Caddy for Life

by John Feinstein

  The victory also cemented Watson’s status as Nicklaus’s prime challenger. In the ’60s, Nicklaus had dueled with Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. In the early and mid-’70s, it had been Lee Trevino. At thirty-seven Nicklaus was still considered the number one player in the world. Now Watson, ten years younger, became the player most likely to succeed him. Exactly when that torch was passed is impossible to say, but many people point to that year’s British Open. The championship was played that summer for the first time at Turnberry, located on Scotland’s west coast, the most scenic of the Scottish links courses.

  Watson arrived feeling great about his game. He had just won his second Western Open, giving him four victories for the year and putting him comfortably ahead of the field in the money race. Unfortunately he arrived without Bruce, who, after the disaster the previous year, had decided it wasn’t worth the money or the effort to make the trip. In that sense Bruce was like a lot of American golfers, who were put off by the cost and inconvenience when a week off in midsummer was extremely enticing.

  “Remember too that back then the money at the British wasn’t very good,” Watson said. “When I won at Carnoustie in ’75 I made seventy-five hundred pounds, which was about twelve thousand dollars. A lot of American players weren’t going to spend the kind of money it took to get there for the chance to win twelve thousand dollars in a best-case scenario. And from Bruce’s point of view, about the only way for him to break even on the trip was for us to win.”

  So Bruce was in Ocean City, New Jersey, visiting friends— and kicking himself—when Watson and Nicklaus became engaged in what many people still believe was the greatest two-man duel in the history of golf. “My luck,” he said laughing. “I stay home and miss him winning the playoff at Carnoustie, make it over there to miss the cut, and then stay home and miss one of the most dramatic moments in golf history. I’m surprised Tom ever let me caddy for him in any major after that.”

  The 36-hole leader that year at Turnberry was Roger Maltbie, with Watson and Nicklaus tied two shots back at two-under-par 138. The conditions the first two days were typical of a Scottish links, windy and difficult. But Friday morning (the British was played Wednesday to Saturday prior to 1980) dawned bright, clear, dry, and windless. Most links golf courses—so called because they are built on slices of land that link the land to the sea—are dependent on the wind if they are to remain difficult. Because they are so old, most of them aren’t very long; the greens are never fast, and as those who have seen them know, they rarely have anything resembling trees. The wind—or rain or hail or sleet or snow—is what protects them from low scoring by great players. There is a wind that sweeps in off the Firth of Clyde some days that locals simply call the Giant because its gusts are so huge they can make standing up on the golf course almost impossible.

  The Giant was sleeping that weekend. The Scots like to say, “If it’s nae wind and nae rain, it’s nae golf.” For at least two days, Watson and Nicklaus proved them wrong. They both shot 65 on Friday and left the rest of the field in their wake. They went to bed that night tied for the lead, five shots ahead of everyone else. For the mortals, Turnberry that day, even windless, wasn’t that easy. On the final day, Nicklaus took a three-shot lead on the front nine. Nicklaus in front on the last day of a major was a little bit like Secretariat coming down the stretch. He wasn’t likely to be caught.

  But Watson kept grinding. He was even after seven holes and trailed by one on the 14th tee. Both players were now at 10 under par for the championship, and 90 percent of the fans on the golf course—or so it seemed—were following them. At that moment Watson had no idea if he was going to win or lose. But he was keenly aware of the fact that he was smack in the middle of something truly special. Standing on the 14th tee, he turned to Nicklaus and said quietly, “This is what it’s all about isn’t it?”

  Nicklaus, who understood too, smiled and nodded his head. It was only later, when Watson became familiar with Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech, that he felt he fully comprehended what that day meant to him. “Jack had been through it a lot more times than I had,” he said. “I was aware that something very special was going on, regardless of the outcome. It was the last round of the British Open and I was paired with Jack Nicklaus and playing against him for the title. For me, that was a wonderful thing whether I won or lost, just to be there. To be in the arena.”

  “It is not the critic who counts,” Roosevelt said in 1910,

  not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause . . . and who . . . if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

  It wasn’t until years later that Watson became aware of those words. He first read them in a letter sent home by one of his children’s teachers. He was so taken by them that he taped the speech to the mirror in his bathroom. In 1993, when he captained the U.S. Ryder Cup team to its only victory on European soil since 1981, he read the speech during the closing ceremony to explain how he felt about the Ryder Cup. On that day at Turnberry, Watson was unaware of the speech but knew that he and Nicklaus were experiencing something only a handful of elite athletes ever get to experience: the notion that you are facing the best when he is at his best in a setting that guarantees that the outcome will be a part of your sport’s history. Watson knew Nicklaus wouldn’t back down in the closing holes, and Nicklaus, especially after what had happened at Augusta in April, knew Watson wouldn’t back down either.

  So they went shot for shot right to the finish. Watson got even again by making a 55-foot birdie putt from off the green at 16, and then took his first lead of the day with a birdie on the par-five 17th. He went to the 18th tee and hit a perfect drive around the dogleg. Nicklaus, knowing he had to make birdie to have any chance, flamed his tee shot to the right into the rough. Any other player would have been lucky to make par from the thick gorse over there; in fact finding the ball wasn’t all that easy. Nicklaus found it and somehow gouged it out of the rough and onto the green, 32 feet from the flag. That left him a very long birdie putt. But Watson knew exactly who he was playing against, and he wasn’t taking anything for granted. He fired his second shot—a seven-iron from 175 yards—at the flag. It took a couple of hops and stopped no more than two feet away.

  Walking onto the greens to cheers that could no doubt be heard all over Scotland, Watson did not think for a second that he had already won. “When you’re in match play, which at that point we were, you always think your opponent is going to make a long putt—especially if your opponent is Jack Nicklaus. You have to be mentally prepared for him to make it. If he doesn’t and you can two-putt to win, fine. But you have to stand there figuring you’ll need to make yours.”

  Sure enough Nicklaus, being Nicklaus, made his birdie putt—about as remarkable a three as anyone had ever seen, given where his drive had landed. Watson, always a fast player anyway, wasted little time over his putt. “I think I wanted to get up there and hit it and have it be over,” he said. “I certainly didn’t want to stand around and think about it.”

  The two-foot putt went right in the hole and Watson had won one of golf’s epic duels. Nicklaus had shot 65-66 the final two days. Watson had shot 65-65. The third-place finisher, Hubert Green, was 10 shots behind Watson. They had lapped and relapped the field.

  A couple of hours later, after the awards ceremony and the press conferences and the TV interviews that are all part of winning a major championship, Watson and Linda had returned to their hotel room to get ready for dinner. The Turnberry Hotel is a massive building that sits on top of a hill looking right down at the golf course. Coming inward on the back nine, it
is the one landmark visible from almost every hole. It was closing in on ten o’clock at night, but the sun was still shining brightly since it doesn’t set until close to eleven during that time of summer in Scotland. As he was getting dressed, Watson heard a lone bagpiper playing outside the open window.

  At that moment, the enormity of what had just happened overwhelmed him. He had won the British Open on a great Scottish golf course, beating the best player of all time in an extraordinary finish. He and Linda both started to cry, overcome by the emotions of the day, the beauty of the setting, and the joy in what Tom had just accomplished. In 1986, just before the British Open returned to Turnberry, the great Frank Deford wrote a lengthy piece in Sports Illustrated re-creating the incomparable duel. He ended by retelling the story of Tom and Linda hearing the lone piper.

  Nine years later, recounting that moment to Deford, Tom Watson cried again.

  If winning the Masters didn’t make Watson a genuine star, Turnberry certainly did. Even though the British Open wasn’t carried on live TV in the United States in those days, golf fans had watched on tape and had read about what had taken place. Many people now believed that Watson had supplanted Nicklaus as the world’s number one player. Watson wasn’t really interested in that. But he now realized that he had become more than a player with potential. “I think it’s fair to say that starting in 1977, I was on a run,” he said. “Bruce and I were partners on that run. I know it was disappointing for him to not be on the bag for those majors, but he was an important part of what I was becoming as a player.”

  It is, as players and caddies will point out, very difficult for those outside the ropes—or as Watson might put it, outside the arena—to understand the relationship between a player and a caddy, especially a successful, long-term relationship. Not only do they spend all those hours together, but many of those hours are fraught with tension, frustration, and emotional twists and turns. That’s why most player-caddy relationships don’t last that long. Most players who have lengthy careers on the PGA Tour will go through multiple caddies during that time. And longtime caddies will experience several changes of employer. Greg Rita, generally considered one of the best caddies of the last twenty-five years, has had five different full-time bosses since he came on tour.

  “You have to understand that in the case of Tom and Bruce, they’re not as close as brothers; they’re closer than that,” Neil Oxman said. “Tom has two brothers, Bruce has a brother. I have no doubt they all love and care about one another. But they haven’t been through the sorts of things together that Tom and Bruce have been through. Remember, these two guys have gone out and worked together in tournaments more than six hundred times. That’s mind-boggling when you think about it. And in spite of all that, you ask them about the fights they’ve had and they can’t come up with anything.”

  The closest thing either can remember to a fight took place in Hawaii years ago. Watson had hit his tee shot on the 13th hole at Waialae Country Club so far to the right that it landed in a patch of mud and red clay. He walked across the clay and mud, dug his heels in as best he could, and punched the ball out, splattering himself from head to toe with the mud and the clay. Seeing the ball land in a spot where there were no yardage markers, Bruce hustled ahead to get Watson a yardage. Standing there with mud and clay all over his shoes, pants, and shirt, Watson wasn’t thrilled to see Bruce bolting ahead of him.

  “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Watson yelled. “Get back here and give me some help!”

  Bruce turned around, saw Watson covered in mud and clay, and couldn’t help but laugh. Watson was not amused. “Get over here and give me a towel!” he yelled, probably as close to being angry as he had ever been with Bruce on the golf course.

  Bruce ran over, gave Watson the towel, and soon after all was well. “We were both a little angry for a little while,” Bruce remembered. “I wasn’t used to having him yell at me, because it just wasn’t his way. Of course later I realized he was reacting to having mud all over him and seeing me running away.”

  Remarkably, that is the only story either man can remember in which there was any anger directed at one by the other. They had disagreements—some loud, some profane—over golf decisions, but no real fights. “I don’t think that’s remarkable,” Watson said. “We’ve always had a good working relationship, and we respect one another.”

  Perhaps so. But to work with someone for twenty-seven years and only have one exchange like that is something most people do find remarkable.

  “I can’t remember ever having a bad day on the golf course with Tom,” Bruce said. “We’ve had disappointing days and days when it went badly and days when we thought we were going to win and didn’t. That’s part of competition. But I’ve never had a day out there where I wished I was someplace else. I was always exactly where I wanted to be when I was out there walking with him.”

  “You have to understand the two personalities,” Oxman said. “Tom is the ideal player for a caddy because he’s considerate, will always treat him with respect, and, unlike so many players, doesn’t blame the caddy for his mistakes or failures. Bruce is the ideal caddy for any player because he works hard, he’s never late, he knows what to say and what not to say. I’ve always said there’s a big difference between a bag-toter and a caddy. I’m a pretty good bag-toter. Bruce is a great caddy, and he’s fortunate to have spent most of his career working for someone who recognizes that.”

  If you ask other caddies what made Bruce so good, they will talk a lot about his work ethic and his loyalty. But they all come back to one thing all the time: attitude. “You never see the bag slump on Bruce’s shoulder,” said Bob Low, who has worked the tour for fifteen years and now caddies for Joe Durant. “A lot of times you can look at a guy and tell his man is having a bad day from the look on his face, from the way he’s walking, from the way he’s carrying the bag. Some guys have it practically dragging on the ground.

  “That never happens with Bruce. He looks like he’s having a good day no matter what, and I know that has to help Tom.”

  Low paused, because like almost all the caddies on tour these days, he was becoming emotional trying to talk about Bruce. “Throughout my career out here, no matter who I’ve worked for, there have always been days when things aren’t going so well and I’ll get down and maybe start to slog a little bit. When that happens, a lot of times I’ll just say to myself, ‘What would Bruce do?’” He smiled. “Maybe we should all wear bracelets that say WWBD. When I do that, I can see him in my mind’s eye, always step for step with Tom, carrying the bag easily, either smiling or looking determined, but never down. And I will literally say to myself, ‘Okay Bob, come on, that’s the way you want to look.’

  “Bruce has been a role model for caddies for a lot of years out here. Caddying is like any other profession, there’s a pecking order. You come out as a rookie and you know who the big guys are. Bruce had been one of the big guys for a long time when I first came out, but he was the first one to make a point to try to help me—give me advice on hotels and restaurants, point out do’s and don’ts around the golf course. I’ve seen him do it for years with the new guys. That’s just his nature.”

  If you ask Watson if there’s one sentence to sum up his friend, his answer comes back quickly. “Bruce Edwards,” he will say, “hasn’t got a mean bone in his entire body.”

  Watson didn’t win again in 1977. It was almost as if the British Open had drained him of so much emotion and energy that he just couldn’t get back to that level again. He played well at the PGA, finishing tied for sixth, but there just wasn’t much he could do for an encore after Turnberry. He finished the year with five victories and $310,653 in earnings, making him the fourth player in the history of the PGA Tour to win more than $300,000 in a year. This may not sound like a lot when you consider that first prize for one weekly $4 million tournament these days is $720,000. Still, 310 grand was a lot of money at the time, and Bruce’s cut was about $35,000, including salar
y, percentages, and work he did for Watson at some nontour events.

  He was living in Dallas by then, first in an extra room that Kay Barton and her husband had and then in an apartment with a friend. Watson was still bugging him to go to college. In fact he told Bruce that if he went to college he would buy him a car. “Within reason,” Watson said, smiling. “I told him I’d buy him a nice car within reason. Not something crazy. I just felt as if he had accomplished a lot as a caddy and maybe it was time for him to go on to the next thing. I was like his parents. I thought the next thing was college.”

  Bruce had given it some thought. At one point he had established residency in Colorado because Hale Irwin’s mother worked in admissions at the University of Colorado and he thought perhaps he might apply there. But he never got around to it. He did enroll briefly at North Texas State, spent a semester there, and then decided he had seen enough of the halls of academia. “Never did get the car,” he said. “I guess one semester wasn’t enough.”

  After 1977 it wasn’t likely that Bruce was going to give up his place next to Watson. He was enjoying himself too much. “We were on a roll,” he said. “You don’t get off a great ride in the middle of the ride. You stay with it.” In truth, he was probably making more money than most twenty-three-year-old college graduates were at that point. And the gypsy life was as appealing then as it had been four years earlier; perhaps more appealing, because it had become easier with money. He was still driving to tournaments with other caddies, but more often than not he either had his own room or just one roommate. No more breaking down beds.