It is one of golf’s most iconic shots. The distant golfer is in the fairway some 170 yards away with a 7-iron in his hand. His high-arching shot lands some 25 feet short of the flagstick, releases toward the pin, and comes to rest one foot away from the cup. The one-stroke lead that the journeyman golfer had in his quest for an improbable win in a major championship was on the verge of becoming a two-stroke lead. Most importantly, it occurred on the final green on the final day. Regardless of what the other top notch professionals in the field could do or would do, the ultimate bubble boy had secured his victory with this timely stroke of brilliance.
It was 20 years ago at the 2003 PGA Championship on the East Course at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York, that Shaun Micheel turned the improbable into reality. He played solid par golf for most of the week on a historic course that had hosted past major championships won by Hall of Famers Cary Middlecoff, Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus and Curtis Strange. It was one tough layout. Micheel’s brilliant 18th-hole iron shot resulted in his first win on the PGA Tour, his first major title, and what would ultimately become his 15 minutes of fame. He would never win again on the professional level and yet that magical shot on the final hole at Oak Hill would make his moment in the sun unforgettable.
We are at the midpoint of the 2023 PGA Championship that has once again returned to Oak Hill’s East Course. A total of 156 golfers were in the field on Thursday. We are now down to the 65 golfers who made the cut. And yet whether you watch the television coverage this weekend or are enough of a hardcore golf fan to check out the after-round cable sports shows, you will see multiple replays of Shaun Micheel’s 2003 shot throughout the broadcasts. It isn’t very often that a golfer who is far removed from being a household name has that one and only shot of a lifetime. Yet we get to see the replay every year during the PGA Championship week.
Shaun Micheel was born in January of 1969 in Orlando. Most of his formative years were spent in Memphis. He attended Christian Brothers High School and parlayed his junior golf successes into a golf scholarship at Indiana University. Any time you can get a scholarship to an NCAA Division I school, you have to be a solid golfer, but Indiana is not exactly one of the big boys of college golf. Shaun turned professional in 1991 after his college days came to an end. He was 22 years old. Perhaps his finest moment during those days was the fact that he saved two people from a car that was sinking into the water while he was a contestant at a golf tournament in North Carolina. He received a local bravery award.
Micheel’s earliest days among the play-for-pay professionals was nothing short of a struggle. He bounced around on the mini-tours, got onto the PGA Tour multiple times, lost his PGA Tour playing privileges multiple times, played the Nike Tour, and was a Q School regular. His only wins during those years was a victory on the Asian Tour in 1998 at the Singapore Open and a win the following year at the Nike Tour’s Greensboro Open. The Greensboro win got him back on the tour in 2000. He would return to the developmental tour in 2001 and at the end of that year he got through Q School once again, just like he did in 1993, 1996 and 1999.
Going into the PGA Championship that August of 2003, it was difficult to imagine success for Shaun Micheel. At the time of the tournament, he ranked 169th in the world. He had gotten into 164 PGA Tour events at that stage of his career and there was zero reason to think that the week in Rochester would be any different. On Thursday, Shaun carded a 1-under-par 69 and found himself among the top 10. Phil Mickelson and Rod Pampling were atop the leader board with a 66 while Billy Andrade and two-time U.S. Open winner Lee Janzen were one stroke back. Fred Funk, Mike Weir, Aaron Baddeley and Chad Campbell shot 68. Micheel found himself in a tie for ninth place. It was unchartered territory. It was just his third major.
Yet during Friday’s second round, Micheel continued to act like he belonged. He shot a 68 and amazingly his 3-under-par total was good enough for a two-stroke lead at the midway point. It was a day when most of the field suffered as evidenced by Pampling’s 74 and Mikelson’s 75. Saturday’s round of the day also came from an unexpected source as Chad Campbell played great. His 5-under-65 got him into a tie at the top spot alongside Micheel, who carded a 69. Their 4-under-par aggregate put Campbell and Micheel three strokes clear of Mike Weir. Four strokes back was the threesome of Briny Baird, Tim Clark and Billy Andrade.
Sunday dawned and Micheel jumped out front with a birdie on the first hole while Campbell made bogey. Micheel picked up two bogeys on the front nine and made the turn at 3-under-par to find himself tied with Tim Clark. Shaun played par golf on the first eight holes of the back nine with two bogeys and two birdies. After 16 holes his lead was two, but Campbell inched closer with a birdie on the 17th hole. With a major championship on the line, Micheel found the fairway off the tee, hit his iconic 7-iron to kick-in range, and was most improbably the PGA Championship titlist for 2003. At the end of the year, Micheel found himself in 34th place on the money list. It was the first time he had ever finished among the tour’s top 100.
During the course of the next three years, 2003 PGA champion Shaun Micheel had a handful of close calls. He finished a distant second at the 2006 PGA at Medinah behind Tiger Woods. He also finished runner-up that year in the World Match Play and the Greater Milwaukee Open. Yet he also had a bevy of health issues, first with exhaustion and later with heart disease. In 2014 Shaun had open heart surgery with four stents inserted. His last full season on tour was in 2011 and he has played sparingly during this past decade on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour for the over-50 set. Yet because of his past champion status, Micheel is at Oak Hill this week. While he occasionally expresses frustration with the fact he was a one-hit wonder, two prevailing facts are of interest. Every major winner in 2003, including Mike Weir, Jim Furyk and Ben Curtis, also had just one major in their career. Another factoid is that over the last 40 years, 16 of the winners of the PGA won it as their sole career major, including Love III, Sutton and Day.
The PGA Championship is at its midpoint. Most probably a well-known pro will prevail at Oak Hill. Yet one never knows. That’s why they play the game and that’s why Shaun Micheel owns a major championship. He owes that one major victory to one of golf’s greatest shots.
