Which leads me to my first big rookie moment. I was told to expect a lot of neat things as I experienced my first year on the Tour, but none was better than the first time The King spoke to me. We were on the putting green on Tuesday morning. Ordinarily, there would still be two days of practice before the opening round on Thursday, but the Hope event started on Wednesday because of the extra round. I had booked a starting time for later in the day and had planned on spending the next hour or so regaining confidence in my putter.
At that point, I really hadn’t been paying much attention to the other players mulling around me. But as I bent over a putt, a ball came rolling across my line of vision, and I heard someone say, “Excuse me.” I immediately recognized the voice from Pennzoil commercials on television. It was The King.
I looked up to see the most familiar face in golf (Tiger notwithstanding), smiling and offering a needless apology for disturbing me. He then extended his hand and said, “I’m Arnold Palmer. I understand this is your first year out here. If I can do anything for you, let me know.”
I managed to grab his hand, probably more enthusiastically than I should have, and stammered, “Well, thanks very much, Mr. Palmer. I’m Bobby Reeves.” Then, on an impertinent impulse, I added, “I’d love to play a practice round with you sometime.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Well, I think we’re only three as it stands now. Why don’t you join us? We’re due off in about ten minutes.”
I don’t exactly recall what I said, but I must have communicated some kind of acceptance, because he called over his shoulder as he walked away that they would be waiting for me on the first tee.
It then dawned on me that I didn’t know where Stewart was. I had just accepted an invitation to play a round of golf with one of the game’s greats, and I couldn’t find my caddie. I immediately fell into a panic.
I bolted over to the caddie area, but Stewart wasn’t there. I ran over to the parking lot, but he wasn’t at our courtesy car. I had just about decided to carry my own bag, as silly as that might have looked for a PGA Tour player, when I saw him coming across the putting green.
“Stewart! I’ve been looking all over for you! We’re up next!”
He gave me a quizzical look and then pointed to his watch. “What are you talking about? We’ve got another hour before we’re on the tee.”
I shook my head vigorously. “No, we’re going off now. Arnold Palmer invited me to play with his group.”
Stewart smiled. “Oh, I see. Well, fine.” He eyed me carefully and said, “Now, calm down, Bobby. You can get his autograph after the round.”
I took slight offense. “Very funny,” I replied. “You can say what you want, but I think it’s pretty cool.”
He laughed as he shouldered my bag and starting walking toward the first tee. “It is cool, but remember what Joe Paterno said: Act like you’ve been there before. This is our last chance to see the course before the tournament starts.”
As we reached the first tee, I saw my idol standing with Paul Stankowski and Loren Roberts, two of the Tour’s better players. They looked just as happy to be playing with The King as I was. I was obviously not alone in my hero worship.
There are many things that make Arnold Palmer a unique figure in sports. For one thing, I doubt that anyone in the history of sport has ever managed to capture the public’s affection as he has. Here we were, about to tee off on a practice round, and a man who became eligible for Social Security when I was in high school had drawn the biggest gallery of the day.
Looking around at the adoring faces of what was once called “Arnie’s Army,” I challenged Stewart to name a single athlete who could match his appeal. He gave a gentle shrug of the shoulders and said, “It’s like someone said, they may say that Jack Nicklaus was the better player, but they will always love Arnold Palmer more.”
It is remarkable to me that no one in the world of golf has anything negative to say about Arnold Palmer. If he has ever had a bad moment and treated a fan, other golfer, or tournament official wrongly, there’s no record of it.
Palmer has always had a unique ability to connect with virtually every person in the gallery. As we walked along during the round, he seemed to answer every encouraging word with a wink, wave, or some other gesture that acknowledged his partnership with his fans in seeking a last triumphant round of golf that, beyond all reason, would carry him once again to the winner’s circle.
As we walked down the third fairway, I cocked my head in Palmer’s direction and said to Paul Stankowski, “I get chills just watching him.”
The goateed pro laughed. “Shoot, I’ve been playing with him for years, and I’ve never gotten used to it.”
My clubs finally drew some attention on the fifth hole. We were all standing together, waiting for the group ahead to clear the green, when Loren Roberts looked in my bag.
“Whatcha got there?”
I looked at Stewart. He was staring impassively ahead. No help there.
I tried to joke my way out of it. “They’re knockoffs,” I said, referring to cheap imitations of brand-name clubs that sell for a fraction of the real thing.
Roberts pulled my seven-iron out of the bag. Waggling the club, he said, “Boy, they feel good.”
He must have caught Palmer’s eye, because he came over at that point and said, “I haven’t seen clubs like that since I was a kid working in my dad’s shop.” Palmer then pulled out another of my irons and scrutinized its head. His voice rising in excitement, he said, “These things were made the old way, one at a time, by a master clubmaker.” He whistled. “I didn’t think I’d ever see something like this again except in a museum.”
I was becoming embarrassed. Handing the club back to me, Palmer smiled and said, “You better hang on to these. If they’re as old as I think they are, they’re probably a lot more valuable than anything we’re playing with.”
After we played our approaches and began walking toward the green, I said to Stewart, “Great. Now they think I’m some kind of a freak playing these antique clubs.”
He shook his head disapprovingly. “You worry about the silliest things. You’re hitting the ball well enough with them, aren’t you? What else matters?”
I was stuck for an answer. I knew one thing: These clubs came from a different time. I was beginning to think that Stewart did, too. He may have been young enough to carry my clubs, but he was old at heart, if there was such a thing.
xviii
MY PLAY AT the Hope showed improvement over Hawaii. Perhaps I was getting acclimated to life on Tour. One encouraging sign was that I was more nervous playing the practice round with Arnold Palmer than I was playing in the tournament. At any rate, I made the cut and won $8,748.
And I managed to do it despite the growing distraction over my clubs. First it was Peter Jacobsen, who came up to me on the range on Friday and wanted to know all about my “classic clubs.” Then Duffy Waldorf ambled over and quipped about the “low-tech pro from Cajun country.” As word spread up and down the practice tee, Stewart was having to fight off other caddies who wanted to pull the irons out of my bag.
I knew it had gotten out of hand when David Duval, who generally shows little interest in such things, came over and, after introducing himself, asked politely if he could hit my six-iron to see how it compared with his. Of course, I let him. He must have liked how it felt, because he kept it awhile and then wanted to know the club’s specs when he finally brought it back. When I said that I didn’t know what they were, he glared at me through his Oakley sunglasses to make it clear that he didn’t believe me.
Our next stop was the Phoenix Open, which would be played at the TPC of Scottsdale. I was told it was a fun course, and I was looking forward to playing there. The Hope had been my first taste of golf in the western desert, and I liked it.
We arrived on Monday, the day after the Hope ended. Stewart hustled me out to the course to squeeze in as many holes as we could before dark. I was surprised at what we found. Un
like the courses we played at the Hope Desert Classic, which were generously irrigated and had wall-to-wall grass, the TPC at Scottsdale looked like patches of carpet laid over sand. From tee to green, each hole was separate and distinct from the others, and between them were outcroppings of rock, cactus, and sand. From the air, the course must have looked like fingers of green on top of a brown background.
But whoever had promised that the course would be fun to play was right. For one thing, it had a short, drivable par four, the kind of hole I dearly love but rarely see. According to Stewart, they’re pretty common in Scotland, but for some reason are not considered to be sexy by architects here in the U.S.
At the TPC of Scottsdale, the seventeenth hole measures only 303 yards and dares you to drive the green. It’s deceptively tempting, and that’s the beauty of it, because anyone who pulls out the driver in the hope of an eagle or easy birdie must avoid a bunker in the middle of the fairway and water to the left of the green. As Stewart pointed out, no matter how you look at it, hitting driver there is a dumb play. (Andrew Magee would probably disagree. He made the first hole-in-one on a par four in PGA Tour history during the 2001 Phoenix tournament when his drive bounced off a player’s putter and into the hole.)
Naturally, I had to try the driver on Monday, just for kicks. Of course, I swung too hard, overrotated, and hooked the ball into the water. When I walked off the green, I had made five.
Stewart couldn’t resist a slight dig as we made our way to the eighteenth tee. “Think we learned anything there?”
I pretended to scowl at him. “Four-iron’s the club, right?”
He just nodded, satisfied that it was worth losing a new Titleist if it meant I’d leave the driver in my bag when we came to the seventeenth on Thursday.
We had started the round by ourselves but picked up Billy Ray Brown and Mike Heinen at the turn. Both were bombers, noted for smashing the ball out of round with just two or three swings. Their personalities fit their games, too. Both were gregarious, loosey-goosey types who just loved to pulverize the ball, go find it, and then wallop it again. It made my back hurt just watching them.
Stewart must have sensed the danger of watching these two linebackers try to bring rain with their drivers. “There’s nothing there for you,” he whispered in my ear as Heinen belted a drive on the 515-yard fifteenth hole that left him with no more than a six-iron for his second shot to the island green.
“What do you mean?” I asked even though I knew.
“That’s not our game,” he said quietly.
I understood what he meant and didn’t argue the point. In fact, I began to turn my head whenever one of our companions teed off for fear I would begin to overswing.
Apparently, word about the clubs had begun to spread. Tom Lehman asked about them on Tuesday, and Phil Mickelson and Billy Andrade checked them out on the range on Wednesday.
I got a real scare on Thursday, though, as I was warming up on the range before the first round. Vaughn Moise, a fellow Louisianian and former LSU player who had been a Tour rules official for a number of years, came up to me. I could tell from the expression on his face that it wasn’t a social call.
“Bobby, we’ve had some questions about your clubs.”
“What about ’em?” I said, trying to sound unconcerned.
“Well, have you ever had ’em checked to make sure they conform with the Rules of Golf?” Moise wasn’t even looking at me as he spoke but instead was fiddling with the head of my seven-iron.
I looked over at Stewart. He was totally impassive.
“Well, no, I haven’t.” I just stood there, feeling kind of stupid. “Why? Did I do something wrong?”
Moise spoke slowly. “Well, no, not necessarily.” He pulled out my four-iron and waggled it. “They really look okay to me. I mean, they’re a classic shape, and the shafts look to be just plain old steel.” He tapped the head. “You don’t have some kind of nuclear material in there, do you?”
That’s when I noticed that his face had broken into a big smile. I grabbed the club out of his hand and said, “What is this—some kind of rookie hazing?”
Suddenly, I heard laughter behind me. I spun around and saw Andrew Magee and Roger Maltbie (NBC headphones and all) having a great time at my expense.
For some reason, I was flattered to have gotten their attention. Moise slapped me on the shoulder and said, “You got off easy ’cause I told ’em you were from back home. You ought to see the pranks they usually pull on the new guys.”
I mumbled some expression of gratitude. As Moise turned to walk away, he said in parting, “Seriously, you should never play a club without having one of us check it out. You never know.”
I turned to Stewart. “Did you know this was coming?” He pleaded innocent and said, “I knew the clubs weren’t illegal, so I was never concerned.”
I’m not sure how such a trivial incident could have had so great an impact on me, but it did. I immediately felt less like an outsider and therefore more comfortable as a player. That, in turn, made me more relaxed on the course and further elevated my play.
It showed quickly in my scores. I opened the first round with a 69. Mickelson, who always played well out West, led with an otherworldly 63, and there were upward of a dozen players between his number and mine. Still, it was my best start yet.
It got better on Friday. I birdied the first three holes and cruised to a 66. I was still five shots back of Mickelson, but I was tied for sixth and playing again on the weekend.
I even got invited to the media tent for a brief visit. Nothing much, just a few questions about where I was from and how it felt to be a rookie on the Tour. My chair was barely warm when I was done.
Stewart didn’t give me much time to enjoy the moment. He had bigger things on his mind.
As I rolled a few putts on the practice green, he came up close to me and said in a voice so low I almost couldn’t hear, “You know, Bobby, you could win this thing.”
I laughed at the thought of winning a PGA Tour event in just my third try. “If bullshit were oil, you’d be an Arab sheik.”
He frowned. “Don’t laugh. Think about it. You’re playing well, and the course sets up just right for your game. If we make a few putts tomorrow, look out.”
The way Tour events are run, you’re placed in a threesome by a semirandom draw, and play in the same group for the first two rounds. The field is then reduced (i.e., “cut”) to the low 60 or 70 scores (depending on the event) and ties on Friday night. The deck gets reshuffled on both Saturday and Sunday, when players are grouped strictly by score, with the lowest scores teeing off last.
Although the Tour is usually played in twosomes after the cut, we were informed that we would be grouped in threesomes to accommodate television schedules on the East Coast. Being tied for sixth, I would be in the third to last group on Saturday with Tom Lehman and Steve Elkington, two pretty big names. I hoped I could hold my water.
After a nervous start in which I nearly missed a two-footer at the first hole for par, I settled down and turned the front one under at 34. Conditions were ideal for scoring, however, and I knew that I needed to make several birdies on the back nine or I would lose ground to the field.
I made a surprise birdie at eleven, which is a long par four, and then followed it with another at the par-three twelfth. The real turn, however, came at fifteen, the par five with the island green. Playing with the wind at our back, I caught my best drive of the day and was only 205 from the green. I wanted to go for it, but Stewart thought it was too risky.
“It’s a perfect three-iron for me,” I argued.
He shook his head. “Let’s lay up, get close with the wedge, and make birdie that way.”
“Stewart,” I pleaded, “I’ve been hitting the long irons really well. I have this shot, I tell you.”
I think it might have been the first time he ever let me overrule his advice on the golf course. With a sigh, he pulled out the three and handed it to me.
I really caught it flush, and the ball took off for the flag like it was on sonar. It finished twenty feet away. I tried not to gloat as I handed the club back to Stewart.
At the green, he read the putt to be a ball out on the right. Stewart’s vision on a putting green was so uncanny I sometimes didn’t bother even looking at the putt myself. I hit it where he told me to, and it went right in the middle. I had eagled fifteen to go five under.
After a four-iron off the tee at the short par-four seventeenth, I stiffed a sand wedge to six feet and drained that putt, too. Now I was six under for the day.
The eighteenth at Scottsdale is like so many of the great finishing holes, a par four that doglegs left and has water on that side off the tee. It’s much like the concluding holes at Doral and Sawgrass. Ordinarily, a player coming to this hole should be happy to make par.
I should have known better, but I was pumped at that point, and so I was thinking birdie. On the tee, Stewart was trying to tell me to play safely down the right side of the fairway, but all I remember thinking was bust it down the left, where the approach is shorter and at a better angle. I felt so good that I did exactly that, outdriving my fellow competitors by as much as thirty yards.
I had no more than a six-iron into the green, where the flagstick was tucked toward the right rear, near the bunker on that side. Every golfer has experienced spells like I was having, where the swing just feels right, and the ball goes wherever you aim. It’s truly a delicious feeling, and I had no doubt that my second shot would end up close.
A large crowd had gathered around the eighteenth green. While Phoenix galleries aren’t as rowdy as the ones at Greensboro, they come close, and this crowd made some kind of noise when my ball finished three feet from the hole.
After I tapped in, I shook Elkington and Lehman’s hands, accepted their congratulations for a great round, and signed my card for a 64 that had me a stroke behind Mickelson in second place.
The round earned me a quick visit to the main TV tower with Mike Tirico and Curtis Strange. I figured they’d just ask me if I was surprised to be playing so well in only my third tournament, but Strange surprised me with questions about my “retro” clubs. I mumbled something that, judging from his reaction, made little sense. Fortunately, Tirico rescued me by announcing they were cutting to a commercial.
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