Miracle at Augusta (2 page)

IF THERE'S A BETTER
place to spend mid-January than Hawaii, let me know. Till then I'll have to make do with Waialae Country Club on the island of Oahu, where Earl and I are getting our last reps in before tomorrow's start of the Azawa Open and warming our bones in the tropical sun. It feels so good to be warm, and out of that stall at Big Oaks, I'm hardly bothered by the fact that fifty people are lined up on the range behind Earl, and two are watching me, one of whom is my new caddy, Johnny Abate. Earl's fans, who have taken to calling themselves Earl's Platoon, aren't content to stand and gape. Every time he pures another 4-iron, they ooh and ahh and shower him with love.

“This is your year, Earl!”

“Hell yeah, buddy.”

“You're the man, EF!”

And my personal favorite—“Earl Fielder is EFing good.”

“I guess they don't get out much,” I mumble under my breath to the object of all this adulation.

“What makes you say that, Travis?”

To clarify, I should probably point out that Earl has enjoyed a dramatic change in fortune since caddying for me in my rookie season in '96. For starters, he is now a member of the Senior Tour himself. He earned his playing privileges by finishing second in the '97 Senior Q-School, then backed it up with one of the most consistent rookie seasons ever, ending the year with twenty-three straight top tens. But what changed everything and transformed him into a bona fide celebrity is that Reebok commercial, which juxtaposes Earl on tour with old footage and photos of him from the late sixties in Vietnam. No one is happier for Earl than me, but do I find the clamor for autographs and photographs at restaurants and airports just a wee bit annoying?

Of course not. I'm a bigger person than that.

“Work on anything in the off-season?” I ask.

“Just tried to tighten everything up a notch. Keep the arms and body more attached, have it all move in one piece.”

“Jesus, Earl. You already got the most buttoned-up swing out here. To get it any tighter you'd need a monkey wrench.” But as Earl stripes a couple more, I realize he may actually have succeeded. Watching Earl, his broad forehead beaded with sweat, is like watching an Old World Italian mason build a wall. There's no wasted motion. Every move and gesture is pared to the nub.

“You're striping it better than ever, Earl, and that's saying something. You're going to get that win this year, maybe two.”

“I wouldn't bet on it,” says Earl. “I'm too much of a grinder. I may not stink it up, but I rarely go real low, either. Don't roll it well enough. But I'd trade all those seconds and thirds for one win. And not just for the exemption. I want something to be remembered for, and once you get your name engraved on silver, it's hard to get it off. How about you, Trav? You work on anything up there on the tundra?”

“See for yourself.”

I pull my 5-wood, aim my club face and feet slightly right of my target, and as I swing, I focus on keeping my hips turning and really letting my arms go, ripping down, through, and up. The ball takes off with the usual trajectory but, a hundred yards out, shoots up like a rocket when the afterburners hit. It bends slightly to the left before landing softly 215 yards away.

“Son of a bitch,” says Earl. “I need to see you do that again.”

I dislodge another Titleist from the pyramid-shaped pile, nudge it into place beside the long, shallow divot, and turn on the ball one more time.

“Well, I'll be damned. The high fucking draw. The suavest shot in golf. I just have one question.”

“What's that?”

“Why? There isn't one hole out here where you'll need it.”

“It's for Augusta.”

“Augusta?”

“How else am I going to keep the ball on those reachable par fives, thirteen and fifteen in particular? Those are birdie holes, Earl. You're not birdieing those, you're losing half a stroke to the field.”

“I know that, Travis. You're not the only one with a TV.”

“You get reception down there?”

“How the hell are you going to get an invitation—steal it from Tiger's mailbox?”

“Haven't thought that far ahead. You know it's a mistake to get ahead of yourself in this game. I just have a feeling I'm going to need it.”

THE DISPARITY IN STATUS
between Earl and me is reflected in our Friday tee times. Earl goes off in the early afternoon with Chi Chi Rodriguez and Raymond Floyd, and I slip out at 7:03 a.m. with senior rookies Trent Smith and Elliot Brody. I hadn't heard of them either, until I looked them up in the media guide. Smith joined the navy out of high school. Back on dry land, he sold insurance, ran a nightclub, and repaired pin-setting machines at a bowling alley, then spent fifteen years in Grand Prairie, Texas, in the auto repair business. He got into the field by Monday qualifying. Brody, who earned his spot through this year's Q-School, was a teaching pro outside Tacoma for thirty years.

It couldn't be a more congenial group. One look at each other and we knew we were all just slightly different versions of the same person—three guys who hadn't seriously considered making a living at competitive golf till it was almost too late, and now we're determined to make the most of our chance. What little chatter there is, is collegial and supportive, each of us giving the others the chance to do their best.

The setting isn't half bad, either. With no one in front of us, I feel like I washed ashore in paradise and just happened to find my sticks here waiting for me. The only sounds are waves, rustling palms, and birds. If anyone had gotten up at dawn and wandered over, they would have seen some quality golf. Among the three of us, we carded one bogey and fourteen birdies. All those sessions at Big Oaks must have paid off, or maybe it's the novel thrill of hitting off organic material, because six of those birdies are mine. For the next four hours, my 66 makes me the year's top player on the Senior Tour, and when the last player walks off 18, I'm tied for second with Gil Morgan, one shot behind the leader, Hale Irwin.

FRIDAY, I WENT OFF
in the first group of the day. On Saturday, thanks to that 66, I go off in the final one. Instead of playing under the radar with two fellow journeymen, I'm trading shots with the two best fifty-somethings on the planet—Hale Irwin and Gil Morgan. Last year, Irwin won nine tournaments and more money than any golfer in the world, including an elegant young cat named Tiger Woods. Morgan won six times and earned more than Tiger, too. The last time I felt this out of my league was the summer afternoon in college when I got it into my head to play pickup basketball at a playground on the South Side of Chicago.

Everyone knows about Irwin, the former all–Big Eight cornerback with three U.S. Open titles, but it's the late-blooming Morgan who is the revelation. For one thing, he possesses a perfect swing. Literally. When he was a kid, his father, a small-town mortician, took him to see Harvey Penick, the legendary Austin pro who taught Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite. Penick took one look at Morgan's move and sent him home. Said there was nothing he could do for him.

Irwin's swing is not nearly as lovely and he's much shorter off the tee, but he possesses a level of competitiveness and confidence that is borderline psychotic. As impressed as I am that Morgan hits it twenty yards past Irwin all day, I'm even more impressed by the fact that Irwin could truly not care less.

I don't want to belabor the point, but here's one last illustration of the chasm in golfing prowess between me and them. Last year Irwin led the tour with an average score of 68.93, and my average was a shade under 71. In other words, if we had a regular game at Creekview Country Club on Sunday mornings, he would have to give me a stroke a side. But at Waialae on Saturday afternoon, I didn't need any strokes from anyone. When our round is in the books, I've carded my second straight 66 to Irwin's 69 and Morgan's 70.

Those aren't typos. That's just golf.

FOR THE FIRST TIME
since that U.S. Senior Open I keep bringing up, the name McKinley looks down from the top of the leaderboard. And it's in excellent company. Sharing my lead at six under are two of the best players and biggest personalities on the tour—Lee Trevino and Hank “Stump” Peters. As the patron saint of golfing long shots, Trevino has forever occupied a special place in my personal pantheon, and the thought of going off with him in the final group on Sunday is thrilling. But seeing that Hank Peters will be playing with us makes my stomach hurt.

You know how some competitors always bring out your worst? Peters has been providing that invaluable service for me since he beat me on the eighteenth hole of a college match when we were juniors, him at Georgia Tech, me at Northwestern. At the time, Northwestern was the kind of school a powerhouse like Georgia put on the schedule to pad their record, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to beat him so badly. Another was that Peters, an all-state quarterback in high school, exuded exactly the kind of big-guy swagger that has always stirred my darkest competitive instincts, probably because at 6′2″ and 137 pounds, I exuded something quite different.

In our first encounter, back in college, I was two up with three to play, yet Peters never for a second thought he would lose, and of course he turned out to be right. After he knocked in his winning putt, which thirty-two years later I still recall as an uphill twelve-footer that broke two inches to the left, he shook my hand and said, “You got a nice little game, son. Stick with it.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

I guess there's something about being condescending, patronizing,
and
better that leaves an indelible impression. Then again, I've always had a talent for nursing slights. I collect them like a wine snob collects Bordeaux. I never know when I might need to dust one off. Not that this one has been paying dividends. Since I got out here, I've been paired with Peters three times and gotten drubbed every time. Maybe it's because I try too hard. More likely, it's because Peters, who won eleven times on the regular tour, is better and always will be.

On Sunday afternoon, Trevino comes out sporting four shades of brown—beige cashmere sweater, light brown shirt, dark brown slacks, and darker brown shoes, and just watching him work his way through the crowd with his distinctive slightly bowlegged gait makes me smile. Peters arrives wearing a camouflage hunting cap and sweatshirt, with several pinches of chewing tobacco stuffed between his teeth and lower gum, but for some reason I find his version of populist charm less endearing. My expression must give me away, because Johnny A promptly walks over and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Now, listen,” he says, “we're not going to let this cracker take us out of our game.”

EASIER SAID THAN DONE,
when this particular cracker has been living in my head rent-free for three decades. Trevino plants his tee, doffs his cap, and busts his iconic open-stanced move. His flat, abrupt chop—somewhere between martial arts and grunt labor—produces the same low, hard fade it has a million times before and ends up smack in the middle of the fairway.

“I hit that sunnabitch quail high,” he says to his adoring gallery. “But I guess there aren't a lot of quail on Oahu.”

After ejecting a brown stream of tobacco juice into a Styrofoam cup, Peters knocks it ten yards past Trevino, who at fifty-eight has lost some distance. Appropriately enough, I'm up last, and as I go through my routine, I can sense how anxious the gallery is for me to get it over with so they can hustle down the fairway and watch Trevino and Peters hit again.

Nevertheless, I catch it solid and roll it past them both. Having hit the longest drive, I'm last to hit again, and this time the gallery doesn't even pretend to wait. Halfway through my backswing, the scenery shifts like the furniture between acts of a play. I yank an easy wedge ten yards left, and when I fail to get up and down, I walk off the first green with a bogey.

“Only the first hole,” says Johnny A. “Plenty of golf to be played.”

True enough. And on the par-three 2nd, I hit my 6-iron to fourteen feet. Knock it in, I'm back to where I started and it's all good. Unfortunately, I'm so eager to undo my opening bogey, I charge my birdie putt five feet past and miss the comeback for another bogey, and on three, I'm so pissed about one and two, I bogey that as well.

Bogey. Bogey. Bogey. Not exactly the start I had in mind, and while I'm barfing on my FootJoys, Peters and Trevino are keeping theirs nice and clean, carding two birdies each. The round is barely fifteen minutes old, and I'm five strokes behind and well on my way to another traumatic defeat at the hands of my outdoorsy, tobacco-juice-spittin' nemesis.

At this point, I should summon my inner Lombardi and dig deep, but God knows what I'd dredge up. Instead, I relax and watch Trevino. For all I know, I'll never get a chance to tee it up with Super Mex again, and if I can't enjoy it, maybe I can learn a thing or two.

The first thing that stands out is the way Trevino parcels his concentration. Yesterday, Irwin and Morgan never peeked from behind their game faces. From the handshakes at the first till they signed the scorecards in the trailer, they never stopped grinding. Trevino has a different MO. For the thirty seconds it takes to plan and execute his shot, he and Herman are as focused as assassins, but once the ball stops rolling, they go right back to shooting the breeze, picking up the conversational thread—dogs, Vegas, barbecue—wherever they left it, as if trying to win a golf tournament is a minor distraction from an otherwise carefree afternoon.

And if the conversation lags, or we're waiting for a green to clear, as happens on 5, Trevino walks to the edge of the nearest hazard and fishes out balls with his 7-iron. He reminds me of my cheap buddies back home, except that Trevino tosses his plunder to the kids in his gallery.

I'm so captivated by the rare opportunity to observe Trevino in his natural habitat, I barely notice my own birdies on 7 and 8, and when I'm looking over my eagle putt on 10, the prospect of sinking it is such a nonevent, I roll it dead center from forty-five feet. Now I'm back in the hunt—two behind Peters and one behind Trevino—and the thought of evicting Peters from my brain is so tantalizing, I immediately start pressing again.

On the next seven holes, I give myself legitimate birdie looks on five and never scare the hole. Surprisingly, Peters and Trevino can't make anything either. Over the same stretch, Peters misses three putts shorter than mine—I guess legends and assholes aren't immune to pressure either—and we head to 18 exactly as we stepped off 10, with Peters one up on Trevino and two up on me.