xxix

I BECAME MORE and more comfortable with the golf course over the next two practice rounds. I guess I was becoming more and more comfortable with Bobby Reeves, too, because I seemed to have rediscovered my rhythm and tempo. And, of course, as my confidence grew, I found it easier to trust my ability and let the game come to me.

The results were evident: I had a 68 and 67 on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was pretty salty golf by anyone’s standards, even for a practice round. After all, I told myself, this wasn’t some two-dollar Nassau back home; we were at Pebble Beach playing for the national championship of American golf.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but Stewart had become very quiet. Other than offering yardage and reading putts, he had little to say on the course. Not that I minded; it seemed like we didn’t need to talk much in order to communicate. Besides, I just assumed that he, like me, was losing himself in the experience. I certainly had no inkling of what really was on his mind.

My playing companions for the first two rounds would be Notah Begay III and Billy Mayfair, two established Tour players. I wasn’t sure I understood how the USGA determined which players to put together for the first two rounds. For one thing, they called it “pairings,” but we played in threesomes, not pairs, on Thursday and Friday. Leaving aside that grammatical error, it was clear there was some kind of pecking order. Tour players tended to be grouped together, and those who had won major championships generally played together as well. Again, this was something over which I had no control, so I paid little attention to it other than to double-check my starting time. As it turned out, the schedule called for us to play in the morning on Thursday and the afternoon on Friday.

We stuck with our usual preround routine on Thursday morning and finished up on the putting green with ten minutes to spare. As we made our way to the first tee, I felt surprisingly calm. Even hearing Ron Read, the USGA starter, announce my name and hometown to the gallery didn’t seem to faze me. I guess I finally did feel, as Stewart said, that I belonged where I was. I certainly didn’t have the fear of failure that the U.S. Open usually inspires among even the best players. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean to sound arrogant. I suppose I just felt that my game was as good as it had ever been and that whatever happened at that point would be for the best.

And that’s pretty much the way the first round went. We finished the day with a 71, even par. It was nothing spectacular but better than most of the field. The best round of the day was a 66 by Sergio Garcia. There were no more than twenty scores better than mine. By any measure, it had been a good day.

That night at dinner, Stewart pointedly refused to take any credit for our successful start. Whenever I brought up a good read he had made on a putt or his club selection on a particular hole, he was quick to remind me that I had already read the line or that my hand was already on the club he recommended.

Finally, he looked squarely at me and said, “Bobby, it’s you, not me. Don’t you get it? You don’t need me like you used to. I know you’re grateful and give me a lot of credit for what you’ve achieved, but the truth is, I’ve never been the reason for your success. The only thing I’ve done is try and show you how to reach your potential.”

I started to protest. After all, this was the guy who pulled me out of jail when I was at rock bottom and reconstructed my game. He chose to become my best friend after I had run off every friend I ever had, including my wife. I wanted to tell him that I would never forget those things no matter where we went from here.

But Stewart held up his hand to hush me before I spoke. “I appreciate your feelings for me. But you’ve got to give yourself credit, too. Don’t ever, ever give up on yourself again. You must promise me that.”

I nodded, a little uncertainly. My friend was being entirely too solemn for my taste. He must have sensed it as well, because he suddenly stood up and began to clear the table.

After we were done, we talked awhile about the next day’s round. Stewart reminded me that playing in the afternoon presented different challenges at Pebble Beach, especially in an Open. Even though most players wore so-called spikeless shoes, there would be a large number of spike marks on the greens from the morning traffic. Under the Rules of Golf, we could repair any pitch marks made by balls landing on the green, but we were not allowed to repair spike marks. As usual, Stewart reminded me to check with another player before fixing any irregularity in the green to avoid controversy. Beyond that, he also counseled me to accept that we might miss a putt or two because of the spike marks. As he put it, “It’s just part of the game, so don’t let it upset you.”

We also were more likely to encounter bad weather in the afternoon, either in the form of wind and rain or even fog. Again, Stewart preached about the importance of accepting things over which we had no control. “We’ve got towels and rain gear,” he reminded me.

I listened patiently through it all, even though I had heard the same spiel from him at virtually every tournament. Stewart’s attention to detail never wavered. Whenever I tried to cut him short, he always said it cost nothing extra to be reminded of these things, no matter how obvious I thought they were. He called it our preflight checklist.

Our late-afternoon starting time meant that I could sleep late and then spend most of the day following the championship on television. I found that I learned a lot by watching other players play the course ahead of me, particularly about the lines of putts. Stewart and I both made notes of what we saw before heading to the course after lunch.

The second round turned out to be one of the strangest I ever played. I started sluggishly, bogeying two of the first six holes, the ones that were supposed to be easy. Then, as we negotiated the tougher part of the course, I caught fire for some reason, making birdies at eight, eleven, twelve, fourteen, and eighteen. The only hiccup I had was a bogey four at seventeen when my tee shot ran through the green into the tall rough. It all came out to a sixty-eight, which at least meant I had made the cut in my first U.S. Open.

Since we were one of the last groups to finish, I didn’t have to wait long to find out that I had done a whole lot better than just make the cut. According to the Unisys “real time” scoring monitor in the locker room, I was in sixth place, tied with Steve Stricker. The leaderboard showed that I was in pretty heady company:

There were only nine players in the U.S. Open who were under par after two rounds, and I was one of them. Not bad when you consider that there were 156 players in the field to begin with. When the cut was made at the low 60 and ties, we were down to 63 players for the weekend.

According to the pairings, I would be playing with Steve Pate on Saturday. Although I would have preferred to be paired with my hero, Hal Sutton, Pate’s score was turned in before Sutton’s and under the rules that put him with me. Not that I minded terribly; I was happy to get a chance to play with the guy known affectionately on Tour as “Volcano.”

By his own admission, there was very little that was pretty about Steve Pate’s golf game. Certainly, his swing was never mentioned when the subject of classic golf swings came up in conversation. And he had steered clear of the exercise craze that had swept the Tour when guys like Tiger Woods and David Duval began chiseling their bodies to gain strength and endurance. (As Fuzzy Zoeller quipped, you knew things had really gotten out of hand when Craig Stadler started dieting and working out.) In contrast to the Stairmaster crowd, Pate was unabashedly proud of his beer gut.

When it came to pure nerve and determination, however, there wasn’t a better-conditioned player than Steve Pate. He had survived a number of injuries from car wrecks and freak accidents to scratch and claw his way back to the top of the game more than once. I figured I would learn something just being around the guy for eighteen holes.

It turned out to be quite an experience. Pate was entertaining to watch. He took turns berating himself and then laughing at shots that didn’t turn out as planned. He was careful, though, not to distract me. I quickly became very comfortable with the guy.

True to his reputation, Pate scrambled around the course and kept his ball in play even though some of his shots weren’t very pretty. It reminded me that golf ain’t platform diving, meaning you don’t get points for form. When the smoke cleared, Pate had tacked a 69 onto his earlier rounds of 71 and 70 and was three under for the championship after fifty-four holes.

To my surprise, I did him one better by carding a 68 that could have been lower. I hit fourteen greens—which is a lot—but recorded only four birdies. Fortunately, I caught bunkers rather than rough on two of the four holes where I missed the green, which made it much easier to get up and down for pars. On the two holes where I missed the fairway badly enough to catch the deep rough, I was lucky to escape with only one bogey, making a twelve-footer to save par on one of the two holes.

I made a mental note that Pate’s experience showed how much more I had to learn about scoring. If we had swapped tee shots and approaches to the greens, he’d have shot 65 with my ball, and I would’ve shot 73 or 74 with his. I still had a lot to learn about managing my way around the course.

Still, my 68 had moved me up the leaderboard, which now read:

I finally got my wish: I would be playing the final round in the second-to-last group, paired with Hal Sutton, my hero from Shreveport.

This was perfect, I thought. Not only was Sutton a fellow Louisianian (that don’t exactly roll off your tongue, does it?), but in my opinion he was one of the pure ball strikers on Tour. No one kept the club square to the target line through the hitting area as long as he did. Stewart and I were both going to enjoy watching him.

That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t seen Stewart since right after we walked off the eighteenth green. Usually, he waited outside the scoring tent for me so that we could walk back to our living quarters together. But he wasn’t there when I came out after signing for my 68.

This was odd, I thought. Here I am, two shots out of the lead after three rounds of the U.S. Open, and my caddie is off somewhere instead of reliving the day’s events with me. Still, it wasn’t the first time I had lost track of Stewart, so I wasn’t immediately concerned. Besides, all I had to do was walk over to our bungalow. He’d turn up there sooner or later.

In the meantime, I was wanted in the press tent. When I got there, they were just finishing with Tiger Woods. As I settled into my chair, I prepared myself for the usual questions about what shots I hit where. The first few questions were exactly that kind, and I gave the same answers that the press had heard hundreds of times before.

I was stunned, however, when Dave Lagarde of the New Orleans Times-Picayune asked me about my time in jail for theft. The whole press room immediately got quiet.

I could feel Stewart’s influence working on me, because I didn’t get mad. I guess I knew that, if this had been the Nationwide Tour, the question would never have been asked. But this was the U.S. Open, by God, and I was on the leaderboard. Where I had been in the past and what I had done were suddenly newsworthy.

So I knew that it was a legitimate question to ask. Besides that, I knew Lagarde well. He was a solid guy who obviously had been tipped off by his sources back in Louisiana about my run-in with Boo. He had to pursue it.

I slowly smiled. Looking at him directly, I said, “I certainly hope I’ve learned something from the experience.” I took a sip of water. “If nothing else, it’s made me appreciate where I am now. It was a bad situation, and I’m grateful that we were able to work it out to everyone’s satisfaction. I’ve been given a second chance, and I don’t intend to waste it.”

I guess Lagarde felt sorry for me, because he let me off without any more questions. I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it, though. I figured Golfweek would send someone down to Baton Rouge to get the ugly details. Fortunately, because of my “DA’s probation,” all they’d find was a record of the charge, with no disposition.

I got up and left the pressroom as quickly as I could.