The Caddie Read online

  We also were more likely to encounter bad weather in the afternoon, either in the form of wind and rain or even fog. Again, Stewart preached about the importance of accepting things over which we had no control. “We’ve got towels and rain gear,” he reminded me.

  I listened patiently through it all, even though I had heard the same spiel from him at virtually every tournament. Stewart’s attention to detail never wavered. Whenever I tried to cut him short, he always said it cost nothing extra to be reminded of these things, no matter how obvious I thought they were. He called it our preflight checklist.

  Our late-afternoon starting time meant that I could sleep late and then spend most of the day following the championship on television. I found that I learned a lot by watching other players play the course ahead of me, particularly about the lines of putts. Stewart and I both made notes of what we saw before heading to the course after lunch.

  The second round turned out to be one of the strangest I ever played. I started sluggishly, bogeying two of the first six holes, the ones that were supposed to be easy. Then, as we negotiated the tougher part of the course, I caught fire for some reason, making birdies at eight, eleven, twelve, fourteen, and eighteen. The only hiccup I had was a bogey four at seventeen when my tee shot ran through the green into the tall rough. It all came out to a sixty-eight, which at least meant I had made the cut in my first U.S. Open.

  Since we were one of the last groups to finish, I didn’t have to wait long to find out that I had done a whole lot better than just make the cut. According to the Unisys “real time” scoring monitor in the locker room, I was in sixth place, tied with Steve Stricker. The leaderboard showed that I was in pretty heady company:

  There were only nine players in the U.S. Open who were under par after two rounds, and I was one of them. Not bad when you consider that there were 156 players in the field to begin with. When the cut was made at the low 60 and ties, we were down to 63 players for the weekend.

  According to the pairings, I would be playing with Steve Pate on Saturday. Although I would have preferred to be paired with my hero, Hal Sutton, Pate’s score was turned in before Sutton’s and under the rules that put him with me. Not that I minded terribly; I was happy to get a chance to play with the guy known affectionately on Tour as “Volcano.”

  By his own admission, there was very little that was pretty about Steve Pate’s golf game. Certainly, his swing was never mentioned when the subject of classic golf swings came up in conversation. And he had steered clear of the exercise craze that had swept the Tour when guys like Tiger Woods and David Duval began chiseling their bodies to gain strength and endurance. (As Fuzzy Zoeller quipped, you knew things had really gotten out of hand when Craig Stadler started dieting and working out.) In contrast to the Stairmaster crowd, Pate was unabashedly proud of his beer gut.

  When it came to pure nerve and determination, however, there wasn’t a better-conditioned player than Steve Pate. He had survived a number of injuries from car wrecks and freak accidents to scratch and claw his way back to the top of the game more than once. I figured I would learn something just being around the guy for eighteen holes.

  It turned out to be quite an experience. Pate was entertaining to watch. He took turns berating himself and then laughing at shots that didn’t turn out as planned. He was careful, though, not to distract me. I quickly became very comfortable with the guy.

  True to his reputation, Pate scrambled around the course and kept his ball in play even though some of his shots weren’t very pretty. It reminded me that golf ain’t platform diving, meaning you don’t get points for form. When the smoke cleared, Pate had tacked a 69 onto his earlier rounds of 71 and 70 and was three under for the championship after fifty-four holes.

  To my surprise, I did him one better by carding a 68 that could have been lower. I hit fourteen greens—which is a lot—but recorded only four birdies. Fortunately, I caught bunkers rather than rough on two of the four holes where I missed the green, which made it much easier to get up and down for pars. On the two holes where I missed the fairway badly enough to catch the deep rough, I was lucky to escape with only one bogey, making a twelve-footer to save par on one of the two holes.

  I made a mental note that Pate’s experience showed how much more I had to learn about scoring. If we had swapped tee shots and approaches to the greens, he’d have shot 65 with my ball, and I would’ve shot 73 or 74 with his. I still had a lot to learn about managing my way around the course.

  Still, my 68 had moved me up the leaderboard, which now read:

  I finally got my wish: I would be playing the final round in the second-to-last group, paired with Hal Sutton, my hero from Shreveport.

  This was perfect, I thought. Not only was Sutton a fellow Louisianian (that don’t exactly roll off your tongue, does it?), but in my opinion he was one of the pure ball strikers on Tour. No one kept the club square to the target line through the hitting area as long as he did. Stewart and I were both going to enjoy watching him.

  That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t seen Stewart since right after we walked off the eighteenth green. Usually, he waited outside the scoring tent for me so that we could walk back to our living quarters together. But he wasn’t there when I came out after signing for my 68.

  This was odd, I thought. Here I am, two shots out of the lead after three rounds of the U.S. Open, and my caddie is off somewhere instead of reliving the day’s events with me. Still, it wasn’t the first time I had lost track of Stewart, so I wasn’t immediately concerned. Besides, all I had to do was walk over to our bungalow. He’d turn up there sooner or later.

  In the meantime, I was wanted in the press tent. When I got there, they were just finishing with Tiger Woods. As I settled into my chair, I prepared myself for the usual questions about what shots I hit where. The first few questions were exactly that kind, and I gave the same answers that the press had heard hundreds of times before.

  I was stunned, however, when Dave Lagarde of the New Orleans Times-Picayune asked me about my time in jail for theft. The whole press room immediately got quiet.

  I could feel Stewart’s influence working on me, because I didn’t get mad. I guess I knew that, if this had been the Nationwide Tour, the question would never have been asked. But this was the U.S. Open, by God, and I was on the leaderboard. Where I had been in the past and what I had done were suddenly newsworthy.

  So I knew that it was a legitimate question to ask. Besides that, I knew Lagarde well. He was a solid guy who obviously had been tipped off by his sources back in Louisiana about my run-in with Boo. He had to pursue it.

  I slowly smiled. Looking at him directly, I said, “I certainly hope I’ve learned something from the experience.” I took a sip of water. “If nothing else, it’s made me appreciate where I am now. It was a bad situation, and I’m grateful that we were able to work it out to everyone’s satisfaction. I’ve been given a second chance, and I don’t intend to waste it.”

  I guess Lagarde felt sorry for me, because he let me off without any more questions. I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it, though. I figured Golfweek would send someone down to Baton Rouge to get the ugly details. Fortunately, because of my “DA’s probation,” all they’d find was a record of the charge, with no disposition.

  I got up and left the pressroom as quickly as I could.

  xxx

  I GRABBED A couple of oranges in the locker room (I was finally picking up some of Stewart’s healthy eating habits) and then headed back to the bungalow. Although I ran into a couple of caddies on the way, no one had seen Stewart. I figured he was waiting for me at our home away from home.

  The place was quiet when I got there. I called out for Stewart, but there was no answer. As I walked down the hallway, I saw my bag standing against the wall. Stewart had obviously been back since we finished play. I figured he was in the shower, so I sat down in the main room to eat my snack and watch the conclusion of the television coverage of the day’s round.
/>   That’s when I saw the note, propped up on the coffee table in front of me. I immediately recognized Stewart’s handwriting. It said:

  Bobby:

  Our work together is done, and it is time for me to go. Although you may not realize it, you have learned everything you can from me. There is no purpose in my staying any longer.

  I have taken my irons with me. That should not concern you. The clubs were there simply to give you something to believe in before you were ready to believe in yourself.

  You may hear some bad news about me. Don’t be sad when you do. It is the way I must leave. If you play by the rules I’ve shown you, this won’t be our last round together.

  Stewart

  P.S. You are ready for tomorrow.

  As if the note was a lie, I bolted down the hall to the bedroom Stewart had been occupying. There was no sign of him. Even his clothes were gone. In fact, the room looked like it had never been occupied.

  Then I thought of my clubs. I half-ran back to my bag in the ball. Sure enough, Stewart’s irons were gone. My old clubs were there in their place.

  My disbelief turned to anger. Here I was, two shots out of the Open lead going into the final round, and the guy who’s my caddie, coach, and best friend had checked out. “How could he do this to me,” I yelled to an empty house, “right before the biggest day of my life?”

  My emotions heaved back and forth for the next couple of hours. I scoured the lodge area, but no one had seen him anywhere. At one point, I even called home, as if Stewart might have gotten back to Baton Rouge already. I suppose I was hoping that he had at least left some message for me on the answering machine that would explain things. I went back and reread Stewart’s note any number of times, trying to find something between the lines that would make some sense out of his desertion.

  It took awhile, but once I accepted that Stewart was really gone, I began to calm down. When I did, I realized that, unless I wanted to be the only player in the Open carrying his own bag, I needed to secure a caddie for the next day. Of course, I knew I wasn’t going to find another Tour caddie on such short notice. The only guys who figured to be available were those who worked for a Tour player who missed the cut, but they weren’t going to hang around just to watch golf, especially in a place this expensive. They would have caught the first flights out Friday night. The best I could hope for was to get one of the caddies who worked out of the pro shop toting clubs for the tourists. Some of them couldn’t tell a five-iron from a wedge, but at least they had been around the course a few times.

  I headed over to the pro shop, hoping to find someone there who could help me. On the way, I passed by one of the USGA trailers. I knew there would be at least a couple of staffers still working, so on an impulse I ducked in to see if they had any ideas. The first person I saw was Roger Harvie, whom I had met when I played in the Amateur.

  He smiled and said, “Hey, Bobby, great tournament. Good luck tomorrow!”

  I explained my predicament. He had an immediate suggestion. “You need to call Fred Couples. His back went out again, and he just withdrew. His caddie, Joe LaCava, would be great.” Rifling through some papers, Harvie said, “Here’s Fred’s cell phone number. If you call now, you may be able to catch him before he and LaCava leave for the airport.”

  I grabbed a phone and dialed the number. Someone I didn’t know answered, but he was able to get LaCava on the line. It took just a minute or two to come to terms, and we were set.

  I thanked Harvie for his help and headed back to the bungalow. Having solved the immediate problem of finding a caddie, I became preoccupied again with trying to figure out why Stewart had abandoned me. I must have spent the next hour or two trying to come up with a plausible explanation for such a bizarre turn of events. Even as I fumed about it all, I knew that I was wasting valuable energy that was better spent getting ready for the most important round of golf I had ever played. Still, the situation with Stewart was something that had to play itself out. I only hoped it did before my starting time.

  At one point, I passed the large liquor cabinet that occupied the corner of the main room. I had never really noticed it before. For the first time, though, it occurred to me that three fingers of scotch would do wonders for my nerves. I even went so far as to open the cabinet and locate a fifth of unopened Glenlivet. At the last minute, however, something—perhaps some remnant of Stewart’s spirit in the house—made me pull my hand away and close the cabinet door.

  Any recovering alcoholic will tell you that overcoming temptation at a time like that is a major triumph. I knew, instantly, what I had done, and my spirits soared. I also understood at that moment what Stewart meant when he wrote in his note that I had learned more from him than I realized. And he was telling me it was time to fly solo.

  As much as I understood it, though, I couldn’t believe Stewart’s timing. The final round of the U.S. Open seemed like a helluva time for my first solo. It was kind of like starting a pilot out on the space shuttle instead of a Piper Cub.

  At any rate, I eventually resigned myself to the fact that I had to play the hand I was dealt. Joe LaCava was an experienced caddie. He had been on Fred Couples’s bag for a number of years, including his win at the 1992 Masters. So he had been there before, and his experience would be valuable.

  My fretting over all of this eventually drained the last of my energy, and I finally fell asleep around two in the morning. Fortunately, being in the next-to-last group, I wasn’t teeing off until early afternoon, so the late hour didn’t matter.

  In all the turmoil, I really hadn’t thought much about the warning in Stewart’s note that I might hear “bad news” about him.

  xxxi

  JOE LACAVA WAS grinning as I approached him. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” he said. “When Fred’s back went out, I thought that pretty much washed out our trip. Instead, I’m in the second-to-last group at the Open.”

  I gave him a rueful smile. “Well, I’m just glad you were available.”

  LaCava could guess from my expression that I was thinking about Stewart. “Whatever happened to your guy?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. He just left. His note said I didn’t need him anymore.”

  I could tell from the look on his face that LaCava thought that was an odd sentiment for a caddie. Shaking his head, he said, “I thought you guys were close.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Stewart saved my life as well as my golf game.”

  LaCava’s face again registered surprise at my comment, but he said nothing more. Instead, he shouldered my bag, and we headed to the range.

  I suspected LaCava probably thought the whole situation was a little nutty, so I didn’t tell him that I had found a second note from Stewart when I opened my locker just before coming out to meet him. In typical fashion, Stewart’s message was fairly cryptic, saying only that I should “trust” myself and “let go” of old baggage. The note concluded by predicting that my life would soon come “full circle” and that old wounds would heal if I let them.

  Under ordinary circumstances, I would’ve been distracted by such a thing. But this was no ordinary day. This was the final round of the U.S. Open, and I was in the hunt. It wasn’t a game of bridge, so I couldn’t pass. Golf was the order of the day, and I had no way of knowing if I would ever have a chance like this again. I resolved to figure out Stewart’s weird messages later.

  Once Joe and I got to the range, it soon became apparent that my new caddie was a real veteran. He watched me carefully as I went through my bag, taking note of the distance I hit each club and asking what swing thoughts, if any, I liked to play with. He seemed to know what I expected of him, which was to be supportive but not intrusive. I was both pleased and surprised at how quickly we became comfortable with each other.

  I was also happy to find that my old irons felt familiar, too, as if I had never laid them aside. Maybe Stewart was right, I thought with a smile. Maybe it really was me instead of the clubs. At any rate, my swing felt rela
xed, and shot after shot was solid and straight to the target. It helped, too, that LaCava punctuated each shot with a reassuring and encouraging comment.

  “Perfect,” he’d say after a good five-iron.

  Or “Great tempo” after I knocked down a sand wedge to a target green eighty-five yards away (which I figured was a helluva compliment considering whom he was used to watching).

  After we had finished at the range, we headed for the putting green. On the way, LaCava showed me his yardage book. He had also charted breaks in the greens. We compared his notes with Stewart’s book, which I found in my bag. They were almost identical. It was one more sign that we were a good fit.

  While we were working on a series of ten-footers, Hal Sutton and his caddie arrived at the putting green. He looked over and gave me a smile. Referring to our common origin, he said, “Looks like old home week, huh?”

  I waved back. Feigning an attempt at humor, I said, “We should at least win low state honors.”

  There wasn’t any point in further conversation, and we both got back to business. It seemed like LaCava and I had just begun to roll a few putts when they told us we were due on the first tee.

  As we made our way through the crowd, I was reminded that no sport allows more intimate contact between players and fans than tournament golf. LaCava led the way and walked quickly, just as Stewart did. No one attracted more fans than Fred Couples, so he knew better than to dawdle, or we’d be pressed in from all sides.

  Once on the first tee, we were given our scorecards, which Sutton and I exchanged. We then showed one another the balls we were playing and compared our markings. When I turned back to my caddie, I noticed that LaCava was going through my bag, counting my clubs.

  I smiled at his thoroughness. The rules limited each player to fourteen clubs, and good caddies always checked to make sure some well-meaning factory rep hadn’t dropped a gratuitous wedge or putter in their bags while they were on the range. Also, most of us had heard about the pro whose seven-year-old had left a pint-sized putter in his dad’s golf bag while he was home during a break from competition. By the time the sawed-off club was finally discovered during his first round back on tour, well down in the bag, dad had picked up four penalty strokes.