Quad Questions With Mark Brooks
The 1996 PGA Champion discusses his win at Valhalla, his influences, the modern short game and why he loves doing ESPN's Featured Group coverage.
Mark Brooks missed his first 13 of 15 major championship cuts. But the Fort Worth, Texas native eventually made more PGA Tour starts than any golfer (803), captured seven Tour titles, and was victorious in the 1996 PGA Championship at Valhalla.
A two-time All-American at Texas, Brooks first tasted major success with a T5 in the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah. He missed out on the 1995 Open Championship playoff at St Andrews by a stroke, then finished T3 in the 1996 Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes only a month prior to his Valhalla triumph.
At the Louisville-area club’s first of three PGA’s, Brooks went into Sunday two strokes behind Kentucky native Russ Cochran. Brooks’ third round 69 included a hole-out for eagle at the par 4 15th.
The final round saw Cochran fade to 77 while Kenny Perry, another Kentuckian, made five birdies from the 8th to the 14th holes to take the lead and put the vocal crowds on his side. In just nine holes Perry impressively flipped a four-stroke disadvantage into a two-stroke cushion over Brooks (before bogeying the par 5 18th to leave the margin at a stroke).
Perry finished at -11 and instead of staying loose at the range or putting green, he joined CBS’s 18th hole tower to wait out Brooks’ finish alongside Jim Nantz and Ken Venturi.
“Kenny came in and put a headset on and helped us describe 20 minutes of action,” Nantz said this week in reflecting on Valhalla’s propensity to create drama. “We asked him several times during commercial breaks, ‘don’t you want to go you know, stay sharp, warm up’? No. He was happy to be exactly where he was.”
Often forgotten in the Perry decision: Brooks closed his round impressively. He birdied the 15th a day after his eagle and came to the 18th needing birdie to force a playoff. A brilliant up-and-down from the deep fronting bunker tied him with Perry. As he walked off the green and unbeknownst to Brooks, the 18th green crowd chanted “Kenny, Kenny” and then turned to serenade Perry, who waived back but was soon ushered to a cart for a trip to the 18th tee.
“I thought I would have time [to warm up]," Perry said. "I misjudged that. Maybe I let my mind wander.’
One of the most consistently long and straight drivers of his era, Perry hit a shakey tee shot into deep grass and never finished the hole. Lost in the focus on Perry’s decision to not stay loose, Brooks struck a pair of fantastic shots to reach the par 5 in two and easily made birdie to clinch the title.
“I grew up a golf brat and most of the people that had a major influence in my life, besides my parents, were PGA golf pros,” Brooks said through tears after receiving the Wanamaker Trophy. “A bunch of bums. A bunch of good guys. But I’ve learned a lot about life through golf and that’s what today was all about, just fighting through the bad and knowing something good is at the end.”
Five years later at Southern Hills in the U.S. Open, Brooks was one of three contenders to three-putt a slow 18th green treated differently than the rest. (Early week play suggested good shots would roll down a steep hill so the USGA slowed the 18th and the ninth greens down.)
Retief Goosen ultimately prevailed over Brooks in the 2001 U.S. Open’s 18-hole playoff by shooting 70 to Brooks’ 72.
These days Brooks is doing instruction work with a lot of young golfers in Austin where he resides and appears weekly with Ed Clements and Scotty Sayers on the Fifteenth Club radio show.
For the 2024 PGA at Valhalla, he will once again be a part of ESPN’s Featured Group coverage as an analyst. Brooks spoke to The Quadrilateral about his memories of the week, why he wore a glove when putting, his early influences, the odd state of modern short games, and why he finds Featured Group coverage so illuminating.
GS: First thought or memory from 1996?
MB: I’ll be honest, I'm not one of those guys that reminiscences about my past successes very much. Honest to God, I mean, hand on the Bible, that I do not remember exactly how I played all the holes coming in.
GS: Is some of that a special level of focus a.k.a. the “zone”?
MB: It's one of those awful cliches but it was a one-shot-at-a-time deal where then you move on. So I think that's part of it. The shot that I remember the most, to be real honest, was my bunker shot on the 72nd hole. I remember quite a bit about that since I had to get up and down to get into a playoff to win a major.
The bunker was definitely going to be my miss, but I actually missed farther to the right in that bunker than I would've liked to have been. And that's a pretty long bunker. I had to carry a ridge or it would've carried the ball back down to the bottom right level. It was pretty awkward and a little nastier than it appeared on TV. But I hit a really good bunker shot and left myself probably what, six feet pretty much straight up the hill. But I do remember the putt and if you said, “What do you remember about the putt?” I remember that there was no way I was going to miss the putt. Not being cocky, it's just..it wasn't going to miss. It was just one of those cases where an opportunity presented and it was like, “I'm taking this one. I'm going more holes.”
Brooks’ approach to 18 and winning putt:
The rest of 'em, I'm going to chalk it up to what you said. I’ve wondered why I don't remember more shots. Well, one, the tournament, it is what it is. It's over. It's time to move on in a lot of ways, and like a lot of people you've talked to, I would guess I do remember the bad shots or the shots that ended up not turning out very well. Those got burned into my brain. There's a couple shots I would like a do-over in my career.
GS: Is one from Southern Hills?
MB: Yeah, I'd like to have a little better first putt on the 72nd hole. The other was on 16 at St. Andrew's last round in The Open. I drove into the Principal’s Nose and made double.
Brooks playing out of the Principal’s Nose:
You train to perform and when you fail, it can stick with you and it could be debilitating or it could be, I don't know, maybe call it somewhat “inspirational.” Either way, it can gall at you.
GS: On paper your preferred ball flight would not seem like a fit for Valhalla or a Nicklaus design?
MB: One of my favorite tournaments on Tour was always Memorial, and you wouldn't think it would fit my game very well, and I didn't win there, but I actually played far better at Memorial than you would've ever figured given what my perceived ball flight would've been: let's call it a semi-lowish draw player. How in the world would that play well at Muirfield Village? But I did. It’s one [Jack Nicklaus’] best courses. Like Valhalla, he gives you a very clear shot choice. He almost dictates what shot he's asking you to play, and I would say I did a really good job of fitting my shot into his requests. I could name a bunch of shots there where they're asking for a big old high cut, but I actually figured out how I could play the shots without hitting the big high cut.
GS: A lot of players of your generation didn't like Nicklaus designs because of a perception they played to his game so they stubbornly refused to adapt. Some guys seemed to take it personally instead of merely playing the hole in front of them. I'm sure you heard some of that in the locker room over the years?
MB: No doubt. But his courses generally have pretty wide fairways and are very angle-oriented. Which is a lot of Pete Dye, by the way. Pete was a master at camouflage and tee shots that looked tight. Then you got out there and you had 50 yards and then on top of that, you were better off on one side than the other…usually.
GS: You often, but not always, would putt with a glove on. What’s the backstory?
MB: I can chalk it up to two reasons. One, Jack Nicklaus putted a lot with a glove on. And he usually had on a white glove if I recall. Number two, there were different times as I was growing up coming through high school and college that I used some older putters that had crappy leather grips on them and that we would refuse to change. It was easier to spit on your glove and get a little tacky because you weren't going to spit on your hand.
GS: Was Nicklaus the most influential player for you?
MB: Yes, Jack, Johnny Miller and Ben Crenshaw for me, but Jack was probably at the top. He only played Colonial a couple of times and Johnny Miller played a few times. I watched every move they made. I loved hearing those irons clubs and big leather grips coming in and out of Jack's bag. I got golf balls from both of 'em. Those MacGregor’s probably look like a couple of eggs today if I could find them. And by the way, it was tough to get a golf ball back in the day. I worked Andy Martinez for like five days to get one ball. They didn't pitch 'em out like candy then.
GS: Did they influence how you learned to swing the club?
MB: All we had were pictures and magazines, still photos. You'd go in the front yard then use the windows as mirrors and start finding those positions. And then of course I got to play with a lot of good players. You just copied people.
GS: You had a great short game and I’m not seeing as many players with a wide variety of shots around the greens today. It seems like this is where Scottie Scheffler has separated himself more than some realize on days he’s not hitting 16 greens. You’re working with some young players these days, what do you see?
MB: I’m going to chalk it up to a lot of—too many—different techniques. You've got everything from hit it with your core, to no wrist, to lots of wrist. I mean, it's insane. There's so much garbage in short game instruction in my opinion. There is still a lot of mystery in the short game and lots of ways to do it. I see a lot of players jumping around trying whatever's the hottest thing going in pitching or chipping, and the same thing in putting as well. When you're talking about shorter wedges from the fairway, I do think it's a speed issue. They're so fast now that a lot of players have trouble scrubbing speed out enough to produce a little 70-yarder. They have a little more trouble with partial swing golf shots and those are all partial swing golf shots.