xii
WE HAD A PLEASANT round again the next day. I soon realized that Hogan’s assessment of Seminole was accurate. Once again, I was forced to use every club in my bag. And because of the unpredictable ocean breeze, virtually every hole played differently from the day before.
I noticed it especially on the thirteenth hole, a par three of about 175 yards. The hole played straight toward the water from the tee, and Ross had set the green atop the prominent dune ridge that shielded the ocean from view until you walked up onto the putting surface. The day before, with the wind blowing in from the sea, I had to nuke a four-iron to reach the front of the green. Now, with the wind quartering from behind my right shoulder, I nearly sailed my tee shot over the green onto the beach on the other side of the dune with just an eight-iron.
I found myself continually bewildered by the wind direction at Seminole. At one point, I turned to Stewart in frustration. “Is it always this crazy out here?”
He just laughed. “No two rounds are the same here, Bobby. It’s that way with most courses that are hard by the sea. Wait’ll you play the British Open on one of the true links courses over there.”
That remark stopped me cold. “You think we’re gonna play in the British Open?”
He nodded. “We’ll get there one day soon, don’t worry. You’ve got what it takes.” He paused and looked off in the distance. “And I’m dying to get back and see it all again.”
“You’ve been there?”
He spoke quietly, as one would during a church service. “Yes, I have.”
“But when…”
“A long, long time ago.” Suddenly, he shook his head, as if to force himself out of his reverie. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Bobby. It’s a goal, not yet a reality. It’s another reason to keep working hard.”
He was right, of course. It seemed foolish to worry about the British Open when we hadn’t even qualified for the B.C. Open. Still, Stewart’s idea of playing Seminole to prepare me for the last stage of Q-School had been a good one. I felt as if my game had withstood a real test there and, with my confidence bolstered, was ready for whatever PGA West had to offer.
It took us three days to drive home to Baton Rouge. Although I halfway expected us to drive on to California, we had made enough prize money in recent weeks to afford airline tickets. So we were flying to La Quinta and would arrive three days before the tournament started—plenty of time to get over jet lag and learn the courses as well.
In the interim, I found out what I could about PGA West. I have to admit that I didn’t like much of what I was learning, particularly about the Stadium Course. Apparently, the developer of PGA West challenged Pete Dye to build something bolder, longer, harder, and more penal than anything he had ever done. With someone like Dye, that’s a tall order. But, by all accounts, he outdid himself with the Stadium Course.
Although most purists are critical of the course as “gimmicky,” few will argue that it is as difficult as any course in the country. That assessment is certainly shared by virtually all of the touring professionals who’ve played there.
After I finished reading the materials I had collected about the course, I moaned to Stewart that PGA West didn’t sound like much fun. Of course, he quickly reminded me that everyone would be playing the same eighteen holes with the same hole locations, so it shouldn’t matter whether the course was hard or easy.
It was such a typical comment. Stewart never tolerated any kind of negative thinking. As he challenged me, “Name one time where thinking that way has helped you.” And, of course, I couldn’t.
Once we arrived, I was glad that we had allowed ourselves a couple of extra days. For one thing, the atmosphere at the final stage of Q-School was even more tense than the earlier stages. Everyone knew they were close to getting a Tour card now—so close, as the saying goes, they could taste it. I’d never seen so many uptight golfers in my life. A guy with a Prozac concession in the locker room could have put his kids through college on this tournament alone.
And the players were much more recognizable this time. Over half the field consisted of guys who had played the Tour before. Many of them had even won events there, some more than once. Add to that the prominent can’t-miss amateurs in the field who were coming out, and it was obvious that the level of competition had risen considerably.
I needed to become accustomed to the somber environment and get past being in awe of the players I had seen on television and read about in the golf magazines. As Stewart reminded me, they were after the same prize we were.
The practice rounds went well and gave no hint of the problems that lay ahead. Neither did my first two rounds, which I played with a friend from the Nationwide Tour named Olen Corbello and a former Tour player by the name of Pete Pauley. I shot 68–70 on the Nicklaus and Dye courses, respectively, and was on the first page of the leaderboard.
I started having problems in the third round, which was also on the Dye Stadium Course, when I three-putted the fourth hole. For some reason, I became rattled, which undoubtedly had something to do with my tree-putting the next hole as well. Now I was really hot, not to mention panicking at the thought of my game deserting me.
Stewart could tell that I had lost my composure. That was never a good thing, especially on a course with more booby traps than the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As we stood on the sixth tee, he leaned over and whispered a single word: “Steady.”
It didn’t do any good. I had lost the new life composure that Stewart and I had been cultivating ever since he drove me away from the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail. I knew exactly what was happening, because it was an old, familiar feeling, but I felt helpless to stop it.
I yanked my drive left into deep rough, hacked out with a wedge, and dumped my third shot on the par-four hole into a deep bunker to the left of the green. It took me three more strokes to hole out, giving me a double-bogey six.
I had gone four over in just three holes. My fall from grace had been so fast it made me dizzy. As we walked off the green, Stewart said in his most reassuring voice, “This is your challenge now, Bobby. We both know what is happening. It’s just old habits coming back to haunt you. Stick with the program. Let go.”
I don’t know whether it was the soothing tone of Stewart’s voice or the substance of what he said, but I felt the tension begin to dissolve. It reminded me to think about the relaxed way I had learned to play over the past several months under Stewart’s tutelage. My sense of feel began to return.
I birdied three holes on the way in and managed to salvage what could have been a disastrous round, finishing with a 73. Although I had lost ground to the field, it wasn’t more than I could recover.
Later, Stewart and I talked about what had happened.
“It’s scary,” I moaned. “I really thought I was past all that. It felt like I was possessed.” I laughed at the exaggeration. “Maybe I need an exorcist instead of a caddie.”
Stewart put down the sandwich he was eating. Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he said, “It’s really not that strange when you think about it. You played golf that way for many years, getting mad and throwing clubs, losing your composure and ruining rounds.”
“Yeah, but I thought that was all behind me.”
He shook his head. “Even when you put it behind you, it’s always there somewhere, waiting for you to let your guard down. As time goes on, it happens less and less. Stick with the program, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
As usual, Stewart was right. I shot 68 the next day on the Nicklaus course to climb comfortably back into contention for a Tour card.
We now had two rounds left. The stress of the whole thing was really starting to show on some of the players. As I looked around the putting green on the next-to-last day, it struck me that I’d seen happier faces on pallbearers.
Stewart must have sensed it, too. Rolling a couple of balls back to me, he said quietly, “Some of these fellows act like the penalty for not playing well is lethal injection. Remember this is just a game. You’re supposed to have fun.”
His advice was easy to take. We had come with nothing and could leave no worse. There just wasn’t anything to lose. The thought prompted a smile. The next putt was right in the center of the cup.
It’s a cliché to say that Saturday is moving day in a golf tournament. I wish I could tell you that I went out and had a great round that put me in position to win on Sunday. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
For one thing, none of my approaches on Pete Dye’s dental chair of a golf course seemed to hunt the hole. The ones that did find the putting surface always seemed to be twenty or thirty feet away. And, although I hit some really good putts, none fell. The result was an even-par round of 72.
As Stewart predicted, the pressure of the occasion had driven scores up faster than a bungee cord in recoil. My 72 was good enough to leave me seven places in the standings (and four shots) on the safe side of a Tour card.
As we left the course, I told Stewart, “I can’t believe how bad the scores were today.”
He nodded. “Wait’ll you see what happens tomorrow.” He paused before adding, “That’s why we have such an advantage. We’ll just go out and work the program…”
I finished the sentence for him: “… and the rest will take care of itself.”
“Yes, it will,” he said, obviously pleased at my rote recitation of our mantra.
That night, I thought about the progress I had made with Stewart and marveled at how differently I now acted and felt. I had learned in a psychology class back at LSU how difficult it was for people to change their behavior, so I knew that what had happened to me was not to be taken for granted. Of course, I had to admit it got a whole lot easier after I lost my wife, my friends, my freedom, and what little money I had. I had nothing left to lose.
All that said, I still wasn’t sure I would have known how to change or what to do if Stewart hadn’t come along. It certainly put the next day’s round in perspective. I had already won something much more important than a Tour card.