Caddy for Life

by John Feinstein

  He began 1978 working for the world’s number one player and was generally considered among his peers and those who followed golf to be the world’s number one caddy. “I still felt as if every day I was on the golf course with Tom, I was exactly where I wanted to be,” he said. “There was nothing about my life at that point that I would have changed.”

  7

  “I’m Gonna Make It”

  THE NEXT FOUR YEARS were not all that different from 1977. In 1978, 1979, and 1980, Watson was the tour’s leading money winner. Purses were now climbing steadily, and in 1980 Watson became the first player in tour history to win more than $500,000 ($530,808) in a single season. In September of 1979, the Watsons had their first child, Meg. Some of Bruce’s closest friends gave up caddying. After spending a year on the tour after college, Bill Leahey got a job in Boston working for an industrial sales company. Neil Oxman graduated from law school in 1977 and went to work as a Democratic political consultant. In 1980 Gary Crandall got married, moved to Texas, and went back to school, learning to be a computer scientist.

  Bruce missed having them on tour, but by then he had a host of new friends. He and Greg Rita had become travel partners and close friends. Like Bruce, Rita had come to caddying because of his father’s membership in a golf club—Glastonbury Hills—and because of the Greater Hartford Open. Richard Rita had been general chairman of the GHO when Greg was very young, and he always played in the GHO’s pro-am. Going over to watch that tournament was Greg’s first exposure to the PGA Tour, and while growing up as a caddy at Glastonbury Hills, he often thought it would be fun to be inside the ropes someday. “By the time I was in high school, I would go over to the GHO and talk to some of the caddies,” he said. “The way they described their life sounded like fun: traveling the country, meeting new people every week, being a part of the competition, and getting close to great players.”

  Like Bruce, Greg struggled in school and landed in a prep school. Unlike his ninety-four classmates, he never gave any thought to going to college. When he decided to give caddying a try in 1976, Bruce was one of the first people he met. “By then Bruce was a star in the caddying world because he was working for one of the best players in the world,” Rita said. “I noticed two things about him right away: his willingness to help new guys like me and his closeness to Tom. It wasn’t your typical caddy-player relationship. It wasn’t as if they went out together every night, they didn’t. But they enjoyed each other’s company, on the golf course, on the range, on the putting green. It wasn’t just boss and employee. They were friends.”

  Rita has gone on to have great success as a caddy. He began working for Gil Morgan early in his career and has caddied regularly since then for players like Curtis Strange, John Daly, and, most recently, Mark O’Meara. He’s been on the bag for three major championship wins: two Opens with Strange and the 1995 British Open with Daly. He and Bruce made perfect traveling companions: same age, similar temperaments—although Bruce is more outgoing than Rita by nature—and remarkably similar backgrounds. “The only complaint I ever had with Bruce was having to listen to him talk about the Eagles—in May,” Rita said. “Every spring he would start telling me why this was going to be the Eagles’ year.”

  Rita paused for a moment. “He’s always been the eternal optimist. That’s part of the reason why he’s such a great caddy.”

  The only disappointment for Watson and Bruce in 1978 and 1979 was Watson’s inability to add another major to his résumé. He tied for second both years at the Masters, falling victim to Gary Player’s stunning Sunday 64 in ’78, then losing in a three-way playoff with Fuzzy Zoeller and Ed Sneed in ’79. Sneed bogeyed the last three holes to create the playoff, then it was Zoeller who took advantage, birdieing the second playoff hole for the victory. The real crusher came at the ’78 PGA, when Watson led by four with nine holes to play at Oakmont only to lose in another three-way playoff (Jerry Pate was the third player) to John Mahaffey. That was a tough one on Bruce, who thought he was about to win his first major, only to watch it disappear on the back nine on Sunday.

  “Disappointment is part of the game, that’s one thing Tom taught me,” he said. “He’s always been good at handling defeat and moving on to the next thing. I had to learn how to do that. That one was especially disappointing, because it really looked as if we had won the golf tournament.”

  Even with those losses, Watson was still the world’s dominant player. He won five times in ’78 and five times in ’79. Then in 1980 he won seven times and did add another major when he won his third British Open—again without Bruce—beating his good friend Lee Trevino by four shots at Muirfield.

  “When you’re playing major championships, all you can really hope for is that your game is there that week,” Watson said. “What you’ve done in the past doesn’t mean anything. It’s how you are playing right at that moment. During that period, my game was consistent enough that more often than not, I was in a position to contend on the last day. Then all sorts of things come into play: nerves, luck, another guy getting hot. You aren’t going to win every time you contend, but the more times you are in position to contend, the more your odds of winning go up.”

  The one major where Watson seemed to have trouble putting himself into contention on a consistent basis was the major he wanted to win the most: the U.S. Open. After the ’74 meltdown at Winged Foot, he had top-tenned the next four years but hadn’t been in serious contention on Sunday. Bruce came out of the ’78 Open at Cherry Hills Country Club outside Denver with all kinds of mixed emotions: once again Watson hadn’t been able to win the event he wanted most. Bruce was still waiting for the day when he would be inside the ropes when Watson won a major. And now his buddy Gary Crandall had been on the bag for the winning player at a major: Andy North won the Open while Watson finished tied for sixth, but nowhere near the Sunday lead.

  “At that point it really wasn’t that bad,” Bruce said. “There were times when I thought about nicknaming myself the Black Cat, but Tom wasn’t even thirty yet and I knew he was going to win more majors. The only problem was, we still couldn’t work at Augusta then, and Tom had pretty much decided after ’77 that Alfie [Fyles] should work for him at the British. I couldn’t blame him for that. Alfie knew the golf courses over there better than I did and he had two wins to show, and all I had to show was a cut. When Andy and Gary won, I was thrilled for them, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little bit envious. I wanted to know that feeling myself.”

  Years later Linda Watson told Bruce that it was her idea to stick with Alfie Fyles at the British. “She said it was more about superstition than anything else,” he said. “Again, how could I blame her for feeling that way?”

  Buoyed by his third win at the British (1980), Watson won another memorable Masters in 1981, holding off Nicklaus and Johnny Miller on the last day for a two-stroke victory. Once again Bruce was outside the ropes watching. “Given my track record in majors, I’m surprised he even gave me a ticket at that point,” he joked. “But I kept on believing my time was going to come. He was still the best player in the world. It was only a matter of time.”

  That year’s U.S. Open was held at Merion Golf Club, outside Philadelphia, one of golf’s most famous venues. It was at Merion in 1950 that Ben Hogan hit his famous one-iron shot on the 18th hole on Saturday (the last two rounds were played on Saturday then) to get himself into a playoff with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio, which he won by four shots over Mangrum the next day. Watson’s sense of the game’s history combined with his desire to win the tournament he had grown up dreaming about made that Open an ideal place for him to finally win, as he often calls it, “the national championship.”

  He was in the process of putting himself into position to do just that, closing on the leaders on Saturday afternoon, when he stepped up on the 15th tee and duck-hooked a three-wood out of bounds. At that moment he was in sixth place and trailed the leader, George Burns, by five shots with all of Sunday still ahead of hi
m and Burns starting to struggle. He trailed no one else by more than two shots. When he walked off the green with a triple-bogey seven, he trailed by eight and had allowed a dozen players in the pack to go past him. By the time he holed out on 18 that afternoon—three-putting the 18th green—it was raining and it was apparent that another year was going to go by without a U.S. Open title. Frustrated, Watson signed his scorecard and, instead of taking the crowded path back to the locker room, walked around to the front of the 18th green, taking a route off-limits to most of the public to await a shuttle that would take him to the driving range. He politely turned down a couple of autograph seekers, saying, “I have to get right to the range now.” He said the same thing to two reporters when they approached.

  Unfortunately for Watson, the van sitting at the shuttle stop wasn’t going to the range. Forced to wait, he was too polite to say no to a little girl who asked for an autograph or to the two reporters who were still there. “I just didn’t play very well,” he said quietly. “The last five holes are really the only hard part of this golf course, especially on a day like this, and I couldn’t do the job on them.”

  Someone asked if he was going to the range to pound out his frustrations. “No,” he insisted. “There’s something I want to work on.”

  The range van mercifully arrived and Watson escaped. He ended up tied for 23rd the next day. Perhaps it was coincidence, but the rest of the year was a virtual washout for Watson. He finished tied for 23rd in defense of his British Open title and missed the cut at the PGA. In fact he didn’t finish higher than 20th in a single tournament the rest of the year. For the first time since 1976, he wasn’t the leading money winner on the tour. He still finished third, thanks to his three victories prior to the Open, but his earnings dropped by almost $200,000 from the previous year. He also wasn’t the player of the year for the first time in five years. British Open champion Bill Rogers was. Watson was again searching for a swing key, trying to find something to get him back to where he had been prior to Merion.

  For Bruce, watching Watson struggle was difficult. It wasn’t just that not being in the hunt on Sunday was no fun and less rewarding financially. It hurt him to see Watson so frustrated. By then Watson was giving Bruce more responsibility. Always a very confident reader of greens, he had started to check with Bruce at times for his thoughts on some putts. When the two would work on the range, if Watson was trying something he would often say, “How’s that look?” knowing that Bruce’s response, while not that of a trained teacher, would be honest.

  It started to come back early in 1982—slowly. Watson won in Los Angeles. He finished tied for fifth at Augusta. He won again at the Heritage. But the swing still wasn’t where he wanted it to be. “I’m getting by right now because my strength is still getting the ball in the hole,” he said that spring. “The swing’s not there yet, but it’s coming. I really believe it’s coming.”

  The Open that year was to be played at Pebble Beach, the place where Watson had so often started his mornings while at Stanford. Frequently he would stand on the 15th tee there and tell himself, “Okay, you have to play these four holes in one under to beat Nicklaus and win the Open.”

  “Of course then I’d play them in two over,” he said. “I had a long way to go back then.”

  He had come a long way since. Now there were some in golf who wondered if he would ever win an Open if he couldn’t win at Pebble, a place he loved and was familiar with. Of course Pebble in January or February when the AT&T is played is a lot different than Pebble in June after the USGA has gotten through setting up the golf course. Familiarity would help, but perhaps not as much as some people might have thought.

  Watson visited Byron Nelson in May to spend time working on his mind and his golf swing. Soon afterward, Nelson told a reporter: “The only thing on his mind right now is winning at Pebble. Every shot he hit when he was here was designed to work on some hole there. If I know Tom Watson, he will be hard to beat there.”

  Watson would have laughed if that statement had been repeated to him on the night before the championship began. “I knew I had no chance to win,” he said, “because I was hitting the ball sideways. I don’t mean sideways, I mean sideways. The only thing I had going for me was that I was so far off-line on a lot of shots that the ball was landing outside the ropes where the gallery had walked and I was getting decent lies.”

  In many ways Watson’s genius comes out on those days—and during those weeks—when he is struggling to find his swing. With Bruce murmuring in his ear constantly that it wasn’t as far away as he thought it was, Watson somehow sneaked around the first two days in 72-72—even par—and was only four shots out of the lead. “I’m really not sure how I did that,” he said. “But I managed to finish strong both days. I played the last four holes in a total of five under: two under the first day; three under the second. That got me to even par and left me still, somehow, in the golf tournament.”

  Amazed to be in contention and still searching, Watson and Bruce headed for the range after Friday’s round. Watson tried one move, then another. Something in one swing told him that he was lifting his arms too quickly on his backswing. He tried cutting down on his shoulder movement in order to turn his shoulders more quickly as he took the club away. One shot flew straight and true. Then another. A few more. Watson turned to Bruce and said quietly, “I’ve got it.”

  This has become a ritual between the two men. When Watson is searching for something in his swing, he and Bruce may spend hours on the range together. Watson rarely consults with a teacher, especially when he is at a tournament. He will keep trying different things until something clicks. He may go weeks without anything clicking, but when it does, he can usually tell with a few swings that he’s found something. Only then will he turn and deliver what may be Bruce’s three favorite words: “I’ve got it.”

  “There is no question,” Watson will say with a laugh, “that he enjoys hearing those words.”

  As soon as Bruce heard Watson deliver the three words on that Friday afternoon, he began thinking the tournament could be won. Four shots back with 36 holes to play? That was nothing. Especially when Watson “had it.” The two men walked onto the tee on Saturday afternoon brimming with confidence.

  “And I went out that day and absolutely striped it,” Watson said. “Hit the ball about as well as I can hit it.”

  The result was a four-under-par 68 and a tie for the lead with Bill Rogers. A number of players were close behind, notably Nicklaus, who was three shots back and would play three groups in front of the leaders on the final day.

  Watson and Bruce went to bed that night excited but nervous. Watson had slept on the 54-hole lead at the U.S. Open before, but that had been eight years earlier, when he was a tour novice, someone who had never won a PGA Tour event. Now he was the winner of five majors and thirty tournaments overall. He was the world’s best player. And, he says, he was every bit as nervous as he had been in 1974.

  “What you’ve done in the past doesn’t matter one bit on the last day of a major,” he said. “It’s all about how you’re playing that day. I felt good about my swing, but I didn’t have any cush [cushion] for any sort of mistakes. I knew Sunday would be a long, tough day.”

  The best thing for the leaders about playing a major on the West Coast is that there’s a lot less waiting on Sunday. In those days, ABC wanted the last ball in the hole by 7 p.m. East Coast time. That meant that Watson and Rogers, playing in the final group, would tee off at 11:40 a.m. West Coast time. Even with the shorter wait, Watson was tight walking onto the first tee. So was Bruce.

  “You have to remember,” he said, “Tom was going for his sixth major. I was going for my first.”

  Watson hit his opening tee shot in the fairway, then turned to Bruce as they walked off the tee.

  “You nervous?” he asked.

  “Real nervous,” Bruce answered.

  “Good,” Watson answered. “Because I’m real nervous too.”

 
It was almost as if acknowledging the nerves helped calm them both down. Watson birdied the par-five second hole but bogeyed the fourth, and he was still four under for the championship as he stood on the tee of the tiny, scenic par-three seventh. Even though he was playing steadily, Watson was hearing huge roars from up ahead, and he knew they could only be for one person: Nicklaus.

  “It didn’t really surprise me,” he said. “The first seven holes at Pebble Beach aren’t that hard. You can make a move there.”

  Nicklaus had done just that. After a poor start—bogey at the first, par at the second—he had reeled off five straight birdies from number three through number seven. That got him to five under for the tournament, meaning he had taken the lead. Watson had not been able to take advantage of the early holes at Pebble. He had birdied the two par-fives but also had two bogeys. When he reached the seventh tee, he trailed Nicklaus by one shot.

  Being mano a mano with Nicklaus didn’t seem likely to spook Watson. After all, he had come out of their two head-to-head confrontations on the last day of majors in 1977 just fine. He floated a perfect pitching wedge to within two feet of the flag at number seven, giving him a tap-in birdie that would give him a share of the lead.

  Except that he missed the putt.

  His second shot at the difficult par-four eighth hole came up short of the green. From there he putted to eight feet but made the par-saving putt, beginning a string of tough putts he would make. Fortunately Nicklaus had bogeyed the hole, so the two men were now tied for the lead. Watson took the lead outright with a birdie at the ninth hole and then made a classic “Watson par” at the 10th. He hit his second shot over an embankment, halfway down a hill that led to the beach and Carmel Bay. After hacking out of the weeds there, Watson was 24 feet from the hole on the fringe a couple of steps from the green. He rolled the putt into the heart of the hole.