rocco and I first met, we weren’t exactly best buddies. In fact, I don’t think we liked each other that much. After a while, though, we started to talk about music and we found we had common ground there. We both loved Rush, and we both knew a lot about rock-and-roll.”
Rocco and Janzen spent a lot of time listening to music in each other’s rooms, playing a game to see who could identify a song, the artist, and the year fastest. “It was very competitive because we were both good,” Janzen said. “There weren’t a lot of songs that we didn’t know.”
They also found in each other a willing practice partner. “Some guys practice because they feel like they have to practice to get better,” Janzen said. “Some guys do it because their coach makes them do it. Rocco and I both liked to practice. We could go out to the practice green at Lone Palm [the club where Florida Southern played and practiced] and spend three hours practicing shots over a bunker and not even notice how much time had gone by. Then we might go into the bunker and spend a couple more hours there. I can’t even tell you the number of hours we spent together just trying different shots and competing, trying to outdo each other.”
Janzen soon figured out that he was dealing with a unique character in Rocco. “There is no such thing as good or bad with Rocco,” he said, smiling. “Something is either the absolute best or the absolute worst. There’s no in-between. He was playing Cobra clubs back then and he convinced me I had to have Cobras because they were so much better than any other golf club I could play with. Finally, I ordered them. They took forever to arrive. Every day Rocco would call UPS and ask where the clubs were. Finally, one morning they told us they were on their way, should arrive by the end of the day. That wasn’t good enough. We had to get in the car, drive around, and find the UPS truck with the clubs. We convinced the guy to give us the clubs and went straight to the course so I could try them out.”
Rocco was so obsessed with the game that he charted every shot he played. “I’m not just talking about tournament rounds, I’m talking about practice rounds — every shot he hit, he wrote it down,” Janzen said. “There was nothing golf related that was too small a detail for Rocco.”
By the spring of 1984, Rocco was eligible to play for Florida Southern, and ready to play well. And he had even bigger goals. Matlock always had his players fill out a form that asked them, among other things, about long-term ambitions. When Rocco filled his out, he wrote, “Play on the PGA Tour.”
During a large chunk of the ’83–’84 school year, Rocco was making the drive from Lakeland to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina a couple of times a month to see Jim Ferree and have him check his swing. Ferree, who is now retired and living on Hilton Head, spent his winters there in those days. Rocco’s going to see him was fine with Matlock, because Matlock respected Ferree and could see how much confidence Rocco had in him.
“By that time Rocco had met Rick Smith through Lee [Janzen] down at Florida Southern,” Ferree remembered. “I had taught Rick as a kid, and a lot of what Rick was teaching people were the same things I had taught him. Rick and I used to joke that I would get Rocco and mess him up so he could fix it, and then he would mess him up so I could fix it.”
Smith had also grown up outside Pittsburgh and had taken lessons from Ferree. After playing at East Tennessee State and realizing he didn’t have the game to make the tour, he decided to teach. He was only a few years older than Rocco and Janzen, so working with the two of them was a natural for both the teacher and the pupils.
Matlock had coached plenty of players who wrote “Play on the PGA Tour” as their goal. When Matlock first saw it on Rocco’s form he almost laughed. But by the end of the 1984 spring season, he didn’t think the notion was laughable at all. “He came so far so fast it was amazing,” he said. “You could see he had potential, even that first time I saw him when he was playing for California. But he worked so hard that his game was almost transformed by the time he finished his junior year.”
That summer, at Matlock’s urging, Rocco played in every top amateur event he could find. He hadn’t done that the previous summer because he didn’t think his game was good enough, but two rounds of golf and a talking-to from Matlock changed that feeling.
The first round of golf took place at Oakmont Country Club on the day the 1983 U.S. Open ended. Rocco had made the short drive from Greensburg to Pittsburgh to see the Open with Dave Lucas and his dad, Ken Lucas, an equipment representative for Ping and a friend of Bob Ford, the longtime golf pro at Oakmont. Rocco spent a good portion of the weekend following Tom Watson, his golf hero, whom he’d had the chance to meet two years earlier during a tournament at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio.
“I was there with a friend whose dad was a member of the club, and somehow we got in the locker room,” Rocco said. “Tom was in there, and we walked over and introduced ourselves. I mean, he could not have been nicer. I remember he asked me if I played, and I said yes. He said, ‘Are you any good?’ And I said, ‘Not yet.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘Keep working; you’ll get there.’ I was already hooked on him because I loved the way he played and competed, but after that there was no doubt. The next year when he chipped in to beat Nicklaus and win the Open at Pebble Beach, I think I jumped ten feet into the air.”
A year later, at the ’83 Open, Watson and Steve Ballesteros were in the final group at Oakmont on Sunday. Ballesteros quickly fell out of contention, and the tournament became a duel between Watson and Larry Nelson, who was one group in front. Late Sunday afternoon, with Nelson about to line up a 65-foot birdie putt on the 16th hole and Watson finishing up on the 15th, a thunderstorm rolled in and play was postponed until Monday morning, with Watson and Nelson tied for the lead.
The next morning, Rocco and the Lucases went straight to the 16th green. Watson was waiting to tee off on the par-three and Nelson was preparing to putt. They watched in amazement as Nelson rolled his putt over hill and dale and into the cup for a stunning birdie two. That turned out to be the difference; Nelson won by one shot.
Rocco’s disappointment over Watson’s loss didn’t last very long. Shortly after the awards ceremony, he found himself standing on the first tee with Ken and Dave Lucas. “Because Ken knew Bob Ford, we were actually able to play the course a couple of hours after the Open ended,” he said. “It was amazing. Because of the rain the course played about 10,000 yards long and, obviously, it was set up as hard as you can possibly imagine. I shot 72 or 73. Just kept the ball in the fairway all day. I was amazed.”
To shoot a couple over par on a U.S. Open golf course is no mean feat, even for a good college golfer. At that point, Rocco wasn’t sure he was a good college golfer, since he was still a semester away from being eligible to play at Florida Southern.
About a month later came the second eye-opening round of golf. Rocco was at Greensburg Country Club doing what he did almost every day — practicing and getting ready to play with his friends. He g
ot a message to call Danny Bonar, another of his golf buddies.
“Hey, you need to get over here to Latrobe,” Bonar said. “I’ve got a really good gambling game set up for us.”
Rocco has always loved to gamble. Several years ago he became obsessed with poker, playing it on his computer constantly and even in the World Poker Championships in 2005. Back then he was always looking for a good “money game,” and had become quite good at making putts with money on the line. So the idea of a good money game was enough to get him in his car to make the twenty-minute drive over to Latrobe Country Club.
“When I got there I said to Danny, ‘So who we playing with?’ He just started walking me toward the first tee. That’s when I saw him standing there.”
“Him” was Arnold Palmer, who owns Latrobe Country Club and lives a few miles down the road during the summer months. As soon as Mediate saw Palmer standing on the tee, he panicked.
“No way,” he said to Bonar. “I can’t play with him. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to talk to him, much less swing a club in front of him. I’m not ready: I can’t do it.”
Bonar ignored the protests and steered the now shaking Rocco onto the first tee.
“The minute we shook hands and he looked me in the eye and gave me that smile of his, I relaxed completely,” Rocco said. “It was as if I’d known him all my life. That’s Arnold. He has this way of making you feel like he’s been your friend forever. I was still shaking when I hit my first tee shot because, for crying out loud, Arnold Palmer is standing there watching me. Once I got that ball airborne, though, I was okay. It turned out to be one of the greatest days of my life.”
Rocco shot 69 that day. Palmer shot 70. “My dad still has the scorecard,” he said, grinning broadly. “I’ve probably played with Arnold hundreds of times since then, but that’s the round I’ll never forget. I mean, I know he was already like a hundred at the time [ fifty-three, actually], but think about it: a college kid, me, beating Arnold Palmer? No way.”
Thus, when Rocco returned to college in the fall he had the following to report about what he had done on his summer vacation:
• Played Oakmont under U.S. Open conditions and shot 72 or 73.
• Played Latrobe Country Club with Arnold Palmer and shot 69 — to beat the King by a shot.
A pretty good summer’s work. Or so Rocco thought.
“You didn’t play in any of the big amateur tournaments,” Matlock told him. “You want to be a pro, you have to play consistently against guys who are going to be pros. You have to prove to yourself that you can compete with them.”
Rocco understood the message his tough-love coach was sending him. He knew that his good play at Oakmont and with Palmer proved something, but it wasn’t enough. He began planning to play in big amateur events the following summer. And that spring, finally eligible, he became a key part of Matlock’s team, along with Janzen, Greg Gamester, and Jim Northrup. Then, as planned, he went off to play against the best competition he could find.
He began the summer by trying to qualify for the U.S. Open, which was being played that year at Winged Foot. He won the local qualifier and then made it into the Open at the sectional. “In a year I’d come from being thrilled to get to play the Open golf course after it was over to actually playing in the Open,” he said. “I thought that was pretty cool.” He played respectably at the Open, but missed the cut by three shots.
He played in the U.S. Amateur and won his first-round match against Jay Sigel, one of the best amateur players not to turn pro (he did years later, when he turned fifty and played on the Senior Tour), and reached the quarterfinals before losing. Then, in the Western Amateur, he beat Scott Verplank, who had won the U.S. Amateur. A year later, Verplank won the Western Open while still an amateur. Rocco made the final at the Western Amateur before losing to John Inman.
In all, a pretty good summer. By the time he returned to Florida Southern for his senior year, Mediate had decided to give PGA Tour Qualifying School a shot the following spring. He wasn’t at all convinced that his game was good enough to get on tour, but he wanted to try anyway.
“I didn’t want to be one of those guys who looked back years later and said, ‘Gee, I wonder if I might have made it if I had tried,’ ” he said. “Plus, to be honest, there was nothing else I was interested in doing. I didn’t have any kind of backup plan.”
The lack of a backup plan bothered his mom. She kept nudging him to keep going to class and graduate, and he kept telling her not to worry, that he would be fine. He had a superb senior season, making the Division 2 All American team while becoming the best player on Matlock’s team. “He played as well that year as anyone who has ever played for me,” Matlock said. “And I’ve had some very good players.”
Rocco set a number of records — course records, tournament records — that year, most of which, he likes to point out, were later broken by Janzen. But he finished the year filled with confidence and headed off to the first stage of tour qualifying at Indiana University. For ten years, and through 1981 the tour held Q-School twice a year — once in the late spring, once in the fall.
“Which turned out to be a good thing for me,” Rocco said. “Because I bombed out completely, didn’t even come close. I was lucky, though, because there was another qualifier a few months later and I got another shot at it.”
Before he left for the second qualifier in October, Rocco made a deal with his mom: If he didn’t make it to the tour this time, he would go back to school to get his degree. “Now that gave me incentive,” he said, laughing. “I had no intention of going back to school.”
Even so, the first stage didn’t begin much better the second time around. He had signed up for a qualifier at the University of Georgia, in part because it was closer to Florida Southern, but also because Tom Gleaton, who had been a couple of years ahead of him at Florida Southern, was going to play up there. The two of them decided to share a hotel room for the week. On the first day, Rocco shot 75 and was so disgusted he was ready to go home.
Gleaton came back to the room and found him packing. “I can’t play,” Rocco told him. “I’m not good enough.”
Gleaton told him he was crazy, that one bad round wasn’t that big a deal. “You didn’t play that badly,” he told him. “You go out tomorrow and play well — not great, just well — and you’ll be right back in this thing.”
Rocco decided to give it one more shot. Gleaton later told Matlock that he had talked Rocco into staying because he didn’t want to pay for the hotel room — $36 a day — by himself if Rocco went home. Rocco knows there was more to it than that.
“He just wasn’t going to let me give up on myself,” he said. “After that pep talk, I stopped feeling sorry for myself.”
But whatever Gleaton’s motives, he was right — the next day went better. By the fourth and final day, Rocco was right around the number he knew it would take to get through the qualifier. “I’m not sure why, but you always know at Q-School to within a stroke, maybe two at most, what it’s going to take to get through,” he said. “You can tell by how tough the course is playing, by the conditions, by how tightly the field is bunched starting the last day. I got to the back nine and figured I needed to shoot two under par to make it.
“I made a couple birdies and came to 18, which was a par-four, figuring that worst-case scenario, if I made a par I would play off and if I made birdie I was in for sure. I couldn’t reach the green in two and I ended up with about a 25-yard pitch shot that had to go over a swale to the hole, which was on the back of the green.
“I was standing there with a pitching wedge in my hand, when all of a sudden I decided to hit a seven-iron. I just grabbed it out of the bag and decided I was playing a pitch-and-run kind of shot. The ball goes up over the swale, disappears, runs toward the cup — and goes in.
“I was thrilled. I thought, ‘Great, I’m in for sure now, no problem.’ I signed my card and found out that by chipping in I’d gotten into a playoff! If I’d
gotten up and down, I’d have been out. It was three guys for two spots. I birdied the first hole and made it. If I had known I had to hole the pitch on 18, no way would I have come close.”
In those days there were only two stages of Q-School. (These days there are four.) The finals that year were at Greenlefe Country Club, which wasn’t too far down the road from Lakeland.
“I’d played the course like a million times,” Rocco said, under-stating things as always. “I knew it blind. Needless to say, I went in there with a lot of confidence. I was convinced I was destined to make it to the tour after what had happened at Georgia. I played very solid golf right from the start.”
The finals are six rounds — 108 grinding holes of golf. After five days and 90 holes, Rocco was tied for 28th place. Fifty players would get tour cards, so he was in a good position. Even so, there was reason to be nervous. The margin between 28th place and 51st place was four shots, and stories about players skying to a high number in the final round were (and are) a major part of Q-School lore. Like anyone on the eve of the biggest day of his life, Rocco struggled to sleep.
“I remember having a dream,” he said. “On the first hole, I hit a driver down the middle and hit six-iron for my second shot — and it went in. I actually woke up with a smile on my face, thinking I was going to be okay.”
He felt even better when he walked onto the first tee and saw Lee Janzen and Marco Dawson standing there. They had been playing in a tournament in Jacksonville over the weekend and had made a last-minute decision to drive to Greenlefe instead of back to Lakeland to watch their two ex-teammates (Gleaton was also in good position) try to make the tour.
Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open Page 5
