The Caddie

by J. Michael Veron

  There was something about the way he spoke that sounded odd. Before I could ask about it, however, he handed me my sand wedge. I hooked it under my arms and against my back and began twisting back and forth to warm up. Then I stretched my arms. It was all part of our ritual.

  Once I was loose, I began to hit soft lobs with the sand wedge to a practice pin about thirty yards away. I gradually increased the distance until I was hitting the club its full ninety-yard distance. After that, I moved to the pitching wedge and then on through the bag until I hit the driver. After that, I hit a few more soft wedges to finish before heading to the practice green. The entire process took about thirty minutes.

  Our time on the practice green lasted only about twenty minutes. And only part of that time was spent hitting putts. The rest of it was devoted to previewing our play for the day. That’s when Stewart reminded me to trust the swing that had served us so well all week.

  Stewart liked to get to the first tee just as the group ahead was teeing off. That meant there was virtually no chance of being late and incurring a penalty. We could see the tee from the practice green, and Stewart nudged me as the group ahead of us walked onto it.

  “Time to go.”

  I handed him the putter and followed as he led interference to the starter’s tent.

  xxi

  I SPOTTED MICKELSON first. It’s a funny thing when you see someone up close and in person for the first time after becoming familiar with them over time through magazines or television. They seem to be larger than life. Mickelson certainly appeared that way—he looked like a magazine cover to me.

  Browne, on the other hand, was like me, a mere mortal. I was tempted to think, Nothing special there, but he had earned his way to the final group, too.

  The starter handed us another copy of the local rules, which among other things reminded us again that the various television towers were considered to be temporary immovable obstructions and that we were entitled to special line-of-flight relief. He then informed us of the order of play and concluded with the perfunctory command “Play away, gentlemen.” We all wished one another well and were off the first tee without hurting ourselves in about two minutes.

  In retrospect, it was my good fortune that the first two holes at the TPC of Scottsdale were fairly easy. Both were straightaway par fours. I liked that, because it gave a player a chance to warm up to the round.

  I made a couple of routine pars, as did Browne, but Mickelson birdied the second hole from twenty-two feet. He was now two up on me. Given his reputation for playing well as a frontrunner, I wasn’t happy to see him make birdie so quickly. If he got hot, we’d play hell keeping up.

  The third hole was a long par five listed at 576 yards on the card. Of the three of us, only Mickelson had the length to get anywhere close in two. However, his driver was perhaps the wildest club in his bag. In fact, Mickelson ranked near the bottom of the Tour in driving accuracy. That fact astounded me, because the guy had a beautiful, fluid swing.

  Sure enough, he missed the fairway at three. I had mine in the middle, but I was a good fifteen yards or so behind him. As we arrived at my ball, I turned to Stewart. “So what do you think? Knock a three-wood down near the green?”

  He spun around at me with a fierce look, only to see from my grin that I was kidding him. “For a moment,” he said in obvious relief, “I thought you’d forgotten how to play this course.”

  He was referring to the two bunkers that guarded the approach to the green on both sides. The one on the right was very large and began about fifty yards in front of the green. Anyone foolish enough to try to hit this green in two needed to be very accurate as well as very long. With the pin set in the rear of the green, finding either bunker meant a long sand shot. I knew from our earlier trips around the course that the smart play was to lay up to ninety yards and spin a sand wedge at the flag.

  I kept a five-iron in the middle of the fairway. From where we stood, it looked to be about ninety yards from the center of the green.

  “Perfect,” Stewart said as he reholstered the club.

  From there, I knocked down the sand wedge to within eight feet of the hole and made my putt for a birdie four. In the meantime, Mickelson had found the right bunker on his second shot and failed to get up and down. He and Browne both made fives. I was back to a one-stroke deficit.

  We swapped birdies at seven and eight and made the turn still with one stroke separating us. My first break came at the twelfth, a 200-yard one-shot hole. Mickelson came over the top and pulled his four-iron right into a deep bunker. I hit one of my best three-irons ever and was no more than ten feet away. From a horrible buried lie, Mickelson proved why he had the reputation of being a magician around the greens by blasting out to within seven feet.

  I made my putt, but Mickelson missed his. I was now a stroke ahead.

  Our confidence levels were now moving in opposite directions, and it showed in our play. Although we both birdied the thirteenth, a par five, I made another at the fifteenth, which was the easiest par five on the course, while Mickelson missed another putt and had to settle for five.

  For some reason, I had been ignoring Browne the entire round. I suppose I had just assumed that my competition would be the Ryder Cup veteran rather than the journeyman. (Certainly, the gallery figured Mickelson to be the favorite.)

  I should have known better. Browne had been on Tour for several years, and anyone who survived that long had grown tough by persevering despite repeated disappointment. Although he wasn’t a household name to anyone except perhaps die-hard subscribers to the Golf Channel, he was rated among the top 100 players in the world. The bottom line was that Browne wasn’t going to go away, no matter how much I ignored him.

  That’s why it should have come as no surprise when Browne matched my birdie at fifteen and added another one at sixteen to pull even with me and ahead of Mickelson by a stroke.

  That brought us to the tricky seventeenth hole, the short par four. Browne had the honors, and he didn’t hesitate to pull out an iron for his tee shot. After he split the sprinklers, it was my turn to hit.

  I reached for the driver, but Stewart kept his hand on the head cover. I gave him a stern look, which he returned in kind. When I persisted, he removed his hand and said quietly, “If you want to hit the driver, help yourself.”

  I immediately realized that I was playing an old tape in my head, the one with a familiar melody about false pride. I let go of the driver, which was halfway out of the bag, and it slid back in position.

  “The four-iron’s the play, isn’t it?”

  Stewart appeared to relax. “That’s the one to hit.” Pulling the bag away as I gripped the club, he added, “Pin’s left. Favor the right side of the fairway. Those bunkers aren’t in play.”

  I picked out a target and focused on it to the exclusion of everything else. I thought of nothing but where I wanted the ball to go. After one last look down the line, I pulled the trigger without hesitation.

  I have no idea why I blocked the shot so badly. The ball was short and to the right, into those bunkers that should have been out of play. The crowd moaned audibly, and only the realization that there were microphones nearby kept me from embarrassing myself with some off-color remark about my ineptitude.

  Mickelson followed with a solid iron shot that finished about ten yards beyond Browne. Both were a good twenty-five yards ahead of me and, more important, sitting on the short grass of the fairway.

  As Stewart and I walked briskly toward the bunker, I said a silent prayer that my ball had a good lie. The last thing I needed was a fried egg from a hundred and twenty yards out. If the ball buried when it landed, I would have no shot to the green and would have to explode out into the fairway.

  Even with a good lie, the shot would be a bit of a challenge. Ordinarily, I’d hit a wedge from that distance. Being in the bunker, though, meant that I had to make absolutely clean contact, or the ball would go nowhere.

  That meant moving the bal
l back in my stance and making a steep swing down on the ball to avoid catching any sand before contact. If the lie permitted, I would take a nine-iron and play a stiff-wristed punch shot.

  Stewart and I breathed a collective sigh of relief when we found the ball sitting up. Without hesitating, I took the club and dug my feet in until they were firmly planted. I knew it was important to avoid any unnecessary movement during the swing and tried to picture a pure arm swing for the shot. After a good look at the pin, I focused on the back of the ball and pulled the trigger.

  I caught the ball cleanly, and it came out low with lots of spin. I bet I could have hit that shot ten more times and never done as well as my first attempt. The ball was hunting the hole from the moment it left the clubface. After landing about six feet short of the hole, it skipped once and stopped cold, no more than four feet away.

  The crowd erupted. Even Stewart couldn’t resist a smile as we exchanged my nine-iron for my putter.

  Mickelson and Browne both found the green but were outside of me. By now there were only three groups left on the course, and so the crowd around us had swelled. It looked like they were ten to twenty deep on all sides. As the noise grew, I reminded myself to close the window that Stewart had talked about. I needed to focus on the upcoming putt.

  At the time, I’m not sure I even noticed whether either one of my fellow competitors made their putts. It turned out that Mickelson did, and when I made mine, he and Browne were tied for second. I had the lead to myself by a single stroke with one hole to play.

  The eighteenth hole at the TPC of Scottsdale is a classic two-shot finishing hole with water off the tee, bunkers on the approach, and little fun in between. When you’re standing on the tee with a chance at your first Tour win hanging in the balance, it takes a month’s supply of testosterone just to hit your drive.

  Suddenly I was so tense my hair hurt. Stewart took one look at the grim expression on my face and laughed. It was a peculiar thing to do under the circumstances, but it worked. The tension dissolved as I laughed with him.

  “Thanks,” I whispered so that the television microphones placed next to the tee markers couldn’t pick up my voice. “I was so tight my lungs locked up.”

  Stewart was still smiling as he said, “Bobby, if you can’t enjoy this, you might as well go back to working for Boo.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. In an instant, I realized that the pressure I was feeling really meant we had a chance to succeed, not to fail. The thought both energized and relaxed me.

  Without further hesitation, I pulled the driver from my bag, selected a target in the distance, and began my preshot routine. When I pulled the trigger, I made perhaps my best swing of the day and blasted the driver down the right side of the fairway.

  As I handed my club back to Stewart, he gave me a wink that said, “Let them chase that one.”

  Both Mickelson and Browne now realized that they would have to make three in order to tie. In a sense, it made their shots easier because it made them more aggressive. Both hit booming drives to opposite sides of the fairway.

  Browne was the first to hit. Knowing that I was unlikely to make worse than four, he had to shoot at the pin and make a three to force a playoff. The flag was set near the right edge of the green, a short distance from the bunker there. Browne had driven the ball to the left side of the fairway, which sloped toward the water, presumably for drainage. That meant that the ball would be above his feet, inducing a right-to-left ball flight—the very opposite of what he needed. Despite the awkwardness of the shot, he made a great swing and landed his ball within eighteen feet of the hole. The crowd at the eighteenth hole, which was huge by now, gave him a rousing—and well-deserved—salute.

  I was next to hit. Stewart figured the yardage right at 170 yards. “Perfect for the six,” he said with absolute confidence as he handed me the club. As I took a slow dry swing with it, mostly to relieve tension, he added, “Dead middle of the green will do just fine.”

  I focused as sharply as I could on the center of the green, blocking out any view of the flag and trying not to think of how important the shot was. I moved quickly and certainly into position, waggled the club twice, and pushed it back with my left hand to begin the swing.

  It wasn’t the best swing I ever made, that’s for sure. I caught the ball toward the heel of the club (too close to a shank for comfort), which cost me at least five yards. Although the ball landed on the green, I figured to be short. For some reason, though, it bounced hard when it landed and rolled another fifteen feet. From where we stood, it looked as if I was no more than ten or twelve feet from the hole, and the boisterous reaction of the gallery at the green confirmed it.

  Mickelson had driven the ball ten yards past me, with much the same angle. Being left-handed, he could draw the ball toward the pin. I could overhear him and his caddie debate between a “smooth seven” and a “hard eight.”

  I found it hard to imagine anyone hitting an eight-iron from 160 yards out, but that’s the club he chose. Mickelson put a great swing on the ball, and the shot began to work right toward the hole. At the same time, the extra loft of the club meant extra spin, and although the ball initially landed within six feet of the flag, it spun back until it was about a foot outside of me.

  As we made our way to the green, I tried to block out the generous applause from the gallery. Although I knew most of it was for Mickelson, who had played his college golf in the state, much of it was for Browne and me as well. None of us had backed down all day, and the crowd had been treated to some great play.

  When we arrived at the green, I knew I had the advantage. Browne’s putt had to traverse a slight ridge about halfway to the hole. From earlier rounds, I knew that the grass there was uneven, probably because the greens mower bounced as it crossed the ridge line. As a result, it was difficult to tell what the ball might do as it ran up and over the elevation there. Mickelson was close to my line and would have to putt first because he was away. I would get a good look at what my putt would do just by watching his. Either way, I had an edge over both players.

  Browne didn’t dawdle with his putt. He and his caddie, a tall gangly fellow who must have been at least six-eight (his nickname was “TV Tower”), took one look and appeared to agree on the read. It was a good one, too, because Browne’s putt appeared to be in the hole all the way. However, it hopped just slightly as it came over the hump, which threw it off-line. The ball caught the right lip and spun out.

  It may have disappointed the crowd, but all I felt was relief. I had dodged one bullet, but one of the best putters in golf now had a mere thirteen feet between him and the hole. The putt didn’t look like it would do much, either. I figured it to be inside left edge. It was also slightly uphill.

  Mickelson took more time looking over his putt than Browne had before him. He walked halfway to the hole to look at the line from the side, then circled back behind the ball. I could tell the instant he decided on the line because his expression changed in intensity and he walked up to the ball with clear purpose. For that reason, I wasn’t surprised when his putt found the bottom of the cup for a three that made the crowd explode.

  We were now tied. While the gallery celebrated its native son’s birdie, I felt Stewart’s hand on my shoulder as I stood up after replacing my ball. In a quiet and confident voice, I heard him say, “His putt didn’t move more than a ball. Keep it inside the hole.”

  I’m not sure I could’ve disagreed with anything he said under the circumstances. The crowd had finally quieted down, thanks to Mickelson’s urging. I located a speck of something about a half-inch inside the left edge of the cup and told myself to roll the ball onto that spot. My last conscious thought was to keep my head still until I heard the ball land in the cup.

  I hit the putt solid, which meant it had a chance. I couldn’t bear not to look and so turned my head after the ball was away despite my intentions. For a second, I thought I may have pulled the putt left, because it seemed to be dead on-l
ine for the left edge of the cup. About three feet from the hole, however, it began to turn right as it lost speed. At that point, I knew I had made the putt, and I raised my arms in the air as the ball creased the middle of the hole and fell in.

  The next thing I knew, Stewart was hugging me, and the gallery erupted once again in appreciation of a great finish.

  I had just won my first PGA Tour event.

  xxii

  AS BOO MIGHT have said, “Poo-yiy, we havin’ some kinda fun now, Bah-bee!” The only problem was that things were happening almost too fast to enjoy.

  Within seconds of my making the winning putt, Roger Maltbie rushed up to me on the green and shoved a microphone in my face. Then he asked me how it felt to win in only my third time out on Tour.

  I hope I never have to watch a tape of that interview. Although I’m not exactly sure how to answer a question like that, I suspect you can do a whole lot better than the blubbering I rendered to a national television audience. Fortunately, Maltbie—who was experienced at doing this kind of thing—instantly understood what was happening and mercifully cut the interview short with a quick “Back to you guys in the booth.”

  By the time I made it to the scorer’s tent, I had recovered enough to remind myself that nothing counted until my scorecard was properly signed and attested with the correct hole-by-hole scores. The last thing I needed was to void my first Tour win by signing an invalid card.

  Everyone in golf was familiar with what happened to Roberto de Vicenzo in the 1968 Masters, where the Argentinian had tied Bob Goalby after four rounds but signed a card showing a “four” rather than the “three” he made on the seventeenth hole. Under the Rules of Golf, the higher score stood, and Goalby won by default.

  As bad as that was, it could have been worse. If de Vicenzo had signed for a lower score on any hole than he had actually taken, the rules would have required that he be disqualified outright. By signing for a higher score, de Vicenzo at least got to keep second-place money.