Twelve days later, Frank Baker stood in the middle of the ninth fairway at Perryton Country Club, hands on hips, staring in the direction of the green. It was rated the hardest hole on the course: a long, tree-lined par-four with a gentle dogleg to the right, uphill to a well-protected green, bunkers left, water right. It was 7:20 a.m., and he and Slugger were finishing their early nine holes even though school was out and Frank had plenty of time to play.
They were on the course that early for two reasons.
First, the humidity was already hanging in the air like an invisible curtain even though the sun had only been up for a couple of hours. Frank’s shirt was damp with sweat, and the mugginess was only going to get worse as the day wore on.
Second, his swing coach’s friend Keith Forman was supposed to meet them for breakfast at seven-thirty. Frank’s dad had already told him that he was bringing a golf equipment representative to the club to meet him at nine. This way, there would be time for Frank, Slugger, and Forman to talk before the equipment rep showed up.
Frank knew this was going to be a long week. The PGA Tour was in town, the Travelers Championship being held at River Highlands. Frank had been going to the Travelers for as long as he could remember and always enjoyed watching the pros, occasionally getting to meet one—if only for a minute or two—and collecting autographs. He was too old for autographs now, but he still liked the idea of hanging around on the range checking out golf swings—Slugger always called a player’s swing his action, as in “I love his action”—and walking the golf course.
He hoped the weather would cool off later in the week. He had tickets, thanks to Slugger, on Thursday and Friday.
“What are you looking at?” Slugger asked, driving up after hitting his second shot from the right rough. “Are you gonna hit or just stare into space?”
“Sorry,” Frank said. “I was just making sure my dad wasn’t back there somewhere.”
“He’s not here until nine,” Slugger said. “We’ve got time. Keith just texted me he’s coming up the drive to the clubhouse. So hit your shot and let’s go.”
That got Frank’s attention. He already had his seven-iron in his hand. He abandoned any pretext of his pre-shot routine, swung smoothly, and sent the ball sailing high into the blue sky. It stopped, checked up quickly on the still-soft green, and ended up about ten feet left of the cup.
“Pre-shot routine is overrated, huh?” Slugger said.
Frank laughed and jumped in the cart. Slugger was in the front-right bunker. He hit a good shot to about eight feet. It didn’t matter. Frank rolled his putt in to win the ninth-tee press.
“You keep hitting it like this, and you’re going to have to give me shots,” Slugger said as Frank plucked the ball from the hole.
“You keep losing like this, and I’m going to weigh two hundred pounds eating all the donuts I keep winning, coach,” Frank said, laughing. That wasn’t likely. Frank was six foot one and weighed a wiry 165 pounds. He had light brown hair and an easy smile. Only in the last year had he started to feel confident about talking to girls, at least at the club where he was well known. At school he was still pretty invisible—except when he had a boxful of donuts in his hand to break the ice.
Watching Frank laughing with Jenna Baxter—a standout tennis player who was a year older than him—outside the pro shop one afternoon, Slugger had commented to Frank’s dad that it appeared Frank had finally discovered girls. “He discovered them a while ago,” his dad had answered. “Now they’re starting to discover him.”
His dad, in the right mood, had a quick, dry sense of humor.
Five minutes after finishing on 18, Frank and Slugger walked into the clubhouse and found Keith Forman sitting by the window.
Slugger had told Frank about Forman a week earlier. Frank had actually read some of his stuff and had seen him on Golf Channel when he made occasional appearances there. Most kids Frank’s age spent their free time either texting or playing video games. Frank watched Golf Channel—while texting or playing games on his phone. The fact that Forman had played golf in college and had been a pro for a while didn’t really impress Frank. His stories on the Golf Digest website were well written and “inside”—which Frank liked. But they didn’t impress him that much either. Seeing him on a set with Golf Channel analysts Brandel Chamblee, Frank Nobilo, or David Duval? That was impressive.
Now, though, Forman was sitting at a table overlooking the 18th green and appearing a little bit bleary-eyed, drinking coffee.
He stood up when they walked over, and he and Slugger hugged briefly. Slugger introduced Frank.
“I honestly don’t care if you can play or not,” Forman said. “I just had to meet someone named after Home Run Baker.” He paused and then added, “And no matter what Slugger tells you, I did not see Baker play.”
That, Frank thought, was funny. He liked Keith Forman right away. He was about six feet tall and maybe a few pounds overweight. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and a low-key vibe. As the three of them sat down, Polly, the usual morning server, came over to the table. There was no one else in the dining room at that hour—a blessing as far as Frank was concerned. The fewer curious members who came over to interrupt, the better.
“Who’s this on?” Polly asked after they’d ordered.
She had worked at the club for as long as Frank could remember.
“On me,” Slugger said.
“Pro shop number or personal?” Polly asked, referring to the fact that Slugger sometimes charged things to the pro shop’s club account, other times to his own.
“Mine,” Slugger said.
“How’d it go this morning?” Forman asked as Polly walked off.
“He beat me three ways,” Slugger said. “Normal morning nowadays.”
Forman smiled. “So tell me, Frank, you want to turn pro sometime soon?”
“Not really,” Frank said. “I have another year of high school, and then I’d like to go to college for at least a couple of years. I’m not really in a big rush.”
“But your father is, right?”
Frank and Slugger both answered the question at once: “Right.”
* * *
It was never easy for Frank to describe his father to an outsider. Keith Forman made it easy, though, because, as he put it, “I’ve never met your father, but I know your father.”
Frank’s parents had divorced when he was very young, and his mother had moved to Japan for her job—her desire to do so being one of the thorny issues between his parents, he’d later learned. Frank remembered a judge asking him if he wanted to live with his mom or his dad and answering, “Not in Japan.” Soon, his mom had remarried and made a whole new life on the other side of the world. Thomas Baker had been a single parent for more than a decade, completely devoted to his son.
Growing up, Frank and his dad were very close, best friends. His dad loved baseball but also golf. He and Frank would go out to play late in the afternoon all summer and on weekends in the spring and fall. At first, Frank was interested only in driving the cart. But as he got older and began to play the game well, it became more about trying to break 100. Then 90 and then 80. By the time he was fourteen he was a 1-handicap and his dad, a good player who was about a 5 at his best, had turned him over to Slugger for lessons.
Frank loved working with Slugger. He told funny stories about his “failures” as a player even though he had once been very good. When they were on the practice tee, though, he was all business. He was working. He expected Frank to do the same.
It had all been fun until Frank’s surprising run at the U.S. Amateur the year before. Having just turned sixteen, he’d been the youngest player to make it through 36 holes of stroke play into the 64-man match play field. Then, in a shock to everyone—including himself—he’d won four matches to make it to the semifinals. All of a sudden he was seeing stories on the internet labeling him the “Perryton Prodigy,” a word he had to look up to understand the first time he saw it.
Until then, his dad had been his biggest cheerleader. No coaching, no questioning what he was doing, no talk of anything but playing golf. It had all changed at the start of this school year, when he’d come home a star after his performance in the Amateur.
Agents were calling. So were equipment reps. And college coaches—lots of college coaches. Clearly, his dad was enjoying the attention, and the possibility of early retirement. His dad was fifty-five and had never especially enjoyed buying and selling stocks for other people, although he did fine at it from his office in the attic of their house.
“You make it big,” he’d said one night, “and we’ll get a place in Florida. You’ll be able to practice year-round once you’re out of high school, and I can retire and get really good at golf and drinking at the bar after golf.”
“What about college, Dad?” Frank had asked.
“If you’re as good as Slugger and I think you are, you don’t need college.” He laughed. “Pass Go, collect two hundred dollars—or more.” The reference was to their favorite board game. In simpler times he and his dad had played Monopoly for hours.
Frank spent what felt like a long while laying this out for Keith Forman.
Twice they were interrupted by members coming in to eat. Both apparently recognized Forman from his TV appearances and came right to the table.
“So, Slugger, you got a celebrity in town,” Bob Dodson said, interrupting Frank in midsentence as if he were invisible.
“Old college teammate,” Slugger said. “He’s in town for the Travelers and dropped in for breakfast on his way down there from Boston.”
Dodson shook hands, introduced himself, and added, “Why does Brandel always criticize Tiger the way he does?”
Forman shrugged. “Maybe because he thinks he deserves it.”
“Well, I just think it’s wrong for someone who isn’t close to the player Tiger was to criticize him,” Dodson continued.
Frank could tell by the look on Forman’s face that he dealt with this sort of thing pretty regularly.
“If that were the case, then no one would be allowed to criticize Tiger,” Forman said. “Except maybe Jack Nicklaus.”
“I met Jack once—” Dodson started to say.
Mercifully, Slugger cut him off. “Bob, Keith’s got to get down the road to Hartford here pretty soon, so…”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Dodson said. “You go right ahead. Sorry to interrupt.”
He half walked, half stalked away.
“They’re never sorry to interrupt,” Forman said. “If they were, they wouldn’t interrupt.”
Frank liked that line—especially since it was true.
A moment later, Ted O’Hara, a real slimeball who had lost the club championship match to Frank two years earlier, also stopped by uninvited.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said.
Frank couldn’t resist. “If you’re sorry, Mr. O’Hara, why are you interrupting?”
Frank couldn’t stand Ted O’Hara and didn’t care if he knew it.
O’Hara stared at him for a second, then continued. “Mr. Forman,” he said, reaching across Frank and Slugger to shake Forman’s hand. “I’m Ted O’Hara. I’m club champion here.”
“Congratulations,” Forman said. “You must be pretty good if you beat Frank.”
O’Hara’s face fell. He looked at Slugger and Frank almost pleadingly, as if begging them to keep his dirty secret.
“I didn’t play here last summer,” Frank finally said.
Now it was Frank and Slugger looking at O’Hara to see if he’d fess up. Instead, he told Forman he enjoyed reading his work and fled.
“Let me guess,” Forman said. “You aren’t eligible to play in the club championship until you’re eighteen.”
“You’re half right,” Slugger said. “Frank beat him—what, four-and-three, Frank?—two summers ago when he was fifteen. Then O’Hara and his buddies pushed through a rule saying you couldn’t play until you were eighteen.”
“What a shock,” Forman said.
Frank had known Keith Forman for less than an hour. He already felt comfortable with him.
* * *
Keith had been a little cranky making the drive down to Perryton. Waking up at five did that for him. His coffee thermos was empty before he was out of Boston, and he was craving more caffeine and a Danish the last ninety minutes of the drive but resisted.
As soon as Frank and Slugger started talking—without interruption—the weariness washed completely away. He could feel his adrenaline getting started.
There was no way to know how good a player Frank Baker was going to be. Making it to the U.S. Amateur semifinals not long after turning sixteen was impressive. Plus, Keith trusted Slugger’s judgment on all things golf. Slugger was the son of a golf pro and had been around the game all his life. He knew what was real and what wasn’t.
Slugger believed that, if all went well, Frank would be ready to take a shot at the PGA Tour in three years—one more year of high school and then two in college. He could literally go to college anywhere he wanted—his grades were good, his board scores excellent—and he would make any team he joined an instant national title contender.
Slugger wanted him to go to Stanford because its golf tradition was virtually unparalleled. Frank liked the idea of Stanford but was intrigued by two other schools: Harvard, because it was Harvard, and Oregon. The coach there was Casey Martin, who had fought the PGA Tour for the right to use a cart due to a rare disease that made walking almost impossible for him. The case had gone to the Supreme Court, and Martin had won a 7–2 decision. Frank had read a book about Martin and had come away thinking he’d be a great person to play for at the college level.
“He can’t possibly go wrong,” Slugger said. “Great schools, great coaches. There’s just the one problem.”
“Dad,” Keith said.
They both nodded. While Frank had been reading up on Casey Martin, his dad had read both of Earl Woods’s autobiographies. If you read those books, you would come away thinking that Earl’s son was just along for the ride, that it was Earl’s genius that had made Tiger into arguably the greatest golfer of all time.
“What aspect of Earl does your dad admire the most?” Keith said.
Frank smiled. “All of it,” he answered. “The money, the planning, the control he had over everything. How tough he was on Tiger. The whole package.”
“Mostly the money,” Slugger put in.
“It isn’t quite that simple,” Frank said. “My dad is a good guy, really he is. He’s been a great father. Raised me alone since I was six. He’s just got so many people in his ear telling him how rich he can be that it’s kind of overwhelming. Now he’s gotten defensive about it, at least in part because I’ve told him I’m going to college—period. He wants me to at least think about turning pro next year.”
Keith knew exactly what Frank was talking about. He had dealt with plenty of fathers like Thomas Baker, both as a player and as a reporter. The only difference between Earl Woods and thousands of other pushy stage fathers was that Earl had been lucky enough to have the son whose talent was so extraordinary he could succeed in spite of Earl.
What’s more, Earl’s teachings might have helped Tiger a little bit as a competitor, but they had also helped to mess him up pretty good.
Keith was starting to explain that to Frank and Slugger when they saw a man with salt-and-pepper hair walking across the room in their direction. Keith guessed that he was in his fifties and, judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t coming over to tell Keith how much he admired his work or to apologize for interrupting.
“Let me guess,” he said quietly to Frank. “Your dad.”
“Brilliant deduction,” Frank hissed back.
The two men stood up to greet Thomas Baker.
“Must have somehow missed my invitation to breakfast, Slugger,” Thomas Baker said. “Who the hell is this?”