Caddy for Life (35 page)

In the comfortable clubhouse dining room that was the headquarters for USGA officials for the week, many veteran rules officials and volunteers had been watching the goings-on on TV. When Watson birdied number one, many of them decided this was something that needed to be seen in person. “People just wanted to be part of it in some way,” said Clyde Luther, who has worked at Opens since the beginning of time. “It couldn’t possibly be the same on TV.”

It wasn’t bad on TV. Since Mark O’Meara had played in the morning, Greg Rita was back in his hotel room watching on TV. “I was shouting and cheering and getting teary-eyed all at once,” he said. “I just felt like it was the most amazing round of golf I’d ever seen.”

By now Bruce was really in a battle with his emotions. He knew what was going on, knew Watson was being Watson again, but he also knew he had to keep himself steady and do his job. Watson was afraid to look him in the eye, because he knew if he saw Bruce losing it, he might lose it too. “Which I couldn’t afford,” he said. “There was still a lot of work to do.”

They worked steadily through the next few holes, wobbling only a little at number six, the second and last par-five on the golf course. Watson missed the fairway there, and his third-shot wedge was a little long. But he managed to chip to four feet and save par, keeping him at three under for the round, two shots behind Quigley in a tie for second place at that moment.

The seventh is another long par-three, 212 yards, but doesn’t play that long since the tee is elevated. Watson decided five-iron and ended up about 35 feet beyond the flagstick. Not a bad shot, but Bruce walked down the hill wishing he had campaigned harder for a six-iron. “Just like I had wished we had hit three instead of two back at Pebble in ’82,” he said.

It can be argued that Watson has made as many long, dramatic putts in his career as anyone who has ever played the game. He is justifiably proud of his ability to make long putts. He might never have enjoyed making one more than the one he made at the seventh on Olympia Fields that afternoon. The putt had a major left-to-right break to it, maybe 20 feet according to Bruce, but it was tracking the hole all the way. As it rolled closer and closer, the crowd noise grew louder and louder. Watson was tempted to put his arms in the air because he could see it was dead center. But at the last possible moment, the ball stopped right on the lip of the cup. When he saw the replay later, Watson was convinced that the ball hit some kind of ridge on the edge of the hole. “You could actually see it rock backward just a tiny bit,” he said.

Standing up by the hole, getting ready to putt after Watson, Verplank saw the ball stop, rock, and then, as Watson started walking, begin to move forward just a tiny bit. “Hey,” he shouted over the din. “It’s moving, it’s going to go.”

Watson walked toward the ball, fully intending to wait the ten seconds the rules allow when a ball is hanging on the lip before tapping in for his par. Just as he arrived at the hole, the ball, as if intimidated by his presence, rolled that last inch forward and disappeared. As the crowd screamed—really screamed—Watson kicked his left leg gleefully as if kicking the ball into the hole, then turned to where Bruce was standing and bowed. That was it for Bruce. He was laughing and crying all at once.

“The kick was pure joy,” Watson said. “The bow was to everything and everyone: to Bruce, to the crowd, to the moment—everything.”

Golf crowds can get very loud—usually more so on Sundays—but they rarely get raucous. When the putt dropped and Watson kicked and bowed, the noise could be heard all over the golf course. “I’ve heard loud in my day,” Watson said. “But that was
really
loud.”

Waiting back up the hill on the tee, knowing where Watson stood on the leader board before the putt went in, Billy Andrade saw the kick and the bow and felt himself losing his composure. “I wanted to run down the hill and hug both of them,” he said. “At that point it was really hard for me to concentrate on my own golf game. I wanted to go and cheer them on.”

It was, by now, very much
them
. What Watson was doing would have been remarkable under any circumstances: fifty-three-year-old past Open champion one shot out of the lead twenty-one years after his Open victory. But everyone in the place knew Bruce’s story. The media, which had been sitting around the press tent dutifully telling Brett Quigley’s life story while explaining what had gone wrong for Tiger Woods, basically dropped everything for Tom and Bruce. The other 155 players, at least for one day, had become a footnote.

“When the putt went in on twelve, I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is really something,’” Verplank said. “I mean, here I was having an awful day”—he would finish with a six-over-par 76—“and I was like a little kid getting excited for Tom and Bruce. The look on Bruce’s face when that putt went in on seven was something I’ll never forget.”

Both Watson and Bruce were fighting their emotions as they walked to the eighth tee. “I just felt like we had turned the clock back,” Bruce said. “It was as if we were back at Pebble Beach again. We were both young and confident and knew anything was possible. It was just an amazing feeling.”

There were, however, still two holes to play. Watson was alone in second place now, one shot behind Quigley. Pumped up, he crushed his drive at the 433-yard eighth and had only a seven-iron to the green. He hit it perfectly, stopping it 12 feet from the hole. “I walked onto the green and said to myself, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to make this one too,’” Bruce said. “You could just feel it at that point.”

Watson was feeling it too. The birdie putt was never going anyplace but the bottom of the hole from the moment it left the putter. “I really swished it,” Watson said. “I looked back at Bruce for a second and I could see he was losing it completely by then. At that point, I was really fighting it myself.”

So was almost everyone else. Watson was now five under par and tied for the lead with one hole to play. He was one par away from shooting 65, the lowest round he had ever shot in a U.S. Open. It seemed as if every single person on the grounds at Olympia Fields was on the ninth hole. In the locker room, players who normally might glance at a TV as they walked by, had stopped and stood or sat transfixed in front of the sets.

The ninth is the longest par-four on the golf course, at 496 yards, but it plays shorter because the hole plays downhill. Watson took three-wood and found the right side of the fairway. He wanted to play his second shot, a six-iron, right to left to the flag tucked on the left side of the green. Whether it was nerves or adrenaline or just all that was going on around him, Watson hit the worst shot he had hit since his opening tee shot five hours earlier. “Just fanned on it,” he said. “It was a bad golf shot.”

The ball went right, stayed right, and flew into the right-hand bunker. The groan was audible. Now Watson had to get up and down for par to maintain his share of the lead. One of Watson’s great strengths throughout his career has been an ability to stay in the present. Many athletes who have blown leads or not been able to finish strong will admit afterward that their mind wandered, that they started to picture themselves holding the trophy or started thinking about what they would say in their victory speech. Watson has never been that way. “Nerves have come into play at times when I haven’t played my best under pressure,” he said. “But I’ve never lost a golf tournament because I couldn’t focus on what I needed to do next.”

Now, though, as he and Bruce walked toward the bunker, his mind
did
wander. “It hit me right then, as soon as I’d put that bad swing on the ball and saw it go into the bunker, that I
had
to get up and down,” he said. “I had to make par for Bruce. If I didn’t make par, the round was going to end on a down note and I wasn’t going to be tied for the lead. The media would talk to me, sure, but it wasn’t going to be the same. I had to make par and be tied for the lead so I could walk into the pressroom and have the bully pulpit and talk about Bruce and ALS and about raising money for research. I was completely aware as I walked toward that bunker that this was a huge moment for me and for Bruce. I’m not sure I’ve ever faced an up-and-down that, in its own way, was as important as that one.”

Handing the club back to Bruce, Watson said, “Lousy shot.”

“No problem,” Bruce said. “Let’s just get it up and down.”

Watson walked into the bunker and examined the shot and the lie. He would later say it was “a fairly easy bunker shot.” Most players would not have agreed. The lie was good and there was plenty of green to work with, but it was slightly uphill, it was a long shot to the flag, and the ball was going to break hard from right to left as it got near the hole. All of that made it delicate.

Refusing to think about what was at stake, Watson got over the ball and, quick as ever, softly nudged the sand, popping the ball up onto the green. The ball took a couple of hops, swerved to the left, and came to a halt seven feet from the flag. A superb shot. “Typical Watson under pressure,” Bruce said.

They took some time over the putt, Watson making sure that Bruce’s read was the same as his. “It was just outside right,” Bruce remembered. “I was shaking by then, but I knew he was going to make it.”

Once he had the read, Watson quickly got over the putt. The silence around the green was deafening. A few seconds later, the roar was ear-splitting when the ball went straight into the cup. Watson had done it. He had shot 65 to tie for the lead in the U.S. Open at age fifty-three, the oldest man to ever do so. “My first thought was, ‘I can win this thing,’” he said, remembering the moment. “Then I saw Bruce.”

Bruce was crying by now, joined by many around the green and by many others around the country, watching on TV. Instinctively, remembering it was Thursday, Watson put his hand out. Bruce was having none of it. He threw his arms around Watson and whispered in his ear, “Thanks for a great five hours.”

That was it for Watson; he was crying now too. “Normally, hugs are for Sunday,” he said. “This was just one round, it was Thursday. But the hug was absolutely the right thing to do at that moment. I think Bruce and I have had two very emotional hugs in our life on the golf course. One was at Pebble Beach and the other was that day at Olympia Fields. They both meant a lot to both of us. This one was more emotional because of the circumstances.”

Bruce agreed. “Pebble Beach was pure joy. This was different, because there were so many emotions involved.”

Verplank and Romero were almost as emotional. Romero offered both men a warm handshake. Verplank hugged them both. “The whole thing was surreal by then,” he said. “I mean I’ve
never
hugged a guy I played with and his caddy on a Thursday. About the only time I’ve ever done that is when a close friend of mine has won on Sunday. But it was unique, clearly, the kind of moment you just can’t make up. I had shot seventy-six and I walked off the green feeling great, excited, so happy for them. I was amazed that Tom still had that kind of magic left and just thrilled that I had been there close up to see it.”

The easy part of the day was now over. For once, Watson wasn’t talking to the media just because it was part of the job. He practically bolted into the interview room and said, very bluntly, “I have the bully pulpit today and I intend to use it.” He then talked about Bruce and about the desperate need for funding to do more research and find a cure for ALS. Patiently he did every TV interview he was asked to, even sticking around to sit on ESPN’s
Sportscenter
set. “I had no problem doing any of that stuff,” Watson said. “To begin with, it’s my duty as a player, I understand that. But on this day, I wanted to do it. This was an opportunity, and I know just how fleeting fame is. I had to grab it and run with it while I could.”

Bruce wasn’t nearly as eager to meet the media. For one thing, he was exhausted and emotionally drained by the events of the day. For another, his thinking was that Watson had shot 65, not him. He had heard the fans calling his name,
“Bruuuuuce,”
as if he were Springsteen. He was moved by the sentiment. But he didn’t want people focusing on him after what Watson had just accomplished. “He shot one of the great rounds in U.S. Open history,” he said. “I really didn’t think the story should be about me.”

But the story was about him. Actually it was about both of them. Clearly Watson had been inspired by the moment and the setting, and by Bruce’s emotions and by his understanding that this might be their last time together in this sort of mega-spotlight. Watson knew that and Bruce knew that. But Bruce wasn’t eager to talk. Tired as he was, he knew his speech would be slurred and difficult to understand. After Bruce came out of the scoring tent, pressroom volunteer Steve Malchow approached him to tell him that quite a few reporters had asked to speak to him. “I’d really rather not,” Bruce said. “They should talk to Tom.”

Malchow understood Bruce’s reluctance. He is an associate athletic director at the University of Wisconsin, charged with running the sports publicity arm of the athletic department. He was working at the Open as a volunteer in the pressroom, something he had done for three years as his vacation. “Being a golfer, I love having the chance to do it,” he said. Malchow is one of a number of sports publicity pros who volunteer to help Craig Smith and his staff Open week. Now he had been handed a slightly more difficult challenge than normal. He followed Bruce into the locker room and found him sitting by Watson’s locker, collecting his emotions and taking a deep breath after an exhilarating but draining afternoon.

“Bruce, look, you can tell me to go away and leave you alone if you want to,” Malchow said. “But there’s something I’d like to say to you, and then if you tell me no I’ll go away. It happens that I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic—just like Scott Verplank. And I can tell you for a fact that when I see him out there competing successfully wearing that insulin pump, it inspires me, makes me think I can do things I might not otherwise think I could do. I know how much worse ALS is. I suspect that a lot of people with ALS give up on themselves when they’re diagnosed, stop living because they’ve been given such awful news.