The Phil Who Could Have Been Jack

Those kinds of players weren't especially difficult for someone of Rodgers' caliber to find. "Looking back," says Deane Beman, who often crossed paths with Rodgers on the junior circuit and later on the PGA Tour, "it is clear to me that Phil was the best player I've ever seen at 15 years old. He had course management and creativity and all the shots. He was better than Tiger at 15."

Rodgers inherited his imaginative style from the late Paul Runyan, a cagey, 29-time Tour winner who started working with Rodgers in 1953 after Runyan took a job at La Jolla Country Club, where Rodgers caddied. Runyan often made Rodgers play blindfolded. "Then he'd tell me what he wanted me to do, why he wanted me to do it and how I should do it," Rodgers says. The drill instilled touch, feel, and audacity. "Runyon always told me that it was a sign of weakness to play a safe shot," Rodgers says.

Rodgers' prodigous rise and relationship with Runyan opened doors. At 10, he teed it up with Ralph Guldahl. At 13, he played with Sam Snead. Then came rounds with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. "The only kid who probably had as much information as me was Butch Harmon," Rodgers says.

The education paid off. Rodgers landed a golf scholarship at the University of Houston, where he won every tournament he entered, including the 1958 NCAA Championship. When Houston, then a private school, pulled its golf scholarships a year later, Rodgers left for the Marines. He completed two years of service in San Diego and Yuma, Ariz., then drove to the 1962 St. Paul Open Invitational to begin his professional career. "I knew I could play," Rodgers says. "I wasn't really afraid of anybody."

For good reason. When Rodgers fired a final-round, course-record 62 at the Los Angeles Open later that summer, he won by nine shots. Hell, he could have won the U.S. Open at Oakmont that same year if he hadn't refused to take an unplayable lie when his ball lodged in a spruce tree in the first round. Instead, Rodgers took four swipes to get it out and made an 8. He eventually finished third, just two strokes behind — who else? — Nicklaus.

With early success came expectations. "People thought I was going to do that all the time," Rodgers says of his torrid play in L.A. "That doesn't happen. Only Tiger does that." Rodgers had other near-wins at the majors, losing a 36-hole playoff to a white-hot Bob Charles at the '63 British Open and a final-round lead to Nicklaus at the '66 British. But how did a guy with his delicate touch and arsenal of shots not once close the deal at a major, or for that matter win more than five regular Tour events?

"If you ever watched him hit the ball," Nicklaus says today, "if you watched his short game, if you watched him putt, you would say, 'How could anybody ever beat him?' But I think his real problem came from a lack of length."

There are other explanations: Rodgers' tendency to overthink; his swashbuckling style; his late-night carousing; his litany of injuries. And then there's this: "I'm not sure that I could have handled being a major champion," Rodgers says. "I couldn't have handled the responsibility." It's a damning admission, and not one Rodgers likes to expound on. He'll readily wax about the glory days with Jack, his weakness for fast cars and fine wine, but ask Rodgers why he never won a major and he'll pause and sigh and scramble for words, a striking departure from what the old pro is like when you get him started on teaching.

It's another flawless morning in Carlsbad, Calif., and Rodgers is seated on a practice range in the kind of black leather swivel chair you'd expect to find in a boardroom. A range staffer had wheeled out the chair as a joke, but it suits Rodgers, who barks out instructions like a Wall Street broker. His charge today is journeyman pro Jeff Brehaut, a Rodgers' disciple of 18 years.