Caddy for Life

by John Feinstein

  If Palmer hadn’t lost a playoff to a chubby twenty-two-year-old tour rookie named Jack Nicklaus at Oakmont Country Club in the U.S. Open a month earlier, he would have been three-fourths of the way to a Grand Slam at that point. Nicklaus, fresh off his U.S. Open victory, followed Palmer to Troon and finished twenty-third. That was the first of thirty-six straight British Opens he played in.

  When Watson first came on tour, the top Americans were regularly going to the British Open. Lee Trevino had won it back-to-back in 1971 and 1972, and Tom Weiskopf had beaten Johnny Miller in 1973 for what proved to be his only major title. But those players were stars. They could afford to take a week off from the tour, spend the money for the trip, and know that they were almost certainly going to miss out on playing the following week too. For the journeyman player trying to keep his playing card or a rising young player trying to prove himself, the British Open just wasn’t worth the hassle.

  By 1975, though, Watson was a star. He was making a lot of money, he had won tournaments in consecutive years, and he wanted to follow the other top Americans who had gone over and played. So he decided to play at Carnoustie, arguably the toughest golf course on the British Open rota, if not in the world. He told Bruce he was planning to make the trip to Scotland and Bruce was welcome to come along and caddy if he liked.

  In those days, a caddy who traveled overseas with a player had to pay his own way. Nowadays, players pay for their caddies and often take them along on their private jets. Watson was flying coach himself, and if Bruce wanted to come, he would have to come up with the money. Bruce had the money and he wanted to go, but he didn’t want to make the trip alone. So he talked Bill Leahey into going with him. Leahey had just graduated from college and was taking a year off to work on the tour before deciding what he wanted to do next with his life. He didn’t have a player going over to play, but he figured he would certainly be able to get a bag once he and Bruce reached Scotland. So he agreed to go.

  Then problems cropped up. Neither one of them had given any thought to the fact that they needed passports. A few days before they were scheduled to fly over, they didn’t have passports and getting them in time was becoming a major hassle. They had no idea where they were going to stay. Neither of them had been overseas before.

  “We finally decided it was too much of a hassle,” Bruce said. “We agreed we’d pass on it this year but try to go the next year.”

  That turned out to be a crucial decision in Bruce’s life. Watson went without him, hired a local caddy for the week named Alfie Fyles, and, in his first British Open, won. This time there were no late collapses. Watson finished the final round tied for first place with Australian Jack Newton. This was still the era of 18-hole playoffs at all the majors (only the U.S. Open retains that outmoded format today), so Watson and Newton had to come back and deal with the howling winds of Carnoustie the following day. Watson shot 71; Newton 72. In his first attempt, Watson had become the British Open champion.

  It was a remarkable breakthrough for a golfer still only twenty-five years old. It put the choke talk to bed and it put Watson into a different category of player. Every player is viewed differently when he wins his first major, but when a young player who has flashed big-time potential does it, golf people pay serious attention. Watson was thrilled with the win but still viewed himself as a work in progress.

  “It was big because it was the British Open,” he said. “It showed me that I had potential. But I never thought for a second that there wasn’t a lot of work still to do. I honestly believed I still wasn’t nearly as good a player as I could be or wanted to be.”

  The British Open wasn’t on live TV in those days, so Bruce had to keep checking radio reports to see how Watson was progressing. He was thrilled when Watson won but angry with himself for not having figured out a way to get over there and work.

  “Next year,” he told Leahey. “Next year, we’re definitely going.”

  With that, he went out and got himself a passport.

  6

  Joy Ride

  NOW THAT HE WAS WORKING for the winner of a major championship, Bruce wasn’t even thinking about giving up caddying to go to college. The winner of the major championship, however, was thinking about it more and more often.

  “I wasn’t trying to tell him you have to go right now,” Watson said. “I knew he was having fun. So was I. And I liked having him around—a lot. Our relationship was evolving at that point to something that went beyond caddy and player. We were becoming friends.”

  It wasn’t as if the two men socialized very often away from the golf course. Watson was married, and Linda traveled with him most of the time. Bruce was single and spent most of his time away from the golf course hanging out with other single caddies. But when you are with someone all day, every day, six days a week for twenty-five to thirty weeks a year, you either make each other crazy or you become close. There’s no in between.

  From the beginning, Watson and Bruce got along. They argued frequently. Watson was an ardent fan of the Kansas City Royals, Bruce a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies. Bruce loved the Eagles, Watson the Chiefs. They made an annual $100 bet on the NCAA basketball tournament, each of them picking teams once the field was chosen, then adding up who had the most wins when it was all over. They also argued about politics: Watson, the midwesterner who had grown up hunting with his dad, was very anti-gun control. Bruce, the easterner who had never touched a gun in his life, argued for gun control.

  “I think I’ve brought him around on the issue of the Second Amendment,” Watson would say years after they first debated the subject.

  “No he hasn’t,” Bruce insisted.

  Most of all, they had fun together. It certainly didn’t hurt that Watson was as successful as he was. “I’ve often wondered if I would have stayed out there if I hadn’t gotten lucky and gotten Tom when I did,” Bruce said. “I mean, who knows? I was spoiled early. I got used to being with someone who played well most weeks and guaranteed me a good income. Maybe if I’d had to jump from player to player or had to work with guys I didn’t like as much, I would have gotten to a point where I would have said, ‘Okay, I’ve had enough of this.’ But it didn’t turn out that way.”

  Brian Edwards thinks it might well have been different if his brother hadn’t worked for Watson. When he finished high school, he followed Bruce onto the tour. He spent the next year working for two pretty good players: Tom Purtzer and Jack Renner. He even won a tournament with Renner—the 1977 Pleasant Valley Classic—but realized after a year that this was not the life he wanted to lead. “I just didn’t like the idea that my success rode on someone else’s success or ability,” he said. “You can be the greatest caddy in the world, and if you don’t have a good player or if you have a good player who is playing poorly, it doesn’t matter. I know there are times when you can help; you can say the right thing, read a putt well, talk a guy into the right club. But long term, like Watson says, the player has to hit the shots. He does well, you do well. He does poorly, you do poorly—regardless of your performance. I didn’t like the way that felt week in and week out.

  “If you work for Tom Watson, I think it feels different because you know success is going to be there. He might go through a stretch of holes, days, or even weeks where he doesn’t play that well. But sooner or later, he’s too good a player—too great a player—to not play well. Bruce always knew that if he did his job well, he was going to see positive results at some point. Most caddies aren’t that lucky. Don’t get me wrong, Bruce is a great caddy, I know that. But I think he’s the kind of person who if he reached the point where he felt his input made no difference one way or the other, he’d walk.”

  Watson and Bruce got their first whiff of frustration in 1976. Watson had finished 1975 in seventh place on the money list with $153,796 and two victories, one of them a major. He had accomplished a rare feat, finishing in the top ten at all four majors: a tie for eighth at the Masters, tie for ninth at the U.S. Open, the win at
the British, and ninth at the PGA. Finishing in the top ten in all four majors is one of the more difficult things to achieve in golf. Watson did it one other time in his career, in 1982. Jack Nicklaus, the greatest major championship player in history, managed to do it five times. Tiger Woods has done it once.

  Even though Watson still thought of himself as merely a player with potential, most in the golf world thought he was about to explode into major stardom. It didn’t happen that next year. Watson didn’t win a tournament, finishing second twice and third once. His earnings went down by about $15,000 and he dropped to 12th on the money list. Not a bad year for most players but a mediocre year for someone who appeared ready to become one of the game’s dominant players.

  The low point, for both Watson and Bruce, came when Watson returned to Great Britain to defend his British Open title. True to his word, Bruce had planned the trip well in advance and was standing on the first tee at Royal Birkdale with Watson when he teed it up on the first day. Fifteen minutes later, he was wondering why he had bothered. Watson began the championship with a triple bogey and never recovered. He ended up missing the 54-hole cut by one shot, a frustrating week for him and for his caddy.

  “I remember being so excited going over there,” Bruce said. “I knew how much it had meant to Tom to win there the year before, and I thought, ‘Now I’m going to be part of it.’ Well, I wasn’t part of it for very long.”

  In those days, the British Open cut the field twice—once after 36 holes, the second time after 54. Watson barely made the 36-hole cut and had little chance to stay alive for the final day. The wind was blowing at Birkdale on that third day and, on the 10th hole, a dogleg left where Watson had hit three-iron, nine-iron in the opening round, he had to hit three-wood, three-wood just to reach the bunker next to the green. Coming out of the bunker, he cut the ball, so he took it out of play. Golf balls cut far more easily in those days than they do now, and players frequently declared them unplayable.

  By the time Watson reached 18 that day, it was clear he wasn’t going to make the cut. The 18th at Birkdale is what caddies call a forecaddy hole. Instead of walking back to the tee from the 17th green, they give their player the driver and walk ahead to the 18th fairway. It saves about 200 yards of walking. Bruce was forecaddying for Watson when he saw him sail his drive out of bounds. That meant Watson needed to re-tee, but he didn’t have a ball. Bruce grabbed a ball out of the bag, raced back toward the tee, and when he got within throwing distance, stopped and threw “a perfect strike on a hop” to Watson. “I’d like to see [Yankee centerfielder] Bernie Williams make a throw that accurate,” he said proudly years later. Watson grabbed the ball, teed it up, and hit it down the middle.

  When he reached Bruce he had a smile on his face. “Do you know what ball you just threw me?” he said.

  Bruce thought about the question for a second, then groaned. “The one we took out of play at ten?”

  “Yup.”

  The rules of golf state that if you take a ball out of play before completing a hole, you may not put that ball back into play again during the round. “If he hadn’t been so far over the cut line, it would have been a disaster,” Bruce said. “Fortunately, two more shots didn’t make much difference at that point. But I was thoroughly embarrassed. It was the perfect end to a perfect week: Start with a triple bogey, finish with a two-shot penalty because I brain-locked.

  “I spent more than a thousand dollars to make that trip, which was a lot of money in those days, and got almost nothing for it. I came home saying, ‘Well, that’s a mistake I won’t make again.’”

  The rest of the year felt like a long run through wet sand for both Watson and Bruce. Both were frustrated. For the first time, Bruce had some understanding of what Brian and other caddies felt when their players weren’t doing well. “But it’s all relative,” he said. “He was still twelfth on the money list and I was still making good money. Plus I knew it would come back. He was just too good and too determined for it not to come back.”

  Watson was certainly determined. “I just played lousy all year,” he says now, looking back. “I wasn’t swinging very well, I wasn’t hitting the ball well, and I didn’t make enough putts. I wasn’t a good player, simple as that. I was searching.”

  Like most great players, Watson is almost always searching for a swing key that will allow him to feel that he can repeat the same swing and make solid contact every single time. He’s a feel player, someone who will tinker constantly—on the golf course, on the driving range, in the locker room, alone in a hotel room at night making phantom swings in front of a mirror. Nothing he tried during 1976 seemed to work.

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t play well,” he said. “There are ways to get around the golf course and play well even when you aren’t that comfortable with your swing. But it’s a lot more fun if you feel like you know what you’re doing.”

  In the fall of that year Watson did two things. First he went to Texas to spend some time with Byron Nelson, taking him up on the offer first made at Winged Foot. The two men spent several days talking about the golf swing and the game, about how to succeed under pressure, and about life. Watson felt completely comfortable with Nelson, no doubt because Nelson is one of those men who is so comfortable with himself that he makes others feel that way about themselves.

  “Byron has such a simple approach to things—in golf and in life,” Watson said. “He’s very direct. In that way he’s like my father, who had a simple and direct approach to things. You never had any doubt talking to them how they felt or why they felt it.”

  Then, armed with new good feelings about his game, Watson went to Japan to play in a late fall tournament. On the 18th hole of the pro-am on Wednesday, he had a nine-iron shot from a sidehill lie and he tried a swing that he’d been fooling around with on the range, trying to keep his shoulders more parallel as he brought the club downward. As soon as he swung the club, Watson knew he had found his swing key. It wasn’t just the flight of the ball—which was perfect—it was the way the swing felt. “Right then I knew I had something,” he said. “I had found something that I was convinced was going to make me hit the golf ball better and more consistently than I had in the past.”

  Which was why he began 1977 feeling better about his golf than he ever had before, in spite of his relatively poor 1976. He arrived at the Monterey Peninsula, site of what was then called the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, brimming with confidence. He ended up in a battle down the stretch with Tony Jacklin, a past U.S. and British Open champion, and held him off to win by one shot.

  “That just opened the floodgates,” Bruce remembered. “He was so confident from that point on. I don’t think there was a week when we didn’t start off thinking we could win.”

  By April, Watson had doubled his career win total. But he had done far more than that: He had gone head-to-head with Jack Nicklaus coming down the stretch in a major championship—and won.

  Watson had followed the victory at the Crosby with a win in San Diego. He arrived at the Masters leading the money list and hoping for a better year in the majors than he’d had in ’76, when he had top-tenned only at the U.S. Open (seventh). After 54 holes, he was tied for the lead with twenty-five-year-old Ben Crenshaw. Rik Massengale was one shot back and Nicklaus three shots behind. Even though Watson had already won a major, there were many in the media who still vividly remembered Winged Foot in ’74, Medinah in ’75, and a couple of other tournaments in which Watson had led on Sunday and not won. The issue of his ability to cope with Sunday pressure at Augusta was raised. A lot of players will bridle at such a question, especially a player who has already won a major. Watson had no trouble with having the issue come up.

  “I know,” he said, “that the thing I have to overcome the most out there tomorrow is me.”

  The final day turned into a two-way duel between Watson and Jack Nicklaus, who at the time had already won fourteen majors, including the Masters five times. The outcome may have turned on
what Nicklaus later insisted was a misunderstanding. Playing one group ahead of Watson, Nicklaus holed a long birdie putt on the 13th hole to tie Watson for the lead. Standing in the fairway, Watson thought he saw Nicklaus turn his way and wave a hand in his direction after picking the ball out of the cup, as if to say, “Match that.” Nicklaus told Watson that he did no such thing, that he was responding to the crowd and would never think to make a gesture like that to Watson or any other player.

  Today Nicklaus and Watson are close friends. Back then they were just getting to know each other. Bruce wasn’t on the bag—it wasn’t until 1983 that Augusta let players bring their own caddies to the Masters—but he was walking outside the ropes and saw the look on Watson’s face after Nicklaus made his putt and his gesture. “At that moment, he was convinced Nicklaus was gesturing at him,” Bruce said. “And it really fueled the fire. Later he talked to Nicklaus about it and Nicklaus told him that wasn’t what he was doing. But right then and there, he thought he was.”

  Watson matched Nicklaus’s birdie at 13, then bogeyed 14 and birdied 15. Nicklaus also birdied 15, so the two men were tied, with Watson on 17 and Nicklaus on 18. Nicklaus had hit his drive down the middle on 18 and was standing over a six-iron when he heard a huge roar behind him. Watson had rolled in a 20-footer for birdie at 17 to take a one-shot lead. Knowing that was what the roar was for, Nicklaus backed off his shot. “It changed my strategy,” he said later. “I was thinking if we both parred in there would be a playoff. Now I needed a birdie.” Firing at the flag tucked behind the left front bunker, Nicklaus did something completely out of character, hitting a fat six-iron that plunked down in the bunker. From there he made bogey. Leading by two, Watson calmly parred the 18th for a two-shot victory and a place in golf’s pantheon. He had now won two majors, including the Masters, and he had beaten the game’s greatest player head-to-head down the stretch on a golf course where Nicklaus had already won five times. If there had been a scintilla of doubt left about Watson’s ability to play under pressure, it was gone forever after the performance at Augusta.