xv

PLAYING AT AUGUSTA must have inspired me, because I practiced with a new resolve in the last few weeks leading up to our first tournament of the year. In fact, I became so intense that it worried Stewart.

“Devotion to practice is a good thing unless you get obsessed with the mechanics of the swing,” he warned.

As usual, I had to return his service. “It worked for Hogan, didn’t it?”

I watched him suppress a laugh at my irreverence. “Are we modeling ourselves after Ben Hogan, now?”

“Well,” I began lamely, “not exactly—”

“Good,” he said, breaking in, “because what worked for Hogan will not work for most anyone else. In particular, it will not work for you.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said with his usual pluck, “Hogan put complete trust in his mechanics the moment he stepped onto the first tee. From the first shot until he walked off the eighteenth green, he thought only about where he wanted the ball to go. Only someone with his iron will could have made such a complete transition from the practice tee to the golf course.”

“What makes you think I can’t trust my swing?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I merely said you shouldn’t become obsessed with the mechanical aspects of the swing. We’ve been working on playing by feel. That’s the way for you to play. Haven’t the last couple of months proven that?”

That last question clinched the argument. I knew Stewart was right. So much so, in fact, that I now wonder why I ever argued with him. I guess that’s part of crooked thinking, too: Sometimes I had to be right, even when I knew I was wrong. It was another old habit that never truly died.

After all that had gone before, you’d have thought that it was no longer possible for Stewart to surprise me with anything. Apparently, I was wrong. Just two days before we were to leave for the Hawaiian Open in Honolulu, he took me back to the cow pasture for a practice session. When he pulled my clubs out of the Explorer, I noticed that there was a different set of irons in my bag.

“What’s this?”

“These,” he said with great reverence, “are the finest golf clubs in the world. I saved them until I knew you were ready.”

I had never before heard him endorse any kind of equipment. Yet it was clear from the way he caressed these irons with his hands that he truly believed they were something special.

I took a closer look. They were old and at the same time new, if that makes any sense. I guess what I mean is that they were a classic design, but they were in mint condition, as if they had hardly ever been used. I noticed, too, that they carried no brand name.

I asked the obvious question. “Where’d they come from?”

Stewart continued to look at the clubs with the kind of affection most men reserve for their favorite hunting dog. Finally, he said softly, “They’re a special set, made by one of the greatest clubmakers who ever lived. You’ve never heard of him, but believe me, a golf club made with his hands is a treasure indeed.”

I meant to ask more, but my attention was drawn to the gleaming clubs. Sensing my growing attraction to them, Stewart pulled one out and handed it to me. That’s when I saw that it had a leather grip.

“You don’t see that anymore.”

Stewart appeared momentarily puzzled. Then he brightened. “Oh, you mean the grip? Yeah, I’m afraid few pros know how to wrap them anymore. It’s much faster for them to slip on a rubber grip.” He frowned slightly. “Faster, not better.”

I knew that Arnold Palmer still played with a leather grip on his driver and was known to take it apart and rewrap it mid-round. Of course, Palmer grew up in the back of a pro shop under the tutelage of his father, Deacon, who was a golf professional at a time when most all golf clubs had leather grips. The young Palmer had no doubt learned how to wrap leather grips before he was old enough to drive.

Outside of The King, though, I couldn’t recall seeing anyone else using leather grips these days. Nonetheless, as soon as I placed my hands on one of Stewart’s irons, I knew instantly that’s what I wanted on my clubs from then on. The leather was softer than any rubber grip I’d ever used, and it quickly warmed to my touch. It had a tacky feel, too, that I liked.

I then gave the clubhead a closer look. It was a traditional blade with a solid muscle back extending from heel to toe. In a way, it resembled the old Haig Ultra irons my father had played when I was a kid. But the more I looked, the more I realized the club really reminded me of the irons I had often seen mounted on the walls of various clubs where I’d played. I’m talking about the kind made back in the days when steel shafts were a fairly new thing.

That’s when it hit me. Eying Stewart suspiciously, I said, “How long have you had these things?”

“Long enough to see ’em work magic, Bobby.”

I wasn’t giving up quite so easily this time. “Well, where’d you get ’em?”

Stewart started that bob-and-weave that was so familiar to me. He was the Muhammad Ali of conversation, always staying just out of reach. “I told you. They were made by an old clubmaker.”

“Who was he?”

“You’ve never heard of him. Angus McCreedy was his name.”

I had gotten a name, but Stewart was right; it didn’t mean a thing to me. Like an old plow mule, though, I continued to drive ahead. “Did he make them for you?”

Stewart appeared to frown ever so slightly. “You might say that.”

“Did you ever win anything with them?”

The hint of displeasure I had observed moments before immediately disappeared from Stewart’s face. Smiling, he said, “I had some very good times with these clubs.”

“Like what?”

His smile broadened. “Oh, some very nice things came my way, Bobby.” Then, suddenly, the spell was gone. Straightening up, he said, “Instead of talking about these clubs, why don’t you hit them?”

He then set my bag next to a pile of Titleists that were nearby. Starting with the wedge, I hit several shots with each club.

The results were remarkable. I couldn’t miss. The irons were a little heavier than anything I could remember playing. The result was that I could feel the clubhead throughout the swing. In fact, every club felt as if it had been custom made for me.

“What’s the shaft flex on these things?”

Stewart rolled his eyes. “Now, don’t be going high tech on me. I hear players on the range nowadays talking about swing weights and flex points, and not one of them understands what he’s saying.”

“A lot of people think it makes a difference,” I countered.

He shook his head in mock disgust. “All that matters is how the club feels in your hands when you swing it. If it feels good and the ball goes where you want it to go, why would you care about anything else?”

I knew what he was trying to tell me. Stewart was a throwback to an earlier time—a time that existed before he was born. It was a time when the great players, who had names like Snead, Hogan, Nelson, and Guldahl, learned the game in the caddie yard, not from some swing guru armed with a video camera. They believed in themselves, not their equipment. As Stewart explained to me once, a feel player like Byron Nelson instinctively knew that his five-iron on one day was four yards shorter than usual, just based on his timing. He sensed it and adjusted his game accordingly.

While I put up a good fight, I knew that Stewart was right, as usual. In the end, I really didn’t care about the swing weight of Stewart’s mysterious irons. All I knew was that I could knock the snot out of the ball with ’em, and that was good enough for me.