Walking with Jack

by Don J. Snyder

  After walking once around Houston National, I pictured it in my mind as a version of the Castle Course because of the greens that are placed on top of hills with steeply sloping sides. Only a little worse because the grass on the sides and at the bottom of the hills died during the drought here, leaving only hard-packed dirt. In order to have any chance today, we are going to have to land these greens and hold them on our approach shots. And that is going to be very difficult if the wind is up as it was yesterday because we will be coming at six of the greens with five- and six-irons instead of wedges. And what worries me most is that there is out of bounds left and right off almost every tee. At the Castle Course there is only one out of bounds on the whole course. Nothing destroys a round faster than a penalty for out of bounds.

  I had an e-mail just before five this morning from a fine golfer in Scotland who reminded me that when Tiger Woods won the Open at the Old Course in 2000, he never hit a single bunker in four rounds. He thought his way around the course, using only irons off the tees. This is the way I would like to play Houston National. Unfortunately, the holes are much longer than those at the Old Course, and if the wind is up today, we’re going to need all the club we’ve got to get to five of the greens in regulation. And I don’t think I can scale Jack back at this point. He’s got some confidence now, and he wants to really tear the roof off the place today. However, if we have a couple of drives out of bounds early, we will have to quickly change our game plan if we want to have any chance at all.

  We await our turn on the 1st tee. The wind is blowing hard in our faces. And it’s a cold wind for some reason. All the players are in jackets and wind pants. And I should have worn my wool hat.

  Hole 1. A 410-yard par-4.

  From here there looks to be no safe place to land our first drive of the day. A road runs up the left side, and out of bounds is right. I take the three-wood from the bag. In this kind of wind, I want to keep the shot low so it won’t be blown off line. And whatever distance we might sacrifice by not using driver, we can make up rolling along the hard-baked fairway. “What do you think, Jack?”

  I say hopefully. “A nice little stinger under the wind. Get it rolling through those hills out there somewhere?” He nods and takes the three-wood. He drills it straight through the wind, right up the middle to hard-packed dirt, a terrible lie. I think we both know that we will never reach this green in two, into this wind from this lie. Jack stripes a four-iron 230 yards. The ball hits the left side of the green and goes bounding down the side of a steep hill. We have no idea what we will be facing when we get to the ball. Now we’re forty feet from the hole and hitting a wedge off ground like concrete. He gets it up there, twenty feet from the hole. A good putt shaves the right edge of the cup. A tap-in bogey. “I hate starting this way,” he says when he hands me his putter. “We’ll get that stroke back,” I assure him. I’m not worried. He looks very confident.

  One over after one.

  Hole 2. A 575-yard par-5.

  Right into the wind. “It’s a three-shot hole, Jackie,” I say, handing him his three-wood again. “Just hit another one the way you did at the first.” He nails it up the middle. We are now on dirt again. He takes the three-wood and tops the ball. The first really bad swing he’s made in days. It rolls maybe 150 yards. Now we are 247 to the green, into the wind, uphill, over water. I want to hit an iron to the only safe landing area, short of the green. “We can save a par from there, Jack,” I tell him. “I want to get there,” he says. “I’m not holding back.” I’ve got a bad feeling about this. He tops another three-wood, and this one goes into the water. We drop four. That wasn’t good, he says to himself. Then he settles in and hits a decent five-iron onto the green in five on this par-5. A bad three-putt, and we have an 8 here.

  Four strokes over after two holes.

  ———

  But Jack isn’t looking discouraged at all. I know this is the moment where we are going to either record another 90 and miss the damned cut or learn to fight on after a miserable beginning. I think this is the test that we both need. On our way to the 3rd tee I start talking with him about the movie Gettysburg, which we used to watch over and over when he was little. There is a moment in the movie when Joshua Chamberlain is about to move his men onto Little Round Top. A colonel comes up to him and says, “Now we’ll see how professors fight.” Jack always loved that line because I was a professor for a while when he was little. I get a smile out of him, and then I say, “Four over par looks like a good score out here today, Jackie boy. Let’s just make a ton of pars the rest of the way.” He nods.

  Hole 3. A 200-yard par-3.

  Across the wind today to another green perched on top of a mound. He hits a brilliant seven-iron to twenty feet. Almost drains the birdie putt. Makes par.

  Four over par after three.

  Hole 4. A 453-yard par-4.

  This is a tough tee shot with a severe dogleg right, into the wind again. The landing area is heavily bunkered. Jack nails his driver over all the bunkers right up the center. It is a drive of 367 yards. Amazing. Our player partners are 80 yards behind us. “I hammered that drive,” he says happily. We are fighting well now. No complaining. No whining. Just plain digging in for the long fight ahead. He hits a perfect wedge to six feet and drains the putt for birdie. We get back one stroke. And I am feeling very good. So is Jack.

  Three over after four holes.

  ———

  Hole 5. A 440-yard par-4.

  The wind is behind us, and Jack stripes his driver right up the left side. He nails his wedge to five feet and misses the birdie putt by one inch. Tap-in par.

  Three over after five holes.

  Hole 6. A 575-yard par-5.

  Wind in our favor now. Our playing partners have already hit three drives out of bounds and lost one ball in the weeds. We have hit every fairway from the tee so far. Another great drive here, 300 yards. He wants the three-wood to try to cover the remaining 275 yards in one shot. He nails it, but the ball rolls down off the steep front of the green. We are thirty feet from the pin in two on this par-5. He tries to putt it up the steep slope because the ground is just dirt. We go sailing past the pin, then miss two putts. A lousy bogey. What a shame. “We deserved better,” I tell him. “But we’ll get it back.” I break into more talk about Joshua Chamberlain. Jack is relaxed, not at all defeated. I think he knows that this is a brutal course and in this wind a tough test. He seems focused on each shot.

  Four over after six holes.

  Hole 7. A 210-yard par-3.

  Downwind. A lovely seven-iron to twelve feet. And a good two putts for a tap-in par.

  Four over after seven holes.

  Hole 8. A 414-yard par-4.

  He nails his three-wood up the middle again. I don’t think I ever caddied for anyone in Scotland who hit so many fairways up the center. And in this wind, with out of bounds on both sides, it’s impressive. A hundred and thirty-seven yards left. A wedge leaves us with a difficult downhill putt of twelve feet, breaking hard left to right. I want him to just cozy it up there close, but he goes for the birdie putt, and the ball rolls ten feet past the hole. We need to drain this putt somehow and make par here. This could be a turning point in the match. He makes it. Great par save.

  Four over after eight holes.

  Hole 9. A 400-yard par-4.

  With the wind behind we can hit only a four-iron here because the ball can roll through the narrow fairway to water on the right. He mis-hits the four-iron. We have 180 yards left. He pushes a seven-iron left. Now we are thirty feet left of the green, and we must save a par. He leaves the first putt ten feet short. Damn. But now he drains the putt. Par save. So we lost four strokes on the first two holes but somehow manage to shoot even par the next seven holes. We hit every fairway. Our partners are discouraged, but we’re holding our heads up.

  Four over after nine holes.

  On the back nine we lost four more strokes and finished with a round of 80, but we played so much better than the
score. We battled back from a disastrous start—four over par after the first two holes—and finished the front nine with no more damage. We hit every fairway from the tee box, something I doubt many players did here today with these narrow landing areas and out of bounds on both sides.

  “You fought back hard today, Jackie,” I say as we are walking to the truck.

  “I threw away five strokes,” he says.

  “Maybe six,” I say. “But you putted and drove the ball like a pro. And now we know that we can fight back from any kind of start. We’ll get another shot tomorrow. Right?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “I’m proud of you, man. You played a tough course in a tough wind, and you held on.”

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “If you shoot three over par out here tomorrow, I’m buying you a steak dinner tomorrow night.”

  Early tee time tomorrow for round two.

  A lot of fine players elected not to finish today rather than post a poor score. One of the guys who beat us in the last event was shooting 90 after the 17th hole, so he quit. We will never not finish. And for now we live to fight another day.

  NOVEMBER 11, 2011

  There is a reason why football games are not played at eight in the morning. It takes a while for big guys to wake up and get moving. We had our first early tee time, an 8:10 start, and this meant heading out on the interstate in the half-light while Jack drank a Diet Pepsi for his caffeine and played Springsteen at high volume to keep from falling asleep at the wheel.

  “Let’s say your granddad is looking down on all of this. Let’s give him something to smile about this morning.”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  We arrived an hour before our 8:10 tee time only to find that the course was covered in frost. A one-hour delay. I went off in search of some bananas.

  Two hours later at the 1st tee, I hand Jack his three-wood and say, “For your grandfather. He went to war at age eighteen. He had his older brother die. His twin brother die. His bride of nine months die. And he kept on fighting. And you know something, Jack, I never told him I was proud of him for not giving up. Never once.”

  Jack just looks at me.

  Whenever I caddied with my pal Duncan at the Old Course, he used to say to me on our way to the 1st tee, “Set your sights low.” Today I turned my back on that good counsel and began hoping for an easy round, or at least a smooth start. Instead, we were in trouble on the 1st hole. After nailing a three-wood right up the middle of the fairway, we had a simple 120-yard wedge left to the hole. But with the green still frozen as hard as concrete, Jack’s second shot bounced high into the air, and we watched in a kind of stunned disbelief as the ball then ricocheted off a mound beyond the green, sailed across the cart path, and bounded over a sidewalk before it came to rest in a mud hole. We took a double bogey from there, and because I knew that it could have been much worse, I lost my patience with Jack when I heard him curse himself. For the next four holes while Jack was making pars, I was looking for a way out. I’d never left a golfer before, but on the 6th tee box I told Jack that I had to find a bathroom. Then I walked by myself for almost an hour composing out loud the lecture I was going to give my son at the end of the round. It was all about being grateful just for the chance to compete, no matter what happened.

  I didn’t catch up with him until the 12th hole, a 616-yard par-5, and when I climbed up onto the tee box, I heard him laughing and chatting up his playing partners. From there on in, I watched Jack make pars and birdies to finish strong for a score of four over par.

  This was good. But he and I still had a private score to settle after this round. On the ride home I blasted him for his behavior after that 1st hole. He shrugged it off and said, “It’s all good.”

  “Not to me,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Jack. And I’m talking as your caddie now, not your old man. We have some time off now for practice rounds. Tomorrow or the next day, you pick the day, but you and I are going to play a match for five bucks a hole. You’ll give me ten strokes anywhere I want them, and I’m going to beat your ass.”

  “Really?” he said sarcastically.

  “Really.”

  That’s enough for today.

  NOVEMBER 15, 2011

  The grudge match never materialized. Instead, it was a knock-down, drag-out shouting match in his truck that began with me telling myself not to say anything that I would later regret and then saying a lot that I regretted almost as soon as I said it about how I was down here in Texas trying to help him get back what he’d lost when he was kicked off his university golf team and the least he could do was act a little grateful out on the golf course instead of behaving like a bad apple. “When the Scottish caddies are stuck out on a golf course with a wanker,” I yelled, “they don’t put up with his bullshit.”

  At some point I stopped long enough to hear Jack yell back at me, “Why does it always have to be about you! This isn’t about you, man!”

  I was shaving the next morning and thinking that I would give almost anything to get back the days when Jack used to climb up onto the bathroom vanity with his make-believe razor made from Legos to shave beside me.

  ———

  It took me another day to finally see that he was right. He was hitting wedges onto the practice green while it all went through my mind. We were here together on this journey, but we had different objectives. I was happy just to be here with him, walking through the fulfillment of an old dream we had shared. That is what mattered most to me. For him, this was the chance to see how good he could be. In all likelihood this would be his best chance, and his last chance, to find out. One of the things he had yelled at me during our shouting match was this: “I hit the middle of every fairway for two rounds, and the best I could do was twelve strokes over par. You don’t get it! That’s pathetic. I start off with a stupid double bogey, and while I’m trying to fight my way back into the match, I’ve got to worry about what you think of me?”

  As parents, I think we cross a line where we start needing our kids more than they need us. While I watched him practice, I began to see what he meant. He didn’t need a father to be worrying about out on the golf course. If he was going to play this game better than he had ever played it before and move up the leaderboard as the tour progressed through the winter, he needed me to be a caddie who lived up to the caddies’ code to show up, keep up, and shut up.

  I didn’t admit to him that I was wrong until he was driving me to the airport for me to catch my plane to Maine for the Thanksgiving break. We stopped for gas and were waiting in line when a truck loaded with Christmas trees pulled in to the station. “It’s coming on Christmas,” I said.

  “It’s ninety degrees,” he said.

  I asked him if he remembered the Christmas when he gave money to the old man on the sidewalk.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  And I saw him smile. We had a tradition in our family when the kids were little. No matter how poor we were, we always drove into Portland on Christmas Eve just before putting the kids to bed and gave a $100 bill to someone walking the streets who looked down on his luck. Jack had watched his older sisters get out of our car each year, and then, finally, it was his turn. There was an old man sitting on the sidewalk leaning against the corner of a building with his back to us. When Jack tapped him on the shoulder, he turned around, and we saw that he had a full white beard. Jack’s hands flew up into the air. “Look, Daddy!” he exclaimed. “It’s Santa Claus!”

  When we pulled up to the Southwest terminal, I said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said to me, and I think you’re right. This isn’t about me. It’s about you playing the best golf you can. So from here on out, you don’t have to be my son on the golf course. You just play golf and I’ll just be your caddie.”

  He nodded and said, “Okay, man.”

  We shook hands. “I’ll see you in two weeks,” I said. “Have a good Thanksgiving.”

  “You too,” he said. “No
snow in Toledo. I’ll be playing at Inverness every day.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s good. And thanks for bringing me along on this journey. I mean it.”

  “You bet,” he said.

  DECEMBER 6, 2011

  Cypresswood is a handsome track, cut out of a thick forest. With no houses, cars, or strip malls, it has the feel of Maine. It is as quiet as a cathedral, and it’s a big course of over 7,200 yards with muscular 464-yard par-4s like the ones Jack is used to at Inverness. It suits his game very well, and he waltzed through our first practice round without adversity except for a couple of tee shots that have me a little worried. Most of the holes are big swinging doglegs, and Jack is determined to take aggressive lines, trying to shave all the corners rather than settling for the middle of the fairways. Twice we nicked trees, and the balls ricocheted so deep into the woods that we didn’t even bother looking for them. I am of the opinion that we forget about shaving the corners and take dead aim at the middle of the fairways; so what if we’re left taking six- or seven-irons to the greens instead of wedges. But I must be careful not to do or say anything that might cause Jack to doubt himself. We have three events coming up in the next eleven days, the toughest stretch of the tour, and he is going to need to preserve all the self-confidence he earned in the last two events before our Thanksgiving break. I didn’t express my opinion in our practice round yesterday, but one lost ball in the woods on Thursday, when it matters, and I will be trying to rein Jack in.