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The biggest adjustment he has had to make is to his celebrity status and wealth. Though he is generally good-natured, the press of fans and reporters sometimes nettles him ("My private time is mine. I'm not a Lee Trevino type who needs to tell jokes"). Miller now commands up to $10,000 for a personal appearance or exhibition, and advertisers woo him night and day. Sears, Roebuck has introduced a line of clothes called "the Johnny Miller Collection," and he has appeared in television commercials for Beautyrest mattresses. He has turned down legions more. "I can be oversold too," he says. No doubt, but the income from the endorsement offers he accepted boosted his 1974 earnings to an estimated $700,000.
Major Championships. An elder in the Mormon Church, Miller is a family man who neither drinks nor smokes. His principal indulgence is a Porsche Carrera racing car, which he says he has driven at up to 140 m.p.h. He owns a condominium in Hilton Head, S.C., but calls home a new $300,000 house bordering the tenth green at the Silverado Country Club in Napa, Calif. He met his wife Linda while attending Brigham Young University on a golf scholarship, and says that he prefers weekends at home with her and their three children to the grind of the tour.
Nonetheless, Linda Miller knows her husband will not have many weekends home this year. Not only will he be out making a run at tour stops like those in Arizona; he will also be going after the major championships that truly establish a golfer's reputation. So far he has won only one, the 1973 U.S. Open. How will he do in this year's Masters, Open, P.G.A. and British Open? He likes his chances in all of them. "I'm more experienced now. I make fewer mental errors and I don't choke as much as I once did. My choking point is probably higher than Nicklaus'."
And his appetite for success remains healthy: "I'm happy now because I'm hungrier for tournament wins than I thought I'd be. For a while there I didn't know if I had that drive." With Miller taking so large a portion from the pot, other pros may have a hungry season.