“You win,” I said, trying to sound gracious. “I hope the stakes weren’t high.”
Stewart chuckled. “We were only playing for pride.”
“Where’d you learn to hit that high-cut shot?”
He shrugged. “Actually, I tend to draw the ball. But, to get that ball close, the high fade was the better shape.”
I whistled. “You mean you just dialed that up on your first swing?”
He nodded. “You just picture it in your mind, and let it go.” He finished wiping the club clean. “It’s all a matter of trusting your swing.”
I remember thinking at the time that there was something eerily familiar about the long, syrupy swing I had just witnessed. Distinctively beautiful in its unhurried grace, it recalled an image that drifted along the outer edges of my mind, just out of reach. It was like the proverbial name that stays on the tip of your tongue, a faded image whose shadowy contours are not quite distinct enough to make out. It would come to me much later.
It was now approaching fall. One morning about a week or so later, Stewart sat me down after breakfast and handed me a form to complete. It was an application for Q-School.
“It’s not due for another two weeks,” he said, “but it’s not the sort of thing we should put off.”
Fingering the pages of the form, I said, “You know, I’m really looking forward to it this time.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said, clapping me on the back. “If we can’t have fun playing golf, there has to be something wrong with us, don’t you think?” With that said, he winked at me.
I completed the form that day. It didn’t occur to me to ask Stewart where the $4,000 entry fee came from.
We continued to work daily on my game. Stewart’s efforts to divorce me from the mechanical aspects of the game were bearing fruit. I was becoming more of a feel player, and my swing began to flow with an energy and tempo that it never had before. Playing this way relaxed me, and my attitude on the course improved as well. I was less intense and therefore reacted better to the occasional bad break that was inevitable in virtually every round.
Before I knew it, it was time for the first stage of Tour qualifying. I knew the site well; we were going back to Champions in Houston. I was pleased not only because it was a great place for golf but also because I knew both courses well.
Q-School was a three-stage event. The first stage actually consisted of four regional tournaments, each having about 150 players. At Champions, we would play each course twice. There would be no cut. I guess they figured you should get more than two rounds of golf for $4,000, no matter how badly you played.
For Stewart and me, this would be our maiden voyage into the world of competitive golf. And there wasn’t a tougher place to start.
I thought there was pressure at the Amateur, but it was nothing compared to Q-School. Imagine pulling up to the parking lot and seeing all manner of wanna-bes mulling around, some with beat-up equipment that leaves you wondering how they scared up the money to play, and all of them wearing faces as long as an undertaker’s.
And that’s not the scary part. If you survive the first stage, it gets worse. That’s when you begin to see the familiar faces—guys you’ve watched play on television—pulling their clubs out of car trunks, too. Some of these guys have even won on Tour. It’s a chilling reminder that there is no such thing as a no-cut contract in professional golf.
Just ask Chip Beck, who shot a 59 in a Tour event but went from Ryder Cup to Styrofoam cup in less time than it takes to say the opening prayer at an ACLU meeting. And he’s not alone. Bill Rogers won enough Tour events (including the British Open and the old World Series of Golf) to be named PGA Player of the Year before making a swing change that unexpectedly affected his natural timing. Three years later, he grew tired of trying to find the old magic and quit the Tour for good. The same for another British Open champ, Ian Baker-Finch, who mysteriously lost his way within months of his greatest triumph and now makes his living wearing a headset in a television tower. Then there was Jodie Mudd, a terrific young pro who rocketed to stardom as the next dominant player on Tour a few years back. After winning the Player’s Championship and the ten-year exemption that went with it, he woke up one morning without a golf game. Following a couple of flameout years, he walked away from competitive golf altogether.
Believe me, most of these guys only give it up when the pain of repeated failures becomes greater than the hope of recovery. The ones who still believe they can recapture the magic will swallow their pride if they have to and return to Q-School. When they do, they’re usually dressed better than the rest of us, but their outfits don’t include happy faces, that’s for sure.
The scenery gets even more interesting as the tournament progresses at each stage. The competition is so intense that one bad round usually means another year playing in Scranton and Midland-Odessa instead of Muirfield Village and TPC Sawgrass.
Guys who experience these reverse career-move outings generally react in one of three ways. First, there are the weepers, grown men who sit on the back bumper of their car and just cry until they get it all out. Then there are the more demonstrative types, who take whatever club most disappointed them during the round—most often a putter but sometimes a five-iron they hooked into a water hazard at an inopportune time—and remodel their car with it.
But neither of these types worry me nearly so much as the ones who turn in a score that works better for bowling and then walk expressionless out of the scorer’s tent, their eyes so vacant you swear you can see clear to the back of their skulls. You can sit and watch them as they walk zombielike to their cars, never looking to one side or the other. When they get there, they calmly and quietly open the trunk and put their clubs and shoes away before leaning over and puking all over them.
That’s why, as we finished our only practice round, I handed Stewart my glove and said, “This ain’t the easiest place for us to start out together.”
He just smiled as he usually did. Hoisting my bag over his shoulder, he said quietly, “You just shot 67 and only made one putt over ten feet. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get started.”
His remark surprised me. The round had gone so smoothly and easily that I hadn’t noticed my score. It was still another sign that there was great power in Stewart’s lessons.
x
IN HINDSIGHT, I guess it was an omen. We had stayed in one of the cottages just across the street from the club (Stewart again had, as he so often said, “made arrangements”) and so walked over to the Jackrabbit course a good hour and a half before our starting time. We were almost to the pro shop when an older man emerged from inside. I noticed him immediately because of his bearing: He walked like he owned the place.
As it turned out, he did. As he drew closer, his stern expression softened into a friendly smile. Waving at my friend, he said, “Hello, Stewart. They told me you were here. How have you been?”
Stewart extended his hand and returned the warm greetings. “I’ve been fine, Mr. Burke. It’s great to see you again. You look well.”
Jackie Burke ran his hand through his curly hair. “Oh, Stewart, I’m okay I guess. At my age, the parts don’t work as well as they used to, but, hell, they’re pretty much worn out, so I guess I shouldn’t expect ’em to.” He laughed to show that his complaints weren’t serious.
Stewart smiled and said, “I’ve been following Robin in the golf magazines. She’s had a great year.”
Burke grinned at the mention of his younger wife, who was prominent on the amateur golf circuit. “Robin’s been playing well.” He turned slightly serious as the teacher side of his personality took hold. “She can get even better, though, if she works hard enough.”
Stewart finally introduced me, and Burke and I shook hands and exchanged brief pleasantries before Stewart led me over to the practice tee to warm up. As he set my bag on a stand at the far end of the range, I couldn’t resist asking, “So, how do you know Jackie Burke?”
That last line was delivered with a trace of sarcasm. Stewart and I both knew that my knowledge of golf history was spotty at best. But, having played at Champions before, I knew something about Burke’s accomplishments. In fact, it gave me no small measure of satisfaction to answer Stewart by saying “Not to mention the fact that he also won four PGA Tour events in a row.”
Stewart had leaned over and was marking my balls with a red felt-tipped marker. He stopped, looked up at me, and smiled. “Every once in a while you do surprise me, Bobby. That’s a nice bit of trivia about Mr. Burke, and it also happens to be true.”
As I worked my way through my golf bag on the range, Stewart repeated what had become our mantra. Relax and swing, he repeated several times. It’s all about slow and smooth, he would say. I didn’t make a bad swing in the forty minutes or so that we hit full shots. We finished with a dozen half wedges and then walked over to the putting green, where we spent the last fifteen minutes before teeing off.
I knew before we started that the extra distance I had gained would come in handy at Champions. Both Jackrabbit and Cypress Creek were long, each running about 7,100 yards. Accuracy was a premium at Jackrabbit as well; the fairways were narrower than the hallway in Stewart’s apartment. If I had been given my druthers, I would have preferred to play my first round, when my nerves were the most fragile, on Cypress Creek.
But I had learned from Stewart that there was no point in concerning myself about things neither of us could change. I had drawn Jackrabbit, and that was that. Besides, I reminded myself, everyone in the field had to play two rounds there. I decided that I’d just as soon get one of mine over with as quickly as possible.
Stewart and I had agreed that we would grade our efforts on how well we stayed focused on playing relaxed and let the score take care of itself. I knew that would be difficult to do, but I thought about how well I had scored when I stuck to that plan.
I shouldn’t have worried. We cruised around Jackrabbit that day as if the fairways were as wide as the first hole at the Old Course (which, in case you didn’t know, is about 100 yards across). I was in the trees only once, and after punching out I nearly saved par. Although there were some hole locations that bordered on being unfair, I waltzed in with a 69.
I hung around the scoreboard awhile before Stewart finally hustled me away. I was there long enough to see that less than a dozen players had managed to break 70. It was an excellent start.
After a late lunch, we still had several hours of daylight left. I wouldn’t be playing until around noon the next day. Naturally, I assumed we would spend some time practicing so that I could keep my edges sharp.
It surprised me, then, when Stewart picked up my bag after lunch and started walking across the parking lot toward the cottage.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t break stride but instead called out over his shoulder, “We’re done for the day. Time for a shower.”
I trotted to catch up to him. “Don’t you think we should work on something this afternoon?”
He just looked at me. “Like what?”
“Well,” I said hesitantly, “whatever I didn’t do well today on the course.”
Stewart laughed. “And what would that be?” He stopped and turned to face me. “Look, Bobby, you played a great round. If anything, you played well enough to have gone much lower. Some days the putts just don’t fall.”
“But,” I persisted, “there’s always something you can improve.”
He shook his head. “Naw, ain’t necessarily so. You’re swinging the club as well as I could ever ask you to, and you’re rolling the ball on the greens as pretty as can be.” He put his hand on the shoulder. “You don’t give a car that’s running this good a tune-up. I say we take the afternoon off and go to a movie.”
So we found a cinema in northwest Houston that featured second-run movies for a buck and watched Tin Cup. For the rest of the evening (we ate dinner at a nearby Chili’s), I teasingly referred to Stewart as Romeo, Roy McAvoy’s caddie.
I slept well that night, better than I usually did during a tournament. We had a late breakfast the next morning. When I wondered aloud about where we stood in the field, Stewart discouraged my curiosity.
“Thinking about what other players are doing, especially at this point, is just a distraction. If we follow our plan, the rest will take care of itself.”
He must have been right; we had a great day at Cypress Creek. I shot 68, with an eagle on the par-five ninth hole. By the time we finished, most of the field had completed play for the day. Thus, despite Stewart’s best efforts, I was able to scope out where we stood against the rest of the 150 or so players.
“We’re second!” I yelled at him across the putting green. He just smiled and shook his head before going back to wiping down my clubs. As I ran up to him, he held up his hand and reminded me that there was as much tournament ahead of us as there was behind us.
Of course, I knew he was right. But the fact remained that I had found a new way to play this maddening game. And it was easier than anything I had ever tried before.
I once heard someone say that in order to play golf well you had to get out of your own way. That was a good way to describe what Stewart was teaching me. I was letting go of a lot of things that had complicated the way I played. Although it now seems obvious, I was able to focus better by reducing the game to its simplest elements.
Of course, the real test lay ahead. It’s one thing to ignore your score in the beginning of a tournament; it’s something else again to play with blinders on when you’re on the back nine on Sunday. But that’s what Stewart wanted me to do, and I had to believe in someone who so deeply believed in me.
The magic was still there on Saturday. Playing in the last group, I managed to block out what my playing companions were doing and concentrated on having fun the way Stewart told me to. Damned if it didn’t work, too.
That’s not to say that I played a perfect round, of course. Playing at Cypress Creek, I bailed out on a four-wood at the famous par-three fourth hole and made bogey. (That’s the one where Ben Hogan failed to clear the ravine on four straight attempts in the 1971 Champions International and, after taking eleven on the hole, withdrew from the tournament, never to play competitive golf again.) And I played a sloppy wedge into the par-five thirteenth hole, catching the right front bunker and making bogey from the sand. But I offset those two bogeys with four birdies for a 70 that could have been much better. As Stewart pointed out, we hit several putts that managed to avoid the hole for no apparent reason. But he convinced me that those were the ones that would fall for us on Sunday.
Stewart kept me on the light bag after the round, allowing me to chip and putt while we talked casually about nothing in particular. He offered an occasional reminder about seeing the line and rolling the ball but seemed more intent on keeping me relaxed than anything else. I got the feeling we were just killing time while waiting for Sunday.
I had slipped to fifth after the third round, so I was playing in the second-to-last group for the final round. That presented no cause for concern; I knew that at least twenty-five players would advance to the next stage. As Stewart pointed out, it didn’t matter where we finished as long as we were twenty-fifth or better.
Sunday was another beautiful day. In the past, I never would have paid much attention to the weather (unless, of course, it was bad). But Stewart reminded me that part of having fun was appreciating our surroundings. So I tried to savor the fresh breeze and the rich green color and texture of the bermudagrass carpet all around me as I made my last few practice swings
before teeing off for the final round.
I refused to indulge any negative thoughts or fear of failing. At breakfast that morning, Stewart had remarked that the worst thing that could happen would be for us not to advance to the next stage. Compared to real tragedies, he said, that really wasn’t that big a deal. As he pointed out, there were plenty of golf tournaments outside of the Tour, so it wasn’t like we would have to spend the year selling insurance. I agreed with him and promised to have fun no matter what.
And it stayed fun for the fourth day in a row. We parred the first five holes, bogeyed six, and birdied nine to turn the front even. We three-putted the tenth hole (a huge green), but birdied thirteen, sixteen, and seventeen to finish two under.
As we walked off the eighteenth green, Stewart smiled and offered his congratulations. I was still a little nervous. “It’s such a pretty day for scoring; what if a bunch of guys go low?”
He laughed. “That’s not going to happen. Your 70 on the last day is like a 68 on any other day. Go check the scores, and you’ll see what I mean. There’s at least a two-stroke penalty on the last day because of the gag factor.”
I checked the scoreboard, and, of course, Stewart was right. I ended up third, made a nice check, and was ready to move on to the next stage of qualifying. Stewart’s reclamation of my golf game and my life had taken one more step forward.
xi
THERE WASN’T MUCH time to celebrate. The second stage of qualifying would begin in two weeks at World Woods Golf Club, a forty-five–hole complex in Homosassa, Florida. It seemed like we barely had time to get back to Baton Rouge and do laundry before gassing up the Explorer for the drive to Florida.
The long drive gave me some time to read about World Woods. It was quite a story. Located over an hour’s drive northwest of Orlando in the middle of nowhere, World Woods was built in the early 1990s. Its Japanese developers apparently had unlimited capital and commissioned noted architect Tom Fazio to give them a golf complex of such high quality that the remote destination would pose no obstacle to attracting golfers.
The Caddie Page 7