Caddy for Life (15 page)
Watson didn’t win again in 1977. It was almost as if the British Open had drained him of so much emotion and energy that he just couldn’t get back to that level again. He played well at the PGA, finishing tied for sixth, but there just wasn’t much he could do for an encore after Turnberry. He finished the year with five victories and $310,653 in earnings, making him the fourth player in the history of the PGA Tour to win more than $300,000 in a year. This may not sound like a lot when you consider that first prize for one weekly $4 million tournament these days is $720,000. Still, 310 grand was a lot of money at the time, and Bruce’s cut was about $35,000, including salary, percentages, and work he did for Watson at some nontour events.
He was living in Dallas by then, first in an extra room that Kay Barton and her husband had and then in an apartment with a friend. Watson was still bugging him to go to college. In fact he told Bruce that if he went to college he would buy him a car. “Within reason,” Watson said, smiling. “I told him I’d buy him a nice car within reason. Not something crazy. I just felt as if he had accomplished a lot as a caddy and maybe it was time for him to go on to the next thing. I was like his parents. I thought the next thing was college.”
Bruce had given it some thought. At one point he had established residency in Colorado because Hale Irwin’s mother worked in admissions at the University of Colorado and he thought perhaps he might apply there. But he never got around to it. He did enroll briefly at North Texas State, spent a semester there, and then decided he had seen enough of the halls of academia. “Never did get the car,” he said. “I guess one semester wasn’t enough.”
After 1977 it wasn’t likely that Bruce was going to give up his place next to Watson. He was enjoying himself too much. “We were on a roll,” he said. “You don’t get off a great ride in the middle of the ride. You stay with it.” In truth, he was probably making more money than most twenty-three-year-old college graduates were at that point. And the gypsy life was as appealing then as it had been four years earlier; perhaps more appealing, because it had become easier with money. He was still driving to tournaments with other caddies, but more often than not he either had his own room or just one roommate. No more breaking down beds.
He began 1978 working for the world’s number one player and was generally considered among his peers and those who followed golf to be the world’s number one caddy. “I still felt as if every day I was on the golf course with Tom, I was exactly where I wanted to be,” he said. “There was nothing about my life at that point that I would have changed.”
“I’m Gonna Make It”
THE NEXT FOUR YEARS
were not all that different from 1977. In 1978, 1979, and 1980, Watson was the tour’s leading money winner. Purses were now climbing steadily, and in 1980 Watson became the first player in tour history to win more than $500,000 ($530,808) in a single season. In September of 1979, the Watsons had their first child, Meg. Some of Bruce’s closest friends gave up caddying. After spending a year on the tour after college, Bill Leahey got a job in Boston working for an industrial sales company. Neil Oxman graduated from law school in 1977 and went to work as a Democratic political consultant. In 1980 Gary Crandall got married, moved to Texas, and went back to school, learning to be a computer scientist.
Bruce missed having them on tour, but by then he had a host of new friends. He and Greg Rita had become travel partners and close friends. Like Bruce, Rita had come to caddying because of his father’s membership in a golf club—Glastonbury Hills—and because of the Greater Hartford Open. Richard Rita had been general chairman of the GHO when Greg was very young, and he always played in the GHO’s pro-am. Going over to watch that tournament was Greg’s first exposure to the PGA Tour, and while growing up as a caddy at Glastonbury Hills, he often thought it would be fun to be inside the ropes someday. “By the time I was in high school, I would go over to the GHO and talk to some of the caddies,” he said. “The way they described their life sounded like fun: traveling the country, meeting new people every week, being a part of the competition, and getting close to great players.”
Like Bruce, Greg struggled in school and landed in a prep school. Unlike his ninety-four classmates, he never gave any thought to going to college. When he decided to give caddying a try in 1976, Bruce was one of the first people he met. “By then Bruce was a star in the caddying world because he was working for one of the best players in the world,” Rita said. “I noticed two things about him right away: his willingness to help new guys like me and his closeness to Tom. It wasn’t your typical caddy-player relationship. It wasn’t as if they went out together every night, they didn’t. But they enjoyed each other’s company, on the golf course, on the range, on the putting green. It wasn’t just boss and employee. They were friends.”
Rita has gone on to have great success as a caddy. He began working for Gil Morgan early in his career and has caddied regularly since then for players like Curtis Strange, John Daly, and, most recently, Mark O’Meara. He’s been on the bag for three major championship wins: two Opens with Strange and the 1995 British Open with Daly. He and Bruce made perfect traveling companions: same age, similar temperaments—although Bruce is more outgoing than Rita by nature—and remarkably similar backgrounds. “The only complaint I ever had with Bruce was having to listen to him talk about the Eagles—in May,” Rita said. “Every spring he would start telling me why this was going to be the Eagles’ year.”
Rita paused for a moment. “He’s always been the eternal optimist. That’s part of the reason why he’s such a great caddy.”
The only disappointment for Watson and Bruce in 1978 and 1979 was Watson’s inability to add another major to his résumé. He tied for second both years at the Masters, falling victim to Gary Player’s stunning Sunday 64 in ’78, then losing in a three-way playoff with Fuzzy Zoeller and Ed Sneed in ’79. Sneed bogeyed the last three holes to create the playoff, then it was Zoeller who took advantage, birdieing the second playoff hole for the victory. The real crusher came at the ’78 PGA, when Watson led by four with nine holes to play at Oakmont only to lose in another three-way playoff (Jerry Pate was the third player) to John Mahaffey. That was a tough one on Bruce, who thought he was about to win
his
first major, only to watch it disappear on the back nine on Sunday.
“Disappointment is part of the game, that’s one thing Tom taught me,” he said. “He’s always been good at handling defeat and moving on to the next thing. I had to learn how to do that. That one was especially disappointing, because it really looked as if we had won the golf tournament.”
Even with those losses, Watson was still the world’s dominant player. He won five times in ’78 and five times in ’79. Then in 1980 he won
seven
times and did add another major when he won his third British Open—again without Bruce—beating his good friend Lee Trevino by four shots at Muirfield.
“When you’re playing major championships, all you can really hope for is that your game is there that week,” Watson said. “What you’ve done in the past doesn’t mean anything. It’s how you are playing right at that moment. During that period, my game was consistent enough that more often than not, I was in a position to contend on the last day. Then all sorts of things come into play: nerves, luck, another guy getting hot. You aren’t going to win every time you contend, but the more times you are in position to contend, the more your odds of winning go up.”
The one major where Watson seemed to have trouble putting himself into contention on a consistent basis was the major he wanted to win the most: the U.S. Open. After the ’74 meltdown at Winged Foot, he had top-tenned the next four years but hadn’t been in serious contention on Sunday. Bruce came out of the ’78 Open at Cherry Hills Country Club outside Denver with all kinds of mixed emotions: once again Watson hadn’t been able to win the event he wanted most. Bruce was still waiting for the day when he would be inside the ropes when Watson won a major. And now his buddy Gary Crandall had been on the bag for the winning player at a major: Andy North won the Open while Watson finished tied for sixth, but nowhere near the Sunday lead.
“At that point it really wasn’t that bad,” Bruce said. “There were times when I thought about nicknaming myself the Black Cat, but Tom wasn’t even thirty yet and I knew he was going to win more majors. The only problem was, we still couldn’t work at Augusta then, and Tom had pretty much decided after ’77 that Alfie [Fyles] should work for him at the British. I couldn’t blame him for that. Alfie knew the golf courses over there better than I did and he had two wins to show, and all I had to show was a cut. When Andy and Gary won, I was thrilled for them, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little bit envious. I wanted to know that feeling myself.”
Years later Linda Watson told Bruce that it was her idea to stick with Alfie Fyles at the British. “She said it was more about superstition than anything else,” he said. “Again, how could I blame her for feeling that way?”
Buoyed by his third win at the British (1980), Watson won another memorable Masters in 1981, holding off Nicklaus and Johnny Miller on the last day for a two-stroke victory. Once again Bruce was outside the ropes watching. “Given my track record in majors, I’m surprised he even gave me a ticket at that point,” he joked. “But I kept on believing my time was going to come. He was still the best player in the world. It was only a matter of time.”
That year’s U.S. Open was held at Merion Golf Club, outside Philadelphia, one of golf’s most famous venues. It was at Merion in 1950 that Ben Hogan hit his famous one-iron shot on the 18th hole on Saturday (the last two rounds were played on Saturday then) to get himself into a playoff with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio, which he won by four shots over Mangrum the next day. Watson’s sense of the game’s history combined with his desire to win the tournament he had grown up dreaming about made that Open an ideal place for him to finally win, as he often calls it, “the national championship.”
He was in the process of putting himself into position to do just that, closing on the leaders on Saturday afternoon, when he stepped up on the 15th tee and duck-hooked a three-wood out of bounds. At that moment he was in sixth place and trailed the leader, George Burns, by five shots with all of Sunday still ahead of him and Burns starting to struggle. He trailed no one else by more than two shots. When he walked off the green with a triple-bogey seven, he trailed by eight and had allowed a dozen players in the pack to go past him. By the time he holed out on 18 that afternoon—three-putting the 18th green—it was raining and it was apparent that another year was going to go by without a U.S. Open title. Frustrated, Watson signed his scorecard and, instead of taking the crowded path back to the locker room, walked around to the front of the 18th green, taking a route off-limits to most of the public to await a shuttle that would take him to the driving range. He politely turned down a couple of autograph seekers, saying, “I have to get right to the range now.” He said the same thing to two reporters when they approached.
Unfortunately for Watson, the van sitting at the shuttle stop wasn’t going to the range. Forced to wait, he was too polite to say no to a little girl who asked for an autograph or to the two reporters who were still there. “I just didn’t play very well,” he said quietly. “The last five holes are really the only hard part of this golf course, especially on a day like this, and I couldn’t do the job on them.”
Someone asked if he was going to the range to pound out his frustrations. “No,” he insisted. “There’s something I want to work on.”
The range van mercifully arrived and Watson escaped. He ended up tied for 23rd the next day. Perhaps it was coincidence, but the rest of the year was a virtual washout for Watson. He finished tied for 23rd in defense of his British Open title and missed the cut at the PGA. In fact he didn’t finish higher than 20th in a single tournament the rest of the year. For the first time since 1976, he wasn’t the leading money winner on the tour. He still finished third, thanks to his three victories prior to the Open, but his earnings dropped by almost $200,000 from the previous year. He also wasn’t the player of the year for the first time in five years. British Open champion Bill Rogers was. Watson was again searching for a swing key, trying to find something to get him back to where he had been prior to Merion.
For Bruce, watching Watson struggle was difficult. It wasn’t just that not being in the hunt on Sunday was no fun and less rewarding financially. It hurt him to see Watson so frustrated. By then Watson was giving Bruce more responsibility. Always a very confident reader of greens, he had started to check with Bruce at times for his thoughts on some putts. When the two would work on the range, if Watson was trying something he would often say, “How’s that look?” knowing that Bruce’s response, while not that of a trained teacher, would be honest.
It started to come back early in 1982—slowly. Watson won in Los Angeles. He finished tied for fifth at Augusta. He won again at the Heritage. But the swing still wasn’t where he wanted it to be. “I’m getting by right now because my strength is still getting the ball in the hole,” he said that spring. “The swing’s not there yet, but it’s coming. I really believe it’s coming.”
The Open that year was to be played at Pebble Beach, the place where Watson had so often started his mornings while at Stanford. Frequently he would stand on the 15th tee there and tell himself, “Okay, you have to play these four holes in one under to beat Nicklaus and win the Open.”
“Of course then I’d play them in two over,” he said. “I had a long way to go back then.”
He had come a long way since. Now there were some in golf who wondered if he would ever win an Open if he couldn’t win at Pebble, a place he loved and was familiar with. Of course Pebble in January or February when the AT&T is played is a lot different than Pebble in June after the USGA has gotten through setting up the golf course. Familiarity would help, but perhaps not as much as some people might have thought.