afternoon waxing and polishing their already gleaming Camaros and GTOs.
“You know how many fairways you missed the first two days?” I ask, after I’ve seen one too many perfect 5-irons.
“Not a lot.”
“One. By six inches. You also missed twenty-four putts inside twenty feet. And guess how many you got to the hole?”
“Not enough.”
“Two.”
“Wow, Travis. You’re actually paying attention.”
“That stuff you said about how you would trade all those thirds and fourths for one win. Was that bullshit?”
“No.”
“Then put that club away and follow me.”
To my relief, he does, and we spend the next three hours on the practice green performing one drill. From anywhere from eight to sixty feet, I drop six balls, and he has to get every one to the hole. If he doesn’t, we start over.
Want to know the results of this three-hour master class? I was afraid you might. On Sunday, Earl doesn’t make a putt over six feet and leaves just as many short. Thanks to my meddling, he shoots 72 and finishes out of the top ten for the first time in a year. I violated the caddy’s version of the Hippocratic oath, which is not to make things worse. And yet, as I throw my bag in the trunk and motor south, I’m buoyed by an almost giddy sense of optimism.
23
THE REASON I’M SO hopeful is that our next stop, Shoal Creek, just outside Birmingham, Alabama, is the toughest track the seniors play all year. That means Earl, even with me on the bag, has a real chance. Let me explain.
Most of the tournaments out here, like the one we just wrapped up in Sarasota, are held at resorts. Resort courses play easy. They have to, because they’re laid out with the hacker in mind. The fairways are wide, the rough anemic, and the hazards so close to the tee they’re not really in play, at least not for the pros, who start drooling all over themselves before they get out of their cars. Since keeping the ball in play isn’t much of a challenge, these tournaments turn into putting contests, and Earl isn’t going to win many of those.
At Shoal Creek, which was carved out of the woods by Nicklaus in ’77 and has already hosted two PGA championships, no one’s salivating in the parking lot. It’s long and tight and unforgiving and there are no houses and swimming pools lining the fairways. To contend at Shoal Creek, you need to be a bona fide ball-striker, someone who can drive it long and straight and hit greens from 200 yards out all day. Even on the Senior Tour, there aren’t many of these, and Earl is one of them. Once you get to the deep end of his bag, he’s as good as any old fart in the world.
In Birmingham, Earl and I have three days to prepare, and the more we see of the course, the worse it looks and the more I like it. Not only is the course hard, it’s set up hard too, with four inches of the juiciest Bermuda rough this side of a U.S. Open. In our first practice round, I drop three balls into it and invite Earl, one of the stronger guys out here, to hack away with his 7-iron. His best carries 85 yards.
“This stuff is horrible,” says Earl.
“No, it’s not. It’s beautiful. Because you’re not going to be in it. And a lot of your so-called friends will be.”
24
MY BIGGEST FEAR IS that Earl wants it too much. Ever since we rolled into town the press has been all over both of us. A former U.S. Senior Open winner who gets himself suspended, then comes out to caddy for his old pal, is good copy, and part of what makes it intriguing, particularly in Alabama, is that the golfer is black and the caddy white. When Shoal Creek hosted their second PGA Championship in 1990, the club’s all-white membership became a national story after Hall Thompson, its founder and president, defended his club by saying “we don’t discriminate in every other area except blacks.” Since then, Thompson has changed his tune, at least slightly, and added one African-American to the roster, but a black golfer winning the
“You know how many fairways you missed the first two days?” I ask, after I’ve seen one too many perfect 5-irons.
“Not a lot.”
“One. By six inches. You also missed twenty-four putts inside twenty feet. And guess how many you got to the hole?”
“Not enough.”
“Two.”
“Wow, Travis. You’re actually paying attention.”
“That stuff you said about how you would trade all those thirds and fourths for one win. Was that bullshit?”
“No.”
“Then put that club away and follow me.”
To my relief, he does, and we spend the next three hours on the practice green performing one drill. From anywhere from eight to sixty feet, I drop six balls, and he has to get every one to the hole. If he doesn’t, we start over.
Want to know the results of this three-hour master class? I was afraid you might. On Sunday, Earl doesn’t make a putt over six feet and leaves just as many short. Thanks to my meddling, he shoots 72 and finishes out of the top ten for the first time in a year. I violated the caddy’s version of the Hippocratic oath, which is not to make things worse. And yet, as I throw my bag in the trunk and motor south, I’m buoyed by an almost giddy sense of optimism.
23
THE REASON I’M SO hopeful is that our next stop, Shoal Creek, just outside Birmingham, Alabama, is the toughest track the seniors play all year. That means Earl, even with me on the bag, has a real chance. Let me explain.
Most of the tournaments out here, like the one we just wrapped up in Sarasota, are held at resorts. Resort courses play easy. They have to, because they’re laid out with the hacker in mind. The fairways are wide, the rough anemic, and the hazards so close to the tee they’re not really in play, at least not for the pros, who start drooling all over themselves before they get out of their cars. Since keeping the ball in play isn’t much of a challenge, these tournaments turn into putting contests, and Earl isn’t going to win many of those.
At Shoal Creek, which was carved out of the woods by Nicklaus in ’77 and has already hosted two PGA championships, no one’s salivating in the parking lot. It’s long and tight and unforgiving and there are no houses and swimming pools lining the fairways. To contend at Shoal Creek, you need to be a bona fide ball-striker, someone who can drive it long and straight and hit greens from 200 yards out all day. Even on the Senior Tour, there aren’t many of these, and Earl is one of them. Once you get to the deep end of his bag, he’s as good as any old fart in the world.
In Birmingham, Earl and I have three days to prepare, and the more we see of the course, the worse it looks and the more I like it. Not only is the course hard, it’s set up hard too, with four inches of the juiciest Bermuda rough this side of a U.S. Open. In our first practice round, I drop three balls into it and invite Earl, one of the stronger guys out here, to hack away with his 7-iron. His best carries 85 yards.
“This stuff is horrible,” says Earl.
“No, it’s not. It’s beautiful. Because you’re not going to be in it. And a lot of your so-called friends will be.”
24
MY BIGGEST FEAR IS that Earl wants it too much. Ever since we rolled into town the press has been all over both of us. A former U.S. Senior Open winner who gets himself suspended, then comes out to caddy for his old pal, is good copy, and part of what makes it intriguing, particularly in Alabama, is that the golfer is black and the caddy white. When Shoal Creek hosted their second PGA Championship in 1990, the club’s all-white membership became a national story after Hall Thompson, its founder and president, defended his club by saying “we don’t discriminate in every other area except blacks.” Since then, Thompson has changed his tune, at least slightly, and added one African-American to the roster, but a black golfer winning the
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