CHAPTER 1

Anticipation

October 2003

SITTING ON THE BACK PORCH of Firestone Cabin at Augusta National, my mind raced. I reflected on my life and considered the possibilities of the next day.

I had a downhill view through the pine trees of the No. 10 fairway thanks to a bright moon. Temperatures were in the 50s, and the wind whistled through the pines. The forecast for the next day was clear and in the 60s. Perfect golf weather.

Although the azaleas weren’t blooming in the fall, the visualization of a full accompaniment of the signature flowers sat in my brain, just not in my nose. I’d played in baseball stadiums and I’d coached and played in football stadiums, but golf is a different sport altogether. When you play a course, you can go out and do exactly what the pro did, a month after or a day after he finished a tournament. Golf has that capability. And you can play the exalted venues where legends are formed or dismantled. Augusta National is such a venue.

Firestone Cabin sat in the middle of a semicircle of newer cabins at Augusta National. The famed Butler Cabin sits off the 10th tee near the 9th green. Everybody in the cabin slept that night except me. Among those sleeping were my father; my college roommate, Steve Nicklaus; and Jack Nicklaus—the Golden Bear, who happened to be Steve’s father.

I felt as though I’d experienced a reversal of roles, putting my seventy-seven-year-old father to bed like I’d tucked in my kids before treating them to the circus the following day.

Three years earlier, a friend offered me tickets for a practice round at The Masters. I accepted and brought my father with me. We drove from Tampa and back the same day. What an experience! Dad remained in a state of awe watching the practice round and some of the par-3 tournament. We walked a lot; he’d been in good shape then, and the fibrosis hadn’t taken its toll yet. Dad commented at one point, “Man, the TV doesn’t do this place justice.” He couldn’t believe the course’s elevations. Augusta National’s beauty captured him, sending him back to his days of tending to his orchids on the side of the house.

Right in his wheelhouse.

No doubt, Dad walked off the course that day thinking he’d never see the place again, much less ever have an opportunity to play the course. Yet now I found myself, perched on the brink of stepping inside the ropes to play Augusta National, and privy to doing so with my father, my college roommate, and the golfer hailed as the best to ever play the game. How would I handle the treacherous greens? Amen Corner? I wanted morning to arrive. I wanted to tee off. I wanted to putt on the immaculate greens. I just didn’t want the night to end.

White Fang would be picking up the check.

Had that magical putter not brought comfort to Nicklaus for a fleeting moment during his storied career, my Augusta experience would never have come to fruition.