Miracle at St. Andrews Page 6

  On my plate are eggs Benedict, which I assume based on the price have been perfectly prepared, and at every table, lawyers and investment bankers are forming and breaking alliances, hatching and scuttling schemes, placing and hedging bets. By 7:45 a.m. the energy is electric, a little like the putting green before the last round of a big tournament.

  “Your win at the Senior Open at Pebble gives you the bona fides,” says Ditkoff, “and as a former copywriter you can presumably turn a phrase, and the brawl in Honolulu established you as a regular guy. Put it all together and it spells money. If my instincts are right, and they are, you could soon be far better known and compensated for what you do with a microphone in your hand than anything you did with a golf club. No disrespect.”

  It’s all a bit overwhelming, and when I’m slow on the uptake, Ditkoff is more than ready to pick up the slack. “I’ve got juice at CBS,” he says, “a lot of juice,” and as if to emphasize the point takes a sip from his own enormous glass of juice—half cranberry, half pomegranate, splash of prune. Over the next ten minutes he drops the first names of his clients, and it’s only through context and repetition that I come to realize that “Danny,” whom he has represented for twenty-eight years, is Dan Rather, and “Jimmy” is Jim Nantz, the purring baritone of the Masters. “CBS dominates golf, and I’ve got half the ponies in their stable. You want a six-week tryout, all I have to do is pick up the phone.”

  Ditkoff is on my side. He is offering to be my mentor and guide, my agent and benefactor, and a person could not have a more powerful and persuasive and life-changing ally than Bobby Ditkoff. So why do I feel like I just got mugged in broad daylight?

  “Bob, I’m very flattered and grateful that you reached out. Still, it’s a lot to digest and I need to talk it over with my wife and young son, who is still in the third grade. Plus, I just started working on a book.”

  “That’s great. Once you get your face on TV, someone might actually want to buy it. How’s that going?”

  “It’s only been a few weeks, but I already have a pretty good outline and title.”

  “That bad, huh? Travis, I get it. You’ve been on the road for four years and you just got home. By all means, take as much time as you need. Think it over carefully, discuss with your wife and son. Then call me tomorrow morning.”

  24

  “THIS WEEK,” SAYS BURT Kearns, “is all about the streak.”

  Gathered around a makeshift table under a hastily erected tent in the parking lot of Torrey Pines Golf Course are some of the most famous faces and larynxes in televised golf. On my right is the éminence grise Ken Venturi, starting his thirty-third year in the tower, and two seats over the shamelessly mellifluous Jim Nantz, who did his first Masters at twenty-six and is just settling into his prime. On the other folding chairs are their supporting cast—Gary McCord, David Feherty, Peter Kostis, and Peter Oosterhuis, each a celebrity in his own right.

  The only little-known face belongs to Kearns, the boy wonder producer of CBS golf and the one in charge of this whole traveling circus. Kearns is small and chubby, and the streak he is referring to belongs, of course, to Tiger Woods, who arrived in La Jolla going for his seventh victory in a row, a streak that began at the end of ’99 and carried over into 2000.

  “At the moment, he’s tied for twenty-second,” says Venturi. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to continue.” The afternoon broadcast of the third round of the Buick Invitational is only a couple of hours away and both he and Nantz are already in navy blazers, shirts and ties, and full makeup.

  “Doesn’t matter,” replies Kearns, who is thirty-one and flashes a trace of the impatience the young have for the old. “Win or lose, it’s about the epic quest, the pursuit of golfing history, and the significance of what he’s already done. Jack couldn’t win seven in a row. Neither could Arnie. Not even Hogan. So even if Tiger comes up short, we’re going to ride him.”

  Kearns takes a gulp from a bucket-sized container of coffee, his third of the morning. As striking as Kearns’s youth are his eyes, which are hyperalert and always at full aperture. “And if Phil does manage to hang on for once”—Mickelson currently leads by three—“it’s about him breaking Tiger’s streak, and about him not liking Tiger all that much, and having a Tiger complex, and feeling Tiger’s hot breath on the back of his neck, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “You don’t think people are a little tired of wall-to-wall Tiger?” persists Venturi, and in the process perhaps exposing a little red neck beneath the tan.

  “These telecasts are starting to feel like Tiger’s home movies.”

  “According to the numbers, we’re getting more viewers every week.”

  “Speaking of Urkel,” says Nantz, “various sources inform me that Tiger has been spending a lot of time with women who might not be particularly appealing to Buick and Cadillac and our other sponsors.”

  “Can we be more specific?”

  “Women in the adult entertainment industry,” says Nantz with the same unhurried delivery and dulcet tones with which he describes the foliage at Amen Corner. “Strippers, a famous and not untalented porn star.”

  “Are your sources other strippers and porn stars?” asks McCord.

  “Alas, no.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” says Feherty, “pro athletes have been hanging out with strippers since the beginning of time…give or take.”

  “David, are you suggesting that there were Paleolithic strippers?” asks Nantz without looking up from his notes.

  “Yes. They were very pale.”

  “Let’s hope the stories are exaggerated and stay rumors,” says Kearns, “and if no one has any questions, or more gossip, please say hello to our newest on-course announcer, Travis McKinley.”

  Kearns’s introduction takes me by surprise. In the last few days, I’ve come to realize that the flip side of having an agent with sufficient juice to get you a job simply by picking up the phone is that the person on the other end of the line isn’t likely to be thrilled about getting the call. Kearns hasn’t said a word to me since I arrived, and on the rare occasions when he’s glanced in my direction, he’s seemed to be searching my face for something he can’t find.

  “Lovely to meet you, Travis,” says Nantz, still not looking up from his notes. “That win at Pebble over Jack and Raymond was one for the ages. And for future reference, that’s usually my seat.”

  “Welcome to show business, kid,” says Venturi with a warm smile. “Great to have you aboard.”

  “Don’t get too attached to him,” says Kearns, “it’s only a tryout.”

  25

  I’M STANDING BESIDE THE 12th tee watching Notah Begay tee off when there’s a crackling in my headphones. “Nantz is coming to you in two,” says Kearns. “He’ll introduce you and then you’re going to tell us about Begay’s second shot. When the red light above the camera goes on, you’re live.”

  Before the pre-pro meeting broke up, Kearns assigned me the threesome of Kevin Stadler, Steve Flesch, and Begay, and said he’d come to me sometime in the first hour. It was a canny choice. Stadler, a former Masters champion who often seems as disgusted with his game as any weekend hacker, is a great player and fan favorite, and Flesch is a talented southpaw, but I knew his real interest would be Begay. Begay was Tiger’s teammate at Stanford, so talking about Begay is just one more way of talking about Tiger.

  As soon as Begay’s shot is in the air, me and cameraman Mike Blundell chase after it like a pair of bird dogs. Twelve is a very long par 4 and Begay’s drive bounces through the fairway into the left rough. After examining the lie (not great) and stepping off the distance (210 yards), I retreat fifty feet and wait. A quick sip of water alleviates my acute dry mouth but does little else. Second by second my anxiety grows until my mind is running amok inside my headset and turning against me. As much as the age-old dread of embarrassment and disgrace in front of a large audience, in this case approximately 2.4 million people, I fear my own perversity. What if for no other re
ason than the fact that it would be disastrously inappropriate, I succumb to a Tourette’s-like outburst and start spouting obscenities?

  A quick check of my watch shows it’s been ninety seconds, but it’s still a shock when Kearns is back in my left ear.

  “Here we go—five seconds. Five…four…three…two…”

  When he reaches one, the red light is flashing, and Nantz is in my other ear: “Now we’re going to our newest on-course commentator and former U.S. Senior Open winner, Travis McKinley, who is on the twelfth hole.”

  Televised golf is the most tranquil of entertainments, a three-hour lullaby for an impromptu afternoon nap, but for those who are humming the lullaby, the process is surprisingly raucous. With Kearns in my left ear and Nantz in my right, I feel like I’m in the middle of a crowded bar.

  “Travis, what does Notah have left for his second shot?”

  “Well, Jim…” I say, and even in my fragmented state, I note that my first two words of golf commentary were “Well, Jim,” which hardly seems auspicious.

  “Despite a decent drive, Notah has two hundred ten yards left from a very juicy lie.”

  “I guess you didn’t see too many five-hundred-five-yard par fours on the Senior Tour, did you, Travis?”

  “Thank goodness. That would have fallen into the category of elder abuse. Twelve is a bear of a hole no matter how young and strong you are. Anywhere near the green would be a great result.”

  When Begay and his caddy reach the ball, where they will spend the next twenty seconds considering the lie and choosing a club, Kearns is back in my left ear. “Okay, now we need some color.”

  Having spent the last two hours polishing a Begay anecdote, I’m ready.

  “Many people,” I whisper, “are aware that Notah and Tiger were teammates at Stanford, but their relationship goes back to junior golf when Begay, the only Native American player on the circuit, went out of his way to befriend the only African-American. According to Tiger’s father, Begay, who is three years older, wanted Tiger to know that he wasn’t alone and would always have a friend, and that’s quite something for a twelve-year-old to do.”

  “Well, let’s see what Notah can do with this four-iron, Travis,” says Nantz, and when the camera pulls away and focuses on Begay, I release an audible sigh. Despite some very shaky moments, I managed to lose my live television virginity without undo embarrassment. If I had a cigarette, I’d light it.

  On Blundell’s monitor, which shows the image viewers are seeing, Begay crouches beside the ball, takes one waggle, and steps away. When he returns the 4-iron to his caddy, Kearns is back in my left ear. “Travis, we need more color.”

  I thought I was done, that having cleared my first little hurdle, I could spend the next fifteen minutes or so luxuriating in relief, but now there are another twenty seconds to cover and I’ve used up my good anecdote. As Kearns counts me down, “…Five…four…,” I frantically search my mind for material, “…three…,” and come up empty. Desperation blooms into white-hot panic—“…two…one…”—and still nothing. For an interminable second, the airwaves are empty and I feel myself falling into a bottomless hole. In the distance, Notah’s caddy lifts up his hand and pulls me out of the abyss with three fingers.

  “Notah is switching to a three-iron,” I say with more emotion than is usual to describe a club change. “Notah has been having issues with his back the last couple of weeks and the three will allow him to swing a little easier and take the pressure off his lower back. That’s a great lesson for you amateurs—when you’re facing a stressful shot, take one more club and swing easy.”

  It’s the kind of serviceable little riff I’ve heard a thousand times over the years, but to me at that moment it sounds like poetry. Finally, Begay hits the goddamned shot and the focus of the telecast moves on.

  26

  FOR THE REST OF the day, Kearns has me handling exit interviews. This consists of corralling golfers as they walk off the 18th green and spoon-feeding them a couple of questions about their round before they duck into the scorers’ tent. The challenge, which is not insignificant, is to get a professional golfer to say something. Anything. To discourage the player from waxing monosyllabic, you can’t serve up a question that can be answered with a yes or no. In fact, you have to all but answer for them. Mostly it’s a matter of making a quick observation and backing it up with a version of “How does it feel?” For example: “How does it feel to come back to Torrey Pines, where you played so well the last two years?” Or: “How crucial was that fourteen-footer you rolled in for par on thirteen in terms of maintaining the momentum of your round?” Or: “In the first couple of events you’ve struggled a bit on the weekend. How important was it to turn in a sixty-eight in the third round today?” Or, if you can handle one more: “You grew up and played college golf in the San Diego area. How good did it feel to play in front of so many old friends?” None of these softballs elicited anything the least bit surprising or interesting, but there were no awkward silences, so, all in all, it was a decent afternoon’s work.

  On Sunday, my apprenticeship resumed in the editing truck, where they had me lay down commentary over previously shot video. When you’re watching a tournament and they cut to the sixth hole where Shigeki Maruyama, or some other golfer nowhere near the lead, is lining up a forty-five-footer, you can be pretty sure the ball is going to end up in the bottom of the hole. However, there was no way for the producers to have known that at the time, and unless the golfer was in the last couple of groups, no one was doing play-by-play.

  To make the footage usable, a commentator does the voice-over later and presents it as if he witnessed it live. For a neophyte, it’s a good exercise in proportionate moment milking. You want to get across the excitement and surprise of seeing that forty-five-foot bomb go in, but it’s still just another inconsequential birdie on a Saturday by a golfer well outside the lead, so you can’t go apeshit. You need to strike the right balance, and this little tone poem took multiple takes: “Maruyama just wants to cozy this forty-five-footer near the hole…the weight looks good…it’s taking the break…could it be?…Yes! An unexpected birdie for Shigeki Maruyama.”

  In the evenings, I study tape of old telecasts in a way I never had before. Every twenty-three-foot putt by Phil Mickelson looks exactly the same as every other twenty-three-footer. Every three-hundred-yard drive bounds down the fairway like every other booming drive and every well-struck wedge dances around the flag in the same way. The only things that change are the context and the language.

  Competent commentators never describe what the viewers can see for themselves, and the best and wittiest, like Feherty and McCord, view every bit of video and exchange as the chance for a bit of improv. The important thing for a rookie like me to keep in mind is that the bar is not that high. If you had something better to do or a little more energy, you probably wouldn’t be sitting home on a Saturday afternoon and watching the third round of the Buick Invitational. But sometimes you don’t, and believe me I know, because I’ve been there too. At times like that all the viewer is hoping for is to be transported from one moment to the next as painlessly as possible. For a few hours on weekend afternoons, our job is to be good company.

  27

  AS A REWARD FOR not screwing up egregiously my first weekend and exceeding his low expectations, Kearns assigns me to follow Woods for three holes early on the back nine at Riviera. Even for someone who played the final eighteen of a senior major with Jack Nicklaus, witnessing Tiger up close is a thrill. There is a charisma to everything he does, even when he is doing nothing.

  Blundell and I catch up to Tiger as he waits to hit his second shot on the par-4 ninth. For Woods, who is so often the longest off the tee and closest to the pin, waiting is something he does a great deal of, and every gesture from the way he nudges up the bill of his cap to the way he crosses his arms on his chest and chats to his famously belligerent caddy, Steve Williams, is elegant and streamlined. It’s almost eerie to see a golf
er so lacking in anxiety and self-doubt, so absent of tics and twitches, simultaneously in the moment and detached from it.

  When it’s finally his turn, Woods hits a piercing 185-yard 6-iron into the wind, and the quality of the strike, the tightness of the draw, and the confidence in the swing remind me of a quote from a college coach who saw Tiger play in high school. He said that if Tiger didn’t do a thing in college or the pros and never teed it up again after the age of eighteen, he would still be the greatest golfer he had ever seen. I’ve watched him hit one shot in person and feel the same way.

  Particularly amazing to me is the height he gets on his long irons and fairway woods. On the par-five 11th, a 320-yard drive leaves him 263 yards to the pin. Williams hands him an iron, and when I see the trajectory of his second shot, I think he’s chosen to lay up, but it just keeps going…and going…and going until it lands on the green. His 3-iron has the trajectory of my 9-iron and lands so softly it’s ridiculous.

  On the next hole, Woods has a wedge to the green, and as I describe the upcoming shot, the wind abruptly changes directions and goes from hurting to helping. “The sudden change in conditions,” I whisper, “might require a different club.” The change also calls for a softer whisper, because my commentary, which would have been safely out of earshot seconds ago, is carried forward on the breeze, and by the way Woods and Williams turn sharply toward me, you might have thought I had just set off a firecracker.

  Provoking the ire of Williams is not a good idea. It’s like feeding the animals at the zoo. When Woods’s wedge lands twelve feet from the hole, I’m hopeful that Williams will understand that there was no way of anticipating such a sudden change in wind direction and my rookie mistake will be forgiven, but Williams is not known for largesse. He is known for being large. Last year, after a gray-haired grandmother snapped a picture in Woods’s backswing, Williams ripped the camera from her hands and hurled it into a pond.