Round two. We drove in darkness again for an 8:40 tee time this morning. While Jack was on the range, I spent some time helping one young man change the spikes on his shoes. At age thirty, after chasing the dream for nine years, he is under pressure now to prove it for his sponsor, who called him last night wondering how he managed to post an 80 in round one. “Hit my drive into the water on number 4,” he recounted grimly. He was teeing off just before us. The whole time we worked on his shoes I kept wondering why it was taking us so long. Then I looked down and saw that his hands were shaking badly.
There is pressure in this game, to be sure, pressure in every variation. But Jack looked very calm as he made his way up onto the 1st tee and hammered his drive 347 yards up the left side into perfect position to hit a high cut over the trees on the left and land the par-5 in two. An eagle putt of forty-seven feet. Not a strong lag putt, but the birdie putt was solid, and the ball dropped into the cup and then danced out. A par. I expected him to be disgusted with himself again, but for some reason he was smiling when he handed me his putter. “Did you see that?” he asked.
“A three-putt?” I said sarcastically.
“No, man, I ripped my pants, bending over to read the first putt.” The only black trousers he’s ever owned, the ones his mother bought him during his sophomore season in high school.
“If I wasn’t so damned broke, I’d buy you another pair,” I told him.
“No problem,” he said.
As we headed to the 2nd tee, I said, “I mean that, you know? I’d love to be able to buy you a new pair of trousers.”
“Why trousers?” he asked. “What happened to pants?”
“In Scotland pants are underpants.”
“Hey, man, you’re not in Scotland anymore. Remember?”
I apologized, then watched him hit his second drive just like the first one. Yesterday he hit every fairway but one from the tees. It has been this way for the last six tournaments. Now we were left with just 85 yards to the green on this par-4. I can’t explain how he could have airmailed the green with his wedge. But he did. And then it was another ruinous wedge left short in the Bermuda rough, and another wedge bladed across the green and two putts. “You can’t make double bogeys when you’re 80 yards from the middle of the green,” he said, disgusted now, as he should have been.
It was funny, though, the feeling that came over me. I know in the early tournaments here on the tour, Jack battled hard but could not recover from this kind of early adversity, but today for some reason I never doubted that he would come back. It slipped away for a while. He made two bogeys in the next three holes, but he never slumped his shoulders or lowered his head. Instead, after being four over after those first five holes, he hit shot after shot and made four birdies and seven pars in the final thirteen holes to finish at two over for the day. It was quite a run. On the day, he had five eagle putts on all five of the par-5s and another on the 302-yard par-4, which he drove to seventeen feet from the hole with a high fade that landed delicately. The one shot I will remember is the 257-yard hybrid he hit into the par-5 number 12, starting the ball out over the water on the left with a cut that brought it back to a soft landing thirty-seven feet from the hole. We couldn’t be sure the ball was on the green until we climbed up over the hills and saw it there. There was something different about Jack’s demeanor today, and I didn’t realize what it was until I was handing him his putter as we walked toward the 18th green.
“It must be about noon,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know what hole we’re on.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said as he looked around for a moment as if he were seeing the place for the first time.
“This is the 18th. You have a four-foot putt for birdie.”
I was astonished really. He didn’t say anything. He took his putter from me, walked onto the green, knelt down behind his ball for a moment to check the line, then knocked it into the hole. While I watched, I remembered the feeling I’d had when he was four over par in this match after the 5th hole, the feeling that he was not worried, that he knew this time he would come back, that the remaining holes would be opportunities to win back strokes. Then I realized that he had been concentrating today in a way he never had before. He had reached the deep down world. I wonder if the time he has spent playing practice rounds with Barry has already helped him become a slightly different person on the golf course. More centered and calm. The rough edges smoothed a bit.
When it was over, all he could talk about was the three three-putts and the double bogey. “I gave away five strokes,” he said as we walked to his truck. “Five strokes yesterday and five more today.”
“You fought back,” I said. “You really played well the final thirteen holes.”
“I’m getting tired of fighting back,” he said. “I want to fight to pull ahead.”
“I know,” I said. “You will. Trust me. Before we’re finished here in Texas, you will.”
The rest of what I told him, he had heard me say before. The bit about how this is his first professional tour, and after he had played no competitive golf for three years, I didn’t know if we’d ever make a single cut down here. “Look, Jackie,” I said. “You haven’t caught the great players on this tour, but you’ve played well against the good players, and you’ve beaten a few of them. Now you have some time off before we head into our final three events. Maybe give yourself a little credit. What do you think?”
“I have to work on my short game,” he said. “I have to learn to hit from the rough here.”
“Or land every green in regulation so I’m only handing you a putter instead of a damned wedge,” I said.
“I’m not satisfied,” he said. “I guess I had higher expectations than you, man.”
“That’s okay,” I told him. “That’s good. Keep going.”
I didn’t say anything to him about what one of the fathers had said today out on the course. He was a sweet man who had been following his son on these tours for seven years. He came up to me off the 17th tee and asked me about Jack. “How far does he want to go with this game?” he asked with a melodious Texas drawl.
I told him that this experience was probably just about Jack trying to learn a few things so that someday he could become a good coach. “Man,” he said as he watched Jack climb onto the tee box. “Not many players can do the stuff he does out here. You should tell him to keep going.”
This wasn’t the first time someone on the tour had talked to me about Jack and his future this way. When we said good-bye off the last green and the father told me he hoped that this tour was just the first of many for Jack, I thanked the man and said exactly what I’d heard Jack say before when he was asked. “We’ll see.”
———
We picked up a couple of Walmart steaks to cook for supper and then drove back to the Studio Plus, to the room we’ve shared since late October, which now feels like home to both of us. Jack told me that Barry had offered to practice with him during the break. He was pleased about this. “Have you ever seen a better player?” I asked him.
“Never,” he said. “He’s the real deal.”
“What a great story,” I said. “He has to leave Ireland when he’s eighteen years old because his dream is to become a player and his father doesn’t believe in him. He comes to America by himself and works his way through college as a caddie.”
“I’ll tell you this,” Jack said. “Anyone who puts up money for him now is going to make a lot on their investment. I’m certain of that.”
“If I had the money, I’d sponsor him, and I’d buy you a couple pairs of pants,” I told him. “And I’m going to write to everyone I know. Maybe I can find five guys who will each put up four grand so he can make his run.”
“You should,” he said.
“Maybe I’d go with him as his caddie,” I said.
“Hey, man,” he said. “You thought this was going to be your last run. But it won’t be. You’ll be over there with him if he makes the European Tour.”
“You think so?”
“I know you, man,” he said.