Dad Was Never Out of Loop as Furyk Stayed in Swing

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. — When he was a kid in Pennsylvania, Jim Furyk would bug his father all the time about wanting to try golf. Mike Furyk kept telling his son that he wasn’t old enough.

Mike Furyk had been a club pro, spending the usual long hours to get the job done. He worked on weekends and holidays and felt bad because he couldn’t take his family on vacations, as most everyone else could.

Mike knew something had to change. He wound up quitting his job so he could spend more time with Jim, go fishing with him, coach him in Little League and encourage him when he played football and basketball.

Jim Furyk loved baseball and football and basketball, but this golf thing kept eating at him. He just had to try it, so he was persistent, asking his father when he could start playing golf.

Mike finally gave up and said they should just set a date when it would be OK for Jim to play. They decided it would be Jim’s 12th birthday.

When that day arrived -- May 12, 1982 -- Jim reminded his dad of the deal.

Years later, Mike would remember Jim’s birthday cake on the table and presents in the living room, yet the only thing on Jim’s mind was golf.

Mike figured that this kid must want to play golf pretty bad.

And now you know the rest of the story. On Sunday afternoon at Olympia Fields Country Club, Jim Furyk won the U.S. Open. It happened a little more than four hours after he had left the clubhouse and headed for the putting green.

That’s where Furyk hugged his dad.

And then, late in the afternoon, he hoisted the silver U.S. Open trophy.

Happy Father’s Day.

Mike Furyk was right, so long ago. That kid really did want to play golf.

It all seems like such a neat and tidy package, doesn’t it? Many thanks to the script writers who came up with this tale. It’s about the former club pro who quits his job to help his son play sports. The kid chooses golf and plays every day until his hands hurt. The father is the only coach his son ever has.

And 21 years and one month after Mike and Linda Furyk bought their son a season pass to a tiny, Pennsylvania public course called Overlook, he won the U.S. Open.

That’s probably part of the story too. You see, it has been sort of easy to overlook Jim Furyk for quite awhile now.

Sure, he had won seven tournaments, but never a major. And while there is no doubt that he is one of the best putters on the PGA Tour, his swing was never a thing of beauty.

Furyk’s swing is quirky, loopy, a pretzel in motion. Some compared it to a guy shooing bees from his head. Or an octopus falling out of a tree.

He never cared about what others called his swing, only what his dad said. The advice was always the same: If it works, why change it? Mike would say that the only change he ever made in Jim’s fundamentals was to suggest that he putt cross-handed.

One time, Mike approached Arnold Palmer and Gary Player at a party and asked each separately what he would change in his career if he could go back and do it over. Both said they would have learned to putt cross-handed.

So Mike taught his son to putt cross-handed.

That worked pretty well too, and Furyk hasn’t changed it.

But Furyk has changed something, and it happened at the moment he made his last putt on the last hole to win the 103rd U.S. Open.

It’s not about his loopy swing anymore.

In the 260th tournament of his career, Furyk took a perfectly beautiful swing at golf history, changed his legacy and joined the list of players who have won a major championship.

To be sure, the money has been good along the way. Furyk has won more than $3 million in prize money this year and more than $17 million in his career, seventh best in the history of golf.

That loopy swing has paid off pretty well.

Furyk’s rounds of 67-66-67-72 added up to a total of 272, matching the best 72-hole score in U.S. Open history. It has been a busy week. Furyk already had set U.S. Open records for the lowest 36-hole and 54-hole scores.

Mike and Linda Furyk walked outside the gallery ropes on Father’s Day at Olympia Fields and took in every moment of their son’s greatest moment in golf.

When it was over, after Furyk had defeated a game Stephen Leaney by three shots, he embraced Linda, then hugged Mike again.

He kissed his wife, Tabitha, and she handed him their 11-month-old daughter, Caleigh Lynn.

As Furyk cradled her in his arms, he looked around and smiled as the gallery cheered and clapped. Maybe his mind drifted a little. He just might have been thinking about what his daughter would decide to ask for on her 12th birthday, and what she could get from her dad.

Maybe she will turn out to be just like him. Who knows? Maybe years later, maybe even on Father’s Day, he will find himself saying the same thing his dad once said:

You know, that kid sure wanted to play golf.