Caddy for Life (32 page)
It was Roberts’s piece that Gwyn, at home in Massachusetts, walked in on during the Sunday telecast. She was stunned by how her brother looked: still smiling and brave, but so thin. She had heard the thick speech on the phone, but seeing him struggle to talk on camera hit her hard. “We had all been talking since the wedding about getting the family together to celebrate, probably in Florida, maybe in the spring or the summer. After I saw Bruce that day, I said to Lenny, ‘We have to make sure this gets done soon.’ It wasn’t as if I said to myself, ‘He’s going to die soon.’ I wouldn’t let myself think that way under any circumstances. I just decided someone in the family had to step in and make sure this got organized and it might as well be us.”
As much attention as he had received at the Players Championship, Bruce knew it was going to be even worse at the Masters. The golf media covers the Players; everyone in the media covers the Masters. Plus he was back with Watson, working at the scene of two of Watson’s most glorious victories. “Normally that’s the week I look forward to more than any other,” Bruce said. “I always stay in the same house with Greg [Rita]. It’s always a good time, seeing the same people you see there year after year. But I knew this time it was going to be different, with all the attention and all the questions. I was excited about Marsha seeing Augusta for the first time, but I also knew she was nervous about the media. She hadn’t really dealt with it very much up until then. I told her to expect it and she said she understood. But I don’t think she really could understand until she was there.”
On the first day, when she walked outside the ropes with several writers following in her wake, Marsha found out what Bruce was talking about. After consulting with a number of doctors, Marsha and Tom had decided to have Bruce work at least initially with a California biochemist named Tim Cochran. Cochran would test Bruce’s blood, pinpoint specific deficiencies, and prescribe various vitamins to counter the low readings he saw. In all, his protocol called for Bruce to swallow 162 pills a day. That meant Marsha had to carry some of the pills with her on the golf course to give to Bruce as a round progressed. The last thing in the world either Bruce or Marsha wanted was to call attention to the regimen. But this was Augusta, and there was no place to hide.
“That week was the most difficult one for me,” Marsha said. “I had spoken to reporters here and there a couple of times prior to that, but nothing like this. Nothing could really prepare me for what it was going to be like. I felt like I was walking around under a microscope.”
Bruce was more accustomed to it but still found it a struggle. The thought had crossed his mind before he even arrived in Augusta that this was Marsha’s first Masters and might be his last. He wanted to savor every moment he could but found that hard to do, because every time he turned around, someone else wanted to talk to him. On Wednesday afternoon he was talking to several reporters under Augusta’s famous tree on the veranda outside the clubhouse when Ernie Els walked up to him and said, “I’m going to win this for you.” Needless to say, that made headlines. Every columnist in America, or so it seemed, felt compelled to do a Bruce column that week. All were kind and flattering, full of quotes from golf people about why Bruce was so popular and why this was such a shock to the golf community.
The disease had attacked his throat first, but by this time Bruce was beginning to feel it in his legs as well. Not seriously—yet—but he was aware of the fact that he was tiring more easily than he had in the past. Watson was aware of it too. Without saying anything to anyone, he began doing small things to make Bruce’s life easier. He left his umbrella and rainsuit in his locker to lighten the bag except on days when it was actually raining. Instead of playing two full practice rounds at Augusta, he played nine holes on Tuesday and nine holes on Wednesday, trying to save Bruce’s legs for the tournament itself. “How many years have I played Augusta?” he said. “It isn’t as if playing eighteen more holes is going to make a big difference to me.”
On Wednesday night, Bruce and Marsha and Tom and Hilary attended the annual Golf Writers Association awards dinner. They had been invited by Jeff and Kim Julian. Jeff Julian was being given the golf writers’ Ben Hogan award for courage in the face of adversity and a physical handicap and had invited the Watsons and the Edwardses to be there. Julian, who had played on both the PGA Tour and what is now the Nationwide (triple-A level) Tour for a number of years prior to his ALS diagnosis late in 2001, had reached the point where he couldn’t actually talk anymore but carried a tiny hand-held computer called a voice synthesizer that allowed him to “talk.” He would press a few buttons, hold the synthesizer up, and his words would come out through the computer.
In accepting his Player of the Year award, Tiger Woods mentioned the guts both Julian and Bruce had shown since they had been diagnosed. “I’m inspired by what they’ve done,” he said. Julian opened his acceptance speech by typing into the synthesizer, “I’ve made it. Tiger mentioned my name.” He was both humorous and inspiring in his remarks, which he claimed would not be brief—“You would think a guy who can’t talk wouldn’t talk long,” he said. He spoke eloquently about the support he had received from fellow players and from others on the tour and, most notably, from Kim. Near the end, running out of energy, his eyes filling with tears, he had to ask Kim to come up and help him finish. He concluded by signing to her, and she spoke on his behalf. It was one of those speeches that leaves everyone in the room taking a deep breath and wondering how Julian could still continue to go on and keep his sense of humor in the face of all he had gone through.
Bruce was very quiet during Julian’s speech and afterward too. “He couldn’t help but look at Jeff and think, ‘This is my future,’” Marsha said. “It was a very difficult night for all of us.”
“I was amazed at his guts,” Bruce said. “But I knew everyone in the room had to be looking at me and thinking, ‘Bruce is going to be like that in the not too distant future.’”
Nonetheless, Bruce thought it was important to be there that night, in part because Julian had invited him but also because there was no sense running from what he was going to be facing. “That’s the tough part,” Watson said. “As wonderful as all the support has been, as much as everyone has been trying to do for him, he’s the one who is going to have this thing in the end. There’s no escaping that fact.”
With the memory of Julian fresh in his mind, Bruce couldn’t wait to get to the golf course on Thursday. There was one problem: rain. It started in the morning, and after pushing the tee times back on several occasions, Masters officials finally gave up and called play off for the day. That not only left everyone with an unwanted free day—there’s not a whole lot to do on a rainy day in Augusta—it also meant that the players would be asked to play as many holes as possible before dark on Friday. Eighteen holes a day up and down Augusta’s hills wasn’t going to be easy for Bruce. More than that would be brutal. Even so, Bruce didn’t mind the chance to catch his breath a little after the interviews he had been doing and the emotions of Wednesday night.
It didn’t help that the golf course was still wet and muddy Friday morning, making walking that much more difficult. Marsha again had a coterie of reporters following her, and CBS had now joined the fray, with essayist Dick Enberg preparing a piece on Bruce that would air Saturday. Many of the fans following the group of Watson, Mike Weir (who would go on to win the tournament), and Padraig Harrington were aware of Bruce’s condition. Throughout the day, Bruce heard shouts of encouragement and had people coming up to him to offer their prayers and words of hope as he walked from green to tee at places on the course where fans could get near the ropes. It was a long, emotional day for both Bruce and Watson.
They ended up getting in 30 holes before dark, meaning they would have to come back Saturday morning to complete the last six holes of the second round. Watson was four over par for the tournament when the horn blew Friday evening, right around the cut line, which most people were figuring would come at four or five over par. At this point in his career, when Watson starts a major, his goal, realistically, is to make the cut. Anything beyond that is a bonus. Since finishing fourth in 1997, he had only made one Masters cut, a year earlier, when he finished tied for 40th. This was a cut both he and Bruce wanted to make badly.
Because of the rain, Augusta officials had sent the players off of two tees on Friday— almost unheard of at the Masters. Only poor weather would occasion such a drastic step, and this was only the third time in tournament history it had been done. Watson’s group had gone off the 10th tee for the second round, meaning they finished play Friday on the third green. Watson was tired; Bruce was exhausted but upbeat. “The last few holes I was going on pure adrenaline,” he said. “The crowd actually helped me, because they kept yelling encouragement and telling me I could do it. I’m sure they could see I was tired too. But there was no way I wasn’t going to make it. I had to. And we were in the hunt for the cut. I felt pretty good when we finished.”
The hardest part was the walk back to the caddy barn. A half-dozen reporters had been following the group strictly for the purpose of monitoring Bruce so they could write about his day. Bruce understood why they were doing it and also why they wanted to talk to him after play was called. But he was tired and emotional and wanting to get home for a hot shower and dinner. Still, he answered the questions patiently, knowing that the reporters were doing their job just as he had been doing his. “The longest walk of the day was the one back to the caddy barn answering all the questions,” he said.
The next morning, with the sun shining brightly, they were back at the golf course to play the last six holes. Forced to start the day on the fourth hole, the toughest par-three on the course, Watson hit a solid four-iron onto the green and made par. Then he parred the fifth hole. Four more pars and he would make the cut for sure; one over the last four holes might get it done too. The sixth hole is a straight downhill par-three with one of those Augusta National greens that can bring disaster at any moment. Watson hit the green with a six-iron but had almost a straight downhill putt. With no chance to stop the ball, he was 15 feet past the cup. From there he three-putted for a double-bogey five.
Disaster. “Now we’ve gone from pars being okay to feeling like we needed at least one birdie, maybe two,” Bruce said. Pressing on the seventh hole, Watson’s second shot from the middle of the fairway found the front bunker. From there he made another double bogey, trying desperately to make his par putt and rolling it 10 feet past the hole. Right there his chances to make the cut evaporated. Two pars on eight and nine left him eight over par, three shots out.
There were cameras everywhere when Watson holed out on number nine. Reporters too. Seeing the crowds and the cameras and the beauty of the day, it occurred to Bruce that he might have just caddied for the last time at the Masters. He had worked at Augusta every year since 1984. He and Watson had almost won the tournament in 1991, when Watson came to the 18th tee on Sunday tied for the lead only to double-bogey the hole and lose by two to Ian Woosnam. His legs hurt, something he wasn’t accustomed to feeling. Walking off the green, everything crashed. He cried, first on Hilary’s shoulder and then on Marsha’s.
He had learned since his diagnosis that once he started to get emotional about something, it was very difficult to bring his emotions back under control. That was why he had tried during the two days not to focus on the shouts and cheers he was hearing but on doing his job, because he didn’t want to get caught up in the emotions. Now it was all too much. When he walked outside the ropes a woman came up to him, tears in her eyes, and said, “Bruce, I have a relative who has ALS. Seeing you doing what you’re doing right now is inspiring for my whole family.”
“That got me started again,” he said, shaking his head at the memory. He thanked the woman, took Marsha by the hand, and walked briskly up to the clubhouse area, not wanting to talk, not wanting to break down again. A CBS camera followed him all the way. Finally he and Marsha walked around the clubhouse to the porch area where caddies normally wait for their players to pull up in the morning or to walk from the locker room to the range.
Bruce lit a cigarette, hands shaking, and, arm still around Marsha, tried to calm down.
“I wanted to make that cut so badly,” he said softly. “Just wasn’t meant to be.”
He brightened, his trademark smile returning. “Next year,” he said, “we’ll win this thing.”
He was being brave and he knew it. The tears came again. He turned realist again. “I just want to walk up eighteen with Tom on a Sunday at this place one more time,” he said. “If I can do that, I’ll be happy.”
That afternoon CBS aired the piece Enberg had done, ending it with Watson hugging Bruce on the ninth green and Bruce, after hugging Hilary, walking away with Marsha. In the piece, Enberg, who writes his own material, talked about how the tables had turned for Watson and Bruce. After years of Bruce carrying the load for Watson, now Watson was trying to carry the load for Bruce.
The Masters is the highest-rated golf tournament of the year. Its TV audience is probably triple that of the Players Championship. Around the country, more and more people were hearing Bruce’s story for the first time. Most golf fans knew him because of all his years with Watson. Anyone even vaguely familiar with golf remembered The Chip, The Point, and The Hug at Pebble Beach. Between the Enberg piece and all the columns written that week about what Bruce was going through, the attention level increased dramatically.
Back in New Jersey, Bill Leahey watched the piece on CBS and tried in vain not to cry. In the weeks since the diagnosis, Leahey had been working almost nonstop on putting together a fund-raiser for Bruce at Caves Valley Golf Club outside Baltimore. “All I could think after I heard the news was that I had to do something to try to help my pal,” he said. “I’m retired, so I’ve got free time. My first thought was a golf outing with friends and family and people who wanted to put up some money to help Bruce.”