Caddy for Life

by John Feinstein

  Hauser’s story made it official that he would have to deal with the issue when he got to Hawaii. It also engendered another week of phone calls—many now coming from the media.

  Sometimes, when he heard the voice of a close friend, Bruce picked up the phone. Even those conversations were difficult, because whoever the caller was could find little to say. “They all wanted to help,” Bruce said. “They all wanted me to know they were thinking about me. They all said, ‘Anything I can do.’ I knew they were all sincere, but it was hard—for them and for me.”

  One of the early calls came from Greg Norman. He was in Australia, playing in a tournament. Tony Navarro, who had replaced Bruce on his bag in 1993, had gotten a call from Phoenix from one of the caddies there telling him the news. As soon as he heard, Norman put in a call to his brother-in-law, a surgeon, because he wanted to understand the disease thoroughly. “I knew what it was and I knew about Lou Gehrig,” he said. “And I knew about Jeff Julian”—a tour player who was stricken with the disease late in 2001—“but I wanted to hear from a doctor exactly what was involved. The more he talked, the more despondent I got. I finally just told him, ‘Enough. I can’t listen anymore.’”

  Bruce was touched that Norman took the time to call from Melbourne. The conversation was similar to the others: Anything he needed or wanted, call. He was thinking of him, praying for him. By now Bruce was almost becoming immune to these talks. He understood, though, that each person who was calling needed to talk to him, to tell him that he was in their thoughts. He did remember one thing Norman said: “I can’t think of anyone who will have more people pulling for him than you.”

  Norman wasn’t the only one who wanted to learn more about ALS. Most people knew as soon as they heard “Lou Gehrig’s disease” that the disease is incurable and fatal. Few knew how quickly most people die once diagnosed, or how they die. Many, searching the Internet for details, had the same reaction as Norman. “I got to a point where I simply couldn’t read any more,” Greg Rita said. “I kept looking for something that would give me some hope, anything, but the further I went, the bleaker the picture got.”

  Ten days after the diagnosis, Bruce and Marsha flew to the Hawaiian island of Kona for the MasterCard Championship. In a sense, this was the perfect event for Bruce to return to the tour. There were only thirty-six players in the field and the media coverage would be tiny, even by Champions Tour standards, because of the location of the event. He would have to deal with being the subject of TV coverage, but even that wouldn’t be full blown, since the tournament was on the Golf Channel as opposed to being on one of the networks. Still, being out on tour meant Bruce could no longer screen whom he talked to. Everyone was going to want to say something to him, and he spent most of the long flight to Hawaii preparing himself.

  It was on Monday that Hilary Watson proposed marriage to Marsha—as in Bruce marrying Marsha there, in Hawaii, that week. “I was thinking it’s such a beautiful spot to do it,” she said. “And I knew Bruce was concerned that if they waited until the summer he might have trouble saying his vows. So I asked Marsha if she wanted to do it.”

  Marsha and Bruce talked it over and decided to go ahead with the Hilary Plan. “Being realistic, there was no way to know how much time we were going to have,” Bruce said. “I knew my family would want to be there, but I also knew they would understand.”

  Hilary did most of the work, finding a minister, arranging for a spot on the beach right near the hotel where all the players were staying, putting together invitations that could be slipped into lockers on Friday. The wedding was at sunset on Saturday after everyone had completed the second round of the tournament. It was, to say the least, an illustrious guest list: Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player—the famed Big Three of the 1960s, winners of thirty-four majors among them—were all there. So were Hale Irwin and Fuzzy Zoeller and Bruce Fleisher and Gil Morgan, recent stars of the Champions Tour. Wives came, and so did all the caddies. The best man, as at Bruce’s first wedding, was Tom Watson. This time, though, Watson was beaming, full of enthusiasm for this union.

  “It was so beautiful,” Marsha said. “It was like something straight out of a movie. I can’t imagine having a more beautiful wedding than that one.”

  After joking about the Eagles and Cowboys, Watson talked about his friend of almost thirty years. “The one thing I can tell you about Bruce,” he said quietly, “is that there’s not a mean bone in his entire body.”

  That was a theme Watson would return to often throughout the year when he was asked—over and over again—to talk about his friendship with Bruce. Like Bruce, he understood that he was going to be asked the same questions over and over on a subject that was painful to discuss at all. But both of them—along with Marsha—came to understand that it was critical that they deal with those questions; with the media attention; with the public outpouring. Watson’s “mission,” as Hilary described it, could only have a chance for fulfillment if millions of dollars could be raised for research.

  “The toughest part of this disease is that so few people live for very long with it,” Watson said. “I don’t blame the drug companies for focusing research on diseases that afflict more people, but the statistics are, in a way, deceiving. Nowadays there are people who live very long, productive lives after being diagnosed with cancer. It isn’t that way with ALS. That’s why we’ve got to raise the money now, while the awareness level is up, because it is so difficult to get people to understand just how powerful and destructive the disease is.”

  Watson’s goal wasn’t just to find a cure for ALS; it was to find a cure for ALS in time to save Bruce. Right from the beginning, he was very conscious of a ticking clock, more conscious every time he saw Bruce looking thinner, tiring more easily, having more difficulty speaking.

  But that night on the beach, even though everyone was aware of the clock, there was a strong sense that a wonderful thing was happening. Watson, who isn’t a believer in destiny or getting over-philosophical about things, looks back on that night and says, “I don’t know why Bruce had to get this disease. But when he did get it, the fact that Marsha had come back into his life and has been willing to take on everything that she’s taken on is something approaching a miracle.”

  No one who knows Bruce or Marsha would argue with that.

  14

  Media Darling

  DEALING WITH THE MEDIA had never been a problem for Bruce during his thirty years on the PGA Tour. Because he was friendly and outgoing by nature, he was always approachable when reporters wanted to talk to him and never felt uncomfortable talking to anyone.

  “Most of the time, though, the attention I got was because of who I was working for, whether it was Tom or Greg,” he said. “More often than not, I would get questions about what club we had hit or what I might have said or he might have said at a given moment. I never had any trouble with that. It was easy.”

  Occasionally it would go beyond that. Because he had been on tour for so long and knew so many people, there were occasions when someone would do a feature on the guy who had been Tom Watson’s partner for all those years. “Even then it would always be someone I knew,” he said. “It wasn’t as if some newspaper or magazine was going to send some guy who had never written about golf to do a story about a caddy.”

  The only time he had ever been the least bit uncomfortable with the spotlight had been when he left Watson for Norman and then when he left Norman for Watson. In both cases there were questions about whether any sort of rift existed, but even then it was eased by the player. First Watson made it clear that he had supported Bruce’s decision to leave. And then, even though most people in golf knew that Edwards and Norman were clearly at odds by the time they split, neither man ever said a bad word about the other publicly.

  Now, though, Bruce was in a completely different arena. He had become the story. That would not have made him happy under any circumstances. Under these circumstances, they made him miserable. Even when dealing
with media members he knew and liked and trusted, the act of talking was becoming more and more difficult. It frustrated him that he was hard to understand, although he joked about it. “Sorry I sound like the town drunk,” became his standard line. The toughest part was suddenly finding himself the focus of attention from media people he didn’t know, some of whom asked sensitive questions like, “So about how long do you think you have to live?”

  Bruce first began to understand how different his life was going to be when he arrived for Watson’s first full-field Champions Tour event of the year in Naples, Florida. After an entire lifetime of answering questions about his player, Bruce realized that his player was now answering questions about him. No one asked him anymore about how Watson was playing or what his club selection had been at a particular hole. After years of finishing a round or a postround practice session, taking the bag back to the bag room, and heading for the parking lot, Bruce found he couldn’t do that anymore. Always there were reporters or camera crews who just wanted a minute. People wanted autographs. He had gone from being recognized by some in golf as Watson’s caddy to being recognized by almost everyone as “Bruce Edwards—the guy with ALS.”

  Bill Leahey saw that difference almost instantly. Several years earlier, he and Bruce had been playing golf one afternoon at Leahey’s club in New Jersey. Leahey was standing in the rough on one hole midway through the round when a wayward drive from an adjoining hole smacked him on the forehead, just above his right eye. Stunned and hurt—though not seriously, as it turned out—he grabbed a towel, yelled over at Bruce that he had been hit by a ball, and proceeded to lie down with the towel underneath his head to try to recover from the wooziness he was feeling. “Bruce came running over,” Leahey said. “So did the guys from the group that had hit me. I was lying there with my eyes closed when I hear one of these guys say to Bruce as he’s getting there, ‘Hey, you’re Tom Watson’s caddy.’”

  Now when Leahey mentioned Bruce’s name to people, they knew exactly who he was long before Bill added those three words that had identified him to the public for so many years: Tom Watson’s caddy.

  Intellectually Bruce understood that virtually everyone who stopped him, whatever the reason, meant well. Strangers would want to talk to him about their relative who had ALS; about a friend who had lived five years with it; about a doctor who had a new drug or a new theory. He and Watson were both bombarded with e-mails and phone calls with advice, remedies, doctors, new drug protocol suggestions, and, in many cases, simply good wishes from people who wanted them both to know they were thinking of Bruce and praying for him.

  Emotionally it was tough to take. As Watson would say later in the year, “I love the outpouring of affection people have directed at Bruce. I hate the reason for it.”

  That summed up well the way Bruce felt. He knew why people wanted to tell him their stories, give him a hug, or pat him on the back. He knew why one reporter after another wanted to talk to him. He and Marsha both went through a period early on where they were resentful of the press, feeling that what they were going through was private, that they were entitled to not talk about what was going on everywhere they went. But after a while they realized that life doesn’t work that way when you are a public figure, and Bruce had gone from being a semipublic figure—Tom Watson’s caddy—to being a very public one.

  Bruce’s private life had also undergone a radical change. Soon after they returned from Hawaii, Marsha went back to Dallas to get the children and move them to Ponte Vedra. There was now no need for an apartment, so Marsha, Brice, and Avery all moved in together. Bruce had vowed to Watson on the night of his diagnosis that he was going to marry Marsha, enjoy every minute he had with her, and buy a dog—something he had never done in the past even though he loved dogs, because there had never been anyone at home to care for the dog when he was on the road. Now he had an instant family, so he decided not to waste any more time before getting a dog. The dog, a Labrador, was quickly named Nabby, after Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, in spite of their miserable failure in the conference championship game.

  After living most of his adult life alone—and certainly never with kids or a dog—Bruce found the suddenly full house an adjustment. But he was, overall, very happy to have Marsha, the kids, and Nabby with him, even when the latter three ran amok on occasion. “At this time in my life, having people around, especially people who love me, can only be a good thing,” he said.

  After a while, both Bruce and Marsha began to understand that the fight they were now in, the one Watson was leading every chance he got, was a very public one. The only way to raise awareness about ALS, about the funds that were needed and about the horrors of the disease, was to talk about it every chance they got. By coincidence, Lou Gehrig had been born in 1903, and ALS fund-raisers were already using the 100th anniversary of his birth as a jumping-off point to try to raise more money for research. Watson and Bruce became new voices and symbols for that campaign.

  “I think it was hard for all of us to see how public the whole thing had become,” Bruce’s sister Gwyn said. “To us, at least in the beginning, this was a very private family thing. Reading about it, hearing about it all the time in the media, was hard for all of us. It wasn’t as if we weren’t used to hearing or reading Bruce’s name or seeing him on TV, that had been going on for years. But this was an entirely different context. Because I worked in public relations, I understood why it was happening. But that didn’t make it any easier.”

  Each time he arrived at a tournament, Bruce felt as if he had to deal with a new wave of questioners and well-wishers. In Hawaii there had been just a trickle of attention, and he had been distracted for much of that week with plans for the wedding when he wasn’t on the golf course. Naples meant more attention, more media, and a whole new round of players and caddies and officials coming up to tell him how they felt. No doubt if he could have, Bruce would have worn a sign that said, “I know how sorry you are that I’m sick. I’m doing okay right now and I appreciate your support and your concern. Now, can we talk about something else?”

  Since he couldn’t do that, Bruce often made the effort to change the subject as quickly as possible. He would ask about a player’s or caddy’s family, or comment on how they were playing. This came naturally to him because it was what he had been doing all his career. He readily admitted that he was in denial about what his future held. Both Marsha and Watson had been studying the Internet constantly, talking to doctors and ALS experts to learn everything they could about the disease. Both remained convinced there was time to find a cure; both were encouraged when they heard about doctors working with new drugs and progress that was being made in research. Several ALS fund-raising organizations explained to them how Bruce’s illness could benefit fund-raising for research, a role Bruce was more than willing to take on, even if it meant talking about his condition far more often than he wanted to talk about it.

  “It almost became part of my job,” he said. “In one sense, the speech impediment helped me there, because I could beg off things, say it was just too hard. Most of the time I was telling the truth, but every once in a while with a reporter, I’d say I was too tired to talk just because I really didn’t feel like doing any more talking on that particular day.”

  Once he had made the rounds on the Champions Tour and heard all the words of concern and sorrow, Bruce had to go through it again on the regular tour. As he had done in the years since Watson moved to the Senior Tour, he caddied for John Cook at the Players Championship at the end of March. This was an event Bruce always enjoyed because he got to sleep in his own bed during the week, the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass being only a few miles from his front door. This time, though, it was different. One player after another whom he had not yet seen came up to him. In some cases words escaped them and they would literally collapse in his arms, speechless, leaving Bruce in the awkward position of having to say something like, “It’s okay. Thanks. I know what you’re thinking.”
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  “All I could think when I heard it was that it was so unfair,” said Billy Andrade, who never forgot how Bruce went out of his way to help him when he first arrived on tour in 1988. “Here’s a guy who the main sound in his life has always been laughter—his and everyone around him. I was on the range in Phoenix when one of the caddies came up and said, ‘Did you hear about Bruce?’ You know it’s something bad when they start the sentence that way, but when he said ALS, my knees buckled. I called him that night.”

  Andrade was one of the few people Bruce picked up the phone to talk to. “When I heard his voice, all I could think to say was, ‘I know you’ll fight this and I love you,’” Andrade said, his voice choking with emotion as he remembered the conversation. “We all deal with tragedy in our lives. Some just hit you harder, especially when they’re so unexpected, than others.”

  Many players hadn’t seen Bruce before the Players. Some were shocked by how thin he looked, even though he said his legs felt fine and joked about his speech problems.

  Andrade’s closest friend on the tour, fellow Rhode Islander Brad Faxon, had the same weak-in-the-knees reaction when he heard the news while sitting at home watching the Golf Channel one night. “The first thing I thought about was coming on tour in 1984 and there was one caddy everyone in golf knew: Bruce. I mean, who didn’t remember him and Watson at Pebble in ’82. So as luck would have it, the first time I’m paired with Watson is the last round at Pebble that year. I was almost as excited about being paired with Bruce as Watson. The first nine holes, Watson shot even par and it looked more like ten over. I mean, he was all over the place. As we’re walking off the ninth green, I hear Bruce say, ‘Okay, we’ve got all that out of our system, let’s make our move now.’