Caddy for Life

by John Feinstein

  Norman and entourage flew in to the British, which was at Royal Troon that year, after a two-day exhibition in Brussels. The weather that year was completely out of character: dry and hot. It had been that way all summer in Scotland. “I brought sweaters, raincoats, umbrellas, rain pants, extra shoes, you name it,” Bruce said. “As it turned out, the only thing I needed was chapstick. It was amazing looking at all the Scots. They were all completely red from the sun because none of them had any idea what sunblock was or how to go about getting it.”

  Bruce’s first truly awkward moment since his job switch occurred early that week. Bruce was carrying Norman’s bag up to his room in the Marine Hotel, which is located a few yards from the Troon clubhouse. As he began to walk up the stairs (there are only four floors in the hotel and the elevator is tiny and slow), he bumped into Linda Watson. After an initial cordial greeting, Linda said to him, “You know, things have changed between us because you left to go work for Greg.”

  Bruce was both surprised and hurt by the comment. He had assumed—hoped?—that Linda felt the same way Tom did about his decision. “Nothing will change the way I feel about you and Tom,” he said. “I’m really sorry if you feel hurt. I would never want you to feel that way.”

  “I believe that,” Linda answered. “But I do.”

  Bruce had always felt close to Linda, felt she had gone out of her way, especially in the early days, to take care of him. It upset him to see how she felt. “All I could do,” he said, “was hope that someday she would understand.”

  In the midst of the record heat wave, Royal Troon was playing fast and, with little wind, relatively easy. Scores were predictably low all week with no wind to protect the golf course. For three days Norman played solidly, hanging on the fringes of contention, but several shots behind the leader, Wayne Grady, a fellow Australian, who played resolute golf for 54 holes and led the championship by one shot going into the final day over, you guessed it, Tom Watson. Norman was six shots back and playing about eight holes in front of Grady and Watson in the last group.

  He would have trailed Grady by only five shots if not for a bogey at the 18th hole on Saturday that left Bruce upset with his player. “He was right in the middle of the fairway, maybe a hundred and forty yards from the flag, which was cut on the right side of the green,” he remembered. “It was an eight-iron and the play was left of the flag, get it on the middle of the green, and try to make a birdie putt from there.”

  Instead Norman drilled the shot directly at the flag and, when it drifted a little bit right, it landed in the right-hand bunker. Norman had made the classic overaggressive mistake: short-siding himself by playing at a pin instead of at a safe spot on the green.

  “Absolutely dead,” Bruce said. “No green to work with and it was downhill to the pin to boot. He hit a good shot from there to get it to twenty feet and make bogey.”

  Later, after the scorecards were signed and everyone had a chance to relax a little, Bruce, who was still feeling his way with Norman at that point said, “Why did you play that shot right at the flag on eighteen?”

  “I was trying to be aggressive,” Norman said.

  “You can’t be aggressive to that kind of pin,” Bruce said. “You have to aim for an area of the green and be sure you make par.”

  Norman said nothing. Bruce had no way of knowing what that meant. Only later would he figure it out.

  The next day was one of those remarkable rounds when Norman left people in awe of his talent. Knowing he had to make birdies all over the place to make any sort of run at the leaders, he came out firing on Troon’s much easier front nine. “Now that was a situation where his aggressiveness was great,” Bruce said. “There were birdies to be made, and he went after them. He could really get on a roll out there when he was hot and confident. It was something to see.”

  Norman birdied the first six holes. As a past Open champion, he is hugely popular in Great Britain, and the crowds came running as he charged up the leader board. Bruce found himself looking around in awe at the scene as Norman continued to close on the leaders. Norman might have shot 62 if he hadn’t bogeyed Troon’s most famous hole, the tiny par-three eighth hole, known as the Postage Stamp because the green is so small and difficult to hit. Eight years later, in his first British Open as a pro, Tiger Woods would make a seven on the hole, which is barely more than 100 yards in length.

  Norman made one other mistake that day. After hitting a superb second shot on the par-five 16th to within 15 feet, he charged his putt for eagle five feet past the hole and then missed the birdie putt coming back. “Three putts for par,” he said. “Inexcusable. I made a real mental mistake there.”

  Even with that mistake, Norman came to the 18th hole seven under par for the day and tied for the lead with Grady, still out on the golf course, and Mark Calcavecchia, who had also made a run to get to nine under par for the championship. Bruce had enough major championship experience by then to know the best thing Norman could do was post a number and make the players behind him on the golf course match it or beat it.

  “I was convinced if we could make one more birdie we would win,” he said. “Of course that’s easier said than done.”

  The 18th at Troon is a difficult par-four even without the wind. A driver is risky for a big hitter because of a large fairway bunker on the right side that comes into play if one crushes the ball off the tee. A three-wood is a safer play, although it will almost certainly leave a long second shot to the green because the hole is almost always played into the wind, even in mild conditions. Norman absolutely killed a driver down the left side of the fairway into perfect position. Just as he and Bruce arrived at the ball, they spotted Jack Nicklaus cutting across the fairway behind them to the ABC-TV tower, which sat to the right of the 18th hole. In those days Nicklaus worked for ABC at the majors, arriving in the booth soon after he finished playing—unless of course he was in one of the final groups.

  Spotting Nicklaus, Norman waved and said, “Hey Jack, you flying home tonight?”

  Nicklaus, a close friend who had been a mentor to Norman early in his career, stopped for a moment and said, “Greg, why don’t you just focus on birdieing this hole and winning the golf tournament, okay?”

  That exchange may well sum up the difference between Norman and Nicklaus—or Watson for that matter. Norman is by nature always outgoing. He sees everything and everyone. Nicklaus is the opposite; if his own mother had been walking across the fairway at that moment, chances are good he never would have noticed her. If he had, he would have ignored her. There was work to be done.

  Norman’s second shot ran through the green and started up a little hill that led to an out-of-bounds marker. But it rolled back down the hill and stopped just off the green, about 30 feet from the hole. As Norman and Bruce walked up to the green, the huge crowd around the green was screaming. At the British Open, the 18th green is surrounded on three sides by huge grandstands, and players will tell you that on Sunday afternoon, when the stands are full and the tension is highest, walking to the 18th green is one of the great moments of their golf lives. It is a great moment for caddies too. For Bruce, this was the first time, since his only British Open with Watson, back in 1976, had ended on the third day, when Watson missed the 54-hole cut.

  “I remember looking around and thinking, ‘So this is what it would have been like with Tom all those years,’” he said.

  Norman had a long putt for birdie, but he had already made a 35-footer and a 60-footer that day, so anything seemed possible. Bruce tended the pin and watched the putt die a foot short, “right in the heart,” he said later. Norman tapped in for 64, an amazing round under any circumstances on the final day of a major championship. Then he and Bruce waited to see what Grady and Calcavecchia would do. Calcavecchia came through with a birdie at 18 to tie Norman. Then, with a chance to win, Grady missed a birdie putt, and all three men headed back to the first tee for a playoff.

  As Norman’s luck would have it, this was the firs
t year the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which administers the British Open, had decided to abandon the 18-hole playoff format. Given the momentum he had built with his 64, Norman probably would have been tough to beat over 18 holes on Monday. He also would have been tough to beat in sudden death, since he birdied the first hole of the playoff. But the playoff wasn’t sudden death either: It was played over four holes, the Royal and Ancient feeling that 18 holes were too many and one hole was not enough. So Norman’s birdie—his ninth of the day—simply gave him a one-shot lead over Calcavecchia and Grady, who both made par.

  “If it’s sudden death, end of story,” Norman said, forcing a laugh years later. “But you know the old saying, there’s a reason why golf is a four-letter word.”

  Norman hadn’t won after the first playoff hole, but he was still sizzling. He birdied the short, downwind second hole to go two under on the playoff. Calcavecchia also made birdie, though, and trailed by one; Grady was now two shots behind. The players cut across from the second green to the 17th tee to play the last two holes. Standing on the tee, Norman asked Bruce for the same four-iron he had hit in regulation. Bruce hesitated.

  “I know a little bit about adrenaline,” he said. “And at that point Greg was really, really pumped up. I started to say to him, ‘You know, right now the play might be the five,’ but I didn’t. If it had been Tom, I just would have said it and then let him decide. In fact I think I can honestly say, with Tom if I had said it, he would have known exactly why I said it and would take the adrenaline into account before deciding what to hit. But I wasn’t that comfortable with Greg and didn’t know how he would react if I said something he wasn’t expecting. So I decided to let him go with what he felt most comfortable with at that moment.

  “It was a mistake. As soon as the ball was in the air, I could see it had too much on it.”

  The ball went through the green to the back fringe. When Bruce and Norman got to the ball, they could see some high grass right behind the ball. Norman would have to be careful to keep his putter from getting stuck on the grass when he drew it back. Norman tried a couple practice swings, then told Bruce to stay close because he might want his wedge. Bruce didn’t like that idea either. “It was a downhill shot on a green without much grass on it,” he said. “Once the ball landed, it was going to take off no matter how much he got under it.”

  Here again, Bruce resolved to say nothing. “I never said anything to Tom around the greens,” he said. “That kind of shot is so much about feel it has to be whatever the player is feeling at that moment.” He smiled. “Of course it also helped that Tom was maybe the greatest short-game player in history.”

  Norman’s very good, but the wedge was a mistake. As Bruce had thought, the ball simply couldn’t stop. It rolled 15 feet past the hole and Norman missed the par putt. Calcavecchia made par, so now he and Norman were tied with one hole to play. Grady bogeyed and was two back and out of contention.

  “I really believe to this day that I cost Greg the golf tournament on the 17th tee,” Bruce said. “I should have spoken up. That’s where my experience should have taken over. If I said something and he ignored me, then it would be on him. But I didn’t, so it’s on me.”

  Not so, says Norman. “I pulled the club, I hit the shot,” he said. “If Bruce had suggested five, I might not have listened. Who knows? That’s typical of Bruce, though. I don’t agree with him, but I’m not surprised he said it.”

  Back to the 18th tee. Calcavecchia’s tee shot flared way right, so far right that he was outside the ropes in the trampled-down area where the gallery walked, meaning he would have a decent lie. Norman again took driver. Up in the ABC tower, Nicklaus immediately questioned the play. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “He’s all pumped up, a three-wood is plenty to get into good position. All he does with driver is bring that bunker down the right side into play.”

  Bruce didn’t think so. Neither did Norman. The bunker was 330 yards away. Even on a dry golf course it would take a huge shot and a bad bounce for the ball to end up there. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. Norman crushed the shot down the middle, it took one long bounce to the right—and caught the corner of the bunker. “The results say I was wrong,” Bruce said. “But I don’t second-guess that one.”

  Norman does . . . a little. “Bruce is right, the result says we got it wrong,” he said. “But I’d driven the ball great all week, and I’m sure that was our mindset. Why mess with success at that point?”

  While Norman and Bruce watched from the bunker, Calcavecchia hit a superb second shot from the rough to about 12 feet from the hole.

  “How close is he?” Norman asked, because from the fairway it was impossible to tell exactly how close the ball was, and the crowd’s going nuts didn’t really mean anything at that point.

  “I think it’s close,” Bruce said. “Can’t tell exactly how close.”

  It was close enough that Norman felt he had to try to get the ball on the green. If Calcavecchia made birdie, laying up and making par would be worthless. Nicklaus, who had the advantage of knowing exactly how far from the hole Calcavecchia was, again first-guessed the play. “With the lip on that bunker, there’s almost no way to get the ball up fast enough to hit it far enough to get it to the green,” he said.

  Right again. The ball caught the lip, flew high in the air, and landed in the bunker in front of the green. Now Norman and Bruce could see where Calcavecchia’s ball was in relation to the flag. Norman had to get his bunker shot close, hope to make par, and hope Calcavecchia missed. Forced to try the spectacular shot, Norman didn’t take enough sand and the ball flew over the green, over the out-of-bounds marker, and stopped on a little path next to the clubhouse.

  That was the end of the dream. As if to twist the knife, a Royal and Ancient official standing near the bunker said to Norman as he came out, “You’re still away.”

  Norman and Bruce looked at each other in disbelief. Norman remained remarkably calm. “I’m hitting five,” he said. “Let Mark putt, and if there’s any need, I’ll play my next shot when that time comes.”

  Calcavecchia quickly put Norman out of his misery by making his birdie putt. Twenty brilliant holes had gone for naught, undone by two adrenaline-pumped shots that brought disaster. “It was an awful feeling,” Bruce remembered. “Because I think we were both convinced until eighteen that he was going to win.”

  “Never should have been a playoff,” Norman said. “If I don’t make that mistake with the three-putt at sixteen in regulation, we win it without playing off. But golf is all about ifs and buts.”

  Norman did recover from Troon to win twice on tour that summer and won another tournament overseas. None, of course, were majors, but Bruce was making more money than he had ever made in his life. The most money he had made in any full year working for Watson had been $60,000. He made more than that in his first half year with Norman and continued to make more money than he had ever dreamed of in 1990, when Norman won twice, finished first on the money list with more than $1,165,000 in earnings, and continued his globe-trotting, taking Bruce along, and of course paying him for his time when he did.

  That was the year when Bruce decided it was time to build a house. He had lived in apartments and small houses shared with others throughout his adult life. Now he was 36 years old, with an income well into six figures, and he was ready to spend some of his money on a place he could truly call home. He decided to build in Ponte Vedra, Florida. It was right near PGA Tour headquarters; he liked the northern Florida climate most of the year, especially in late fall, when he was home the most; and he had a number of friends living in the area. Plus Jacksonville Airport was an easy place to get into and out of, with lots of flights to Atlanta, where he could connect to just about anyplace he needed to go.

  As soon as Bruce began telling his caddying buddies what he was doing and showing them the plans, the home-to-be was given a name: The House That Norman Built. Years later, when Watson talked about Bruce’s decision
to go work for Norman, he used the house as proof that it was the correct thing for Bruce to do. “Greg made Bruce enough money so he could build that house,” he said. “The way I was playing back then, there’s no way that would have happened.”

  Watson and Bruce missed each other. Watson continued to struggle with his game after Bruce’s departure, and, he admitted, playing golf wasn’t the same without Bruce walking down the fairway with him. “Every player has his own quirky habits,” he said. “Bruce knew mine so well. I remember one of the first tournaments after he left, I bent down to mark a ball and, without looking, flipped the ball back over my shoulder. That’s the way I always did it, and Bruce was always there to catch the ball, because he knew that. This time the ball just went flying, because the guy working for me had no idea. Not his fault. He just wasn’t Bruce. He didn’t know me like Bruce did.

  “Plus I enjoyed his company. We had fun together. We gave each other a hard time, we got each other’s humor. None of the guys who worked for me were bad guys or bad caddies. They just weren’t Bruce.”

  And Norman wasn’t Watson. When the Eagles played the Chiefs, Norman didn’t care who won. Watson wanted the Chiefs to win, if only so he could taunt Bruce. The same was true of the Phillies and Royals. When the two teams had met in the 1980 World Series and the Phillies won, Bruce completely wore Watson out reminding him about the outcome. Bruce had felt as if he were part of the Watson family. With Norman he was well treated and felt that Greg was a friend, but he also understood that the relationship was different—had to be—from the way it had been with Watson.

  He liked Laura Norman, Greg’s wife. In fact to this day, Jay and Natalie Edwards talk about how much they enjoyed walking golf courses with Laura Norman. Gwyn still remembers walking into a New York restaurant with the Normans one night and seeing heads turn because so many people immediately recognized the white-blonde hair of the Great White Shark.