A taste of tour life; why a pro-am serves up anticipation, exhilaration and humiliation—for us and, occasionally, for them

Golf Digest, Jan, 2004 by David Owen

How Tiger and other pros see it

The Western Open was first played in 1899 and is the oldest regular event on the PGA Tour. It was created, and is still run, by the Western Golf Association, which is 17 years older than the PGA and just five years younger than the U.S. Golf Association. The WGA's headquarters--in Golf, Ill.--also houses the offices of the Evans Scholars Foundation, the country's largest privately funded college-scholarship program and the beneficiary of the pro-am I played in. More than 800 caddies currently attend college on Evans Scholarships. Fifty-two of them worked our pro-am as caddies for the pros.

My own caddie, Ben, was a high-school senior and a regular summer caddie at another club in the area. He told me that he hopes to qualify for an Evans Scholarship when he graduates, and that his ambition is to become a high school shop teacher--an occupation for which he had been preparing himself by learning to use a table saw to launch short lengths of 2-by-4 at a Volkswagen Beetle being dissected on the far side of his school's shop.

Ben was a terrifically helpful caddie, but even he was unable to transform my over-the-top slash into a convincing imitation of a swing. My closest near-contribution to the team occurred when, by weakly missing a six-foot putt for net birdie, I conceivably helped Kenny sink a three-foot putt along more or less the same line. Other than that, I had the sort of round that makes you wonder whether God hasn't suddenly decided to turn you into a better person, by making your life miserable.

The stars of our team were Kenny and Bill. Kenny sank almost everything inside 10 feet or so, and Bill, at several crucial moments, was somehow able to hit his 3-wood about as far as Hayes could hit his driver. The two of them carried our team onto the first page of the electronic leader board and then to a final score of 15 under par--an awesome performance, which, if it had been one stroke better, would have vaulted us into a three-way match of cards for fifth place, out of the 26 groups with morning tee times. (The field was divided into morning and afternoon divisions.)

The trophies were handed out at lunch, in a huge tent not far from the 18th green. Nobody, not even the winners, paid attention to the presentation, so I left my table to talk to two of the four guys who had played with Tiger. (They were easy to spot, because they were smiling so broadly that their eyes were almost squeezed shut.) One told me he had been too excited to sleep the night before and had passed the long hours till dawn by calling everyone he could think of. Both said that Tiger had been an extraordinarily gracious, friendly, talkative and amusing playing partner, and that he had signed as many autographs and posed for as many photographs as they and their friends had wanted. They also said that Tiger, disgusted with himself after pulling a drive into the trees to the left of the fairway on 13, had asked his Evans Scholar caddie to finish the hole for him. "The caddie wedged Tiger's ball onto the green," one said, "and then Tiger carried the bag himself and handed the caddie his putter! It was amazing!"