xxxi

JOE LACAVA WAS grinning as I approached him. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” he said. “When Fred’s back went out, I thought that pretty much washed out our trip. Instead, I’m in the second-to-last group at the Open.”

I gave him a rueful smile. “Well, I’m just glad you were available.”

LaCava could guess from my expression that I was thinking about Stewart. “Whatever happened to your guy?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. He just left. His note said I didn’t need him anymore.”

I could tell from the look on his face that LaCava thought that was an odd sentiment for a caddie. Shaking his head, he said, “I thought you guys were close.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Stewart saved my life as well as my golf game.”

LaCava’s face again registered surprise at my comment, but he said nothing more. Instead, he shouldered my bag, and we headed to the range.

I suspected LaCava probably thought the whole situation was a little nutty, so I didn’t tell him that I had found a second note from Stewart when I opened my locker just before coming out to meet him. In typical fashion, Stewart’s message was fairly cryptic, saying only that I should “trust” myself and “let go” of old baggage. The note concluded by predicting that my life would soon come “full circle” and that old wounds would heal if I let them.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would’ve been distracted by such a thing. But this was no ordinary day. This was the final round of the U.S. Open, and I was in the hunt. It wasn’t a game of bridge, so I couldn’t pass. Golf was the order of the day, and I had no way of knowing if I would ever have a chance like this again. I resolved to figure out Stewart’s weird messages later.

Once Joe and I got to the range, it soon became apparent that my new caddie was a real veteran. He watched me carefully as I went through my bag, taking note of the distance I hit each club and asking what swing thoughts, if any, I liked to play with. He seemed to know what I expected of him, which was to be supportive but not intrusive. I was both pleased and surprised at how quickly we became comfortable with each other.

I was also happy to find that my old irons felt familiar, too, as if I had never laid them aside. Maybe Stewart was right, I thought with a smile. Maybe it really was me instead of the clubs. At any rate, my swing felt relaxed, and shot after shot was solid and straight to the target. It helped, too, that LaCava punctuated each shot with a reassuring and encouraging comment.

“Perfect,” he’d say after a good five-iron.

Or “Great tempo” after I knocked down a sand wedge to a target green eighty-five yards away (which I figured was a helluva compliment considering whom he was used to watching).

After we had finished at the range, we headed for the putting green. On the way, LaCava showed me his yardage book. He had also charted breaks in the greens. We compared his notes with Stewart’s book, which I found in my bag. They were almost identical. It was one more sign that we were a good fit.

While we were working on a series of ten-footers, Hal Sutton and his caddie arrived at the putting green. He looked over and gave me a smile. Referring to our common origin, he said, “Looks like old home week, huh?”

I waved back. Feigning an attempt at humor, I said, “We should at least win low state honors.”

There wasn’t any point in further conversation, and we both got back to business. It seemed like LaCava and I had just begun to roll a few putts when they told us we were due on the first tee.

As we made our way through the crowd, I was reminded that no sport allows more intimate contact between players and fans than tournament golf. LaCava led the way and walked quickly, just as Stewart did. No one attracted more fans than Fred Couples, so he knew better than to dawdle, or we’d be pressed in from all sides.

Once on the first tee, we were given our scorecards, which Sutton and I exchanged. We then showed one another the balls we were playing and compared our markings. When I turned back to my caddie, I noticed that LaCava was going through my bag, counting my clubs.

I smiled at his thoroughness. The rules limited each player to fourteen clubs, and good caddies always checked to make sure some well-meaning factory rep hadn’t dropped a gratuitous wedge or putter in their bags while they were on the range. Also, most of us had heard about the pro whose seven-year-old had left a pint-sized putter in his dad’s golf bag while he was home during a break from competition. By the time the sawed-off club was finally discovered during his first round back on tour, well down in the bag, dad had picked up four penalty strokes.

The first hole at Pebble Beach is a par-four that’s only 380 yards in length. It’s straightaway off the tee and then bends about twenty degrees to the right for the approach. Sutton and I both hit three-woods that found the middle of the fairway, and he was the first to hit his second shot. Like most of the greens at Pebble Beach, the first green is fairly small. For that reason, most players hit their approach to the middle of the green regardless of the hole location, especially under Open conditions when missing on either side means playing your recovery from deep rough. So Sutton dropped an eight-iron onto the center of the green, no more than twenty feet from the hole.

My tee shot had finished only a few yards past Sutton’s and slightly to the right. I was probably only seven or eight yards closer to the middle of the green, but it put me right between my eight-and nine-irons. It wasn’t the kind of decision I wanted to make on the very first hole. I was wondering what club Stewart would recommend when LaCava suggested the nine: “We’d rather be below the hole.” He didn’t say it, but we both knew that getting up and down from behind the green was a tough play. Better short than long.

I hit the nine-iron solidly. The ball finished in the front middle portion of the green, about the same distance as Sutton from the hole. LaCava had begun to prove his worth on just the second shot of the day.

After reaching the green, we determined that Sutton was away. Although he had a different line, LaCava studied Sutton’s putt as well as ours and took note of its speed and break. Although the ball ran by the hole on the high side, my new caddie had learned something. As I squatted to replace my ball in front of its marker, he leaned down and whispered over my shoulder, “Greens’ve dried out a bit; they’re a little faster’n this mornin’. But they’ve grown a little, too, so the grain’s toward the ocean. It’s gonna run to the right. I got it two balls out.”

I nodded, then plumbed the putt myself by holding the putter in front of me and sighting down the shaft at the hole. This supposedly revealed any slope in the line. I found the “plumb-bob” method to be wrong as often as not and rarely relied on it to read the break of a putt. But old habits die hard, and it had been a part of my routine for so long that I did it without thinking, even when I had already decided how the putt would break. I then stepped around to the side of the ball, took two quick practice strokes, and gave the ball a solid start toward the hole.

I still don’t know how the putt stayed out of the cup. I hit it right on the line that Joe and I had read, and it began to take the break just as we figured. However, U.S. Open greens can get crusty and bumpy late in the day, so maybe the ball hit something we didn’t see. Anyway, it caught the high side of the hole and spun out, leaving me a yard or so for par.

I gave Joe a pained look, not so much because we hadn’t made the birdie, but because I didn’t want a three-foot test of my manhood on the very first hole. That’s when his experience showed. He just shrugged and said, “Good stroke.” Then he walked over to look at what remained for our four.

LaCava seemed as confident and businesslike as Stewart as he surveyed the short putt and said, “Straight in.” His nonchalance had an immediate calming effect. I got right down to business, rolled the ball into the center of the hole, and began thinking about my next shot, which was our tee shot on the second hole, while we waited for Sutton to finish. Only one shot mattered, I reminded myself, and that was the next shot I had to play. I could ponder where Stewart had gone later.

Even though it was the most important round of my life, I still can’t recall much about the rest of the front nine that day. None of it was very spectacular, but success in the Open has never required spectacular golf. As Andy North proved in winning in 1978 and 1985, U.S. Open conditions reward the old “fairways-and-greens” kind of golf that can be decidedly unspectacular.

Looking back, I’m amazed that the whole fiasco with Stewart wasn’t more distracting. I suppose some would say I was in a state of denial about Stewart’s disappearance, but I really think I couldn’t deal with that and the U.S. Open at the same time, so subconsciously I just shoved Stewart’s disappearance aside for the time being.

In any event, I now understand why so many guys can play in tournaments even in the midst of family tragedies. Tournament golf absorbs your attention so completely that it affords you a momentary escape until you’re ready to deal with the larger problem.

I think I only missed one green on the first nine holes, when I pulled my tee shot on the par-three fifth hole, but I made a five-footer there for par. Throw in birdies at the third and sixth holes, and we turned the front two under for the day. We were still two down to Duval, who had made two birdies behind us, but we had caught Harrington. Sutton had only one birdie and was now three strokes behind us.

The real story, though, was Tiger Woods. Up to this point, the Open had been a huge disappointment for him, especially since his earlier romp in the 2000 Open had been the main reason the USGA had brought the Open back to Pebble so soon. A combination of sprayed drives and missed putts had left him five shots behind as we began play that Sunday.

We could tell from the roars of the crowd ahead of us, however, that something was going on with him. As we headed to the tenth tee, we got word that Tiger had indeed caught fire, making birdies on four of the first six holes, and that he was looking at another possible birdie at the green up ahead. If my math was right, he was now only one behind me and Harrington and three behind Duval, with a chance to pull even closer.

That wasn’t welcome news. If there was any player in golf I didn’t want hunting the same trophy as me, it was Tiger Woods.

I felt a sinking sensation but only for a moment. Just as quickly I caught myself. Hadn’t Stewart told me time and time again that the only game I could control was my own? Woods was going to do whatever he was going to do. Unless they were going to let me take his ball and hide it from him (which was unlikely), all I could do was play my ball.

As I was addressing my tee shot, a Mach-Two roar at the green up ahead told us that Tiger had made his putt for birdie. Before Stewart’s intervention, something like that would have affected me. This time, though, I backed away, collected my thoughts, and quickly went back to work. If there was ever a time to answer Woods, this was it.

While the time was right, the location could have been a whole lot better. The tenth hole at Pebble Beach is a 446-yard par four that’s the last of four consecutive spectacular (but quite difficult) holes along the Pacific Ocean. From the tenth tee, the player is faced with bunkers on the left and Carmel Bay on the right, and not nearly enough fairway in between. Needless to say, it’s not a shot you look forward to.

As I had each day, I aimed just inside the fairway bunker. The plan was that, if the ball went straight, the worst that could happen was that I’d be playing from the bunker, which had a low enough lip to allow a decent approach shot to the green. If it slid right, I’d be in either light rough or the fairway. In either case, I wasn’t going near the water.

I nailed it. The ball took off straight for the inside edge of the bunker. I don’t know if it caught a ride from an unexpected trade wind or what, but instead of landing at the bunker it cleared the whole thing by a good ten yards. Even the crowd oohed at that one, and they had just seen Woods tee off in the group ahead of us. I looked at LaCava and arched my eyebrows in surprise. He crooked the corner of his mouth into a half smile, half smirk and returned my driver to the bag.

“We won’t have more’n eight-iron from there,” he chirped as we started off down the fairway. Truth is, it turned out to be a nine. To give you an idea of how far we had driven it, we were ahead of Sutton—the game’s purest driver in my opinion—by damned near thirty yards.

Even with a nine-iron, the approach shot at the tenth is scary. The green is small and sits precariously on the edge of a cliff above the beach, like it’s ready to slide down into the ocean the minute the next tremor hits. I wasn’t surprised, therefore, when Sutton put his approach in the left bunker. That was a helluva lot better than losing your ball in the Pacific Ocean on the right.

It was now our turn to play. As if he could sense my apprehension, LaCava spoke with confidence as he handed me my club. “Dead center of the green. Nothing else.”

I’ve hit more than a few nine-irons just as well as I hit this one, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never hit a good one that counted as much. The ball jumped off the club, whizzing as it flew, and headed straight for the middle of the green. It landed almost dead center, and then it kicked right toward the flagstick. When it came to rest, the explosion from the gallery at greenside confirmed that the ball was close to the hole.

“You got game, Chief,” LaCava said with a big grin as he toweled off the nine-iron. He then pulled my 8802 from my bag, handed it to me, and hustled off to retrieve my divot.

Like many Tour caddies, Joe LaCava was in surprisingly good shape. I was no more than twenty yards or so down the fairway before he had caught back up with me. “You know, we should have a straight putt from there; everything breaks to the water.”

I nodded. “I had a putt in the opposite direction on Friday and left it short.”

“Yeah. That’s ’cause you were going up the hill. We’re sliding down it this time. All you’ll have to do is get it started on the line. It’ll get there on its own.”

When we arrived at the green, I noticed for the first time that the gallery’s support for us had swelled. I guess it had been building all along, but I was too engrossed in each shot to pay much attention. The applause and cheers this time, though, were too loud to ignore. It gave me chills, to be honest. Confidence, too. It’s hard not to get pumped up when you’ve got that many people yelling your name in an encouraging way.

It got a whole lot louder when I rolled that twelve-footer right in the mouth of the cup.