18

TWO HANDS ON THE JUG

IN 1994, THERE WERE THREE WEEKS between the U.S. Open and the British Open. The tour stopped in Hartford (the Canon Hartford Open), Chicago (Motorola Western), and Williamsburg (Anheuser-Busch) between majors. Most players who were going to play in the British played either Hartford or Chicago and skipped Williamsburg, where the weather is usually the hottest it gets all year, not exactly perfect preparation for the weather in Scotland.

In order to try and lure players to Williamsburg, tournament organizers charter two planes on Sunday to get players to flights in New York and Boston so they can be on-site at the British on Monday. That gives them a full day to deal with jet lag and then practice on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Even with that perk, most top players skip Williamsburg and either rest or fly over early to get acclimated to the weather and the time change. Davis Love played Williamsburg in 1994, but knew he probably should not have. “The people here are just so nice, it’s very hard to say no to them,” he said. “And Lexie loves the theme parks.”

Some players were in Williamsburg because they had no intention of making the overseas trips. For American players, the British Open is the most inconvenient tournament of the year. The trip is the longest and the most difficult; there are fewer fully exempt spots available because the tournament spreads its exemptions out among the various tours worldwide; and it comes smack in the middle of the summer at a time when a lot of players figure a break is going to be more valuable than trying to play a different game—links golf means bump-and-run shots along the ground and dealing with wind and rain and cold and not being able to just fire at flags, because the ball doesn’t stop the way it does on American greens—after a long, expensive, exhausting trip.

Curtis Strange, Hale Irwin, Fred Couples, and Scott Hoch were among the fully exempt Americans who said thanks, but no thanks, for different reasons in 1994. Billy Andrade and Jeff Sluman also passed because they would have had to go over a week early to qualify and they decided that was just too much effort. A number of other nonexempt Americans made the same decision.

Some Americans will go to the British Open every year come hell or high water. “You can’t win the damn tournament if you don’t enter it,” Tom Kite said, clearly disgusted with some of his countrymen who no-showed.

Peter Jacobsen, nonexempt from the British for the first time in a number of years, flew over to play qualifying. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said. “There’s no tournament like this one. This is where the whole thing began.”

That was the attitude of most of the top Americans, from Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicklaus to Tom Watson to Fuzzy Zoeller to Tom Kite to younger players like Davis Love and Brad Faxon. If you were a golfer and you had a chance to play in the oldest championship of them all, you played.

“What happens with a lot of guys is they come over here dreading all the inconveniences and end up falling in love with the whole thing,” Watson said. “That’s what happened to me. When I first came over here, I said, ‘This isn’t golf,’ hitting the ball on the ground and watching balls take crazy bounces all over the place. After a few years I realized I was wrong. This is golf. We changed the game, not them.”

There is no atmosphere like that of the British Open. The crowds are more knowledgeable, they come out in droves regardless of the weather, and the history and tradition of the courses the tournament is played on is evident from the first tee to the 18th green. They love golf and golfers at the British Open in a way that is entirely different from Americans. The Brits love stars, no doubt about it, but in the end, they love the game most of all.

That’s why the winner of the Open Championship is introduced simply as “the champion golfer of the year” during the awards ceremony. Nothing more needs to be said.

Of course, like any major championship, the British always produces some kind of pretournament controversy. In 1994, that controversy sprang up even before most of the players had arrived in Scotland.

On the morning of July 7, Tim Finchem called PGA Tour headquarters, the way he always did from the road, to check messages and to see if anyone on his staff needed him for any reason. He was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, en route back from a trip to Los Angeles.

His secretary, Cathie Hurlburt, told him that one staff member had an urgent need to talk to him: John Morris, the vice president of communications. “There’s some kind of story with John Daly,” Hurlburt said.

Finchem groaned. Like everyone else in golf, he knew that Daly was a time bomb that could explode at any minute. He hoped whatever it was that would cause Morris to need him wasn’t that big a deal. And yet he knew that Morris was about as low key as anyone who worked for him and that if this issue was a minor one, he would wait until Finchem got back to Ponte Vedra to talk to him about it.

This couldn’t wait. Morris got on the phone and began reading Finchem a story that had moved on the wire that morning. It quoted from a story in a British tabloid, the Sun. According to the Sun, Daly, who was playing in the Scottish Open, had claimed a few days earlier that “plenty of guys on the PGA Tour do drugs and all sorts of crazy things.” He had added, “I’m not the only one who has had substance-abuse problems out here by any means.” He went on to say that he favored drug testing on tour, especially since “I know I’m one of the people who would test clean.”

There was more, but Finchem had heard enough. Very few things shake him, but he knew as soon as Morris began reading that he—and the tour—had a problem. Maybe this was another case of a British tabloid turning an innocuous quote into a headline. Maybe someone had put words in Daly’s mouth. That was the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario was simple: Daly had been quoted accurately. In that case, Finchem had the first crisis of his term as commissioner on his hands.

Before he passed judgment on that, he needed more information. He asked Morris to track down a copy of the Sun story and gather any other clips or stories that came across the wire. He also told him to contact Marty Caffey and Wes Seeley, the on-site media officials at the Anheuser-Busch Classic, which was starting that day in Williamsburg, and have them monitor player response to the story once it started making the rounds. He knew there was going to be a lot of angry reaction to Daly’s comments. He thought briefly about going to Williamsburg, then decided against it. He didn’t want to make the story any bigger than it was going to be.

By that afternoon, he knew he was dealing with the worst-case scenario. Not only was the story accurate, the quotes were on tape. Finchem asked Bill Calfee and Sid Wilson, his player relations liaisons, to contact Daly or his people and tell them Finchem wanted to meet with him as soon as he arrived at Turnberry the next week for the British Open. He also told Morris to tell the media he would have no comment on the matter until he met with Daly.

Finchem’s instinct about the players being angry was (surprise) correct. On Saturday afternoon, during ESPN’s telecast of the third round of the Anheuser-Busch, Curtis Strange came up to the booth to sit in with Jim Kelly and Gary Koch. Strange had known all week that he was going to spend some time doing TV. Since he lived about a mile from the clubhouse at the tournament site, Kingsmill Plantation, and had a contract with the development, he was the unofficial host of the tournament.

Strange was furious when he heard what Daly had said. But he didn’t want to go on TV and make some half-cocked remark that wouldn’t be reflective of how all the players felt. So, before he played Saturday morning, he went up and down the practice tee, asking other players what they thought. Their reaction was unanimous: if he really said that, he’s got some serious explaining to do.

Of all the major sports, golf is the one least likely to have a drug problem for several reasons. Like tennis, it is an individual sport, meaning there is almost no way to cover up a bad performance or claim an injury and still make a living. In fact, the notion that you have to play to get paid is even stronger in golf because there are no appearance fees on the U.S. tour that can guarantee a drug-troubled star income, and you have to play well for at least thirty-six holes every week to make any money at all.

Beyond that, golfers are older, as a group, than other athletes. Most are married and have children and many of them bring their families on the road with them, especially during the summer months. What’s more, golf is the only sport in the world that asks the athletes to report to work at 7 o’clock in the morning at least once a week, sometimes as many as three days a week. It is tough to be a regular partyer and a regular winner in golf.

Are there golfers who have tried drugs, some who have used them at various times? Of course. Are there some golfers who drink too much? Of course. Daly was one example of the latter. Have there been players who have experimented with performance-enhancing drugs (like beta-blockers) over the years? Certainly. Still, it is not going out on a limb to say that fewer golfers use drugs than most segments of society. They simply can’t afford to.

But as soon as Daly raised the specter of drug use, anyone who said that drugs weren’t a problem on tour was going to be judged by many as either covering up or being an apologist. Because Daly was such a big name and, ironically, because he had experience with substance abuse, his words would carry weight with some people. That’s what upset the players. They knew that some people were going to believe Daly no matter what. He had given the tour a black eye, and putting makeup on it wasn’t going to make the swelling go down quickly.

By the time Strange joined Kelly and Koch, he knew what he wanted to say. Kelly pulled no punches, raising the Daly issue right away. “Hi, Jim, nice to see you too,” Strange said, laughing. Then he answered the question: “I’ve talked to a lot of the guys about this today,” he said, “and I think they all feel about the same way I do, which is that they wish John Daly would crawl back under that rock he came out from.” He paused. “What’s really disturbing about this is that by making comments like this, John is capable of tearing down in a few minutes what Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer have worked thirty-five years to build, and that’s the image people have of the PGA Tour. I don’t think that’s fair.”

It was the line about crawling out from under a rock that received the widest play in the media during the days and weeks that followed. But the important point was the second one: players like Palmer and Nicklaus and Tom Watson (and dozens of others) had spent years building the image of golfers as gentlemen and sportsmen and gracious winners and losers.

It may be corny to think like that, but part of golf’s magic is the notion that the players respect one another. In 1991, Watson and Nicklaus were paired together for the second round at the Masters. Watson shot 68 that day to lead the tournament. As he and Nicklaus walked up the 18th fairway, the huge gallery was standing and clapping for both men. Always a brisk walker, Watson paused as he got near the green to wait for Nicklaus.

Nicklaus stopped. “You go first,” he said.

“We’ll go together.”

“You’re the one leading the golf tournament.”

“You’re Jack Nicklaus.”

They actually stood there for a moment, laughing, each trying to push the other forward. Finally, they walked onto the green together, and if you didn’t get chills you were in the wrong place.

That was the kind of feeling golfers had for one another and the kind of scene golf fans thought made the game special. Now John Daly had said they were all on drugs. Except for him of course.

Davis Love, one of the least confrontational people on the tour, shook his head when he thought about what Daly might face when he reached Turnberry the next week. “I know a lot of guys have a lot of questions,” he said, “and he better be ready with some answers.”

It was Greg Norman who asked the first question. “What the hell could you have been thinking?”

He was standing on the putting green behind the new Japanese-built clubhouse at Turnberry. It was Monday afternoon and players were just starting to trickle in to begin preparing for the British Open. Norman had been in Europe for almost a week and had read all the stories about Daly’s comments. When he walked onto the putting green, there was Daly. Norman walked over to Daly and asked the question.

Daly looked up from what he was doing, surprised, no doubt, by the rancor in Norman’s voice. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, how could you say something like that, how could you make a blanket accusation like that? What in the world were you thinking about?”

Daly’s round features clouded over. “Look, I’m sick and tired of everyone making me the bad guy on tour. I’m tired of people acting as if I’m the only one who has ever done anything wrong. So don’t give me a hard time, I don’t want to hear it.”

It might have gotten more heated, but Daly turned around and left as soon as he was finished. Norman was tempted to follow him into the locker room but thought better of it. “It wasn’t worth wasting my time,” he said later. “And I didn’t want to go in there and do something I might regret.

“I was livid with the guy, absolutely livid. How dare he say that any of us are on drugs. I’m not the one who beat up my wife; I’m not the one who is an alcoholic; I’m not the one who tears up rooms. It was just inexcusable.”

Norman was especially sensitive to the drug issue because there had been wild rumors during his slump that he had a drug problem. One afternoon, when he picked up his then five-year-old son Gregory at school, the boy was crying when he got into the car. He had heard from other kids at school that his father was on drugs.

“Obviously, they got it from their parents,” Norman said. “That’s the part of being famous that’s hard. If someone says something about you, okay, that’s tough and you don’t like it, but you develop a shell after a while. But when your kids start getting it, that’s just not fair.

“People who don’t know you read something in the paper, they believe it. The next thing you know it’s become the gospel truth.”

The story about the Norman-Daly confrontation spread through the locker room quickly. The line that kept being repeated was “I’m tired of everyone making me the bad guy on tour.” In truth, no one had been given more chances to be the good guy than Daly.

“If I had done the things he’s done, I’d have been ostracized so fast it would have been ridiculous,” Norman said. “Almost anyone would have been. Then he goes around acting like people are picking on him.”

That was how Norman began his defense of golf’s oldest title.

There is no golf tournament in the world like the Open Championship, as it is called everywhere but in the United States. The Men of the Masters love to talk about all their traditions, but the Open was sixty-five years old—older than the Masters is now—when the first Masters was played in 1935. The Open is played on links golf courses, so-called because they are slices of land that link the land to the sea—the kind where the game was first played. And, while a lot of Americans like to point out that a links course without wind and rain will often yield scores that remind people of Palm Springs, the simple fact is that the weather is as much a part of a links golf course as the greens, the flags, and the cups.

Then there are the fans. As Tom Watson, who is as beloved in Scotland as anyone since Old Tom Morris (who won the championship in 1861, 1862, 1864, and 1867), points out, golf in the British Isles is a lot like baseball is in the U.S. Even those who don’t play the game understand the game. They know that a shot from 140 yards one day that lands 20 feet from the flag is a mediocre shot; a shot from the same place to the same place the next day can be a brilliant one.

They are partisan and they will whoop it up with the best of them when one of their own is in contention, but they appreciate great play from anyone. You will never hear anything resembling a “USA” chant at an Open Championship.

Turnberry had been part of the seven-course Open rota only since 1977. It had replaced Carnoustie, generally considered the most difficult of the Scottish courses, for the simple reason that the tournament had become too big for Carnoustie. Getting several thousand people in and out of the little town each day was virtually impossible although new roads and hotels were being built for a planned return there in 1999.

Of course getting to Turnberry wasn’t exactly easy. There were two roads that led to the golf course, both of the two-lane variety, and if you weren’t fortunate enough to be paying £215 a night (about $340) for a room in the Turnberry Hotel, heavy traffic was going to be part of your day throughout Open week.

There are four Scottish courses on the Open rota: St. Andrews is all about tradition and the birth of the game; Muirfield is the most elegant of the courses and probably the most classic test of golf; Royal Troon (which is about twenty miles from Turnberry) is tradition and has the Postage Stamp, the tiny par-three that is the second most famous hole (the Road Hole at St. Andrews being number one) in Scotland.

And then there is Turnberry, which is pure aesthetics. A Japanese corporation bought the golf course and the hotel several years ago and has poured several million dollars into redesigning the hotel and into building a new clubhouse. The golf course itself goes out toward the water for eight holes, hugs the shoreline for three, then works its way back inland. From the fourth tee, Ailsa Craig, the famous bird sanctuary that looks like a giant rock jutting out of the Firth of Clyde, seems so close on a clear day you would swear you could reach out and touch it.

The ninth tee is on a tiny promontory of land completely surrounded by water, much like the 18th tee at Pebble Beach. The famous yellow-and-white lighthouse that is Turnberry’s symbol is straight ahead and slightly to your left from the tee with the fairway to the right. Hook your tee shot and the rocks in front of the lighthouse or the beach will be the landing area for your ball.

The 9th, 10th, and 11th all run along the water in much the same way eight, nine, and ten hug the water at Pebble Beach. At Pebble, the water is on your right, at Turnberry your left. Turnberry turns inland at 12 and as you get closer to the clubhouse, the huge luxury hotel looms above you.

The two British Opens that had been played at Turnberry had produced great drama. In 1977, Nicklaus and Watson staged their historic duel over the last thirty-six holes, Watson’s 65–65 edging Nicklaus’s 65–66. It was that tournament that marked Watson for golfing greatness and made him forever a part of Scottish lore.

The weather that year was shockingly mild, warm, and dry, especially on the weekend. Nine years later, on a day when the famous winds known as the Turnberry Giant swept in from the Firth of Clyde, Norman shot a stupefying 63 on the second day and took control of the tournament en route to his first victory in a major.

In 1994, the Giant made an appearance on the weekend prior to the tournament and the weather stayed wet, drab, and windy through Tuesday. That sort of weather was probably the perfect setting for Finchem’s meeting with Daly. By now, Daly knew he was not the most popular guy in the locker room. No one else had confronted him the way Norman had, but the whispers were around.

In truth, Daly had sensed trouble even before his confrontation with Norman. On Saturday, before playing his last round at the Scottish Open, he had called Peter Jacobsen and asked him to come to his post-round press conference that afternoon. He had already heard that Finchem wanted to meet with him and he knew he was making headlines all over Great Britain. It was ironic that Daly would call Jacobsen looking for support, since it was at Jacobsen’s charity tournament the year before that he had launched his shot over the heads of several thousand fans while Jacobsen watched in horror.

“He was hurting when he called,” said Jacobsen, one of the most extroverted players on tour. “I could tell he was looking for support and I was one of the few Americans over for the Scottish. I know John’s not a bad guy, and I like to think I’m not the kind of person who carries a grudge. So I went.”

Daly didn’t deny what he had said during that press conference—the fact that the interview was on tape would have made it difficult—but he did start to backpedal a little, saying he wasn’t trying to get anyone in trouble and that he was just attempting to say he wasn’t the first or last guy to have a drug or alcohol problem on the tour.

Daly said essentially the same thing to Finchem during their ninety-minute meeting in the Turnberry clubhouse. He was almost apologetic, knowing full well that Finchem could easily suspend him again. Finchem didn’t want to suspend Daly. He knew what his presence meant to sponsors and to the tour in general. By the next day, it was apparent that he had counseled Daly to fall back on the old “I was quoted out of context” cop-out when the subject came up and to say he was sorry he had said the things he had said and—most important—that he had no evidence of drug use on the PGA Tour.

Finchem was prepared to listen if Daly had evidence that there was drug use on tour, but he suspected he didn’t. He had already started an informal investigation, asking anyone and everyone connected with the tour if they thought there was a drug problem or even the perception of a drug problem. If so, he might consider drug testing. When he was finished talking to people, Finchem was convinced that there was no need to drug test or even send out a memo to the players—which he had considered—on the subject of drugs.

His official comment on the meeting with Daly was no comment. He would leave the talking to Daly—and hope Daly got his lines right.

Daly followed Finchem’s “advice” (read, instructions) perfectly. On Thursday, he did several lengthy interviews with television and then with the print media. He recited his lines and, for good measure, he added something that Jacobsen had brought up to him. “Anytime anyone asks you about anything, you should give them the same answer,” he told Daly. “Tell them you don’t have time to think about anything except playing good golf and staying sober.”

Sure enough, Daly finished all his interviews with a smile, a shake of the head, and the Jacobsen mantra: “I’ve got enough to worry about just trying to stay sober,” he said. “I don’t need to worry about anybody else.”

He was letter-perfect except for one thing: every time he tried to say “out of context,” he said “out of content.” Oh well, practice would probably make perfect.

The weather broke Wednesday, the dark clouds replaced by blue skies, the chilling winds gone, their place taken by comfortable breezes and temperatures climbing into the 70s.

Turnberry had the feel of a schoolyard on the first warm day of spring, everyone excited and rejuvenated by the gorgeous weather.

The story of the day was the two old men, Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, taking on the world’s top two players, Nick Price and Greg Norman, in a friendly little better-ball match that drew a crowd of several thousand. Watson and Nicklaus both shot 65 and they won easily, four up with three holes to play, and walked off smiling, each £100 richer. What’s more, everyone in the media had a perfect story for the last practice day: Watson and Nicklaus, reunited at Turnberry—this time as partners—both tearing up the course once again in beautiful weather. It had been seventeen years since their magical matchup, but you never would have known it as they took turns making birdies.

Norman, who had been working as an assistant pro for $28 a week in 1977, and Price, who had been in the Rhodesian air force at the time, watched in amazement as the fifty-four-year-old and the forty-four-year-old gave them a golf lesson. “I felt like I’d jumped into a time machine and it was 1977 again,” Price said, laughing.

Watson and Nicklaus were not, however, the biggest winners of the day. The foursome of Davis Love III, Ben Crenshaw, Corey Pavin, and Brad Faxon made a $1,000 no-bogeys bet on the first tee. Anyone who could play all eighteen holes without a bogey would collect $1,000 from the others. Price remembered a similar bet he had been involved in the year before. He had been the last member of the foursome still alive on the 15th hole, and his playing partners did everything but kick his ball when he had a five-foot par putt left on that green.

“I missed it,” he said. “No doubt the toughest gallery I’ve ever played in front of.”

It was Faxon who had the last chance to collect the money after Love went out on the 13th hole. He ignored all the hooting and blathering during his backswing and kept on making pars. At 16, he offered to let them all off the hook for $750 if they called the bet off right then.

No. Fine, Faxon said. At 18, with his second shot heading right for the flag, he yelled out, “The price is $990 now!” A few seconds later, it was $1,000.

“The big question now,” he said, “is whether or not I ever collect.” Crenshaw paid before the week was over; Pavin paid two weeks later. Love was the lone holdout. “I think I want double or nothing,” he said.

Of course, practice rounds mean nothing. Or do they? “I’m playing so much better now than I was at the [U.S.] Open, it isn’t even funny,” Nicklaus said Wednesday night. “But you never know what’s going to happen when you start playing for real.”

Tome Watson was up at 5 A.M. on Thursday. His tee time was 7:35 and he wanted to have plenty of time to shower, dress, have breakfast, and get to the range to get loose. The previous afternoon, on the practice tee, Davis Love and Phil Mickelson had both expressed amazement that a five-time British Open champion would get stuck with such an early tee time.

Watson shrugged. “You never know, it might turn out to be an advantage,” he said. “The best weather might be in the morning.”

The morning weather was favorable: overcast, but with no rain or wind that was a factor, and a long way from resembling the Giant. But the early wake-up was difficult for Watson. He didn’t sleep very well, worrying about having to get up and, even with his meticulous preparation, he was still feeling cobwebs on the first tee. He tried to play a conservative one-iron shot, just to get the ball on the fairway, and yanked it way right.

He made par from there, but the front nine—which was playing downwind—was a struggle. He was even par at the turn and concerned that he might have a tough time coming in against the wind. By now, though, he was awake and warming to the challenge. He had spent several days in Ireland with Lee Trevino before coming to Scotland and had arrived feeling relaxed and confident.

Coming to Scotland was always energizing for Watson. He had been frustrated after Oakmont, feeling he had let a golden opportunity to win another major slip away. Three times he had been in position to win majors at Oakmont—leading on the back nine on Sunday at the PGA in 1978 and the Open in 1983, only to lose, then coming up short on Sunday at the Open in ’94. He kept insisting that he considered Oakmont “a friend,” the problem being that Oakmont was a friend to Watson the way Iago was a friend to Othello.

Watson played fairly well at the Western Open two weeks later, finishing tied for seventeenth, but he was not in a good mood most of that week. Davis Love and Andrew Magee, his playing partners the first two days, both wondered if something was bothering him. Watson is never very chatty on the golf course, but he was downright snappish a good deal of the time, even though he played well—shooting 68–69.

Maybe the pressure of playing so much good golf without a win was kicking in. Before the tournament, Watson had noted that his first win on tour had come twenty years earlier at the Western immediately following a final-round collapse at the Open. Perhaps he was just pushing too hard to make history repeat itself.

The trip to Ireland that he and his wife, Linda, had made with Lee Trevino and his wife, Claudia, was a superb tonic. Trevino always made him laugh and he had given him a putting lesson, telling him to move his hands forward on the putter. When the putts started dropping in practice on Wednesday, Watson began to think something good might happen.

By the end of his opening round at Turnberry on Thursday, he felt the same way. He made two birdies on the back nine, even with the wind freshening and in his face. That put him at 68, a solid first-round score, especially on a morning when you started out so sleepy you wondered exactly where the first green was. As it turned out, Watson had been exactly right about the weather. The morning players got the best of it by far. By 2 o’clock the course was windy and rainy and, as the afternoon wore on, the rain kept getting harder and harder.

When Davis Love teed it up at 1:20, the rain was just starting, but he had a feeling it was going to get worse. He had warned Robin to bring a raincoat with her even though it was still dry outside when they left their hotel room. “It’ll rain,” he told her. “It always rains at the British Open.”

Love desperately wanted to play well, regardless of the weather. He had played better at the U.S. Open than at the Masters, finishing tied for twenty-eighth, but he hadn’t broken par all week and was never in any kind of contention. He finished the tournament with a double bogey on the 18th hole on Sunday that left him so disgusted that he uncharacteristically flipped his putter at his bag as he walked off the green.

He had not played well since the Masters and he knew it. He hadn’t been in the top ten, in fact, except for Atlanta, where he had been in contention briefly on Sunday before slipping to a tie for eleventh; his record since the Masters was cut–cut–T(tie) 11–T45–T42–T38–T28–cut–T38. He had now missed four cuts in 1994, one more than he had missed in all of 1993.

He was struggling with his irons, especially when he hit long irons off the tee, and he felt as if he hadn’t made a putt since college. At the Western, he had missed the cut by one shot after forgetting to move his mark back on a green. He had moved it to get out of Watson’s line, then forgot to move it back. Or, at least he thought he hadn’t moved it back. The notion that he hadn’t occurred to him two holes later. He asked Watson and Magee if they had seen him move it back and they couldn’t remember. His caddy, Frank Williams, had been raking a trap, so he didn’t know either. Since he wasn’t sure, Love had to assume that he had forgotten, so he called a penalty shot on himself. That ended up costing him the cut.

Missing the cut wasn’t nearly as upsetting as the idea that he wasn’t all there mentally. He went home and worked with his friend Jack Lumpkin for a couple of days on both his swing and his putting stroke. He was hitting the ball much better by the time he arrived in Scotland and wanted very much to get off to a good start. He was tired of playing himself out of majors before they had even really begun.

The beginning was not encouraging. He hit his second shot at number one almost up against a fence and had to make a tricky four-foot putt for bogey. The whole front nine was a scramble—he hit only four greens—but he had a chance to get to the turn still one over when he lined up a three-foot par putt at nine.

He missed. Love looked sick. The rain was pelting down by now and he was already seven shots behind the leader, Greg Turner of New Zealand, who was on his way to a 65. But Love didn’t die. He finally made a birdie at number 11, and he kept getting out of trouble all the way to the clubhouse. At 14, he made a miraculous recovery from a buried bunker lie, making a 10-foot, curling downhill putt for par. He bogeyed 16, but came right back with a birdie at 17. When he made one more tough par out of the left rough at 18, he had shot 71 and was thrilled to be just one over par after the way he had started.

“Normally, that round is 75, especially at a major,” he said. “I struggled, but now I feel good because if I can get some decent weather tomorrow I can play myself into position for the weekend.”

What pleased Love was that he had done something he normally had trouble doing: grinding out a respectable round on a day when he didn’t bring his best swing to the golf course. Almost no one shows up for four straight days at a major with his A game. Often, the key to contending is being able to save a lot of pars on that day when you aren’t going to make a lot of birdies. Love had done that.

So had Norman, who had also drawn an afternoon tee time. When he arrived at the clubhouse forty-five minutes after Love, the wind was howling and he was delighted with 71. “The job today was to stay in contention,” he said. “I did it and I’m a happy camper.”

Which made him exactly the opposite of Nick Faldo. The three-time Open champion teed off ten minutes before Norman, in the 1:55 group, along with U.S. Open champion Ernie Els and American Jim McGovern.

Since his disheartening experience at Oakmont, Faldo had been searching for his swing and his putting stroke. He had arrived home from Oakmont on Saturday evening and decided his first job the next morning would be to look at tapes of his swing circa 1990 and 1992, when he was winning majors. Something was missing. Maybe he could find it on tape.

He couldn’t sleep. Ideas kept running through his head about his swing, about putting, about how to attack a golf course. He would get up, make a note, then try to go back to sleep. By 3 A.M. he knew it was no use. He got out of bed, walked upstairs to his game room, which has a snooker table and cabinets containing trophies and golf clubs that he had used in winning majors.

He sat down with the gray leather notebook that he had received as a gift on the Concorde flight home and began writing everything down. Pages and pages of notes. “Every thought I’d ever had on the golf course that worked,” he said. “Some I looked at and said, ‘No, this isn’t right,’ and crossed them out. Others, I said, ‘Right, we’ll try this one.’ ”

By early morning he was downstairs watching tapes with his five-year-old son Matthew. The BBC had done a special on his landmark 1990 year when he had won the Masters and the Open Championship, so he looked at that. Then he looked at tapes from 1992, when he had won six times. He pulled out the putter he had used at the Open in 1990, then he dragged a dozen other putters out and headed for the putting green behind his house.

First, he had contests among the putters, lining up an identical putt from 12 to 15 feet and trying to put the same stroke on each putt to see which felt most comfortable. Then, referring to his notebook, he began comparing strokes—one more inside, another outside, a different one a bit shorter. More contests. He decided to go back to the 1990 putter and headed for the range to work through all the notes he had made on his swing.

“It was almost square-one stuff,” he said. “The great thing about golf is that there are times when the game tells you that you need to go back and start over, look for something new—or something old, because what you’re doing just isn’t working.

“Oakmont was quite unnerving. Not to be able to hit the ball where I wanted to at all really threw me. But when I got home and started all my experimenting I was quite excited. In a way, it was fun to be working that way again.”

He went to the Irish Open the next week, a tournament he had won three years in a row. He didn’t win, but he did contend and he felt much better about what he was doing. Progress. Finally. He went home for a couple of days and then he and Leadbetter went to Turnberry for a couple of early practice rounds. Every shot was on a string. The putting was good. He could feel it coming back. The Click wasn’t that far away. Leadbetter, who worked as a guest columnist for one of the London papers during Open week, wrote about Faldo’s newfound confidence and predicted a strong championship for him.

Faldo flew home to London for the weekend, since he and Norman were scheduled to tape their Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf match at Sunningdale on Sunday. He knew the match was supposed to be fun, nothing too serious, but when the ball began spraying on him again, he fell into a funk. Norman, who had brought his two children with him, spent most of the day talking to them since Faldo said almost nothing for 18 holes. The final margin was only one shot, but that was because Norman bogeyed the last two holes with a four-shot lead and Faldo finally made a birdie.

“It was awful,” Faldo said. “I just couldn’t understand what was going on. When Led and I were at Turnberry, it was all there. Then I get out there with Greg and I can’t do a thing. I was totally and completely aggravated.”

When he got back to Turnberry the next day, he and Leadbetter went straight to the practice tee. Faldo was still beside himself. What was going on here? How could he be hitting the ball exactly the way he wanted to on Friday and feel completely helpless on Sunday? Why couldn’t he find the swing he had in 1992 and hold onto it?

He knew all the answers, that no one can ever hold onto the swing he wants forever or, sometimes, for forty-eight hours. But he was venting. The Open was his tournament and he didn’t want a repeat of the Masters or Oakmont.

By the time he reached the 17th tee on Thursday afternoon, Faldo was feeling neither joy nor despair. He was two over par, but, like Love and Norman, he knew that wasn’t an awful score—especially if he could birdie the relatively easy 17th and get in with the same 71 that they had produced.

It was shortly after 6 o’clock and the mist and rain had left the golf course gloomy and dark. Faldo’s tee shot drifted right, putting him in a spot, he suspected, where getting to the green in two would be almost impossible. That was annoying.

He marched briskly to his ball. A few chilled fans and a lone marshal were standing a few yards away. He looked at the marshal and asked, “This the first one?” He was certain the marshal nodded yes. The lie wasn’t very good, so he took out an iron and slashed it down the fairway, well short of the green.

McGovern had also pushed his drive. But he couldn’t find his ball. He began walking in circles, searching for it. Terror suddenly gripped Faldo. “As soon as I saw Jim looking round, I knew,” he said.

McGovern finally walked to a ball about 20 yards beyond where Faldo was. He looked down at the ball, then looked at Faldo, and pointed back down at the ball. The distinctive “Faldo” that is printed on all of Faldo’s balls was on that ball. Faldo had hit McGovern’s ball.

It was as if someone had dropped a piano on top of him. He felt his knees buckle and he stood there wondering just how in the hell this could be happening. Wait, he must be dreaming. If he waited a few seconds, he would wake up in bed in a cold sweat, then let out a sigh of relief because it had just been a dreary, terrifying nightmare.

He waited. Nothing happened. He was still standing, soaking wet, on a hill on the 17th hole at Turnberry and McGovern was quietly coming back to the spot from which Faldo had hit his ball. There was nothing to do but walk up to his own ball and hit it. The two-shot penalty meant he would be hitting four. By the time he had slapped it out of the rough, then missed the green, chipped on, and two-putted, he had made an eight. On a hole where four was the norm, he had made eight.

Instead of getting back to one over par, he was now five over, and the 18th was playing dead into the wind. In a daze, he somehow made par at the 18th, getting up and down from the high grass left of the green. “The funny thing is, making that par at 18 actually gave me a tiny ray of hope,” he said. “For some reason, I thought at five I could still come back and make the cut. At six, I might have just fallen apart completely.”

Word of Faldo’s disaster had spread around the grounds like wildfire, especially in the media tent. If you had ranked the players in the tournament from one to 156—one being the most likely to hit the wrong ball, 156 the least likely—Faldo probably would have been 156—155 at the highest.

He was so meticulous and deliberate and careful about everything that the notion that he would walk into the rough during the first round of the Open Championship in poor visibility and slash away at a ball without double-checking to make sure it was his was unthinkable.

And yet it had happened. If someone had walked into the press tent and announced that Princess Diana had been a late entry into the field and had just played the front nine in 29, the shock waves would have been far more muted. The next shock came a few minutes after Faldo had signed his card when he showed up in the interview room to answer questions about what had happened.

Earlier that day, Colin Montgomerie had refused to come to the interview room after shooting a 72, then stalked away from a small group of reporters standing near the 18th green when someone asked a question he didn’t like. Imagine how Daly would have reacted to a request to speak to the media under similar circumstances. But Faldo came.

He explained what happened, answered several questions—all of them really the same question: How could you?—and summed it up succinctly by saying, “It wasn’t very clever, was it?”

He had come in because he knew the tabloids were going to have a field day with him and if he stormed off it would only be worse. “Damage control,” he said later, forcing a smile. The tabloids can’t be controlled no matter what you say or do. The next day, the headline writers were hard at work: “Faldope,” read one; “Fooldo,” read another. The stories that went with them basically accused Faldo of the greatest gaffe in the country’s history since Neville Chamberlain declared “peace in our time” after negotiating with Hitler in 1939. At least then Chamberlain didn’t hit the wrong ball.

“You always have to be meticulous,” Norman said later that evening. “That sort of thing is why golf is a four-letter word.” He paused, then couldn’t help a grin. “I’ll bet,” he said, “there were some four-letter words flying after that incident.”

It had been a long first day at the Open Championship.

Faldo, Norman, and Love all got the weather they had hoped for the next morning. It was chilly and breezy, but nothing like Thursday afternoon.

Faldo had gone out to the practice tee Thursday evening and hit balls in the rain for thirty minutes for no other purpose than to release some of his anger. “It was a scream at myself that I needed,” he said.

He was out early and played like the Faldo of old, shooting a 66 that not only got him comfortably inside the cut (he was at 141, the cut was 143) but put him in position to make a move Saturday if he could go low again.

Love and Norman each shot 67, just the kind of round Norman expected; just the kind Love had never been able to come up with in a major. They were both at 138, very much within striking distance of the leader.

Whose name was Tom Watson.

This was a day for Watson to savor, one of those afternoons when all the memories of Opens past came flooding back to him as he produced the kind of shotmaking that had made him, well, Tom Watson. Wide awake on the first tee at 12:05, he came out firing, using a driver on a hole where most players went with a one-iron. He hit his driver to within easy wedge distance of the green, pitched to 15 feet, and made the birdie. He was off and running after that.

At the par-five seventh, with the wind in the players’ faces, the green seemed unreachable. Watson pulled out a driver on the fairway and crushed it 240 yards onto the green. He had hit almost an identical shot with a driver on the same hole seventeen years earlier. He two-putted for birdie. Then, at the tough par-four eighth, he slammed a three-iron through the wind to within eight feet and swished that putt for another birdie.

“Those were my two favorite shots of the day,” he said later, “the driver at seven and the three-iron at eight. They were fun.”

The whole day was fun. Watson birdied 10 with a 12-foot putt and was tied for the lead. As he walked off the green, a huge grin crossed his face. “I’ve got those bookies quivering now,” he said.

The London bookies had sent Watson off at 50-to-1 odds on Thursday morning. Hearing those odds on Wednesday evening, Nick Price had said, “If I were making a bet, that’s the one I’d take.”

Watson’s only bad moment all day came—naturally—on a short putt. He missed a two-footer for par at the 13th, but then made a superb save at the 14th for par, and just missed an eagle at 17 before tapping in for birdie. That sent him to the 18th tee leading the tournament at seven under.

At each hole on the back nine, the ovation grew louder. The screams of “Come on, Toom!” were everywhere, and Watson, wearing his Scottish-tweed hat instead of the white Ram baseball visor he normally wears, loved every second of it. He was feeding off their energy and their joy, the chills running through him each time he walked onto a green and heard the shouts and applause all around him.

As he and Bruce Edwards, his longtime caddy, walked up the 17th fairway, Edwards turned to him and said, “I swear, Tom, if it was you and Faldo down the stretch on Sunday afternoon, I think all these people would be pulling for you.”

Watson didn’t answer, but the idea clearly warmed him. On the 18th tee, he was almost like a little kid after his first bicycle ride. He blasted a one-iron around the corner of the dogleg and said, “That’s solid.” He handed the club back to Edwards and said, “I’ll bet I’ve got 178 yards to the flag.” He was close—187. He made par from there for a 65 and the kind of 18th green ovation normally reserved for the winner.

“Not bad for a has-been,” he said, an ear-to-ear grin on his face when it was over. He sobered for a moment. “I’m not a has-been. I still think I can win.”

Which had a lot of bookies scared to death.

Friday was Watson’s day, but a lot of players were bunched tightly behind him. Jesper Parnevik, the young Swede who was playing the American tour, was one shot back and so was Brad Faxon, who had played a bogeyless round when it really mattered and had matched Watson’s 65. One shot back of them, alone in fourth place, was Nick Price.

No one left the golf course more frustrated that day than Price, even though he shot 66. He had come to 18 five under for the day and had hit an eight-iron second shot that came up short of the green. From there he made an aggravating bogey. Playing late in the day, he hadn’t taken into account the dropping temperature and had under-clubbed. He should have hit a seven-iron. Still, he was only two shots back and felt as if he hadn’t played his best golf yet.

Price was one of the few players not staying in the Turnberry Hotel. He had rented a house a few miles from Turnberry, knowing that meant he had to monitor traffic closely each day, but it was worth it to him because he liked to have room to spread out and relax, especially at a major.

He was wound tight and he knew it. As brilliantly as he had played in 1993, he hadn’t really been in contention at a major and he had been awful at Augusta (T-35) and the U.S. Open (cut). This tournament was the one he most wanted to win. He had given it away to Watson in 1982 and had it taken away by Ballesteros in 1988. He knew that thirty-seven wasn’t anywhere near the end of a player’s career (look what Watson was doing at forty-four) but he also knew you only get so many shots at majors.

Price burned to be more than just a good player or even a very good one. He wanted to be one of the great players, and he knew that he could win the Western Open for a hundred straight years and not be considered a great player. He knew that a bogey at 18 on Friday might be what kept you up all night Sunday. But he also knew that the opening thirty-six holes was merely the prelude for a golf tournament, the lounge act before Sinatra. He went to sleep Friday telling himself that his golf had improved every day since he had arrived on Monday. He had to keep improving for two more days. If he could do that, he would take his chances come Sunday evening.

When the players woke up Saturday morning, they knew right away that they would be dealing with an entirely different golf course than the one they had played the first two days. Scottish summer—which sometimes lasts as long as a week—had arrived. The sun was out, there was almost no breeze, and the temperature would approach 80 by midafternoon.

A links course without weather is a lone Christian facing ten lions. It is helpless.

You can shoot 62 today, Nick Faldo thought as he warmed up. Scores would be low, and he felt that if he could put up a number early in the day, he might be in contention by nightfall.

One of the Brits did make a move early that day, but it wasn’t Faldo. Montgomerie, the high-strung Mrs. Doubtfire look-alike, shot 65. This time he agreed to come to the interview room. But when someone asked him if he’d had a good night’s sleep, he shot them a look and said, “Stick to golf please.”

Faldo tried mightily all day to take advantage of the balmy conditions. He kept firing at flags, getting close, and missing putts. Nothing would go in. He ended up shooting an exasperating 70, meaning he lost ground. He had started the day eight shots behind Watson. He ended it trailing the leaders by 10. Any chance of a miraculous rally after Thursday’s calamity was gone.

If Faldo was upset, Davis Love was speechless. He had started the day convinced he was finally going to get over his majors bugaboo. With the unfamiliar luxury of a late weekend tee time at a major (1:55) he slept in, wandered over to the course at around noon, and bought himself a baked potato at one of the concession tents as his breakfast/lunch.

Just like Watson the day before, he came out swinging, hitting a driver on the first hole. Els, his playing partner, hit the more standard one-iron, and Love was 60 yards past him. He hit a gorgeous wedge to eight feet. Perfect, he thought. Come out of the box flying and race up the leader board. But his putt veered left as soon as it came off the club. Two holes later, he hit another fabulous approach. This one was closer, about six feet. The putt wasn’t. Another pull. Another par that should have been a birdie. At the fourth his seven-iron off the tee spun to four feet. This time he made the putt. Okay, now he could make a move.

Only he couldn’t. Love hit the ball superbly all day. He missed two greens the entire afternoon. At one of them, the ninth, he was just off the green and chipped in for birdie. That made up for a lot and put him at four under. He sneaked a look at the leader board. There were a lot of red numbers. Everyone, it seemed, was under par. He would need to at least match the 33 he had just shot coming in.

He finally made a putt at the 13th, a trickling 15-footer. He was so happy that he threw his arms into the air as if to say “finally.” The putt put him at five under. It also put him on a major leader board later in the tournament than at any time in his life. If he could make one more putt somewhere and birdie the easy 17th, he could be right there…

But he missed his second green at 14 and this time it cost him a bogey. He was off the leader board as quickly as he had been on it. When his shot from the back bunker there slid 15 feet past the hole, he pounded his wedge in disgust. He was even angrier when a poor chip from just in front of the green at 17 cost him his birdie. Els, who had been all over the lot throughout the day, eagled the hole. When they both parred 18, Love, who had played near-perfect golf tee to green, walked off with a 68; Els, who had looked capable of shooting 75, had somehow managed 69.

A 68 on the third day of most majors will move you past a lot of people. Not on this day. Of the eighty players in the field, forty-three shot in the 60s. Love’s 68 left him right where he started—five shots from the lead. With thirty-six holes to play, that is not a daunting margin. With eighteen left, it is, especially when there are eight players ahead of you—seven of them by three shots or more.

What galled Love was the fact that he easily could have shot 65—or better—if he had putted decently. That evening, he found Tom Kite on the putting green and asked for a putting lesson. Like a lot of Love’s friends, Kite was convinced that Love’s problem was his routine. Working with psychologist Bob Rotella, Love had developed a routine where he picked a target, got over his putt, and stroked it. Rotella didn’t want him to think about mechanics. He wanted him to think only about getting the ball where he needed it to go. And he didn’t want him standing over the ball thinking too much.

There is a difference between standing over a ball and taking the putter back so fast that you are still moving when you hit the putt. Kite—and others, including Love’s caddy, Frank Williams—were convinced that he was moving when he was putting. It is impossible to move and putt well. Kite, who was tied with Love at four under for the tournament, worked with him that evening on doing his routine, but getting still before he putted. Kite had also worked with Rotella and respected him, but he thought Love was going too far in this area. “This is the one thing I disagree with Doc on,” he said. “I just don’t think you can putt well if you’re moving all the time.”

Love left the green that night with mixed emotions: he thought Kite had shown him something that would work but he was afraid it might be too late.

Greg Norman didn’t take a putting lesson that night. He left the golf course quickly and quietly. He knew his chances of defending his title had drowned earlier in the afternoon at the 16th hole.

All week, Norman hadn’t felt quite right over the ball and neither he nor his teacher, Butch Harmon, were sure what the problem was. Friday afternoon, they figured it out. He had gotten too square in his swing, a little too upright. A slight adjustment and, boom, the ball was soaring again. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Five shots back, Norman could make his move on Saturday.

He did, with a birdie at number one and a birdie at number two. Watson hadn’t even teed off yet, and Norman was already within three shots of him. “He’s going low today,” Harmon said walking down the third hole. “Way low.”

If golf was merely about ball striking, Norman and Love probably would have led the tournament that night. Norman kept hitting the ball close and—like Love—kept missing makable birdie putts. Even so, he was still five under for the tournament when he reached 16 and still in contention.

His drive was in the right rough, but not in any serious trouble. Thinking the ball would fly out of the rough, Norman took a nine-iron and put an easy swing on the ball. The moment it left the club, he knew it was in trouble. The lie had been fluffier than he thought. The ball took off in a lazy arc and Norman knew it was headed straight for the burn that runs in front of the green. “Just stay dry,” he pleaded.

No such luck. The ball spun into the burn. A chip and two putts later, Norman had a double-bogey six. He was back to three under. Grinding his teeth, he walked onto the 17th tee knowing he had to make at least a birdie, perhaps an eagle. If he could get back to five under by the end of the day, there might still be a chance.

He couldn’t. Playing for a right-to-left wind, he aimed straight for the right fairway bunker off the tee—and hit the ball right into the bunker. From there, he had no chance to get home in two. A par. “Which was like a bogey,” he said. “Just like that, I’d lost three shots to the field—two at sixteen, one at seventeen. I knew I was a dead man.”

When he signed his card and looked at the scores, it confirmed his thinking. He was at three under. By dusk, that would put him behind nineteen players with one round left. That was too many. When an interviewer from the BBC mentioned that he might make one of his famous charges on Sunday, Norman shook his head.

“No, not this time,” he said. “Too many strokes and too many guys.”

Watching the interview, his agent, Frank Williams, almost gagged when he heard his boss/client say he couldn’t charge on Sunday. “Don’t you ever say that on television,” he told Norman. “Never say you can’t win.”

“But Frank, I can’t,” Norman said. “Let’s get out of here.” He was tired. It had been a long, difficult week.

The leaders that night were Fuzzy Zoeller and Brad Faxon. Zoeller, whistling all the way, had shot a brilliant 64 to get to nine under, and Faxon, without a bogey (of course), had shot 67 to match him. Watson, who had missed two short putts on the back nine (“hiccups,” he called them) and then birdied 17 and 18, was one shot back along with Jesper Parnevik, Ronan Rafferty, and Nick Price.

Price would have been tied with Zoeller and Faxon, but he bogeyed 18 again, this time going over the green with a seven-iron.

“I’m going to get it right one of these days,” he said, forcing a smile. Once again, he had mixed emotions. He knew he was in excellent position. He also knew it could have been better. That night at dinner, Leadbetter said to him, “Well, Nick, you hit an eight-iron short at eighteen on Friday and a seven-iron long today. Maybe you should carry a seven-and-a-half-iron tomorrow.”

Price laughed, but he couldn’t help but think about what 18 would be like the next day. The only thing he knew was that there was absolutely no more room for error.

Watson had hoped against hope that the Turnberry Giant would show up on Sunday. A golf course where pars were at a premium would suit him a lot better than the Turnberry that the players had destroyed on Saturday. Looking at the scores Saturday evening, Dave Marr, the 1965 PGA champion who worked for the BBC, shook his head and said, “Is this Turnberry or Tucson?”

Turnberry looked a lot like Tucson again on Sunday. More mild weather. The general thinking was that a score in the mid-60s would be needed to win.

Long before the leaders teed off, a number of mini-dramas were unfolding. The one that unfolded—unraveled might be a better word—the fastest was that of John Daly. He had started the tournament well, shooting 68 on Thursday and had actually gotten to five under par through nine holes on Friday.

But he hooked his tee shot onto the beach at the 10th and, even with thousands of fans helping, no one could find the ball. He made a triple-bogey 7 there, then made a double bogey at the 11th. He was even par for the tournament after thirty-six holes but could do no better than 72 against the defenseless golf course on Saturday. That seemed to kill his interest and he practically ran around the course on Sunday, shooting an embarrassing 80 that included an 8–6–5 finish. He was in his car and gone within minutes of signing his card. He was the only player in the field who failed to break 80 on either Saturday or Sunday, and he finished eightieth among the eighty players who made the cut.

No doubt he shot that 80 because so many people were picking on him.

Davis Love didn’t do all that much better on the final day, but it wasn’t because of lack of effort. Still harboring some hope that his putting lesson with Kite might turn him around on the greens and allow him to produce a very low number, he hit two beautiful shots at number one for the second straight day to within eight feet and, for the second straight day, missed the putt.

All color seemed to drain from his face. His expression said, “Here we go again,” and he was right. Only this time, knowing the golf tournament was lost, his concentration suffered. He finished an awful day with a 74 that dropped him from a tie for ninth all the way back to a tie for thirty-eighth.

Nick Faldo passed Love going in the opposite direction. He finally got his putter going on the back nine of the last day, and when he made a fine up and down from the gorse at 18, he had shot a 64. It was a satisfying round for Faldo, not because it moved him into a tie for seventh place, but because it meant that he hadn’t let the wrong-ball incident destroy him. He had played the last three rounds in 10 under par and if there was ever an example of the difference between a champion and a spoiled brat, all one had to do was compare Faldo and Daly on the final day.

Daly, it should be remembered, started the round only one shot behind Faldo. He never even bothered to try. Faldo, who had as much chance to win as Daly—zero—worked hard on every shot. He beat Daly by 16 shots on the final day—16! And yet the fans still screeched for Daly as if he were some sort of folk hero. Faldo received warm applause when he made his final putt at 18, but nothing that even bordered on raucous or wild.

And, just as he walked off the green, a huge roar went up from the first tee. Watson had just been introduced. Bruce Edwards had been right on Friday. To the Scots, Faldo, the reserved Englishman, was someone to be respected. Watson, the American with the warm, gap-toothed grin, was a hero.

Faldo could handle that. What hurt him most was to be driving away from the golf course on Sunday just as the leaders were teeing off. He was proud of what he had done the last three days. But he didn’t play the game to accumulate moral victories.

With all the talk about low numbers being inevitable again, none of the leaders made any kind of move on the front nine. Zoeller birdied the second hole to briefly go to 10 under, but he bogeyed the fifth to give that back. Faxon, who hadn’t made a bogey in forty-one holes. bogeyed the first. It was a bad omen. On this day, in serious contention on a Sunday at a major for the first time, he would fail to make a birdie.

Watson and Parnevik were paired together for the second straight day. It was tough to take Parnevik as seriously as his golf game merited. He had gotten into the habit of wearing his white Titleist cap with the brim turned up because he liked to get sun on his face. Disturbed because the up-turned brim hid its logo, Titleist had made him a special cap with the brand name under the brim. It looked goofy. Parnevik, the son of a Swedish comedian who was known as the David Letterman of Sweden, didn’t seem to mind.

“If he wins, those things will be all the rage in Sweden on Monday,” Watson joked Saturday night.

Watson had changed his headgear for Sunday, going back to his standard Ram visor—no doubt at the company’s insistence—and eschewing the tweed cap that looked so perfect on him walking a links course. Both players matched pars for the first six holes, Parnevik having to scramble several times while Watson kept hitting greens and two-putting.

The seventh was dead into the wind, making it virtually unreachable in two. Watson laid up 50 yards short, then hit a stunning chip to two feet. The screams were even louder than on Friday. A huge smile on his face, he tapped in for birdie. Zoeller’s bogey had just been posted on the board. He and Watson were tied for the lead. Eleven holes were left, and Watson had saved his best golf all week for the back nine.

The previous evening, leaving the golf course, Bruce Edwards, mindful of Watson’s shaky Sundays all year, had said to him, “I just have a feeling tomorrow’s going to be your best Sunday of the year.”

Watson was feeling that way too as he walked to the eighth tee. He was full of adrenaline. The shaky starts that had hurt him on Sunday in recent majors hadn’t happened. He was tied for the lead in his favorite golf tournament on a course that had produced what might be his fondest memory in golf.

He had driven the ball superbly all week, and he stepped onto the eighth tee wanting to be sure not to lose the ball to the right. He overcompensated. The ball hooked into the rough, near the gallery ropes. Hands on knees, he stared at the lie, trying to figure out just how fast and hard the ball would come out.

The answer was faster and harder than he thought. He hit a five-iron right at the flag, and the crowd went crazy until it saw that the ball had come out hot. It went through the green into the thick rough behind it. With very little green to work with, Watson’s chip raced 20 feet past the pin.

Even then, he still thought he could save par. It would be an old-fashioned Watson par if he could make it and as much of a momentum builder at this point as the birdie at seven had been. For a split second, it looked as if he had made it. Watson bent at the knees, hoping, but the ball slid just past the cup. Too far past. Four feet. Watson stared at the ball and you could almost read his mind: Oh no, not again.

Yes, again. The bogey putt spun inches to the right. Watson tapped the ball in, reached down for it, and said, “Dammit, Tom!” Stunned and angry, he flipped his putter at Edwards harder than he had intended and Edwards had to throw up his hands to catch it at the last second.

They marched to the ninth tee. Standing on what may be the most beautiful spot in all of golf, Watson stared out at the water, arms folded, seeing nothing. He was now at seven under, trailing four players, tied with two others. After Parnevik, who was still at eight under, had teed off, Watson crushed his tee shot right at the directional flag in the middle of the fairway.

“Good one, Tom,” Edwards said. “Come on, let’s go.”

Watson wasn’t ready yet. He had to regain his composure. He stopped for a long drink of water while everyone else headed up the fairway. As he walked through the narrow path from the tee to the fairway, the fans were imploring him to come back. For the first time all week, he did not look up at them as he went past.

His drive had looked good, but wasn’t. The directional flag was actually deceiving. You had to aim left of it to hit the fairway. If your ball went directly over it, you were headed for the right rough. That was where Watson was. As he walked over the crest of the hill, he asked an official where his ball was. When the man pointed to the rough, Watson’s shoulders sagged a little more.

He had no chance to get to the green from where he was, and he hacked the ball left, to another tough lie. He knew he couldn’t afford another bogey so, even though it was an almost impossible shot, he tried to land the ball just short of the green and hope it would trickle downhill to the pin.

Instead of trickling, it kicked straight right. He was still on the fringe. The next chip was better, but not good enough. Four feet. Again. It was almost too painful to watch. The same nervous stroke, the same horrid result.

Two holes, two double bogeys. Just like that, it was over. Three and a half days of joyriding had become the Nightmare on Elm Street in two holes. Watson never made another birdie. The cheers were as loud as ever when he walked onto 18—someone in the crowd even yelled, “Next year, Toom!”—but they were hollow now. He missed one last short putt at 18 and finished tied for eleventh—one shot behind, among others, Nick Faldo.

He had shot 74 in the final round at Pebble Beach, 74 on the last day at Augusta, 74 on Sunday at Oakmont, and 74 at the finish at Turnberry.

He walked off the green in a state of shock, forcing the smile he had forced in defeat in the past. “Thirty-eight putts,” he said softly. “You can’t win with thirty-eight putts.”

He patiently answered all the questions. “This hurts,” he said. “I’m having some problems with my putting, but I’ll figure it out, I won’t give up.”

Someone asked him what he would take away from the week. For a split second, Watson’s eyes clouded. “Nothing,” he said, finally. “Nothing.”

But a moment later when they asked him if he still thought he would win again, he squared his shoulders one last time. “You bet,” he said.

Why?

The jaw shot straight out. “Because,” he said, “I believe it.”

He left then, slowly walking up the 112 steps from the golf course entrance to the hotel entrance. They were the same 112 steps he had walked after his greatest victory in 1977. Then he had flown. Now he felt each step. He was exhausted, battered, and bloodied. But he would get up again, even if it meant getting up to be battered again.

Tom Watson was not the British Open champion, but he was something that any golfer should feel proud to be. He was Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena. The same Man in the Arena who was taped to the mirror in his bathroom. Battered and bloodied. But never beaten.

By late afternoon, most of the contenders had dropped back, not as melodramatically as Watson, but just as thoroughly. Two men were left with a chance. One was Parnevik, who, after Watson’s collapse, had put on the first real charge of the day, birdieing three straight holes, bogeying one, then birdieing two more. That got him to 12 under par with one hole to play.

It also seemed to put him in control of the tournament. The only player even within hailing distance of him was Price, and he was struggling. He had started slowly like everyone else, making three-putt bogeys on two and five, the second one from 25 feet.

Seeing that his boss was as angry as he ever got, Squeeky Medlen, Price’s caddy, said softly as they walked off the sixth tee, “That just stoked the fire, Nick. Let’s go.”

Slowly, they went. Price finally got a birdie at the seventh and hung in. But when he got to the 13th and found himself trailing Parnevik by three, he began to wonder if this wasn’t going to be another opportunity lost.

“I was too careful the first five or six holes,” he said. “I was trying not to put a foot wrong, and that’s not the way to play. I had to just play.”

He did, but Parnevik had gotten so hot it appeared it might be too little, too late. The Nick Price of the 1980s might have looked at Parnevik’s number on the board and thought, oh well, too good, well played, let’s see if we can’t get second. But the Nick Price of the 1990s never thinks a tournament is over. He always thinks there may just be a way to pull it out.

He had to save par from behind the green at 13. Then at 14, he caught a flyer in the rough and hit his second shot way over the green. A bogey would finish him, he knew that. He got lucky that he was so far over the green that he was in a trampled-down area and had a decent lie. He hit a running seven-iron that skidded to a halt three feet past the pin. Relived, he tapped in for par. He was still nine under, Parnevik, 11. He hit a good five-iron at the par-three 15th, but his 18-foot putt spun past. Walking up 16, Price heard a roar and knew Parnevik had birdied 17. Somehow, he had to make a birdie.

He did, knocking a sand wedge to 12 feet and making the putt. Parnevik was at 12 under, he was at 10. The 17th was eminently reachable in two. If he could birdie it and birdie 18… there was still a chance.

Up ahead, Parnevik was doing his Ernie Els imitation. He had decided not to look at any leader boards and had ordered his caddy not to tell him anything. Hearing various shouts and cheers behind him, he somehow figured that he was either behind or tied as he stood on the 18th tee. In truth, since Price was still on 16 at that moment, he was leading by three.

He hit his tee shot to the right side of the fairway. If he had known he was leading, he would have played a four-iron to the middle of the green. But thinking he needed a birdie, he aimed a five-iron right at the flag, which was tucked front and left in an almost impossible spot to get close.

The shot sailed left into the gorse, a terrible spot. Parnevik flopped a good wedge shot out to within 10 feet, but missed the putt. He tapped in for bogey, a round of 67 and a total of 11 under. When someone told him that he had been leading by three, all the color drained out of his face.

The three-shot lead was down to one after the bogey and Price’s birdie at 16. Price had crushed his drive at 17 and had a four-iron left to the green. He knocked it on, 50 feet past the flag. A two-putt birdie would tie him with Parnevik. A playoff suddenly loomed. As they walked onto the green. Medlen had a thought.

“You know, we haven’t made a long one all week,” he said.

Price glanced at the huge yellow scoreboard. Parnevik’s bogey wasn’t up yet. He thought he needed to make the eagle putt to tie. “I put every drop of blood I had into making that putt,” he said.

The putt had very little break in it, only about eight inches, so speed was the key. As soon as Price saw it go over the crest of the little hill on the green, he could see that it was headed straight for the hole. “I wondered if it would hang on,” he said.

About eight feet away, the ball took a tiny hop to the right—Price saw later watching it on tape that it had hit a spike mark—and for a split second he thought it might slip past the cup on the right side. But at the last possible second, it hit the corner of the cup, spun around the edge briefly, and dropped.

Standing in the fairway waiting to play his second shot, Brad Faxon saw Price jump what looked to him like 20 feet straight into the air. “I was waiting for Squeeky to catch him, but then I saw him up in the air too,” he said.

Faxon knew what had happened. The roar told everyone else. The putt was exactly 17 paces—51 feet—long. By nightfall it would be described in various places around the world as between 70 and 80 feet long. In any event, it was the shot of the year.

When he came back to earth, Price looked at the leader board again. He was much too experienced not to look. He saw Parnevik’s bogey. After seventy-one holes, for the first time all week, he had the lead. Now all he had to do was par the hole he had bogeyed the last two days. Where the hell was that seven-and-a-half-iron Leadbetter had talked about?

Price has had high blood pressure all his life. Now he took a few deep breaths to stay calm as he stood on the 18th tee. All he wanted to do was hit a three-iron around the corner and hope he ended up in a good spot to get to the middle of the green. He hit the shot solidly, but thought it might be a little farther left than he wanted it.

“It’s fine,” Medlen said as they walked off the tee. “The only thing I care about is that we’re not between clubs again.”

Price was thinking the same thing. When they got to the ball, the lie was fine. Medlen checked the yardage—165! A seven-iron! No more, no less, exactly a seven-iron. “My favorite club, my favorite shot,” Price said. “If I couldn’t put that shot on the green, I’d quit golf.”

He took his time and the ball sailed directly at the center of the green—right where Parnevik should have aimed. When it landed, the crowd was screaming. Short of Watson, they could think of no one they would rather see win than Price.

As he began his walk to the green, Price felt chills racing through him. He had waited all his life to make this walk—to the 18th green at the Open championship, needing two putts to win. He started to say something to Medlen, but when he turned his head, he wasn’t there. Thinking that Price deserved this moment to himself, Medlen had dropped behind him.

No way. Price turned to Medlen and waved him up. Medlen hesitated. “Come on, Squeek,” Price said, “let’s enjoy this together. Who knows if we’ll ever get to do it again.”

And so they walked onto the green together, both of them tingling. There were still 30 feet to negotiate, though, and Price suddenly flashed back to the three-putt at the fifth. “I didn’t want to stand there taking all the bows and then make a fool of myself by three-putting,” he said.

He didn’t. He carefully lagged to three feet, looked the putt over, and tapped it in. He was in Medlen’s arms, the two of them pounding one another for joy. Sue Price didn’t really want to go out onto the green, she felt it was Nick’s moment not hers, but her parents and their friends were pushing her and she finally went out there and Nick practically crushed her with his bear hug.

A few minutes later, at 6:18 P.M. on a sparkling summer evening, Charles Jack, the captain of Turnberry, introduced “the champion golfer of the year,” and handed him the coveted claret jug. Price grabbed it in his huge hands and kissed it with all his might. “In 1982, I had my left hand on this trophy,” he said. “In 1988, I had my right hand on it. Now, at last, I’ve got both hands on it.”

They cheered and cheered and cheered, and Price smiled and smiled and smiled. He had read a magazine article a few weeks earlier previewing the tournament that had mentioned that he had twice had one hand on the trophy. When he finished reading the story, he had made a vow: “Someday, I’m going to get both my hands on that damn thing.”