108 golf digest | issue 4. 2020Nhat V. Meyer/MediaNews Group/the Mercury NewsVia GettyiMaGesLast Shot
A tale of joy and survival as an amateurin the final group at Pebble Beach.The Golfer in the Arenaby jerry tarde / Editor-in-Chiefhis is my 50 th year of playing
golf, and I just had the greatest ex-
perience a chopper like me could
ever imagine. I hit the lottery three times in
a week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
First, I got invited. Second, I made the cut.
And third, I played in the final group on Sun-
day when my partner, Nick Taylor, whipped
Phil Mickelson down the stretch to win.
Nick, age 31, ranked 229th in the world
at the start of the week, is the stereotypical
Canadian—great guy, great family—who
plays golf with a cool, quiet confidence.
Think Gary Cooper with Brad Faxon’s
putting touch. He eagled our first hole in
the first round and never lost the lead.
I want to tell you what it’s like to play
alongside top pros under the pressure of
TV cameras and big-time galleries—in
Phil’s case, trying to extend a Hall of Fame
career at age 49, and for Nick, having won
only once five years ago and knowing a vic-
tory could change his life forever. We were
in the middle of it—their amateur partners,
Steve Young, the legendary San Francisco
49ers quarterback, and me, whose last vic-
tory was in the fourth flight of a member-
guest. (“I don’t feel like an athlete today,”
Steve said on the back nine, as the winds
off Carmel Bay hardened the greens and
turned our lower bodies into cement.)
Steve and I agreed at the start that our
main goal was not to win the team pro-
am—that was locked up by two-time cham-
pion Larry Fitzgerald. We just wanted to
stay out of the way, pick it up, and avoidembarrassment when going from fear to
panic with nothing in between.
My friends Jim Nantz on CBS and Jaime
Diaz on Golf Channel tried to make more
of my assistance to Nick than was there—
Jim referring to my “calming presence
every step of the way” and Jaime saying
I had a “Buddha-like influence.” I figure
they were intimating I was in my pocket
most of the time.
I saw my job as protecting Nick from
the long needle of Mickelson, who I’ve
known since his college days. Maybe I
could at least deflect his trash talk. Even
before we started, he was giving me grief
on the putting green that we had the same
three-striped balls and should be care-
ful not to hit the wrong ball. After I drove
off the first tee, Phil sidled over and said,
“Good to know you won’t be hitting any
bombs today. That’s about an 8-iron dis-
tance.” When we got to the ball, he shouted
across the fairway, “I can get you a Calla-
way Mavrik—I think you’ll do better with
one of them.”
I said, “Phil, I have an mph problem, not
an equipment problem.”
“OK, I’ll bite,” he said. “What’s mph?”
“Miles per hour,” I said.
“Oh,” said Phil.My counterattack was to use an irides-
cent ball marker with a Winged Foot logo
(scene of Phil’s worst U.S. Open collapse).
When I told Nick later, he laughed and
asked if Phil noticed. “Phil doesn’t miss
anything,” I said.
The round seemed to move quickly, even
though it took five hours. I never stopped
to snack or drink; we were on the run.
Nick ate only a PB&J sandwich he made in
the morning. Our movie seemed to be on
fast-forward for me, but Nick was always
even-paced. I was rushing too much to be
nervous. We talked a little, mostly me ad-
miring his par-saving putts and his eagle
from the bunker on 6 (when Phil’s head
noticeably snapped back). One thing that
amused me was how often Nick would
compliment my straight driving.
After Nick made his one big mistake—a
double-bogey 7 on 14—the lead dropped to
two, and I could hear Phil saying to his cad-
die/brother Tim that he just needed three
strokes: “We’ll get them one at a time. We
can still do this,” he said walking off the
15th tee. Then Nick pitched in on 15 and
birdied 17, and that was that.
There was a poignant moment as we
waited on the 18th tee. I got a little emo-
tional looking at Nick looking at the surf
around us, but he was stoic. Nick won the
tournament by four ahead of Kevin Streel-
man. We tied Young and Mickelson for sec-
ond in the pro-am, five behind Fitzgerald
and Streelman.
In the end, it’s all about me, of course.
For once I saw myself as The Man in the
Arena, described by that old 12-handicap-
per Teddy Roosevelt, who said: “It is not the
Tweeter who counts; not the golf critic who
points out how the short hitter stumbles, or
where the doer of deeds could have made
a net birdie.
“The credit belongs to the golfer who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred
by sand and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who double-bogeys the stroke
holes, because there is no effort without
skulled balls from bunkers, but who does
actually make the putt not shown on
television.
“Who at his best knows the triumph of
beating Mickelson on Sunday, and who at
his worst, if he fails, at least fails while dar-
ing greatly against Fitzgerald, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat.”way to go, pards
No Phil-like leaps for us: Nick Taylor (left)
and I connect on a cool knuckle-bump.