"I don't regret it at all," Floyd says of his freewheeling lifestyle. "Who's to say that if I led life differently I might not have burned out? Honestly, I'd like to go back at 21 and dedicate myself. But would I have fulfilled my life? Would I have become the person I am today?"

One tournament in floyd's 41-year career marks a crossroads. It's not the 1976 Masters, where he lapped the field to win by eight shots. Nor that epic Open at Shinnecock a decade later. In fact, it is the Greater Jacksonville Open in March 1974, a tournament from which the feckless, underachieving playboy withdrew.

His bachelor life had ended three months earlier when he married an elegant, 30-year-old brunette named Maria Fraietta, who owned a fashion school in Miami and whom he had met through mutual friends. Their first child, Raymond Jr., was born nine months and two weeks after the wedding. "People who knew me marveled when I got married. They couldn't believe I was the same person," he says. "I don't want to sound like a prude or a stiff collar, but I took the vows and that meant something." The new Mrs. Floyd proved to be as strong willed about her husband's career as he was cavalier.

After an opening-round 76 at Jacksonville's Deerwood Country Club, Floyd was midway through an equally indifferent second round when a buddy approached. "You can't make the cut," Bob Rosburg said. "Withdraw and we'll go to Miami and be at the races this afternoon."

"Sounds good to me," Floyd replied. He walked in, but never made it to the track. Maria refused to leave. "I came here for four days and I'm staying for four days," she said. As the couple idled in the hotel, Maria told her husband to make a decision: "If you don't like what you're doing, stop. You're still a young man. There are a lot of professions you could undertake."

"That was like hitting me upside the head. A light bulb went on," Floyd says almost exactly 30 years later. "Before that I didn't work hard. My talent had carried me."

He changed his nocturnal habits and began working with Jack Grout, who had coached Nicklaus. The results suggested what Floyd might have achieved during his first decade .on Tour had he spent less time with his rat pack and more .with the range rats. He won the Kemper Open in 1975, ending a six-year drought that extended back to the '69 PGA Championship, and became a consistent, formidable force on Tour. Of his 22 career wins, 17 came after he married, including three of his four major championships. "He turned up in a condition to play," says longtime CBS announcer Ben Wright. "Maria rescued his career. He was not too far from being washed up."

The curtain had fallen on the party-hearty first act of Floyd's career. He welcomed Act 2 as a condemned man greets an 11th-hour phone call from the governor.

Previous

1  | 2  | 3 | 4  | 5  | 6  | 7

Next