The Caddie

by J. Michael Veron

  He offered a slight smile. “Well, I hope not.”

  “Who told you about that?”

  He gave me another of his mysterious looks. “I don’t recall exactly. But like I told you, Bobby, I know a great deal about you.”

  With that, Stewart stood up and set my bag in the corner. I went over to inspect his handiwork. Every club seemed to sparkle. I couldn’t believe how good they looked. “You sure you only put soap and water on these things?”

  “That and elbow grease,” he said with a laugh. “We’re ready for tomorrow now.”

  Stewart may have been ready, but I wasn’t sure I was.

  v

  AS I STUMBLED out of the shower the next morning, the delicious smell of fresh coffee and scrambled eggs wafted over me. Stewart must have heard me as I came out of the bathroom. He yelled from the kitchen, “Breakfast is on the table. Best eat while it’s hot.”

  I quickly slipped on a T-shirt and shorts and seated myself. In front of me was toast, juice, coffee, and eggs. I looked up appreciatively and said, “You seem to have a broad range of talents. This looks fabulous.”

  He smiled. “You give me too much credit. Anyone can make breakfast.”

  I laughed. “You obviously don’t know my wife.” I grimaced as soon as I said it. The pain of losing Betsy couldn’t be pushed away with a joke, nor could the guilt from the certain knowledge that it was my own damned fault.

  Stewart ignored my misguided attempt at humor. Sitting down next to me with his own plate, he said, “It’s time for us to get down to work today. I’ve arranged a place for us to practice not far from here. We’ll go over this morning and get started.”

  I dressed, and we loaded my clubs into the Explorer. As we pulled out of the lot, he directed me down Nicholson Drive. As we passed Tiger Stadium, I told him, “I don’t know of any golf courses out this way.”

  He answered quickly. “I didn’t say anything about a golf course.”

  Again, Stewart stopped about a sentence short of where he should have, forcing me either to ask him what he meant or simply to wonder what he was up to. I chose the latter, refusing to give him the satisfaction of any more games of Twenty Questions.

  We must have driven a couple of miles more before he told me to take a left at Benefiel Road. A short distance farther, and he had me turn onto a shell road and stop the car. I looked around and saw nothing but a pasture.

  “There’s nothing here,” I said more to myself than to him.

  Stewart looked out toward the field beyond the fence that ran alongside the road. “Oh, but there’s plenty here. You just don’t see it yet.”

  I was losing patience with our verbal sparring. With a trace of sarcasm, I said, “I see a big pasture that’s good for running cows, and that’s all I see.”

  “Perhaps you should have your vision checked,” he sniffed as he pulled my clubs from the back of the Explorer. Without saying more, he began walking away. I assumed I was supposed to follow, so I did.

  He led me to a gate. It had a combination lock, and Stewart quickly spun the dial back and forth with the confidence of someone who knew the numbers by heart. Within seconds, the lock sprang open. Stewart then pushed the gate back and motioned for me to walk through.

  “I take it you’ve been here before,” I muttered as I walked past him. He just smiled and closed the gate after I was by.

  I looked behind him, and he pointed to a spot in the distance. As we walked in that direction, I noticed that the grass up ahead had been mown short. As Stewart led me closer, I saw several piles of golf balls. I guessed that there were three or four hundred, and they looked new. When we got to them, it became apparent that they were, in fact, brand new.

  Given that this was a most unlikely place to find a large number of virgin Titleists, I asked the obvious question. “What are these doing here?”

  Stewart set my bag down nearby. “They’re for us. It’s hard to work on your ball striking without having balls to strike.”

  “That really doesn’t answer my question.” I gave him a hard look. “How’d they get here?”

  Stewart had opened my bag and pulled out a glove, which he handed me. He then unzipped a side compartment and extracted several tees. He never looked up or otherwise acknowledged my question or the growing impatience that was evident in my voice.

  Finally, he said in a quiet voice, “Well, we needed them, didn’t we?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s not the point. How’d they get here?”

  “Oh, calm down, Bobby,” he said in that same even tone of voice that was beginning to sound just a little patronizing. “I told you this morning I had made arrangements for us to practice. We’ve got everything we need right here.” Pointing away in the distance, he added, “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve even got targets to hit to.”

  I looked to the west and was surprised to see three flags planted at various distances. The grass around them appeared to have been cut short, too, like the hitting area where we were standing.

  “From the stake over there,” he said, this time pointing to a red-and-white stake a few yards away, “the three flags are 100, 150, and 200 yards out. The grass here in our hitting area is cut so we can move forward or back about thirty yards. That’ll allow us to hit just about every club in the bag.” He turned back to me. “We can work here in complete privacy, without anyone bothering us.”

  I would have asked him who owned the land we were on, but I figured it was useless to do so. Instead, I just took the wedge he handed me.

  “Take this,” he said, “and hold it on your shoulders. Start rotating back and forth to loosen up.”

  I did as he said. Within a few seconds, I could feel the warmth spread through my back. He then told me to take a few practice swings, real easy at first, gradually working to a full swing.

  As he watched me, Stewart lectured. “It’s important to warm up at the right pace. It sets the tone for your golf that day. Don’t hurry.” After a short pause he added, “There’s a real connection between the physical and mental sides of the game. When you feel relaxed, it’s easier to let go of old fears.”

  I knew enough about golf to know you had to warm up, but like most players I figured you just did it to get loose. Stewart obviously believed that there was a whole lot more to it than that. Loosening up was part of letting go.

  As he put it, “If you get quick here, you’ll be in a hurry all day long, and all that’ll get you is a Friday-night plane ride out of town.”

  I laughed. “In the places I play, it’s more like a bus ride.”

  He only smiled before saying “That’s now. Do what I tell you, and we’ll be riding planes before you know it. First class, too.”

  If anyone else had said it, it would have sounded arrogant. But coming from Stewart, delivered in his quiet and confident tone of voice, I took it as an endorsement of his belief in our future together.

  Speaking of our future together, it struck me that Stewart had yet to discuss money with me. Since caddies don’t work for nothing, most of them make it clear up front what they expect to make. If Stewart had something in mind, though, he hadn’t shared it with me. Of course, nothing Stewart had done to this point was typical. It was becoming apparent that he was different from any caddie I’d ever known. I figured we’d cut a deal when he was ready to bring it up.

  Stewart had me hit a few short pitches, telling me to let the club just fall to the ball and release naturally. “The swing can never be hurried,” he said repeatedly as I dropped soft lobs in a tight circle forty yards away.

  Finally, he stopped me. Pointing to the results, he said, “Almost every one of those would be within eight feet of the pin. And that’s with the half wedge, which I consider to be the toughest shot in golf. That ought to tell you something, Bobby. You’ve got great natural touch. Learn to trust it, no matter what.”

  We then progressed to full swings, working our way through the bag. Stewart continued to preach the importance of main
taining an easy rhythm and trusting it. Whenever I asked a question dealing with the mechanics of the swing, he brushed it aside.

  “Your mechanics are solid as can be. Don’t become one of those fools who makes one bad swing and goes to changing everything. No one swings the same all the time, but that doesn’t mean you need to change anything.”

  Picking up a golf ball, he crouched down like a shortstop. “In baseball, you have to scoop up those grounders and fire them in one motion over to the first baseman if you want to catch a fast runner.” He pretended to throw the ball without straightening up. “Sometimes the infielder makes a bad throw. You don’t see him changing the way he plays just because of an error, though, do you?”

  I realized that the idea of a second baseman changing his throwing motion because of one or two bad throws was ludicrous, and I said so.

  Stewart just smiled. “So why do golfers change the way they swing just because they hit a couple of bad shots?”

  I had no answer and just shrugged. Stewart then explained, “Because the pace of golf affords us too much time between shots. Instead of enjoying the day as we walk between shots, we’re tempted to analyze what went wrong after making a bad swing. We look for the magic fix for something that’s not really broken. Instead of forgetting about a bad swing, we have time to read all kinds of things into it.”

  He shook his head. “You know, there’s a difference between making a bad swing and having one. If your swing produces thirty or more good shots a round and only a handful of bad ones, why change it?”

  “Yeah, but don’t you want to eliminate the bad shots?”

  He grinned. “That’s what practice is for.” He bounced a ball on my sand wedge several times before letting it come to rest on the club face. “And that’s where knowing where to miss comes in handy, too.”

  I knew where he was headed. “Now you’re talking about course management.”

  He nodded. “And from what I’ve seen, you don’t know much about that.”

  His comment made me a little defensive. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’d have gotten your card on your first try if you had given any thought to how to play the course.”

  Instantly, I knew that Stewart was referring to a triple bogey I had made at the last hole of Q-School. It had kept me from advancing to the next stage by two shots. I had blocked my drive to the right, and instead of pitching back to the fairway for an easy bogey (as my caddie pleaded with me to do), I tried to bomb a five-iron out of heavy rough over a large water hazard. I had a bad angle to the green, and the shot had little chance of success, but I went for it anyway. Of course, I dumped the ball into the water and in the end made seven when five would have gotten me a Tour card.

  I had replayed that hole in my mind a hundred times, and I knew Stewart was right. It was a dumb play.

  With playful sarcasm, I said, “I suppose you’re going to teach me the error of my ways, huh?”

  He smiled confidently. “I can save you at least one stroke a round, if not more, with better course management. And you know what one stroke a round means. That’s four strokes a tournament.”

  I laughed. “Hey, give me a little credit. I can do the math.”

  “Speaking of math, do you know how much of the game is played from 100 yards in?”

  Anyone who plays golf very seriously understands that scoring is all about the short game. Still, I had never been big on statistics, so I just shrugged.

  Stewart smiled. “Right at two-thirds of all strokes played.” He paused, as if he wanted to let the number sink in, then wiped off my last club and started walking toward the flags in the distance. “C’mon and help me pick these up.”

  We spent twenty minutes retrieving the balls and returned them to the hitting area. When we were done, I suddenly realized that I was famished. “My stomach says it’s lunchtime.”

  He looked at his watch. “That it is. Let’s get something to eat and then spend the afternoon working on the short game.”

  I gave him a quizzical look. “You got a putting green out here, too?”

  He responded with another one of his mysterious expressions. “Maybe not here, but rest assured, Bobby, I’ve got whatever you need.”

  I was beginning to believe him.

  vi

  WE DROVE TO a hamburger joint on the outskirts of the LSU campus called the Hontas Hutch, and Stewart bought lunch. I wasn’t used to mooching this much and reminded him that I intended to repay him. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I told you before, there’s plenty of time for you to pay me back. I’d like you to focus on more important things for the time being.”

  He also reminded me that the next order of business was repaying the stolen money and negotiating a reasonable plea bargain on my pending criminal charge. As he put it, you can’t make birdies from behind bars. Fortunately, I hadn’t had time to spend much of the money before I was caught. While we couldn’t confirm the number, my best estimate was that all but $180 or so had been recovered when I was arrested.

  Stewart seemed pleased. “We can handle that. If we can get that money to your friend Boo quickly, he may be willing to ask the DA to go easy on you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not so sure of that. I imagine Boo feels like I burned him pretty badly.”

  Stewart was more optimistic. “When he finds out you did this right after your wife threw you out, he’s got to feel sympathy for you.”

  I grimaced at the mention of Betsy. “What you don’t understand is that this isn’t the first time Boo’s been done with me.”

  Stewart smiled a little. “Are you referring to that little altercation you had at English Turn?”

  The “little altercation” Stewart was referring to had occurred during the Tulane Invitational our last year together. I had really been drinking a lot, even more than usual. Back then, I thought playing with a buzz was cool.

  Of course, now I know better. But at the time, I thought drinking was part of the game. It took hitting bottom, I guess, for me to realize that I had seriously overrated the benefits of alcohol on my golf game.

  For one thing, alcohol tends to destroy your equilibrium (although, being drunk, I usually didn’t notice), and balance is obviously critical to good golf. I mean, there’s a reason you never saw Jack Nicklaus sway on an important shot. Besides that, getting on the juice usually numbs your touch around the greens, which dramatically affects scoring.

  Anyway, one of the guys on the team at the time made a comment about my drinking. In retrospect, he was probably trying to help me. But confronting a problem drinker is not for the faint of heart. Trust me, an alcoholic will do whatever it takes to preserve his access to his favorite drug, and he can be very mean about it. Not only that, but alcoholics are masters at changing the subject and directing attention away from their problem.

  In my case, I counterattacked from my only position of strength, which was golf. I was the best player on the team, drunk or sober, and I knew it. So I challenged the poor guy, whose name was Sandy Rose. “Two hundred bucks, low round.” Even though he didn’t have the money, he was too embarrassed to refuse.

  In my twisted way of thinking, I guess I figured that shooting a low score would prove I didn’t have a drinking problem. Determined to show Sandy up, I went out and shot 65, one of my best competitive rounds ever. Then I hunted down my teammate, who was on the putting green with the rest of our team.

  “Well,” I said with my chest stuck out. “Let’s compare cards, Sandy, and settle our bet. I made it around in seven under. Can you beat 65?”

  Sandy just looked down. Boo then stepped between us. “Bahbee, I’m only gonna say this one time. Let it go.”

  I let out a snort of disgust. “Yeah, Boo,” I said sarcastically, “I guess you’re right. I guess two hundred dollars is enough tuition for Sandy to learn his lesson.”

  I don’t remember what happened next. According to witnesses, Boo dropped me with a right uppercut that would have
done Joe Frazier proud. If Howard Cosell had been there, he’d have been shouting from the corner “Down goes Reeves! Down goes Reeves!”

  I woke up alone in the pro shop, slumped in the back corner next to a rack of putters. To this day, I have no idea how I got there. When my head finally cleared, I walked slowly and unsteadily back to the team van. The guys said nothing to me for the rest of the trip and damned little for the rest of the year. Not that I wanted to talk to anybody anyway. My jaw was so sore I lived on Jell-O and mashed potatoes for two weeks.

  I slid back in my chair and shook my head. I didn’t know whether to be more flattered or scared by Stewart’s knowledge of my past. “One of these days you’re going to explain how you know so much about me.”

  He just smiled. “One of these days you’ll understand it without any explanation from me.”

  “Whatever,” I said for lack of anything else. “My point is that you shouldn’t count too heavily on Boo giving me a second chance, because he may feel that he already has.”

  Stewart wiped his mouth and folded his paper napkin neatly on his plate. “You should give Boo more credit than that. He really admires your golfing skills, even if he does think you’re a bit of a jerk.”

  I could tell that Stewart had some plan in mind that would get me out of trouble. He really seemed to think that Boo, the man whose trust I betrayed, would go to bat for me.

  Under ordinary circumstances, I would have scoffed at the idea, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances. Stewart remained very much a mystery to me at the moment, but one thing was clear: He had an innate understanding of people that was unlike anything I had ever seen. In the short time I had known him, I hadn’t found him to be wrong about anything. I wasn’t going to start betting against him now.

  Besides that, Boo was Cajun. There were no more generous or forgiving people on this earth than Cajuns (short for “Acadians”). I guess it had to do with their history. They were run out of France and then Nova Scotia before settling in south Louisiana in the 1700s. It said something about their spirit that these migrants—with names like Boudreaux, LaFleur, and Fontenot—turned the most mosquito-infested, hot, and humid region of North America into a place famous all over the world for its music, food, and joie de vivre. Cajuns didn’t dwell on the past, which I suppose accounted for Stewart’s optimism about Boo helping me.