xxvi

WE TOOK SUNDAY off.

It wasn’t my idea. After enjoying my best round in weeks, I was anxious to play again. I guess I was feeling a little left out while reading the scores from the Memorial in the Sunday paper.

“Looks like a horse race over at Muirfield. Duval’s slump may be over; he and Mickelson are tied for the lead. Tiger and Jim Furyk are a shot back, and Kenny Perry’s only one back of them.”

Stewart didn’t seem impressed. Putting down his coffee, he said, “That’s behind us. The only thing that counts is tomorrow.”

“If tomorrow’s so important, why aren’t we playing somewhere today?”

His expression didn’t change. “Your game is coming back. Let it be. Forcing things won’t help.”

“Didn’t Hogan say that everyday you take off means you’re one more day away from getting better?”

Stewart laughed. “If Hogan said half the things they claim he said, he wouldn’t have had time to practice or play.”

I suspected that Stewart was right. I knew that Hogan wasn’t much of a talker. Sam Snead claimed that the only thing the man might say to his playing companions during an entire round was “You’re away.” And, of course, there was the familiar story about Hogan being so absorbed in his own play at the Masters one year that he didn’t even notice when his playing companion, Claude Harmon, aced the par-three twelfth hole.

As usual, Stewart got his way. We spent most of the day just sitting around the hotel pool. There wasn’t much conversation between us, either. If Stewart was planning our strategy for the Open qualifier, he wasn’t letting me in on it. Although I was curious to know what he was thinking, something told me to leave him be. He always seemed to know what was best for my golf and for me as well.

By midafternoon, I couldn’t stand it anymore and went inside to watch the finish of the Memorial on television. Remarkably, Stewart declined to join me, feigning no interest. He was certainly true to his word when he said that only tomorrow mattered.

Watching Duval win the tournament with birdies on the last two holes only got me worked up at the thought of trying to win a place in the Open field. One thing that makes our national championship so special is that it is exactly what its name implies: an “open” competition. Any professional (or scratch amateur) willing to pay the entry fee may enter and compete to win one of the 156 places in the starting field. Although the USGA grants a growing number of exemptions from qualifying to past winners of golf’s major championships and to other players with exceptional records, the majority of the field is filled through a series of rigorous qualifying competitions.

The first stage in the process consists of eighteen-hole local qualifying rounds. The lowest scorers in each of those competitions, held around the country, advance to a second stage, called sectional qualifying. There, the local survivors compete against one another and against established players who have earned exemptions from the first stage through playing accomplishments that are noteworthy but not quite significant enough for a full exemption into the Open itself.

Sectional qualifying is a high-wire act for all involved. If you are one of the few players to survive, you tee it up in the U.S. Open a few days later. If you fail, you wait—literally—until next year to try again.

Like any serious professional player, I was quite familiar with Open qualifying. I had tried to make it on three different occasions and even got past local qualifying once. But you had to play really well over a long period of time to make it through both stages.

As the winner of a PGA Tour event, I was exempt from local qualifying, which was a big advantage. In fact, I was surprised to discover a few days before that I had missed earning a full exemption from all qualifying by only $4,782—the amount of prize money that I needed to finish in the top ten on the Tour’s money list at the time. Those missed cuts in Florida had proved more costly than I realized.

Even so, I had no problem with the idea of playing my way into the Open. The way I looked at it, the name “Open” was supposed to mean something. I knew that there was some controversy over the growing number of exemptions into the national championship that was awarded each year by the USGA’s executive committee. Some critics argued that the list of exemptions was looking more and more like the list of invitees to the Masters and that our Open was in fact becoming closed. To make their point, they often pointed out that 1996 Open Champion Steve Jones (who beat Tom Lehman and Davis Love in a dramatic finish at Oakland Hills) earned his place in the starting field by winning the very last spot available in a sectional qualifier ten days earlier. This was proof positive, they said, that the qualifying process was a meaningful part of identifying our national champion because it demanded exceptional play over a longer period of time and not just during the four days of the championship proper.

There were now over sixty spots in the field awarded through full exemptions, leaving fewer than a hundred to be filled by qualifying competition. But they were there, and I was more hopeful and determined than ever to earn one. My first trip around Scioto had been a good one, and I saw no reason why I couldn’t complete two more loops around the course with equal success. I figured that another couple of 68s would be more than enough to get me in.

The sectional qualifiers are either one- or two-day affairs, depending on the official in charge of the competition. In order to move all of the PGA players along to the next Tour stop, they ran the qualifier at Scioto as a one-day event. That put a premium on endurance. Thanks to Stewart’s fitness program, however, I felt that gave me an edge.

We were due to start at 7:32 A.M. the next morning. We got to the course by 6:30 and were on the range shortly thereafter. I felt good all the way through my bag, which heightened my optimism. But it was on the putting green that Stewart told me something that turned out to be one of the best tips he had ever given me.

I was rolling the first few putts well enough, but Stewart seemed unsatisfied. Walking over to me, he asked quietly, “Bobby, are you much of a baseball fan?”

I looked at him curiously. It seemed to be a strange time to be asking about another sport. “Yeah,” I said, “I’ve always liked the Yankees.”

“I suppose most folks do.” The way he said it sounded a little condescending, as if I pulled for them only because they were winners. The truth was that the Pee-Wee League baseball team I played for as a nine-year-old had been nicknamed the Yankees, and that determined who I would always root for.

He continued. “Do you remember Sandy Koufax?”

“He was a little before my time, but I know that he was the best pitcher in baseball back in the sixties. Played for the Dodgers, right?”

“That’s right,” Stewart said, nodding. “But what you may not know is that, despite having the hottest fastball in the game, Koufax was merely average for the first five years or so that he was in the big leagues, because he lacked control. One day, quite by accident apparently, he took a little off his delivery, throwing at about 80 percent of his full effort. The results were remarkable. Every pitch went exactly where he wanted it, with no loss of speed or movement. He not only achieved total control of his previously wild fastball, but his curve became a devastating pitch as well.”

Stewart paused, either to see if I was still paying attention or for dramatic effect. Apparently satisfied on both counts, he continued, “Suddenly, by holding back a little, he became the most dominant pitcher in the game, able to place every pitch on the edges of the plate, wherever the hitter’s weakest hitting zone might be.”

With that, he was done with his little oration. However, I didn’t have the slightest idea why he had chosen to share this little parable with me in the last few minutes before we were set to tee off.

“Okay,” I said tentatively before bending over another putt.

Stewart was clearly disappointed that I hadn’t gotten the point. “Don’t you understand, Bobby?”

“Understand what?”

“He was pressing. Out of control. Afraid to hold back.” I could tell that my friend was becoming a little exasperated at what he perceived was my denseness.

“What does that have to do with me?”

He rolled his eyes. “He didn’t trust his game, Bobby. He couldn’t let go of his fear. When he finally relaxed, he jumped to an entirely new level.”

He rolled a ball back at me. “It’s the same thing with your putter. Don’t be afraid to miss a putt. Trust your stroke. Play a level below your hardest and maintain control that way. It’ll smooth out your stroke.”

I realized then what he was telling me. I had been pressing. That’s what had pulled me out of my game. Of course, we both knew that was the problem (hell, lately I could feel myself getting tense the minute I walked onto the golf course), but I needed a new way or reason to give up forcing my game.

The story about Koufax was just what I needed to hear. It also made me realize the reason I had played so well two days earlier. The practice round at Scioto had been casual and relaxed, and I had trusted my game. And, of course, that’s when it began to reappear.

I made the next five six-footers. That was all the confirmation I needed as we headed to the first tee. I also recognized that what Stewart told me applied to the entire game. It made no sense to feel frantic about hitting any shot. If I stayed within my game and just allowed the club to release naturally, it would stay on-line and follow my shoulder turn.

It was the first time I had ever played golf using a baseball player as my swing thought. But God, how it worked. Stewart and I cruised around Scioto with a 67 in the morning, followed by a 70 in the afternoon. I missed winning the medal by two shots, but it didn’t matter. I was going to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

That’s right: Pebble Beach. I had refused to allow myself to think much about where the Open was being played, because Pebble Beach was certainly one of my favorite golf courses on the planet. That wasn’t based on personal experience: I had never played there before. But, next to Augusta National, Pebble Beach was perhaps the most publicized course in America.

Between golf magazines and televised tournaments, I had seen enough of the place to be captivated by it from afar. Only now, for the first time, I could personally savor the prospect of walking fairways that overlooked the Pacific Ocean, of playing anything from a six-iron to a sand wedge at the 107-yard seventh hole (depending on how the wind was blowing at the moment), and of trying to stop my guts from seizing up like an overheated car engine while I attempted to steer my tee shot at the eighteenth hole somewhere between the ocean on the left and the white stakes on the right.

It is difficult to describe what gives Pebble Beach such a special place in the affection of so many golf fans. The most obvious attraction, of course, is the incredible beauty of the Pacific Ocean, which serves as the world’s largest water hazard on five of its holes. (During the days when the old Crosby clambake was played there, Arnold Palmer’s tee shot wound up among the rocks along the beach behind the par-three seventeenth hole. He climbed down to play the ball rather than accept a penalty. After several unsuccessful attempts to reach the green, Jimmy Demaret quipped to a national television audience, “What choice does he have? His nearest drop is Honolulu.”)

But there are any number of courses bordering great bodies of water that don’t rank with Pebble Beach. Besides the beauty of the landscape, the course has a great competitive history, having hosted both the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open on multiple occasions, not to mention the PGA Championship and numerous other events. Again, so have other courses. Jack Nicklaus has been quoted as saying that, if he could only play one golf course the rest of his life, it would be Pebble Beach. Yet I’m aware that many consider the inland holes at the course, particularly the stretch from eleven through sixteen, to be pretty ordinary from an architectural point of view.

So what is it that inspires such devotion? In the final analysis, I’m not sure there’s any simple explanation. All I can say is, I loved the place before I ever played it, and when I finally did tee it up there, it certainly returned my affection.