Caddy for Life

by John Feinstein

  Bruce woke up on the morning of the first round feeling as good, mentally and physically, as he had felt in a while. He had been able to walk 36 holes on Sunday without feeling that exhausted at the end of the day. He was encouraged by the way his legs seemed to be holding up. There was no doubt in his mind now that he would be able to walk 72 holes this week and again in Toledo at the Senior Open. He was even regretting just a little bit his decision to skip the trip to Great Britain. But he knew the doctors were right about the risks involved if the weather was cold and rainy, which could cause his joints to stiffen. “I couldn’t afford to take a chance that I’d get over there and lock up in bad weather midway through the round and have to give the bag to someone in the crowd or something,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been fair to Tom, not to mention the fact that it would have been embarrassing. Plus I knew a rest after working four weeks out of six was going to be a good idea.”

  Still, he felt good enough to talk confidently about being able to caddy—maybe even walk—in 2004. This would not be, he told people, his or Tom’s last Open.

  The weather conditions on that Thursday, June 12, were close to perfect. It was comfortable and breezy, just enough wind to keep everyone cool without really affecting shotmaking. As usual Bruce arrived at the golf course long before Watson, hanging out on the putting green right outside the clubhouse while waiting for him. Since Watson plays so rarely on the regular tour these days, there were still a lot of players and caddies who hadn’t seen Bruce or had only seen him briefly since his diagnosis. As had been the case at both the Masters in April and at the Colonial in May, people kept stopping to talk to him, to try to think of something to say. Rich Beem, the PGA champion in 2002, walked up, started to say something, began to bite his lip, and simply threw his arms around Bruce in a hug. “Hey,” Bruce said quietly. “I’m fine. Okay?”

  Bruce had developed a strategy by this point to deal with the awkwardness he knew people felt. As soon as the first pause in conversation came, he would tell a joke or make a comment about how well a player was playing. Anything to steer the subject away from ALS or how he was looking or feeling or talking. At one point, while several players were standing around trying to figure out what to say, Bruce began yelling at veteran caddy Mark Jiminez, who was standing a few yards away from him on the green.

  “Hey Mark,” he yelled. “Can you caddy for Watson at Inverness?”

  Jiminez looked both concerned and confused, as did everyone else. The Inverness Club was the site of the U.S. Senior Open in two weeks. Was Bruce saying he wouldn’t be able to caddy then?

  “You see,” Bruce said, without waiting for a response, “I really want Watson to win the Senior Open, since we lost that playoff last year at Caves. I was thinking, since you never lose at Inverness, you might bring him some extra luck.”

  Jiminez started laughing. So did everyone else. In 1986 Jiminez had caddied for Bob Tway when he had won the PGA at Inverness. Seven years later he had been on Paul Azinger’s bag when he won the PGA at Inverness. Undefeated and untied at the Inverness Club. “Best Inverness caddy that ever lived,” Bruce concluded.

  Watson arrived about ninety minutes before his tee time. All Bruce wanted to see was how the ball was flying when they got to the range. Would he still have it?

  Yes. The move that had worked Wednesday was still working on Thursday. By the time they walked to the 10th tee, Bruce was feeling confident that it was going to be a good day. “I take a lot from the way he warms up,” he said. “If he’s solid on the range, he’s almost always solid on the golf course. Some guys aren’t that way. Tom almost always is.”

  Most of the morning players were already in the clubhouse by the time Watson’s group was introduced on the 10th tee. The early leader was thirty-three-year-old Brett Quigley, a seven-year tour journeyman who had bounced back and forth between the PGA Tour and the triple-A Nationwide Tour since 1997. Quigley had shot a five-under-par 65 to take the lead. That score, and the fact that quite a few players were under par, was an indication that North’s initial call to Watson had been accurate. The only surprise among the early scores was that Tiger Woods, the defending champion, had struggled in with a one-over-par 71, leaving him well back in the pack.

  The 10th hole at Olympia Fields is a 444-yard par-four. Watson decided on a three-wood off the tee and proceeded to hit a nervous opening shot into the right rough. Even someone playing in his thirtieth Open can get Open jitters. From there he had a long shot to the green from an iffy lie and pushed it right of the green. He chipped to 12 feet and two-putted for a bogey. Hardly an encouraging start. Walking off the green Bruce said quietly, “We’ve still got seventy-one holes to go.”

  Both men later admitted that the opening bogey surprised them, given the way Watson had been hitting the ball on the range. The 11th is another par-four, a tad longer than the 10th, at 467 yards. This time Watson found the fairway, and his six-iron came up just short of the green. From there he putted and ran the putt a good eight feet past the hole. Now, less than twenty minutes after teeing off, things were beginning to look sour. “One bogey, okay, you get it out of your system,” Bruce said. “But if you start bogey-bogey, you might begin to think it’s a trend and it might be a long day.”

  Confidence in golf is a remarkably delicate thing, even for the great players. Lining up his ninth shot of the day, Watson was already facing a minicrisis, and both he and Bruce knew it. When the par putt went in the hole, both men breathed a small sigh of relief. “Stopped the bleeding right there,” Bruce said. Now they were into the round and, he hoped, ready to start making a move.

  At the 12th, yet another par-four—the back nine starts with five in a row—Watson hit a superb drive down the left side of the fairway. He had 170 yards to the hole from there and, with a slight following wind, was between a six-iron and five-iron. Bruce was inclined to hit five, not wanting to end up too far short of the hole. Watson, feeling good about his swing, preferred a smooth six. “I think,” Bruce said later, “he called that one right.”

  As soon as the ball came off the club they could both tell it was a good shot. The question was, how good. “It was at the flag all the way,” Bruce said. With the ball in the air, Bruce said, “Be right,” meaning, “Be the right club.” The ball bounced directly in front of the flagstick, took a big hop, and disappeared. Up at the green, the crowd was going crazy.

  Watson has always had good eyes, but at fifty-three, they weren’t quite what they used to be. What’s more, the shot was uphill, which meant he couldn’t see the hole. Bruce, who has always had remarkable vision, still has it. When he saw the ball bounce and disappear, he screamed, “You holed it!” Watson could hear the crowd, but knew they might be screaming because the ball was very close. Then he saw fans behind the green holding their arms up in the touchdown signal and knew that Bruce was right: The shot had gone in for an eagle two. He turned to give Bruce a high-five and could see that Bruce was getting very emotional, far more emotional than he would have in the past, even about a great shot.

  “Part of it was the fact that I do get more emotional quickly with the disease,” he said. “But part of it was also me thinking, ‘Okay, here we go. He’s going to do something special today.’”

  Watson was thinking the same thing. “That turned the whole round around,” he said. “I started kind of shaky with the bogey, then managed to get the par at eleven. But when that shot goes in and I go from one over to one under just like that, I started thinking maybe this was going to be one of those days.” Watson remembered playing in another national championship—the 1970 U.S. Amateur—when he stood on the eighth tee on the first day four over par and promptly holed his tee shot for an ace, then birdied the ninth hole. “I went from four over to one over in two holes,” he said. “Turned the whole week around for me.” He went on to finish fifth, which in those days was good enough to get into the Masters.

  Lee Janzen was a few fairways over from Watson, playing the 16th hole when he heard
the roar come from number 12. He could see Watson and Bruce celebrating in the fairway and he realized what had happened. “It sent a chill straight through me,” he said. “I think we all had the same thought that day: This might be the last time for Tom and Bruce. You couldn’t help but root for them every step of the way.”

  Verplank was in a sour mood at that point, having started out bogey-double bogey. But when Watson holed his shot and he saw the look on Bruce’s face, he caught himself grinning in spite of the fact that he was angry with himself for getting off to such a poor start.

  Now, with the crowd urging him on, Watson was very much into the round. He kept making pars on the back nine, the more difficult of the two nines at Olympia Fields, until 16, when he hit a huge drive and a wedge to about 18 feet and made his first birdie of the day. That put him at two under, with 17 and 18, two very difficult holes coming up. “By then he was really rolling,” Bruce said. “I was worried about seventeen”—a monster of a par-three, at 247 yards—“because he had to hit four-wood. But he hit the ball so well it hit the flagstick. He didn’t make the putt, but I was thrilled to make par there.” He hit two more good shots and just missed birdie at 18, so he walked to the first tee at two under par with a growing crowd now following the group.

  The first hole is probably the easiest one on the golf course, a relatively wide-open par-five. Watson’s drive caught the rough and he was forced to lay up. His wedge stopped 12 feet past the hole, leaving him a slick downhiller for birdie. He knocked it in. Now he was on the leader board, and word was starting to make its way around the golf course that something extraordinary was happening.

  In the comfortable clubhouse dining room that was the headquarters for USGA officials for the week, many veteran rules officials and volunteers had been watching the goings-on on TV. When Watson birdied number one, many of them decided this was something that needed to be seen in person. “People just wanted to be part of it in some way,” said Clyde Luther, who has worked at Opens since the beginning of time. “It couldn’t possibly be the same on TV.”

  It wasn’t bad on TV. Since Mark O’Meara had played in the morning, Greg Rita was back in his hotel room watching on TV. “I was shouting and cheering and getting teary-eyed all at once,” he said. “I just felt like it was the most amazing round of golf I’d ever seen.”

  By now Bruce was really in a battle with his emotions. He knew what was going on, knew Watson was being Watson again, but he also knew he had to keep himself steady and do his job. Watson was afraid to look him in the eye, because he knew if he saw Bruce losing it, he might lose it too. “Which I couldn’t afford,” he said. “There was still a lot of work to do.”

  They worked steadily through the next few holes, wobbling only a little at number six, the second and last par-five on the golf course. Watson missed the fairway there, and his third-shot wedge was a little long. But he managed to chip to four feet and save par, keeping him at three under for the round, two shots behind Quigley in a tie for second place at that moment.

  The seventh is another long par-three, 212 yards, but doesn’t play that long since the tee is elevated. Watson decided five-iron and ended up about 35 feet beyond the flagstick. Not a bad shot, but Bruce walked down the hill wishing he had campaigned harder for a six-iron. “Just like I had wished we had hit three instead of two back at Pebble in ’82,” he said.

  It can be argued that Watson has made as many long, dramatic putts in his career as anyone who has ever played the game. He is justifiably proud of his ability to make long putts. He might never have enjoyed making one more than the one he made at the seventh on Olympia Fields that afternoon. The putt had a major left-to-right break to it, maybe 20 feet according to Bruce, but it was tracking the hole all the way. As it rolled closer and closer, the crowd noise grew louder and louder. Watson was tempted to put his arms in the air because he could see it was dead center. But at the last possible moment, the ball stopped right on the lip of the cup. When he saw the replay later, Watson was convinced that the ball hit some kind of ridge on the edge of the hole. “You could actually see it rock backward just a tiny bit,” he said.

  Standing up by the hole, getting ready to putt after Watson, Verplank saw the ball stop, rock, and then, as Watson started walking, begin to move forward just a tiny bit. “Hey,” he shouted over the din. “It’s moving, it’s going to go.”

  Watson walked toward the ball, fully intending to wait the ten seconds the rules allow when a ball is hanging on the lip before tapping in for his par. Just as he arrived at the hole, the ball, as if intimidated by his presence, rolled that last inch forward and disappeared. As the crowd screamed—really screamed—Watson kicked his left leg gleefully as if kicking the ball into the hole, then turned to where Bruce was standing and bowed. That was it for Bruce. He was laughing and crying all at once.

  “The kick was pure joy,” Watson said. “The bow was to everything and everyone: to Bruce, to the crowd, to the moment—everything.”

  Golf crowds can get very loud—usually more so on Sundays—but they rarely get raucous. When the putt dropped and Watson kicked and bowed, the noise could be heard all over the golf course. “I’ve heard loud in my day,” Watson said. “But that was really loud.”

  Waiting back up the hill on the tee, knowing where Watson stood on the leader board before the putt went in, Billy Andrade saw the kick and the bow and felt himself losing his composure. “I wanted to run down the hill and hug both of them,” he said. “At that point it was really hard for me to concentrate on my own golf game. I wanted to go and cheer them on.”

  It was, by now, very much them. What Watson was doing would have been remarkable under any circumstances: fifty-three-year-old past Open champion one shot out of the lead twenty-one years after his Open victory. But everyone in the place knew Bruce’s story. The media, which had been sitting around the press tent dutifully telling Brett Quigley’s life story while explaining what had gone wrong for Tiger Woods, basically dropped everything for Tom and Bruce. The other 155 players, at least for one day, had become a footnote.

  “When the putt went in on twelve, I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is really something,’” Verplank said. “I mean, here I was having an awful day”—he would finish with a six-over-par 76—“and I was like a little kid getting excited for Tom and Bruce. The look on Bruce’s face when that putt went in on seven was something I’ll never forget.”

  Both Watson and Bruce were fighting their emotions as they walked to the eighth tee. “I just felt like we had turned the clock back,” Bruce said. “It was as if we were back at Pebble Beach again. We were both young and confident and knew anything was possible. It was just an amazing feeling.”

  There were, however, still two holes to play. Watson was alone in second place now, one shot behind Quigley. Pumped up, he crushed his drive at the 433-yard eighth and had only a seven-iron to the green. He hit it perfectly, stopping it 12 feet from the hole. “I walked onto the green and said to myself, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to make this one too,’” Bruce said. “You could just feel it at that point.”

  Watson was feeling it too. The birdie putt was never going anyplace but the bottom of the hole from the moment it left the putter. “I really swished it,” Watson said. “I looked back at Bruce for a second and I could see he was losing it completely by then. At that point, I was really fighting it myself.”

  So was almost everyone else. Watson was now five under par and tied for the lead with one hole to play. He was one par away from shooting 65, the lowest round he had ever shot in a U.S. Open. It seemed as if every single person on the grounds at Olympia Fields was on the ninth hole. In the locker room, players who normally might glance at a TV as they walked by, had stopped and stood or sat transfixed in front of the sets.

  The ninth is the longest par-four on the golf course, at 496 yards, but it plays shorter because the hole plays downhill. Watson took three-wood and found the right side of the fairway. He wanted to play his second shot, a six-iro
n, right to left to the flag tucked on the left side of the green. Whether it was nerves or adrenaline or just all that was going on around him, Watson hit the worst shot he had hit since his opening tee shot five hours earlier. “Just fanned on it,” he said. “It was a bad golf shot.”

  The ball went right, stayed right, and flew into the right-hand bunker. The groan was audible. Now Watson had to get up and down for par to maintain his share of the lead. One of Watson’s great strengths throughout his career has been an ability to stay in the present. Many athletes who have blown leads or not been able to finish strong will admit afterward that their mind wandered, that they started to picture themselves holding the trophy or started thinking about what they would say in their victory speech. Watson has never been that way. “Nerves have come into play at times when I haven’t played my best under pressure,” he said. “But I’ve never lost a golf tournament because I couldn’t focus on what I needed to do next.”

  Now, though, as he and Bruce walked toward the bunker, his mind did wander. “It hit me right then, as soon as I’d put that bad swing on the ball and saw it go into the bunker, that I had to get up and down,” he said. “I had to make par for Bruce. If I didn’t make par, the round was going to end on a down note and I wasn’t going to be tied for the lead. The media would talk to me, sure, but it wasn’t going to be the same. I had to make par and be tied for the lead so I could walk into the pressroom and have the bully pulpit and talk about Bruce and ALS and about raising money for research. I was completely aware as I walked toward that bunker that this was a huge moment for me and for Bruce. I’m not sure I’ve ever faced an up-and-down that, in its own way, was as important as that one.”