Caddy for Life (34 page)

“That’s why I wanted the two practice rounds there,” he said. “The first one you’re almost finding your way around. On Wednesday it started to come back, I started remembering shots I had played to different holes and the way each hole was set up. I was a lot more comfortable after practice round number two than I was after practice round number one.” One thing he had discovered was that North was right: He could play the golf course. The greens were surprisingly soft, almost attackable, generally unheard of at an Open.

Still, it wasn’t going to matter if Watson didn’t start hitting the ball better. After they had finished their Wednesday practice round, Watson and Bruce went to the range. As always, Watson was tinkering with different swing moves and thoughts. Bruce watched closely as he hit one shot after another. Watson was trying to get his right arm a little bit farther from his body as he came through the ball. He felt as if he was too tight, a little bit locked up, and wondered if moving his arm outward would free up the swing.

The shots began flying truer and truer. One after another. As had always been the case, Watson said nothing for several shots. “I don’t say anything until I’ve hit a number of shots to confirm that what I’m thinking is working,” he said.

Finally he turned to Bruce, the old smile on his face. “I’ve got it,” he said.

“I almost jumped up and hugged him right then,” Bruce said. “He doesn’t make a habit of saying that unless he’s pretty sure he’s found something. To find something on the range the day before what might be our last U.S. Open was something. Of course we wouldn’t really know until we got onto the golf course the next day, but I went to bed that night feeling confident that he could make something happen.”

So did Watson. He was paired with Scott Verplank, a solid American veteran player, and Eduardo Romero, a longtime star on the European Tour who is from Argentina. Verplank was extremely pleased to be paired with Watson. As a youngster, growing up in Dallas, he had been a big Watson fan and remembered watching Watson and Bruce during the six-year period (1975 through 1980) when Watson had won the Byron Nelson Classic four times. “I loved to watch Watson play,” Verplank said. “I loved his boldness and his pace of play, the way he attacked every shot. I still remember the year he was going for four in a row [1981] when he lost in a playoff [to Bruce Lietzke], how disappointed I was.”

Verplank and Bruce had become friendly after Verplank turned pro when Bruce was still living in Dallas. Verplank had dealt with health issues of his own—he is an insulin-dependent diabetic who wears an insulin pump that hooks onto his belt while playing—but had never complained about bad luck or the unfairness of it all, even though the diabetes and two major surgeries on his elbow had prevented him from reaching the level of stardom that had been predicted for him after he won the Western Open (the first amateur in twenty-nine years to win a PGA Tour event) in 1985 while still in college.

The first time he had seen Bruce after the diagnosis had been at the Players Championship, when he had gone looking for him on the first practice day to talk to him and see how he was doing. “It was exactly what I would have expected from Bruce,” he said. “No ‘why me,’ no whining. He just said, ‘Hey, I’ll deal with it,’ and wanted to talk about me and my game. That’s just always been his way. He’s been a caddy a long time, but I think—no, I know—that almost every player looks at him as one of us, as a peer in every way.”

Verplank came into the Open with high hopes. He was playing well, and he knew that the Open, with its emphasis on keeping the ball in the fairway, was always going to be his best shot at winning a major. He arrived on the first tee thinking he had a chance to be in contention on Sunday afternoon. The Watson-Verplank-Romero threesome would tee off at one-thirty in the second wave of tee times. In 2002 the USGA had given up its longtime tradition of starting everyone from the first tee during the first two rounds, because pace of play had become so slow it was almost impossible to complete the rounds—even with mid-June’s extra daylight—before dark. By starting players from the first and 10th tees in a morning wave and an afternoon wave, it spread the field out more and moved the last tee time up from three forty-five local time to two-fifteen.

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.