The Caddie

by J. Michael Veron

  A Tour official then escorted me to the press tent, where the questions were more predictable. You know, what club had I hit on such-and-such a hole, that sort of thing. And, of course, there was the inevitable: How will you stand up being in the last group on Sunday for the first time?

  The truth was, I was just crazy enough to think that Stewart had been right all along. This tournament was ours.

  xix

  I SHOULD HAVE been a basket case that night, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was strangely calm about the whole thing. Stewart and I agreed we had nothing to lose and should just go out on Sunday determined to have fun.

  But there was the matter of my golf clubs, specifically my irons. They were attracting as much attention as my play; Curtis Strange’s question had gotten the attention of the entire Tour. I shouldn’t have been surprised; every player is looking for that magic set of clubs that will take him to new heights. Here I was, an unknown rookie going really low in just my third event, with some funky clubs that no one else had ever heard of. I’m sure a number of them were thinking, if this guy can shoot 64 with those clubs, think of what I could do.

  That night, I told Stewart I wanted to know more about the clubs. He leaned back from the dinner table, fought off a yawn, and said, “Well, what do you want to know?”

  “For starters,” I said, “how old are they?”

  He looked off for a while, then back at me. “McCreedy originally put those clubs together in 1926. I changed the shafts and, of course, the grips, but the club heads are the original forged irons.”

  I made a whistling sound as I considered what he had just told me. “That’s a long time ago.”

  Stewart nodded but said nothing. In fact, I thought he was through talking about the clubs entirely when he leaned forward. “There’s something you need to know about those clubs, Bobby.”

  The mysterious way he spoke made me swallow hard. For all I knew, he was about to tell me they were stolen from a museum somewhere. “And what’s that?” I asked obediently.

  “They’ve stood the test.”

  I screwed up my face in a puzzled expression. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” he said slowly, “they’ve won major championships.”

  My eyes grew wide. “What? What championships? What player?”

  He held up his hand. “Whoa, Bobby, slow down a bit. What I’m trying to tell you is that these clubs belonged to the greatest player who ever lived.”

  I recoiled slightly in surprise. I thought I understood what Stewart was saying, but I found it hard to believe. “I thought these were your clubs. Are you telling me they originally belonged to Bobby Jones?”

  “Yes,” he said with a proud voice, “he first used them in the ’26 Open at Royal Lytham, and they were a part of everything that came after.”

  “Including the Grand Slam?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, now, that would obviously include the four championships he won in 1930, although he never called them the “Grand Slam.” That’s a term the sportswriters came up with.” He paused before adding, “I always liked Grantland Rice’s variation: ‘the Impregnable Quadrilateral.’”

  I spent a few moments pondering what I had just learned. The next question, I realized, was obvious. “How’d you get the clubs?”

  He just looked at me for the longest time. It was apparent that he was giving careful thought to what he was about to say next. Finally, he said in a low voice, “I guess you could say they came to me from the man himself.”

  I leaned forward, looking almost bug-eyed. “You knew Bobby Jones?”

  Stewart smiled. “As well as I know myself.”

  “You’ve just got to tell me all about that.”

  He pursed his lips for a moment and then said, “When I was just starting out, I caddied at Augusta. Mr. Jones came out in his golf cart one day to follow a match I was working. That’s when I met him. For some reason, he took a liking to me.”

  “Did you ever caddie for him?”

  Stewart shook his head. “By that time, he wasn’t able to play anymore.”

  “Well, how did you get to know him so well?”

  Stewart didn’t answer right away. He kept looking off in the distance, and I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what I had asked or reliving those times in his mind. Finally, he looked over at me and said quietly, “Mr. Jones was a very proud man. Even as he became very weak, he didn’t want to ask for anyone’s help. I suppose he feared their pity.”

  I noticed Stewart’s eyes becoming wet. He stopped to sip his drink. When he spoke again, I thought I detected a slight tremble in his voice. “I took it upon myself to try and help him as best I could. I went to his home and assisted him with certain needs.…”

  His voice trailed off, and I could tell that Stewart had revealed all that he wanted to. He stood up and said, “We’ve got a big day tomorrow, so we’d better turn in.” He broke out into a big grin. “It’s going to be a heckuva day, I can tell you that.”

  If there was anything that could divert my attention from my mysterious clubs, it was being reminded that I had a chance to win my first PGA tournament the next day.

  Being in the last group with Mickelson and Olin Browne, a veteran journeyman on the Tour who was probably more nervous and surprised to be there than I was, meant that we would not be starting until midday.

  Although Stewart had tried his best to get me not to worry about schedules, I still didn’t like having that much time to kill. I just hoped I could sleep late so that most of the morning would be gone by the time I woke up.

  Going to sleep wasn’t going to be a problem. I was exhausted from all the excitement. My eyes began getting heavy early in the evening, and I was in bed not long after dinner.

  As I lay there in the darkness, I thought again about my mysterious caddie. There was something about him that was different from any person I had ever known. For one thing, he didn’t match his body. He acted much older than the age he appeared to be. I knew that Bobby Jones had died sometime in the early ’70s. If Stewart had known him then, it was more evidence that he was older than he looked.

  And then there were the clubs. I suppose he could have come about them the way he said, but I had the nagging feeling there was more to it than that.

  I fell asleep before I could figure it out.

  xx

  I SLEPT WELL. Unfortunately, it was still early when I woke up. I had several hours before I was due at the course.

  As usual, Stewart was already up. I assumed that he had gone for a jog. He liked to run in the early morning; he said it cleared his mind for the rest of the day.

  Sure enough, he returned to our hotel room dressed in shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes. I noticed that, as usual, he did not appear to be at all winded, though his customary run often covered five miles or more.

  “How was it?” I asked, trying to feign interest. I had never developed any real enthusiasm for aerobic exercise despite Stewart’s efforts. I understood, of course, the benefits to be gained, but my running was only a means to that end. It was not something I enjoyed doing. Stewart, on the other hand, seemed to regard running as some kind of spiritual experience. I didn’t get it.

  “Great,” he said with his usual relish. “The morning air here in the desert is so crisp.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said in a tone clearly indicating that we had exhausted my interest in the subject.

  Of course, Stewart was undaunted. With the same enthusiasm, he said, “Are you ready for breakfast?”

  I had been up long enough to become hungry. “Absolutely.”

  “Good. Let me shower, and we’ll get something to eat.” He paused for a second before adding, “There’s a Denny’s or something like it down the street. We can go there.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I offered agreeably. “I’m ready to go when you are.”

  We were in the courtesy car and on our way in twenty minutes. Over a hearty breakfast of eggs, toast, and ham, I thought br
iefly how odd it was that I didn’t feel particularly nervous or apprehensive about the afternoon’s round. I had often prayed for serenity in the past. Perhaps, I thought, my prayers had finally been answered.

  After breakfast, we still had an hour or so before we needed to be at the course. As we drove away from the restaurant, I spied an upscale golf store in a new strip mall on the left.

  “We’ve got some time to kill. Let’s stop there and see what’s inside.”

  Stewart turned into the parking lot, found a convenient spot, and we were soon inside the store.

  It was obvious that this place was on the swank side. The store’s interior featured lots of wood paneling intended to evoke the feel of a clubhouse. The carpeting and trim was Pinehurst green, further enhancing that theme.

  A set of bookshelves in a back corner caught my eye, and I wandered over to take a look. Before I got there, a display to the left distracted me. There was a large picture of Bobby Jones winning the British Open at St. Andrews in 1927. He was doing it with my clubs.

  Excitedly, I called Stewart over. He looked at the photograph and just smiled.

  “Those are my clubs, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” he said calmly. “They are.”

  “That’s so weird,” I said, shaking my head.

  Stewart said nothing at first. Then he held up a book he had pulled from the bookshelf nearby. It was a book on golf history. He had it open to a page and showed it to me.

  “If you want to know a little bit more about the original owner of these clubs, you might want to take a look in here.”

  I took the book from him and began to read. I was stunned at what it said.

  From 1923 to 1930, a twenty-something Bobby Jones won the U.S. Amateur five times, the U.S. Open four times, the British Open three times, and the British Amateur once. And when he wasn’t winning those national championships outright, he was coming damned close. During those years, the record showed that he finished worse than second in the U.S. Open only once, losing twice in playoffs and once by calling a penalty on himself. This meant that he finished either first or tied for first in the U.S. Open in six of the eight years. He also barely missed winning another U.S. Amateur during those years, losing in the finals. Of the four British Opens Jones was able to enter during his glorious run through the 1920s (the trip abroad in those days was by ocean liner and therefore expensive and time consuming), he won three of them.

  Of course, as everyone knows, Jones won all four major championships in 1930 at the age of twenty-eight and promptly retired because he had no worlds left to conquer. What sometimes escapes the notice of those who argue that someone else surpasses Jones as the greatest player ever—usually Nicklaus, sometimes Hogan—is that Jones did all this as a part-time player. He remained an amateur all his life and made a living practicing law. His competitive golf was generally limited to one or two tournaments (usually the Southern Amateur or the old Southeastern Open) before playing in the major championships. The idea of Nicklaus (or anyone else, for that matter) competing with the same success on such a limited basis is laughable. (In fact, Nicklaus briefly considered emulating Jones by competing as a career amateur but discarded the idea as unrealistic.)

  I also knew that Nicklaus and Hogan significantly padded their championship totals during their fourth and fifth decades of life, more than ten years after the age at which Jones retired. At twenty-eight, neither Nicklaus nor Hogan had anything close to the number of championships that Jones had won by the same age.

  Needless to say, I was impressed by what I was reading. Like every golfer, I recognized the name of Bobby Jones and understood that he was the leading player of his time. Sadly, however, I had not understood the true extent of his dominance of the game. Henceforth, I would speak his name with much greater reverence.

  I probably would have stayed there much longer, reading more of the remarkable story of Bobby Jones, but Stewart finally nudged me. It was time to head out to the golf course. We did have a tournament to finish, he reminded me.

  We were only a few minutes from the TPC of Scottsdale and arrived at the course an hour before we were scheduled to start. I told Stewart I would meet him at the putting green and went inside to change my shoes.

  The crowds hit me as soon as I came out of the locker room. I had escaped their notice until late Saturday, when I suppose they could no longer dismiss me as a rookie who would fold after two good rounds. Also, the local media really played up my place in the final group, including my “mysterious” custom clubs. So the gallery’s interest in a new face had been piqued, and they were waiting when I emerged from the clubhouse.

  I wasn’t prepared for it. People were thrusting all kinds of things at me to sign, from hats to posters to programs. Fortunately, I had been told to carry a felt-tipped pen just for that purpose, so I wouldn’t have to stop and use someone else’s and hand it back. It was best to keep moving, they said, even if it meant the autograph seekers had to run after you. Otherwise, you could spend all of your warm-up time signing your name.

  Still, it was hard to ignore people who were wishing me well. I guess there was a trick to connecting with them and moving along at the same time. There was none better at it than Arnold Palmer, but he was one in a million. For me, this was going to be an acquired skill.

  I lost my bearings while signing autographs and took a wrong turn. Following the gallery ropes to the right instead of the left, I ended up behind the eighteenth green rather than at the putting green. The groups that had teed off early in the morning were finishing their round, and the stands were already filling up. I started to turn around, but the scene grabbed me for some reason, and I stood there taking it all in.

  That’s when I started hearing comments from the stands. People were pointing at me and saying my name. I had always assumed that the fans who wanted autographs only knew that I was a player because of the way I was dressed and the fact that I was walking with a caddie. I didn’t think they really knew who I was other than that. But when I heard them calling my name, it hit me that they actually knew who I was.

  I should have realized, I guess, that they now recognized me from seeing my picture on television. That sure beat the hell out of seeing my mug shot in that Pensacola police gallery. That thought made me understand how far I had come and how big a stage I was now on. This ain’t Kansas anymore, Toto, I said to myself.

  Just as I was about to turn away, I saw Boyer Rose, a pro I had known since my mini tour days, putt out. As he walked off the green, I could tell he was in obvious golf pain.

  Golf pain is difficult to explain to anyone who’s never played the game. It’s a mixture of anger, humiliation, frustration, and (because professional golf is played in public) embarrassment, and it hurts worse than anything else I’ve ever experienced. All of it is driven, of course, by the fickle, unpredictable nature of the game. In short, you can have full command of your golf skills one day and none the next—and never know why. That’s bad enough when you’re just playing the game for fun, but when you’re trying to make a living at it, it’ll make you beg your doctor for Prozac.

  Boyer had obviously had one of those days when his game had deserted him. I looked over at the standard bearer and saw that he had shot a score high enough to earn a B in most courses I took at LSU. Unfortunately, he had lost a lot more than college tuition with that big number.

  Just as Boyer was walking off the green, his wife ran up and hugged him. His expression changed immediately, and he returned her affection with a warm smile. It was a tender scene. I thought immediately of Betsy, though, and realized that I no longer had the kind of painkiller that had just worked so well for my old friend.

  I didn’t want to be distracted by what I was feeling, so I shook my head as if to clear it and turned away. I needed to find Stewart and get ready to play.

  It took awhile, as I signed a few more autographs, but I finally caught up with him near the putting green.

  “Where have you been?”
he asked.

  I just shrugged and said, “Got lost.”

  He grabbed my elbow and began walking briskly toward the range. “We don’t have any time to waste. Don’t stop, no matter what,” he said in an urgent tone that surprised me.

  Now that Stewart was walking with me and carrying a bag with my name on it, the fans pressed in even more. I don’t know how many times I signed my name on the way to the range (without ever breaking stride), but it was a bunch. Even though I kept my marker in plain view, I still took a few jabs and nicks with the pens that people were sticking out at me. Still, it was a small price to pay for all the attention, which felt good.

  Stewart was all business, though. I suppose he was worried about how all of this would affect me. When we finally broke through and took our station on the range, he looked at me and said, “It’s a funny thing about golf galleries, Bobby. They’re the best fans in all of sport. Draw all that you can from them, but never let them take you out of your game.”

  Despite the good vibes, I had to admit that the newfound attention had also made me a little nervous. “Well, you sure as hell don’t see anything like this in the places I used to play.”

  Stewart appeared to be counting my clubs and checking to make sure I had enough balls and gloves. Without looking up, he said, “You’ve got to maintain a wall between us and them. Pretend there’s a window in that wall that you can open and talk to them when you want but that you can close off whenever you need to focus on the shot you’re about to play.” He looked up. “Understand?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I suppose so, but I’m not sure that’s easy to do.”

  Stewart shook his head. “It’s very important that you learn how to do it. Believe me, it can ruin you if you don’t. Especially in major championships. It took me a long time to learn that.…” His voice trailed off.