Handing the club back to Bruce, Watson said, “Lousy shot.”
“No problem,” Bruce said. “Let’s just get it up and down.”
Watson walked into the bunker and examined the shot and the lie. He would later say it was “a fairly easy bunker shot.” Most players would not have agreed. The lie was good and there was plenty of green to work with, but it was slightly uphill, it was a long shot to the flag, and the ball was going to break hard from right to left as it got near the hole. All of that made it delicate.
Refusing to think about what was at stake, Watson got over the ball and, quick as ever, softly nudged the sand, popping the ball up onto the green. The ball took a couple of hops, swerved to the left, and came to a halt seven feet from the flag. A superb shot. “Typical Watson under pressure,” Bruce said.
They took some time over the putt, Watson making sure that Bruce’s read was the same as his. “It was just outside right,” Bruce remembered. “I was shaking by then, but I knew he was going to make it.”
Once he had the read, Watson quickly got over the putt. The silence around the green was deafening. A few seconds later, the roar was ear-splitting when the ball went straight into the cup. Watson had done it. He had shot 65 to tie for the lead in the U.S. Open at age fifty-three, the oldest man to ever do so. “My first thought was, ‘I can win this thing,’” he said, remembering the moment. “Then I saw Bruce.”
Bruce was crying by now, joined by many around the green and by many others around the country, watching on TV. Instinctively, remembering it was Thursday, Watson put his hand out. Bruce was having none of it. He threw his arms around Watson and whispered in his ear, “Thanks for a great five hours.”
That was it for Watson; he was crying now too. “Normally, hugs are for Sunday,” he said. “This was just one round, it was Thursday. But the hug was absolutely the right thing to do at that moment. I think Bruce and I have had two very emotional hugs in our life on the golf course. One was at Pebble Beach and the other was that day at Olympia Fields. They both meant a lot to both of us. This one was more emotional because of the circumstances.”
Bruce agreed. “Pebble Beach was pure joy. This was different, because there were so many emotions involved.”
Verplank and Romero were almost as emotional. Romero offered both men a warm handshake. Verplank hugged them both. “The whole thing was surreal by then,” he said. “I mean I’ve never hugged a guy I played with and his caddy on a Thursday. About the only time I’ve ever done that is when a close friend of mine has won on Sunday. But it was unique, clearly, the kind of moment you just can’t make up. I had shot seventy-six and I walked off the green feeling great, excited, so happy for them. I was amazed that Tom still had that kind of magic left and just thrilled that I had been there close up to see it.”
The easy part of the day was now over. For once, Watson wasn’t talking to the media just because it was part of the job. He practically bolted into the interview room and said, very bluntly, “I have the bully pulpit today and I intend to use it.” He then talked about Bruce and about the desperate need for funding to do more research and find a cure for ALS. Patiently he did every TV interview he was asked to, even sticking around to sit on ESPN’s Sportscenter set. “I had no problem doing any of that stuff,” Watson said. “To begin with, it’s my duty as a player, I understand that. But on this day, I wanted to do it. This was an opportunity, and I know just how fleeting fame is. I had to grab it and run with it while I could.”
Bruce wasn’t nearly as eager to meet the media. For one thing, he was exhausted and emotionally drained by the events of the day. For another, his thinking was that Watson had shot 65, not him. He had heard the fans calling his name, “Bruuuuuce,” as if he were Springsteen. He was moved by the sentiment. But he didn’t want people focusing on him after what Watson had just accomplished. “He shot one of the great rounds in U.S. Open history,” he said. “I really didn’t think the story should be about me.”
But the story was about him. Actually it was about both of them. Clearly Watson had been inspired by the moment and the setting, and by Bruce’s emotions and by his understanding that this might be their last time together in this sort of mega-spotlight. Watson knew that and Bruce knew that. But Bruce wasn’t eager to talk. Tired as he was, he knew his speech would be slurred and difficult to understand. After Bruce came out of the scoring tent, pressroom volunteer Steve Malchow approached him to tell him that quite a few reporters had asked to speak to him. “I’d really rather not,” Bruce said. “They should talk to Tom.”
Malchow understood Bruce’s reluctance. He is an associate athletic director at the University of Wisconsin, charged with running the sports publicity arm of the athletic department. He was working at the Open as a volunteer in the pressroom, something he had done for three years as his vacation. “Being a golfer, I love having the chance to do it,” he said. Malchow is one of a number of sports publicity pros who volunteer to help Craig Smith and his staff Open week. Now he had been handed a slightly more difficult challenge than normal. He followed Bruce into the locker room and found him sitting by Watson’s locker, collecting his emotions and taking a deep breath after an exhilarating but draining afternoon.
“Bruce, look, you can tell me to go away and leave you alone if you want to,” Malchow said. “But there’s something I’d like to say to you, and then if you tell me no I’ll go away. It happens that I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic—just like Scott Verplank. And I can tell you for a fact that when I see him out there competing successfully wearing that insulin pump, it inspires me, makes me think I can do things I might not otherwise think I could do. I know how much worse ALS is. I suspect that a lot of people with ALS give up on themselves when they’re diagnosed, stop living because they’ve been given such awful news.
“You haven’t given up at all. You’re still out there doing what you’ve always done. What you did today was inspiring, believe me, for all of us, but I’ll bet especially for people with ALS. I think it would be great if you came out and talked just for a few minutes about how you’ve been able to do this. It’s an amazing story.”
Bruce thought about it for a minute, then lit a cigarette. “I’ll be there the whole time,” Malchow promised. “If you get tired, or it’s too tough, you tell me and I’ll stop it.”
Bruce agreed. He walked back outside the locker room and found a phalanx of reporters waiting for him—notebooks, tape recorders, and cameras were everywhere. Bruce had talked to reporters for thirty years; he had done a good deal of media at the Masters. But nothing like this.
He spoke slowly, trying to make his words clear, about what the day meant to him. He talked emotionally about all Watson had done for him. “To have a friend like Tom Watson,” he said at one point, “is an incredible thing. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel.”
The tears were coming again, and he paused and looked down to gather himself. When he looked up, he glanced at some of the faces around him and noticed something: Many of those listening—cynical, jaded reporters—were crying too.
“All my years in the business,” Malchow said, “I’ve never seen reporters crying. They did it that day, and I don’t think any of them was ashamed to do it.”
It was that kind of day.
The last thing Bruce did before he left the golf course was an interview with ESPN. Once he understood that this was an opportunity, that people wanted to hear his story, tired as he was, he agreed to do as many interviews as he could.
Before he left for the evening, Watson had made the comment to people that “if I were to go out and shoot ninety tomorrow, it really wouldn’t matter.” He didn’t want to shoot 90, he wanted to win the golf tournament. The competitor in him was saying it was Thursday and he had played 18 good holes with 54 still to go. But the friend in him, the brother in him, or as Neil Oxman would put it, the closer-than-brother in him, knew that nothing could take away from what had happened that day. It had been magical, and as he said, sh
ooting 90 wouldn’t change that.
He went back to his hotel room and was getting ready to go to bed when he flipped on the television set. There was Bruce, doing the ESPN interview, struggling to talk because he was so tired and so full of emotion. The interview wasn’t long, but Watson clearly heard the last thing Bruce said: “I know,” he said, the tears coming one more time, “that he did this for me.”
This time, alone in his room, Tom Watson made no attempt to hold back his tears. As Bruce’s image faded from the screen, he sat for several minutes crying quietly out of both joy and sorrow. “I only wish,” he said later, “it could have been more about the joy and less about the sorrow.”
16
Needle in a Haystack
ANY GOLFER WILL TELL YOU that there is nothing more difficult than coming back and playing well the day after a great round. It is not the least bit uncommon for a player who has gone low one day to shoot 8 to 10 strokes higher the next day. The feel is different, the pressures are different, and when the magic that was evident the day before isn’t there, a player can get frustrated easily and quickly.
In Tom Watson’s case all that was in play on Friday at the Open—and more. He had slept well—“I had trouble sleeping at times early in my career,” he said, “but not anymore”—and came back to the golf course the next day to find the place still abuzz about what had happened on Thursday afternoon. One after another, players came up to congratulate him on his round and on the day. Watson took the compliments as nothing more than the respect players show one another after a good round, but many of those who paid him the compliments felt as if it had been far more than that.
“If all it had been was a great player turning back the clock for a day, it would have been a wonderful story,” said Jeff Sluman, the 1988 PGA champion. “But this was so much more than that. I think we all believed that he did play that round for Bruce, and I think we all felt proud of both of them that day.”
Watson played early on Friday, which according to Bruce was normally an advantage for him. “I prefer to go late-early when he’s playing well, because you get up and get right back at it,” he said. “You don’t want to sit around and wait to play if you don’t have to.”
Watson didn’t play poorly on Friday, but it wasn’t the same as Thursday. Realistically, how could it be? He wasn’t likely to hole out another six-iron or have too many thirty-five-footers hang on the lip of the cup and drop in. He shot 72, two over par for the day. That left him at three under par for the championship, four strokes behind the leaders, Jim Furyk and Vijay Singh. Like most people, Furyk, after playing early on Thursday, had watched much of Watson’s round. “The good thing was, after a while, it was all Tom Watson,” he said. “Normally, as a player, if you’re watching on TV you get upset if they just focus on one guy. But this time it was the right thing to do. Some stories are feel-good stories for the viewers. This was different. It was a feel-good story, at least for that day, for everyone.”
Even when Watson dropped back on Friday, most of the buzz around Olympia Fields was still about what had happened on Thursday. In fact a truly remarkable thing had happened: Tiger Woods, still struggling, had become almost an afterthought. Story one was Watson and Bruce; story two the leaders. Then people got around to Tiger. It was almost unnoticed, since Watson finished the second round in a tie for 10th place, but he had already accomplished his unspoken goal: making the cut. Of course that goal had become a given after Thursday. Watson was still focused at the end of the day Friday on trying to win. Four shots behind the leader with 36 holes to play was far from an impossible task.
By Saturday evening, though, the dream had faded. Each day at the Open, the USGA makes the golf course a little bit more difficult. Furyk and Singh’s score—133—had broken the Open record for 36 holes, and there were all sorts of red (under par) numbers on the board. In fact twenty-six players were under par through two rounds. A year earlier, at Bethpage Black, the number had been four. That did not make the USGA happy. So the hole locations on Saturday were considerably more difficult. “The weather and wind conditions never really changed all week,” Watson said. “The course did get drier and faster. But what really changed were the pin placements. By Sunday they had them tucked pretty well.”
Saturday was no picnic either. Furyk was steadily playing himself into control of the tournament. He shot 67, three under par, which gave him a commanding three-shot lead over unknown Australian Stephen Leaney with 18 holes to play. Watson had a tough day right from the start, shooting 75. By the time he finished, he knew he had no chance to win. He was now tied for 32nd place and trailed Furyk by 12 shots. So he and Bruce changed their goal. Since he wasn’t going to win, the next best thing Watson could do was guarantee himself a spot in the 2004 Open at Shinnecock. The way to do that was to finish in the top 15. Watson figured if he could shoot 68 on Sunday and finish at even par for the week, he would be a lock for the top 15.
His calculations were right. In fact they were conservative. The combination of Sunday Open pressure, a golf course that was now playing fast and hard, and those always tricky Sunday hole locations sent scores soaring. From twenty-six players under par on Friday, the number had trickled down to nineteen on Saturday. By the time everyone holed out on Sunday, there were only four players under par, led by Furyk, who shot a cozy, conservative 72 to ease his way to a three-shot victory over Leaney, his first major championship after being a very solid player on tour for almost ten years. Mike Weir and Kenny Perry finished tied for third place, seven shots back. It was the least suspenseful Sunday at an Open since Woods’s 15-shot victory in 2000, but that had been different since it was Woods in the lead, smashing records left and right en route to his first win in the Open.
A 68 would have tied Watson for fifth place. Unfortunately, he shot 72, which left him tied for 28th. That was a very solid finish for a Champions Tour player, but it wasn’t what Watson had hoped for, especially after Thursday. “I never backed up the great round on Thursday with another good one,” he said. “I needed one more round in the sixties to confirm the first round and didn’t get it. That part was disappointing.”
As it turned out, an even-par 70 on Sunday would have put Watson in the top 15, with virtually everyone in the field going in reverse on the last 18 holes. Even though he never made a move on Sunday, the afternoon was still full of emotion for both Watson and Bruce. When they arrived at the first tee, Ron Read, the USGA’s longtime Open starter, told Bruce he had something for him. It was, he said, the original flag that had been in the hole at Pebble Beach on the 17th green that day in 1982 when Watson had chipped in to win the Open. Bruce knew that Watson had a framed flag from the 17th hole in his house, so he was a tad skeptical. “We always have two,” Read explained. “We keep an extra one for every hole in case something happens to the flag we’re using during the round—wind gust, whatever it might be. We sent Tom the copy because it was less beat-up.”
Bruce looked at the flag. Sure enough, there were small tears and stains, indicating it had spent time on the green on that windy day. “Of all the things I lost in the fire, losing the flag [from the 18th] at Pebble was the worst,” he said. “To get the one from seventeen that way was just unbelievable.”
The round itself wasn’t terribly gratifying in a golf sense, but it had to be in a personal sense. At every single hole the two men heard cheers that were as loud as Thursday’s, only different. These were valedictory cheers. Most fans knew it might be Watson’s last Open and that it might also be Bruce’s last. “There was a sense,” Billy Andrade said, “that Thursday had been a farewell of some kind. It was great that it happened, but it made you very sad to think of why it had been as dramatic a day as it was.”
Watson felt that sense keenly. He was trying very hard to focus on playing well, but he couldn’t help but hear the cheers, hear the fans chanting, “Bruuuuce,” on almost every green. “As wonderful as the cheers were,” he said, “the closer we got to eighteen, the more heartb
reaking they became.”
NBC was now clinging to Tom and Bruce as if they were a ratings life raft. With Furyk in command and no one other than Leaney even remotely having a chance to make a run at him (Woods had faded to 75 on Saturday and was a complete nonfactor, finishing tied for 20th), Tom and Bruce were NBC’s story. Every time they walked on a green, the camera showed close-ups of both of them. Whenever Watson made a putt or hit a good shot, there was a close-up of Bruce reacting. It went on that way all day.
Bruce felt as if he had spent all his emotions on Thursday. He heard the cheers and, like Watson, was grateful. Marsha had flown out Saturday to be there for the final round, and he was glad she was getting the chance to feel all the emotions in person. But he was cried out and worn out. As he and Watson walked up the 18th fairway together, the noise was as loud as it had been on Thursday, growing as they got closer to the green. Watson put his arm around Bruce as they approached the green and Bruce whispered to him, “We’ve still got another shot to get into Shinnecock, you know—if we win at Inverness.”
“Absolutely,” Watson said. “Let’s just do that.”
They both had to go through one more go-round with the media when it was over. Watson did an interview with Jimmy Roberts in which he talked about the four days and what Thursday had meant and the importance of raising money for ALS research. At the end Roberts asked him what he would remember most about the week. Watson paused a moment. “Bruce’s tears,” he said finally. “That’s what I’ll remember.” He was choking up again. “I just want to find something for him.” Roberts, pretty close to tears himself by then, managed a “thank you, Tom” and threw it back to Dan Hicks in the 18th tower.
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