The Prodigy

by John Feinstein

  Frank laughed. “My hands will shake on the first tee no matter what,” he answered.

  Keith nodded.

  “So what do we do about all this?” Frank asked. He’d been silent in the car ride over.

  “You don’t do anything,” Keith said. “You eat breakfast, go back to the club, and stretch out on the couch in the lounge outside the locker room. At least shut your eyes for a while. I’ll try to figure out who did this to you.”

  “It had to be Lawrensen,” Frank said. “If he jeopardizes my college eligibility, or ruins it, then I have to turn pro.”

  “That makes partial sense,” Keith said. “He knows Augusta, though, and he would have to know that if he brought the NCAA into it, they would probably contact the club. If this were tomorrow, I’d say Lawrensen was a good bet. But going to the NCAA Friday, not when Tucker might very well have DQ’d you, makes no sense. Plus, Ron wants you to turn pro—absolutely. But I don’t think he wants to sully your reputation unless he feels he has to, and I don’t think he is anywhere near that point yet. He was still trying to threaten me yesterday. If he’d played the NCAA card, why bother?”

  “He threatened you?”

  “Yeah, wild stuff about getting me fired at Golf Digest. Nothing for you to even think about. I’m fine.”

  “Can the NCAA really declare me ineligible?”

  “Oh yeah, they absolutely can,” Keith said, remembering his conversation with Casey Martin. “The only thing that might save you is the Cam Newton case.”

  “The Panthers quarterback?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah. When Newton was at Auburn, word got out that his father had, basically, sold him to the highest bidder. Several schools were involved. The NCAA eventually ruled that Cam knew nothing about it, and so wasn’t subject to punishment.

  “Here’s the problem: Football is big bucks for the NCAA. Cam was about to win the Heisman Trophy and take his school to the national championship. The NCAA didn’t want all that to come crashing down, so they basically made up a rule on the spot to keep him on the field. You, however, don’t play football—you play a nonrevenue sport. Most people outside the golf world have no idea who you are, at least right now. The NCAA might want to make an example of you—or, more specifically, your father.”

  “They can do that?”

  “They can do just about anything they want. And, if they know your dad signed a contract of any kind on your behalf, they’ve got you pretty much nailed.”

  Frank sighed. He didn’t want to see his father later that day; in fact, at that moment, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to see him again.

  “So if it’s not Lawrensen, then who?” he asked. “Not that many people knew any of this.”

  “Probably more than you think,” Keith said. “If Lawrensen made a deal with, say, Brickley, you can be sure he was negotiating with the other apparel companies. Same with equipment or anything else. The rumors have been all over. It isn’t a well-kept secret.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing for sure: when I do turn pro, he won’t be my agent.”

  Keith shrugged. “He’s probably not a lot worse than the rest of them. But I don’t think he’s as smart as he thinks he is.”

  The pancakes Frank had ordered arrived. Keith had ordered eggs and bacon.

  “Hope this isn’t too heavy,” Frank said.

  “You don’t play for six hours,” Keith said. “You’re carbo-loading. That’s good.”

  * * *

  They had taken Frank’s car, with Keith driving. As they turned in to the club, Keith said, “Hey, I’ve never driven up Magnolia Lane before. This is pretty cool.”

  It occurred to Frank that, seven days after gawking at Magnolia Lane for the first time, he had barely noticed where they were when the guard waved them through the gate.

  They parted at the clubhouse door, Keith saying that unless he came upon something extraordinary, he wasn’t going to bug Frank with any information he might dig up during the day. Frank’s major concern was how to deal with his father and Lawrensen. His father had been calling and texting, and he knew he needed to respond to him.

  “Just get it over with when they get here,” Keith said. “Don’t point fingers—at least not yet. Does you no good right now. Tell them what happened with Tucker, and say that you can all deal with it tomorrow. Lawrensen will probably be thrilled—even if he didn’t do it.”

  Frank called his father back once he was inside the locker room; cell phone use was allowed in there.

  “Where the hell have you been?” his dad said. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”

  “Who is ‘we,’ Dad?” Frank asked. “You and your business partner?”

  His father ignored the crack. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “At the golf course. In the locker room.”

  “Okay, we’ll meet you for breakfast in the grillroom in twenty.”

  “I’ve eaten. I’ll meet you in the lounge outside the locker room.”

  * * *

  When his father and Lawrensen turned up, Frank calmly walked them through his morning—except for Keith’s involvement.

  “That’s shocking,” Lawrensen said when Frank finished. “They gave you no clue who contacted the NCAA?”

  “None at all,” Frank said, watching Lawrensen for any sign that might indicate he was the leak. “Anything to this?” he asked, now looking directly at his father.

  “This isn’t the time or the place to talk about it,” his father said. “You need to get ready to play.”

  If there was any doubt about whether the story was true, it vanished in Frank’s mind at that moment.

  He told his father and Lawrensen he wanted to try to sleep for a while. Amazingly, stretched out on the couch, he actually did fall asleep. He awoke to find Slugger standing over him.

  “What are you doing sleeping here?” he asked. “Your dad told me you came out here very early. Are you okay?”

  “What time is it?” Frank asked.

  “About one-thirty,” Slugger said. “We need to get going.”

  It was clear that his dad and Lawrensen hadn’t said anything to Slugger about what had happened. Probably too embarrassed. Frank thought about filling him in, but he decided against it. He needed to warm up and get his mind on playing golf.

  Frank was in the last group with Rory McIlroy. Hideki Matsuyama, also at nine under, and Jason Day, who had made a big move on moving day with a six-under-par 66 to get to eight-under, were right in front of them. Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, both at seven under, were in the third-to-last group.

  Frank stretched, thought for a moment about taking a quick shower, and then dismissed the thought. Once he got on the range and started to feel the adrenaline, he knew he’d be fine.

  The range seemed empty when he and Slugger walked out there. Sundays are different at a golf tournament. No one goes to the range to hit balls when they finish their round. Playing in the last group meant there were only a handful of players still warming up.

  McIlroy spotted him and came over to say hello. “Bet you never thought a week ago when you couldn’t find the clubhouse that we’d be in the last group together today, did you?” he said.

  “Never crossed my mind,” Frank said.

  “Crossed mine when I saw you play,” McIlroy said. “Good luck out there today.”

  Frank understood why Keith liked McIlroy so much. If he’d been sitting at home watching today, he’d be pulling for him to win.

  But he wasn’t sitting at home—he was playing. And he was going to do everything in his power to try to win. Or at least play as well as he possibly could. If someone—Rory or anyone else—was just better than he was, that was fine.

  At 2:45 Frank walked to the putting green. The fans—patrons—were screaming his name as he made his way, surrounded by security people, to the other side of the clubhouse. He also heard a few chants of “USA!” that he could have lived without. This had nothing to do with where you were from. It wasn’t the
Ryder Cup.

  Fifteen minutes later, he walked onto the tee to wild cheers. He and Rory formally shook hands and showed each other their golf balls. Frank’s red circle was clearly drawn.

  McIlroy was up first and hit a perfect drive that bounced left of the fairway bunker and just kept going—or so it seemed—over the crest of the hill. Frank had to wait a moment for the cheers to quiet when he was introduced. He smiled, touched his cap once, then again, and finally put his tee in the ground. He hit the exact same shot he had hit on Number 1 all week—a draw aimed at the corner of the bunker.

  This time, though, the ball stayed dead straight, never moving. It plopped into the bunker, drawing a groan from the crowd. Frank was shocked. The ball had felt perfect coming off the club.

  “No worries,” Slugger said. “We can make a par from there.”

  Except they didn’t. Frank found the left bunker with his second shot, hit a good bunker shot to about eight feet, but missed the putt. It was the first time all week he’d bogeyed Number 1.

  “It’s just one hole,” said McIlroy, who’d made par, as they walked to the second tee. “Just play golf.”

  Frank managed to birdie the second from the front bunker, which calmed him down. At Number 3, still feeling a bit shaky, he laid up with an iron and was happy to make par. Then he bogeyed the tough par-three fourth. He was at eight under. McIlroy and Matsuyama were at ten under, and Spieth was tied with Frank at eight under.

  Still, it wasn’t as if he were collapsing. He made a good up-and-down at the fifth, then drilled a six-iron to ten feet at the sixth.

  “Make this, and we’re back in the ball game,” Slugger said. “It’s dead straight. Don’t overread it.”

  He didn’t, and Slugger was right. The putt went in, the crowd roared, and the “USA!” chants started again.

  As they stood on the seventh tee waiting for Matsuyama and Day to hit their second shots—Day was a notoriously slow player—Frank turned to McIlroy and said, “You must get tired of the ‘USA’ stuff.”

  McIlroy shrugged. “This is nothing,” he said. “Wait until you play Ryder Cup. They never stop.”

  They both parred 7, bringing them to two holes that Frank knew would be critical to his chances—8 and 9.

  Eight was the most difficult par-five to birdie because it was the most difficult to reach in two. Except for McIlroy, who hit two perfect shots to 30 feet and two-putted for birdie to take the outright lead at 11 under. Matsuyama had bogeyed the seventh to drop to nine under, tied for second with Frank.

  Frank missed the fairway to the right—finding the rough, or as it was called at Augusta National, “the second cut.” (Nothing at Augusta National was “rough.”) Whatever it was, it wasn’t very deep, but Frank decided to lay up rather than try to hit a wood out of it. From there, he hit a solid wedge onto the green to within ten feet of the flag, but the putt turned right at the last possible second.

  Still, he was tied for second—two shots back of McIlroy.

  At Number 9, the pin was in its very famous Sunday position: front-left. It was an absolute sucker pin, even with no water involved. If you landed the ball pin-high, there was almost no chance for the ball to stay on the green. If you tried to simply fly it safely to the back of the green, you’d have a brutal downhill putt.

  Both Frank and McIlroy hit their drives to the bottom of the hill. Surprisingly, McIlroy pulled his second shot into the left bunker. Frank aimed for the middle of the green—hoping to land no more than 20 feet behind the hole. The ball landed on almost the spot he was aiming for. It spun back in the direction of the hole, and for a split second Frank thought he’d spun the nine-iron too much and it was going off the green. But it stopped hole-high, eight feet right of the flag.

  “That’s a great shot,” McIlroy said as they walked up the hill to the building applause toward the green. “You give me ten shots from that spot, I doubt I’d get it closer.”

  Frank was thinking if he had a hundred shots from there he wouldn’t get it any closer.

  McIlroy’s bunker shot skipped 15 feet past the hole, and he missed coming back for his first bogey of the day. As he lined up his putt, it occurred to Frank that if he made it, he’d be tied for the lead with nine holes to play. He needed an extra moment to gather himself, so he circled the hole a second time. He got over the putt, reminded himself that putts on this green always broke more than you thought, and then managed to get the putt to just glide over the right edge—and in.

  The “USA!” chants were now getting very loud. He and McIlroy were both ten under. Matsuyama, Spieth, and Day were a shot back.

  “The Masters doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday,” McIlroy said with a grin as they walked between the ropes to the tenth tee.

  “There is no back nine,” Frank said. “Just a second nine.”

  They were both laughing as they walked onto the tee. It occurred to Frank that he was actually having fun. How was that possible?

  37

  Keith Forman was standing in his now-usual spot directly behind the tenth tee when Frank Baker and Rory McIlroy arrived. Both were laughing. Keith found that amazing. There were nine holes left to play in the Masters, they were tied for the lead with a posse of great players chasing, and they were laughing?

  He hadn’t seen a single shot on the front nine. He had decided his time would be better used seeing if he could get some kind of fix on who might have tipped off the NCAA about Ron Lawrensen and Thomas Baker. He figured if Frank played well enough to stay in contention, he’d pick him up on the back nine. If not, he didn’t really want to watch him collapse. He had to admit he was a little surprised when he checked the scoreboards and saw that Frank was hanging in with McIlroy, Matsuyama, Spieth, and Day. If you added Dustin Johnson to the list, you’d have the five top players in the game.

  So it was four stars and a seventeen-year-old kid. Amazing.

  Not having any idea where to begin his search, Keith wandered up to the tree. There wasn’t nearly as much activity there now as there had been early in the week. Many of the sport’s corporate rainmakers had already left. Same with a lot of the agents. There were media guys hanging around because the thick crowds made walking the golf course with the late groups on Sunday almost impossible without inside-the-ropes access. Although Augusta never announced official numbers, the consensus was that at least forty thousand people were on the property. Keith was almost dreading walking the back nine if Frank was still in contention.

  For a while, he wandered aimlessly, not even sure who or what he was looking for. He could hear the roars coming from the golf course as the leaders moved around the front nine.

  The first person he saw worth talking to was Steve DiMeglio.

  “Can you imagine the rating CBS is going to get with this leaderboard?” DiMeglio said. “No Tiger, you got four of the big five, plus your guy, who is the best story of all. I think Nantz will explode if the kid somehow wins.”

  Keith knew DiMeglio wasn’t exaggerating—at least not by much. He’d watched some of the CBS highlights show the previous night, and Nantz and the entire CBS crew—or as Nantz liked to call it, “the CBS golf family”—had more or less been comparing Frank’s 54-hole performance to the invention of the wheel and the iPhone.

  “It would be one of the great sports stories of all time,” Keith said.

  “Yeah, only problem with it is that Ron Lawrensen gets rich, and not only do those phonies from Brickley get the kid, but he becomes the most valuable property in golf. Hell, as it is, he’s a gold mine.”

  “How do you know about Brickley?” Keith asked.

  “I haven’t been in a cave all week,” DiMeglio said. “Hell, Erica and Ron are upstairs on the porch right now—probably working out just how to make the announcement tomorrow.”

  “What?” Keith had figured that Lawrensen was out on the golf course with Thomas Baker.

  DiMeglio pointed upward, and Keith could see Ron Lawrensen and Erica Chambers sitting across from
each other at a table he knew was just to the left of the door leading to the dining room.

  “Gotta go,” he said to DiMeglio.

  “Why?” DiMeglio asked. “You think you’re going to stop any of this?”

  Keith didn’t answer because he was bolting in the direction of the clubhouse door, which was a few yards from where they were standing.

  He hustled up the circular stairway—too fast by Augusta standards—and walked through the almost-empty dining room to the porch. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. The only people there were Lawrensen and Chambers. Both looked surprised to see him.

  “You aren’t out watching the golf tournament?” Lawrensen said. “Isn’t that what real reporters do—watch the golf?”

  “Save it, Lawrensen,” Keith said. The time for niceties and dancing around had passed.

  He sat down in the chair between the two of them.

  “Please join us,” Chambers said sharply, without a trace of her luminous smile.

  “You can save it, too,” Keith said. He was done gawking at her. He probably hadn’t been aggressive enough trying to find out exactly what Brickley was up to because he’d been dazzled by her.

  “I assume you two are finalizing—or more likely celebrating—a deal that Frank knows nothing about and wants nothing to do with.”

  “Oh, he’ll want something to do with it when he sees the numbers involved,” Chambers said.

  “No, his father will like the numbers. You don’t know this kid.”

  “Oh, and you do?” Lawrensen said.

  “Very well,” Keith answered. “That’s why he asked me to go with him to see Jonathan Tucker this morning. Not you. Not his father. Me.”

  Keith knew—because Frank had texted him—that Frank had told his father and Lawrensen about the meeting. So he wasn’t giving anything away—except for his presence.

  For once, Lawrensen looked caught off guard. “You’re lying,” he said lamely.

  Keith shrugged. “No need to lie. You can read my story about it later.”

  Now Lawrensen was concerned. “You could ruin his image if you wrote about that,” he said. “I thought you said you cared about him.”