One on One

by John Feinstein

  He returned the handshake. “I owed you that.”

  The funny thing is, I don’t think I ever liked him more than at that moment. I really believed that with his smarts he was going to grow into someone truly worthy of being admired. Several years after our dinner, he did write a letter to Rachel Robinson, apologizing for not showing up that night in New York to honor her husband. The potential to do good was very much there.

  I also thought at some point he would get past his anger about what I’d said and written about his father.

  Sadly, I was wrong on both counts.

  17

  More Walks

  THE WAY THE PUBLISHING industry works is, no doubt, much like any other industry: something works, everyone copies it. Jeff Neuman, who edited A Season on the Brink, has often told me that he received at least a couple of hundred proposals in subsequent years that began with the words “This is the next Season on the Brink.” Of course there was no next Season on the Brink, because there was no next Bob Knight.

  After A Good Walk Spoiled ended up outselling Season, there was great clamoring from Esther Newberg and my new editors at Little, Brown for another golf book. The story of my move from Random House to Little, Brown could take up several chapters here, but for now suffice to say this: Peter Gethers, my editor at Random House, was heroic, and a number of people working at Random House at the time were not. I was lucky that Charlie Hayward, who was running Little, Brown, had always wanted me on his list, and I ended up moving from one publisher to another in the middle of a contract—unusual to say the least.

  The move worked out well for Little, Brown and for me—not so well for the woman at Random House who decided that selling my contract was a smart move.

  The question after Good Walk Spoiled wasn’t whether to do golf again but what golf book to write next. To me, there were two choices: the majors or Q School. During my research on Good Walk Spoiled, the four majors and Q School had been the most riveting weeks I had gone through. The pressures were entirely different but equally draining. John Daly called Q School the fifth major. Almost everyone who played golf had a Q School story of some kind.

  But there were also great stories surrounding the majors—they just took place on a more public stage, which would mean it would be more difficult to get the kind of inside stories that had made Good Walk Spoiled work. I was pretty confident by then I could pull that off. At the very least, I was now well connected in the golf world.

  And Jack Nicklaus had never denied me anything.

  So I decided on doing the majors and following a similar reporting format to Good Walk Spoiled: pick a mixed bag of players, ranging from stars to unknowns, and follow them through the four major tournaments of 1998. In a way, I would get some Q School thrown in since both the U.S. Open and the British Open had qualifiers and there would no doubt be fascinating stories to tell there.

  As it turned out, none of the four players who won the four majors that year were on my original list: Mark O’Meara won the Masters and the British Open, Lee Janzen won the U.S. Open, and Vijay Singh won the PGA Championship. Janzen had been on Team Feinstein for A Good Walk Spoiled, so I had written extensively about him, and when he won at the Olympic Club he was more than happy to give me some more time. O’Meara was one of the more outgoing guys on tour. I hadn’t picked him for my new group, not because I didn’t like him, but because I had figured at forty-two his time to be a factor in majors had passed. I was fortunate, again, that Mark was willing to give me lots of time after his breakthrough wins. I didn’t get much from Singh, but that just made me a lot like everyone else.

  It was the runners-up though who had the best stories: Steve Stricker, who finished second to Singh at the PGA, was in the midst of a great comeback year after falling off the golf map in 1997; Brian Watts, who lost to O’Meara in a playoff at the British Open, had been playing in Japan because he couldn’t make the U.S. Tour and was thrilled that his second place finish at Royal Birkdale allowed him to come home; Payne Stewart, who blew a four shot lead at the U.S. Open to lose to Janzen; and Fred Couples and David Duval, who finished a shot behind O’Meara at the Masters.

  I first met Stricker in 1993 at Q School. Several people had told me to keep an eye on him, that he was a budding star, and I did. He and his wife, Nicki, who caddied for him, were classic Midwesterners—polite to a fault and always enjoyable to be around. Steve made it through Q School in 1993 and finished number four on the money list in 1996 after winning twice, but he made an equipment change in 1997 when offered a big contract, and it completely messed with his mind and swing and he had a disastrous year. Plus, he had to start 1998 with a new caddy because Nicki was pregnant with their first child.

  “It’s worse for me than for Steve,” she said one day walking outside the ropes at San Diego. “At least he’s still playing. All I can do is watch.”

  I had done my first sit-down with Steve that week, the “life story” interview. Basically, I ask the person to tell me his life story before I ask a single question about what is going on in the present day. In describing his parents, Steve had said, “If you think I’m a polite Midwesterner, you should meet my parents. They’re as polite as anyone you’ll ever meet: never a bad word to anyone. They’re sort of the anti–New Yorkers of the world.”

  I laughed and told Steve I knew what he meant, having grown up in New York.

  Steve went white. “Oh my God,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I don’t think all New Yorkers are rude or anything like that.”

  “Steve, stop, it’s fine,” I said. “First of all, most New Yorkers are rude. Second, your description is perfect. Please don’t worry about it.”

  Steve nodded and we continued talking. The next day when he went out to play his first round, I walked with his group. Something backed up play and there was a delay on one of the tees. Steve walked over to where I was standing.

  “You know it’s really been bothering me since we talked about what I said about New Yorkers,” he said. “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

  “Steve, seriously, let me say this to you as a New Yorker: Shut up. Stop worrying about it. Worry about your golf.”

  He smiled. “What would a New Yorker say in response to that?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you that,” I said, “because there are women around.”

  To this day the first time I see Steve every year he says, “Uh-oh, here comes the rude New Yorker.”

  I point out the redundancy of putting rude in front of New Yorker and we go from there.

  The person I probably least wanted to talk to who contended in a major that year was Payne Stewart. I had never had any issues with Payne the way some writers had, but that was at least in part because I had steered clear of him when I first started spending time on the tour.

  Frankly, I thought he was aptly named. My first up-close experience with him was at the 1993 U.S. Open—which he almost won, finishing second to Janzen then too, just as he would do again in 1998—when he was paired with John Daly the first two days. On Friday, Daly had become the first player to ever hit the green in two at the 600-yard seventeenth hole at Baltustrol Golf Club. Nowadays, there are players who can probably reach it with a five-iron, but back then it was a remarkable feat. Dave Anderson of the New York Times wrote his entire column that day about Daly’s first two shots at seventeen.

  During his press conference, someone asked Stewart about Daly reaching the seventeenth in two.

  “Did he reach it in two?” Stewart said sarcastically. “I didn’t notice. I wasn’t paying attention. I stay focused on my own game, not anybody else’s game.”

  It was a smarmy, wise-guy answer, which was not atypical for Stewart at the time.

  Stewart was a wonderful player, and a colorful one too—with his plus fours that were impossible to miss. But he was one of those guys who was charming when things went well, snappish when they didn’t go well, and smart-alecky almost all the time. We did talk occasionally becaus
e Mike Hicks, his caddy, was a huge basketball fan—specifically a Duke fan—so he would often grab me on the range to talk hoops. Payne would frequently join in the conversation, so we had a cordial relationship even though I had never once asked him a one-on-one question about golf.

  When he blew the four shot lead at the Olympic Club to lose to Janzen by one, I had no choice: you can’t write a book on a year in the majors and not try to talk to a guy who threw away a four-shot Sunday lead at the U.S. Open.

  So when I saw Payne and Hicks on the putting green on the Tuesday of British Open week, I figured this was as good a time as any to ask. After we had all exchanged handshakes and Hicks had asked if I had an update on Duke’s recruiting, I told Payne I needed a favor.

  “Name it,” he said, rolling ten-footers at one of the holes while Mike stood behind it and rolled the balls back to him.

  “I’m doing a book on the majors, focusing on this year,” I said. “I know Olympic probably isn’t your favorite subject at this point, but somewhere along the line I’d like to sit down and talk to you about the week. I promise to make it as painless as possible.”

  He stopped putting, stood up straight, and leaned on his putter. For a second I thought he was going to say something like, “You’ve never once asked to sit down and talk to me and now you want to talk to me about this?”

  That’s not what he said. “If you’re doing this for a book, you’re going to need some time, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, whatever you could spare.”

  He shrugged. “You’re going to be at Sahalee, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why don’t we just have dinner there one night? It’ll be more relaxed that way.”

  “Yeah, sure, that’d be great,” I said.

  “Just find me when you get there and we’ll figure out details.”

  I thanked him and walked away in semi-shock. Maybe I had misjudged the guy for five years.

  It turned out I hadn’t. The person who told me I hadn’t misjudged Payne Stewart was Payne Stewart.

  I got to Sahalee on Monday afternoon and found him sitting in the locker room having just played a practice round. Before I could even remind him about our talk at Birkdale, he said, “I’m glad you showed up. How’s tonight for our talk? I’m staying at a house right down the street. I’ve got some guys coming over and we’re going to grill steaks. Come over and eat, we’ll talk afterward.”

  Which is exactly what I did. Payne cooked and after everyone had eaten, he and I sat on the back terrace and talked. We talked about the Open and how much he had wanted to win a second one.

  He told a funny story about getting to the Western Open a couple of days after the U.S. Open and learning that he had been paired on Thursday and Friday with Lee Janzen.

  “I love Lee to death,” he said. “But the last guy I wanted to spend two days with right then was Lee, especially with all the questions we were both going to get about Olympic. What pissed me off was I knew they’d done it for TV, and of course the tour claims all the pairings are done by computer.”

  The rules official in charge of the pairings that week happened to be Jon Brendle, who was not only one of Stewart’s closest friends but was his tenant—Jon and his wife, Martha, rented their house from Stewart and lived right next door to him.

  “So I went to see Jon and I told him he better fess up or I was going to throw a fit,” he said, laughing. “I told him I might even withdraw if he didn’t tell me the truth.

  “He finally said, ‘Okay, okay, they asked me to do it [they being the tournament officials and TV]. You know there aren’t a lot of glamour guys in the field this week because it’s the week after the Open, and they needed a glamour group for TV. So I did it. Guilty.’ ”

  Payne was laughing as he finished the story. “So I pointed my finger at him and I said, ‘Okay, that’s it then, you know what I’m going to do?’

  “He got this terrified look on his face because he thought I was really angry and I was going to withdraw. So I said, ‘I’m going to raise your rent!’

  “He was so relieved because he knew I’d never do that—I like Martha too much.”

  Seeing an opening, I commented that once upon a time he might have thrown a fit over something like that. What had changed?

  It was then that Payne told me the story, which I recounted in The Majors, about the 1996 incident at the Masters when a father and son had asked him for an autograph while he was storming to his car after missing the cut. He had not only refused but had yelled at the man, telling him he was breaking the rules by asking for an autograph. When he got into the car with his wife, Tracey, she had let him have it, pointing out that the man had not violated the rules, that autograph seeking on the parking lot side of the clubhouse was allowed, and how dare he yell like that in front of the man’s son when he was the one who had missed the cut—not the autograph seeker.

  “You need help,” she had said finally. “I’m tired of having you embarrass me this way.”

  He had listened and gone to counseling and had come away from the experience with a new attitude and a new understanding of how fortunate he was to do what he was doing and make the money he was making, even on days when he missed a cut.

  We went backward from there, talking about growing up in the game and about his father’s death at the age of forty-seven from cancer. “People ask me sometimes what my best win was,” he said very quietly. “I tell them it was the Hardees Classic in 1983. It was the only tournament my dad ever saw me win.”

  We talked late into the night. Eventually Payne did something athletes rarely do: he turned the tables and started asking me questions. I talked about my mother’s death and how it had affected me, and we shared how much it hurt us both that his dad and my mom had never gotten to see their grandchildren. For some reason, I never turned off my tape recorder, even long after we had finished the actual interview portion of the conversation. I’m so glad I didn’t.

  Fourteen months after we had that talk, Payne was killed—along with five other people—when the private plane he was flying from his home in Orlando to Texas on the Monday of the 1999 Tour Championship crashed after something went wrong with the air-pressure system in the cabin and the cockpit. The tragedy occurred a little more than four months after Payne’s dramatic victory over Phil Mickelson in that year’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst.

  Not long after Payne’s death, I dug out the tapes from that night in Sahalee and popped them into the tape machine in my car during a long trip. Hearing his voice: the Midwestern twang, the high-pitched laugh, the corny jokes, and the heartfelt emotion—especially when he talked about taking his infant daughter to visit his father’s grave—made me laugh and cry all at once.

  “I felt so sad that he would never see her,” Payne said that night. “It wasn’t fair at all. But I felt better knowing that he’d seen me grow up and marry someone he truly loved and overcome a lot of the dumb things I did as a kid. That’s the best thing about being a parent, isn’t it? Seeing your kids figure life out. It’s the thing I enjoy now more than anything else I do, watching my kids grow and figure things out.”

  He smiled that night when he said that, and then added, “I just hope they figure things out a lot quicker than their old man did.”

  On the day Payne died—October 25, 1999—his daughter, Chelsea, was thirteen; his son, Aaron, was ten.

  I REALLY WASN’T SURE what I was going to get when I asked David Duval to be part of The Majors.

  I’d known him since Q School in 1993—where he’d failed to make the four-round cut after a much-ballyhooed career at Georgia Tech—but I didn’t know him well. My gut feeling was that he was a good guy: I had this abiding memory of him on the day Arnold Palmer played his last round at the British Open in 1995 that convinced me his was a good soul.

  A lot of players came out of the clubhouse that day to watch Palmer make his last walk up the eighteenth fairway at St. Andrews. The two I remember most vividly are Nic
k Faldo, who said simply, “He’s the Great Man after all, you can’t miss this,” and Duval.

  Duval was a tour rookie but was already a young star. He not only came out to watch Palmer, he brought a camera. He took pictures and then waited patiently while Palmer did his postround TV interviews and went inside to sign his scorecard. Then and only then did he ask Palmer if he would pose for a picture with him.

  I liked that about Duval, and I also liked the notion that behind the sunglasses and the sometimes snappish press conferences, there was a very thoughtful person waiting for someone—how about me?—to draw him out. When I first asked Duval about spending time with me for the book, he actually said, “I’m really flattered that you would ask.”

  Hardly the cocky kid people thought he was at that point. A lot of that image, as Duval has noted, went back to 1992, when he had played in the Bell South Classic as a twenty-year-old junior at Georgia Tech and had been the fifty-four-hole leader. When he was asked on TV after the third round if he thought he could compete on Sunday with Tom Kite, who was in second place at the time, he shrugged and said, “I have so far.”

  It came off cocky when in fact it was just David being matter-of-fact. He didn’t win the next day, shooting 79 to drop back to a tie for thirteenth. No doubt if TV had interviewed him that day, he would have said something like “I wasn’t good enough to beat anybody today, much less Tom Kite.”

  All that said, we didn’t get off to the best start on the book. At the same tournament in San Diego where I had my lengthy dinner with Tiger Woods, Duval and I made plans to get together on Thursday afternoon. He was playing fairly early and suggested we meet on the putting green after he was through with his postround practice routine at four o’clock (golf is, as far as I know, the only sport where players almost always practice after they are finished competing on a given day).

  I showed up on the putting green at four o’clock. No Duval. I went inside to check the locker room and then walked out to the range. I finally ran into someone who said they thought he had left the golf course for the day.