Caddy for Life: The Bruce Edwards Story by Feinstein John

Author:Feinstein, John [Feinstein, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: SPO016000
ISBN: 9780316052047
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2008-08-21T05:00:00+00:00

10

Home Again

SINCE WATSON DIDN’T PLAY much in the fall, Bruce actually had some downtime after Milwaukee, which worked out well, since The House That Norman Built was just about complete and he had some time to enjoy the fruits of those three years. His first tournament back on Watson’s bag came late in the fall of 1992, when he and Watson flew to Japan to play the Dunlop Phoenix Open, the one overseas event Watson always played in the fall because Dunlop was one of his longtime sponsors. Playing in Japan had become something Watson looked forward to each fall. It had been there, in 1976, that Watson had hit the nine-iron shot he felt led to his emergence as the world’s best player the following year. Now it also became a place for reuniting.

Being back with Watson was a little bit like returning to his old bedroom at home for Bruce. He felt completely comfortable right away. Which made sense. There hadn’t been any hard feelings between player and caddy when they had split. They had remained friends. Any concerns Bruce had about Linda had been wiped away on Watson’s birthday. “It was like old times,” Bruce said. “Except that we were all twenty years older.”

By then the Watsons’ children were thirteen and ten, which was a major reason Watson was picking and choosing where he would play. He now felt comfortable again on the golf course, confident with his swing and with the way he was striking the ball. There was a new problem, though: short putts. Once the greatest putter in the world at any distance, Watson was still dangerous from long range; but he had lost his confidence on the short ones. “You miss a couple that you think you’re going to make and you start to think more about them the next time around,” he said. “The next thing you know, it’s inside your head, and people start whispering that you have the yips.”

Next to the shanks (hitting the ball dead sideways), the yips may be the worst malady that can afflict a golfer. Quite simply, having the yips means you get jumpy and nervous over putts, almost always short ones. Johnny Miller, winner of two major championships, is the most notable exception to that rule: “I never had the yips on short putts, just ten-to-fifteen-footers,” he has said. Most players experience the yips in some form as they get older and their nerves begin to lose their sharpness. The reason so many players on the Senior Tour use long putters nowadays is to combat the yips.

No one knows exactly what causes the yips to kick in. In Watson’s case it may just have been the shock to the system he found in being competitive again after several years of wandering among the modern-day rabbits. In the 1970s, rabbits were players who didn’t have fully exempt status and had to hop from Monday qualifier to Monday qualifier on tour. Today, on the all-exempt tour, rabbits are players who are up early on Saturday and Sunday morning to lead the field at tour events.

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