The Caddie

by J. Michael Veron

  That’s why, I suppose, the galleries at the Open have a somewhat different attitude than those at golf’s other major championships. They seem to feel more of an ownership in the tournament and its eventual champion. So they were also checking me out, sort of like a job interview, because I was making a serious attempt to be their champion.

  Of course, a lot of them were pulling for me because rooting for the underdog is an American tradition. Duval, Woods, and Sutton had won a lot of tournaments and were established stars on the Tour. I was just a rookie whose star had shined briefly in the desert and then dimmed not long thereafter.

  But I don’t believe anyone really gave much thought at all about me until around the time we reached the sixteenth hole, and I still hadn’t disappeared from sight. Let’s face it: With Woods and Duval on the leaderboard, followed by a Ryder Cup player like Harrington and an established veteran like Sutton, everyone figured that I had about as much of a chance as Jack Lemmon to win a trophy at Pebble Beach.

  I must have started thinking the same thing. Maybe the gallery was right. Maybe I had no business taking on the giants of the game in their most hallowed championship. Not only that, but maybe I hadn’t overcome my fears about losing Stewart as much as I thought. And maybe, just maybe, it was all just too much for me to handle anymore.

  Like an engine seizing up, I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. Since Joe was walking a couple of steps ahead of me and looking at his yardage book, he didn’t notice at first. But suddenly I couldn’t walk, and my hands started shaking. And I felt scared. Very scared.

  When Joe realized something was wrong, he came running over. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  “Are you sick?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said slowly. “I don’t know what to tell you, Joe, but I’m scared to death.”

  His shoulders slumped for just a second, as if perhaps he had known all along that getting a final-round bag in contention for the Open was too good to be true and that something like this had to happen. But he recovered quickly, as he had all day whenever we encountered any adversity.

  “You want to sit down for a second?”

  I waved my hand. “No. I don’t want to call any more attention to this. Help me walk along a little.”

  We took our time getting to our ball. Fortunately, Sutton was away. We had a few extra moments to catch our breath before it was our turn to play.

  LaCava started to dig in my bag. “Do you have any aspirin or anything that might help?”

  That’s when I saw Stewart’s letter. I had stuck it in the top zipper pocket of my golf bag for good luck. Instantly, I recalled what he had written: “You are ready.…” Thinking of that simple phrase had an immediate effect on my panic, almost like a hypnotic suggestion. It brought all of Stewart’s lessons back to me, reminding me as he did that I had earned my right to compete for the Open title and that I belonged where I was at that instant.

  I could feel the panic begin to subside. I looked at LaCava, who was trying hard to appear unconcerned. Giving him a forced smile, I said, “I’m gonna be alright, Joe.” I then patted him on the shoulder and gestured toward my ball. “Let’s get back to work.”

  Sutton had played another solid iron shot and was safely on the green not far from the hole. LaCava had us at 153 from the hole and 138 from the front of the green. It was an eight-iron, he said, and I agreed.

  I’d like to tell you that my nerves had fully recovered as I prepared to play, but they hadn’t. I was still shaking. As I stood over the ball, I realized that I wasn’t ready. That’s when I know Stewart was somehow still with me. Instead of pulling the trigger, I backed away.

  Not wanting to scare LaCava anymore or admit that I was still having problems, I pretended to look up at the trees, as if I was studying the wind.

  My caddie gave me a puzzled look. He brought the bag back over and asked quietly, “You want another club?”

  I shook my head. “Naw. I thought I saw the trees move and wanted to make sure there was no wind.”

  He half-grunted. “The eight’s the right club. It’ll put you right where you want to be.”

  I took and deep breath and felt more relaxed. This time, I was ready to play.

  I didn’t catch the ball as cleanly as I would have liked. Of course, as Ben Hogan once said, you measure your game by the quality of your misses, which greatly outnumber the few shots you hit perfectly.

  This turned out to be a quality miss. It landed below the flag and took the slope toward the left, leaving us with a straight putt uphill to the cup. We were nearly twenty feet away, but I’d rather have a twenty-footer uphill than a five-footer downhill on a U.S. Open green anytime.

  When we looked at it, we saw that it was a makable putt. Not that I was expecting to make it, but we could be a little aggressive with it because of the uphill slope. And damned if it didn’t go in.

  The crowd went nuts. I don’t know if it was because we were in such close quarters or what, but the sound was the loudest thing I’d ever heard, and that included some pretty rowdy college football games I’d been to back in Baton Rouge. Joe was trying to tell me something (I think he was telling me what a good putt it was), but I couldn’t hear him, and he was only a few feet away.

  Sutton had to wait a few minutes for the noise to die down before he could putt. Then, as he was getting over the ball, we were all startled by an eruption at the next hole, when they must have posted my score. Sutton backed away again. By the time he was able to putt, he had lost his concentration, and his twelve-footer spun out of the hole. You could tell from his pained expression that he had seen the last of his Open hopes die with that missed putt.

  Some players claim that they don’t look at scoreboards during play because it distracts them. There was no way I wasn’t gonna look. As we got to the seventeenth tee, I saw that my nine-under score was posted and that Duval had parred fifteen to remain at eight under. I also saw that Woods had parred seventeen and was still at six under. However, I mentally conceded a birdie to Tiger at the par-five finishing hole and expected him to finish at seven under.

  The path between the sixteenth green and the seventeenth tee heads east to west and crisscrosses the path between the third green and the fourth tee, which travels north to south. In fact, the fourth and seventeenth tees are so close together that players on the two holes have to be careful not to disturb each other.

  We didn’t have that problem this late in the day, of course, because the field had cleared the fourth hole well over two hours before. But there were a lot of grandstands in the area, which were overflowing at this point, and it created something of a traffic jam. It didn’t help matters that there was a major commotion of some kind across the way, back behind the fifteenth hole, where the main road enters the resort. We heard the siren of an ambulance, and word spread among the crowd that someone had been hit by one of the tour buses that ferried people to and from the area.

  I hardly needed the distraction at that moment. All I could think about was what lay ahead. The seventeenth hole is a par three that heads straight out to the Pacific Ocean. It usually plays at 208 yards or so straight into a headwind and features a figure-eight green laid out at a forty-five–degree angle from the tee. The landing areas in the loops at each end of the figure eight are smaller than a cheap hotel room. As a bonus, the green is guarded by bunkers on all sides, including a massive one across the front that looks like one of King Kong’s footprints. The meek may inherit the earth, but they’ll still have trouble parring number seventeen at Pebble Beach.

  The hole has a lot of history. Kermit Zarley was leading the Open in 1972 in the final round when he made five there, dooming his chances. A short time later, Jack Nicklaus hit the flagstick there with a one-iron into a stiff wind and tapped in for a birdie two. The difference earned Nicklaus his third Open championship. Ten years later at the ’82 Open, Tom Watson came to the seventeenth on Sunday tied with Nicklaus, who ha
d finished. With his coleader watching on television, Watson hit his tee shot into the heavy rough behind the green but then chipped in for a birdie two to take the lead. He went on to birdie the eighteenth hole for a two-stroke victory and his only U.S. Open championship.

  I was well aware that the seventeenth was a feast-or-famine adventure. If offered the option, I would gladly have taken a par and moved on to the eighteenth without ever teeing my ball.

  In returning to the ocean, we also got back out into the wind. It was blowing just as hard as before. I didn’t think I could reach the green with a three-iron, but I didn’t want to hit the five-wood because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep the ball low enough. I decided to muscle the three.

  I knew it was a mistake the minute I hit it. I swung too hard, came over the top, and sent the ball left of the green. I prayed for the ball to land in one of the bunkers on that side, because escaping from the sand would be much easier than digging my way out of the tall rough.

  No such luck. The ball landed in the nearly knee-high grass between the large front bunker and a small pot bunker left of the green. To make things worse, the cup was located over on that side of the green as well, leaving precious little room to manufacture a flop shot or pitch that could finish near the hole.

  The lie didn’t improve our chances of success, either. When we got to the ball, we found it nestled at the bottom of five-inch-deep grass. It would take a healthy cut just to get the ball out of the rough, but it would have no spin because of all the grass between the club and the ball, so it would run away from us once it landed. We’d do well just to keep the ball on the green.

  My mind ran rampant with any number of disastrous scenarios. One had me leaving the ball in the rough. Another had me over-swinging and sending the ball over the green into the rough on the other side. Still another had me double-hitting the ball à la Tze-Chung Chen at the 1985 Open at Oakland Hills. (The cruel joke was that his initials, “T.C.,” stood for “Two Chip.”)

  None of this was helping me form positive swing thoughts. Eventually, I decided it was best to err on the side of hitting it past the hole rather than leaving it short and in the rough.

  I really hit a pretty good shot. I had opened the wedge so that the ball would come out high and land softly, which it did. But without backspin, it just kept moving on the hard and crusty green. When it finally stopped rolling, it was thirty feet past the hole. It was gonna take something close to a miracle to save par.

  Seventeen wasn’t giving up any miracles that afternoon. My par putt never really threatened the hole, sliding past on the low side. I made the last two feet for a bogey four. That dropped me back to eight under par, and I was again tied with David Duval.

  xxxiv

  I HAD ONE hole left to win the U.S. Open, and it was perhaps the best finishing hole in all of golf.

  The eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach is a classic par five that curves gently left along the Pacific Ocean all the way from tee to green, protected from the enormous power of the ocean only by a seawall. It measures 543 yards, and, as Jack Nicklaus proved in his swan song at the 2000 Open, the green can be reached in two. However, with water all the way down the left side and a putting surface not much larger than a two-car garage, it’s not considered a smart play for anyone in contention.

  As we stood on the eighteenth tee, I was suddenly happy to have the wind blowing in from the ocean. As troublesome as it was on seventeen, it provided an additional line of defense against hooking a ball left into the ocean.

  Without that comforting wind, the tee shot at the eighteenth can be pretty terrifying. Not only is the ocean waiting to swallow any shot on the left, but there’s out of bounds protecting the multimillion dollar homes that line the right side of the hole. (If your home had a view of the eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach and the Pacific Ocean, it’d be worth a few million bucks, too.) The most popular target from the tee is the larger of two pine trees situated rather conspicuously on the right side of the fairway some 250 yards out.

  True to his reputation as the best driver in golf, Sutton was right down the middle, and his ball seemed to run forever on the hard, dry fairway. Just before teeing my ball, I glanced over at the scoreboard and was relieved to learn that Duval had not birdied sixteen and therefore remained at eight under. Since I didn’t think he was likely to make two at seventeen, I figured that whichever of us played eighteen the best would be the new U.S. Open champion.

  I should have known better than to count out Tiger Woods, though. Up ahead of us, the crowd roared as he hit a towering second shot that reached the middle of the green. It suddenly dawned on me that he had a putt for eagle that could put him at eight under par as well. If he made his putt, and neither Duval nor I made a birdie at the last hole, the three of us would be back the next day for an eighteen-hole playoff. That favored the players who were more experienced, and I came up considerably short there compared to Woods and Duval. As I teed my ball, I knew that my best shot at the Open title was today, not tomorrow.

  I could’ve hit it better. It wasn’t a bad shot, but I didn’t quite catch it like I wanted. It was more of a “heeler” than anything else. Still, it finished in the fairway. So far, so good.

  When we arrived at my ball, I saw that Sutton had outdriven us by as much as twenty yards. While he was within striking distance of the green, we were not.

  Joe quickly flipped open his yardage book and turned to me. “We’ve got one-sixty-two to a hundred-yard lay-up.”

  I thought for a moment. “So it’s two-sixty-two to the middle.”

  His eyebrows squinched together. “Well, yeah. But why?”

  I looked down at my ball. “We’ve got a good lie. I think I can just about get it there with a three-wood.”

  He shook his head. “Not without drugs, you can’t.”

  I laughed. “Look, the ground’s so hard in front of the green up there that the ball will bounce and run for a good twenty yards. We can run it up right through the neck between the bunkers.”

  LaCava’s eyebrows now arched. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t come here to lay up.”

  He snorted in disgust. “This ain’t Tin Cup, you know.”

  I shook my head. “Look, we gotta make birdie. Even if we don’t make it to the green, we’ve got a better chance of makin’ four up there than we do from a hundred yards out.”

  What LaCava was thinking, but didn’t want to say, was that laying up took the ocean out of play. Trying to blast a three-wood from that far out to a small green squeezed all the way to the ocean’s edge risked disaster. In LaCava’s book, it was a really stupid play, the kind made by Tour rookies who didn’t know anything about course management. But he was too smart to mention the obvious and plant any negative swing thoughts in my mind. If I was going for it, he wanted me to be as positive about the shot as possible.

  Of course, one reason that the eighteenth hole at Pebble Beach is considered to be such a great finishing hole is precisely because it is not easy to do what I was trying to do. But the way I saw it, the green wasn’t that easy to hit in three, either. The wind’s almost always a factor, the green is small enough as it is, and there are all these bunkers around it squeezing it to death. So I figured the best thing to do was just bomb away and at least get my ball in the vicinity of the green in two.

  LaCava made one last pitch for laying up. “Look, let’s finish with no worse than five. We’re in at eight under. Let Duval look at that number. Put the pressure on him. Besides, we may still make birdie, but we’ll do no worse than par.”

  Up ahead of us, a massive bellow from the grandstands signaled that Tiger Woods had rolled in his eagle putt. That suddenly changed everything, because he was now in the clubhouse at eight under par. A five here would not win the championship but would only get us into a playoff with Tiger. Probably Duval, too, assuming he made par at eighteen. Still worse, if Duval made a birdie while I played safe for par, there wouldn’t be a playoff. H
e would win the title outright, and I would have lost the Open by playing safe when I had a chance to win it.

  Even Joe knew that Tiger’s putt had clinched the argument in my favor. With a shrug, he pulled the head cover off the three-wood. He didn’t hand it to me, though. If I was going to hit the three-wood, he would make me pull it out of the bag myself.

  So I did. I gripped the club, picked out a precise line to the middle of the green, and pulled the trigger.

  I’m here to tell you that I’ll never hit another ball as hard as I hit that one. I’d like to think I’ll hit a lot of ’em straighter, though. I must’ve come over the top, because the ball started left, dangerously left. There’s a bunker that lines the inside of the seawall for the last hundred yards or so to the green, and I was praying so hard for the ball to catch that bunker and stay dry that I was speaking in tongues.

  It did, by the slimmest of margins. Actually, the ball was out over Carmel Bay for a period of time before the wind pushed it just barely back over dry land. When it landed, the ball ricocheted off the inside edge of the seawall and bounced dead right, jamming itself against the opposite lip of the bunker.

  At first, I was so relieved to have reached dry land that I gave no thought to the next shot. We must have given Sutton something to think about, though, because he laid up when the green was well within reach for him. Of course, when he hit his third shot with a sand wedge from eighty yards out to within five feet of the hole, I realized that had been his plan all along.

  When we finally arrived at the green, I could tell something was wrong. Two guys wearing blue jackets with USGA crests on their breast pockets were standing next to the bunker where my ball should have been. When I walked up to them, the older one said, “We’re having difficulty finding your ball.” His partner, less certain, just nodded in agreement.

  I immediately saw the trouble. The heavy greenside rough hung over the lip of the bunker. The ball apparently was lodged up underneath somewhere, perhaps buried in the sand. We would have to search for the ball. I knew that, under the Rules of Golf, I could dig through the sand to do so, even if it meant uncovering my ball. Once I found it, I would have to re-cover the ball, leaving just enough exposed so that I knew what to swing at.