Payne Stewart and the US Open: A Personal Memory

The US Open brings Payne Stewart back every year.

Not just for people who followed his career closely — but for anyone who was paying attention in 1999, when he stood on the 18th green at Pinehurst No. 2 and holed a fifteen-foot par putt to win by a shot. The fist pump that followed is one of the most reproduced images in the history of golf. The knickerbockers, the flat cap, the sheer relief of a man who had been close so many times finally getting there.

He died four months later. He was 42.

I have a particular reason to remember Payne Stewart. In the summer of 1998, I caddied for him at Ballybunion.

That Round at Ballybunion

He was playing in a group with Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara — the week before O'Meara won The Open at Royal Birkdale. I was a teenager. I had very little idea what I was standing in the middle of.

What I remember is how relaxed Stewart was. He was comfortable in that company, comfortable on a links course, comfortable being himself. He was funny. He talked to people. He wasn't performing being Payne Stewart — he just was.

He got a hole in one that day.

The following summer, he won the US Open. And then he was gone.

The US Open Career That Almost Wasn't

Payne Stewart's relationship with the US Open is one of the great stories of patience and persistence in major championship golf.

He won it first in 1991 at Hazeltine. Then came the near-misses — three runner-up finishes in majors across the 1990s, including the 1998 US Open at the Olympic Club, where he lost by a single shot to Lee Janzen after leading with nine holes to play.

By 1999, there were people who had started to write a different kind of story about him. A player who was brilliant enough to get close but somehow couldn't hold it together when it mattered most.

Pinehurst No. 2 ended that story.

He played the final round with Phil Mickelson and shot 70 — not spectacular, but flawless when it counted. The putt on the last. The fist pump. The moment with Mickelson, who had just become a father for the first time and found out during the round — Stewart sought him out before the trophy ceremony to congratulate him. That detail says something about who he was.

Why It Still Matters

The US Open doesn't produce clean, comfortable stories. It's designed not to. The rough is penal, the greens are fast, the pressure is unrelenting. It finds out players who aren't quite ready.

Stewart was ready in 1999. After everything — the near-misses, the years of good-but-not-quite, the 1998 heartbreak — he was ready.

That round at Ballybunion was the summer before. Relaxed, funny, playing golf with Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara on one of the finest links in the world, getting a hole in one, going home at the end of the day.

The US Open was a year away. None of us knew what was coming.

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