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Playing With Payne Coming to grips with the death of Payne Stewart cast a pall over Tiger Woods's win at the Tour Championship
By Gary Van Sickle
The week was filled with a chaotic mix of shock and sadness, respect and regret, remembrances and celebrations, tears and toughness. The actual competition was equally unbalanced: The 29 golfers in the elite field--Stewart's spot was not filled--played 27 holes on both Thursday and Saturday so that they could attend Stewart's memorial service in Orlando on Friday. In the end the only thing about the event that seemed normal was that Tiger Woods was the guy who won it. Woods's victory, by four strokes over Davis Love III, was his third straight and seventh on Tour this year, the most in a season since Johnny Miller won eight times in 1974. Until Sunday, though, the golf was an afterthought. The news of Stewart's death on Monday, Oct. 25, had hit the Tour hard. Commissioner Tim Finchem was on a teleconference call announcing that Buy.com had taken over as sponsor of the Nike tour when he was told that something was dreadfully wrong aboard Stewart's Learjet. David Duval heard about a plane flying aimlessly on autopilot, its passengers presumably dead or unconscious, as he was having lunch at the Champions Club, but he didn't know that Stewart was thought to be on it until he crossed the room to sign in for the tournament and a volunteer told him. Jeff Sluman, at home in Chicago, fielded calls from concerned friends. "They knew I had been in Orlando the day before, and since at that point nobody knew who was on the plane, they were calling to see if I was home," Sluman said. "It was terrible watching it unfold, praying and hoping it wasn't somebody you knew." Andy Martinez, Tom Lehman's caddie, was about to board a flight from Dallas to Houston when he learned that the wayward jet in the news was co-owned by Stewart and that it would crash when its fuel ran out. "I wobbled onto the plane," Martinez said. "I was woozy." Brian Sullivan, who caddies for Jeff Maggert, was at Champions walking off yardages with Stewart's caddie, Mike Hicks, when Hicks's cell phone rang. According to Sullivan, Hicks kept repeating "Oh, my god" and then ran off the course. "I knew then it was serious news," Sullivan said. The Tour made the pro-am on Oct. 26 optional for the players, yet more than 20 of them showed up anyway and played at least some holes with the amateurs who would have been their partners. Woods played all 18, saying that getting on the course helped him take his mind off the tragedy. The atmosphere, however, was surreal. "When we got to the course, it was so silent," Woods said. "It was eerie--nobody was asking for autographs or clamoring for pictures. It was real quiet. Even on the range guys were hitting and nobody was talking." In the players' parking lot next to the clubhouse, a ribbon was placed on the spot assigned to Stewart. Soon, a shrine of flowers, signs and messages adorned the empty space, to which fans were drawn all week. There was talk of canceling the event before Tour official Ben Nelson came up with the idea of playing 27 holes on Thursday and Saturday and leaving Friday open. Some players who attended Thursday's emotional memorial wondered if they would be able to handle a funeral, too. Soon after the service, which was held on the 1st tee, Justin Leonard asked Love when he was going to leave for Orlando. "I might go in a little while," he replied. Said Fred Funk, "The service was as much emotion as I've ever felt. I couldn't stop crying. Jeff Sluman asked me, 'If we couldn't deal with this, how are we going to deal with the funeral?'" On the course the players seemed to be going through the motions. Love was the only player to break 100 over the 27 holes on Thursday, shooting a seven-under 99 to take a one-shot lead over Woods, and fought his emotions every step of the way. "I had a tough time gathering up enough emotion to even play," Love said. "I hit a beautiful six-iron shot off the dirt at the 14th--a great shot--but you know what, I didn't care. Part of me said we shouldn't be playing and the other part said we needed to be out there. I chastised myself every time I had fun or got excited. It was a crazy range of emotions." Leonard said he was on the verge of tears several times during his round, and Love got so choked up when he saw an airplane circling the course with a banner reading WE WILL REMEMBER YOU, PAYNE that he had to wait several minutes to attempt a short putt. "That's when it really hit home," he said. "You shouldn't be out there playing golf with tears in your eyes." All the players paid tribute to Stewart in one way or another. Matt Griesser, the actor who plays Sign Boy in the FootJoy commercials, wrote Stewart's initial's on Love's hat. Love also carried a swatch of tartan cloth and some sand from Iwo Jima that a patriotic fan had given to the members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team. Many players wore black ribbons. Duffy Waldorf, who is known for the colorful markings he puts on his golf balls, instead wrote inscriptions about Stewart on them. No one made a more dramatic statement than Bob Estes. Dressed in black, Estes hit his opening tee shot with a putter, tapping his ball about 15 feet--symbolic, he said, of Stewart's winning putt of the same length on the final hole of this summer's U.S. Open. Estes, who made a double bogey on the hole, caught everyone by surprise, even his playing partner, Brent Geiberger. "I had a hard time hitting after what Bob did," said Geiberger. "He felt that he needed to do that for Payne. I thought it was nice." Estes later caught flak from some other pros, among them Nick Price, who said a more meaningful gesture would have been to birdie the hole, but Estes stood his ground. "I wasn't trying to draw attention to myself," he said. "I had so much emotion on the 1st tee, I wanted people to know how much Payne meant to us." Attending the service in Orlando on Friday morning and then returning to Houston that evening made for a long day for the players, but Woods, who lives in Orlando, took the opportunity to stop by his house and pick up his backup sand wedge because on Thursday he had destroyed the head on his original wedge while hitting a foolhardy shot. On the 411-yard par-4 15th hole, his 24th of the day, he pushed his tee shot, and it lodged next to a tree, flush against a rock the size of a driver head. Instead of incurring a penalty by taking a drop, Woods opted to swing through the rock. He succeeded in advancing his ball about 20 feet and irritating the nerves in his left wrist, arm and shoulder, giving himself a stinger that caused him to wince in pain on every full shot for the remainder of the round. The good news was that the day off did wonders for Woods, and on Saturday he returned at 100% to take control of the tournament, finishing that day's 27 at 13 under par to build a three-stroke lead over Chris Perry, his closest pursuer. On Sunday, before golf again became the primary focus, most of the players made one last gesture to honor Stewart by donning knickers for the final round, something they had debated doing earlier in the week. "I was against it at first," said Love, "but today I told Tom Lehman, 'This just feels right.'" Stuart Appleby went so far as to borrow an outfit from Stewart's own closet and, thus attired, bore an unsettling resemblance to its owner. What began as another day to remember Stewart, ended as another day to marvel at Woods. The top-ranked player in the world for 29 out of 43 weeks this year, he leads the Tour in seven of its 13 statistical categories and, scariest of all, is 23 and only getting better. "I haven't seen anybody have a year like this since I've been out here," says Love. "Nick Price was the closest; then you'd have to go back to Jack Nicklaus. I said the first couple of years he was here that he was not even close to how good he could get. We are starting to see that now. He is clearly head and shoulders above the rest of us." When he has gone into the final round either tied for or in the lead, Woods has won 11 straight times and lost only once. As closers go, he is golf's answer to Mariano Rivera, and on Sunday he made two birdies in his first nine holes to eliminate any suspense. Still, his dominating performance, as remarkable as it was, wasn't what everyone will remember about the most mixed-up Tour Championship ever. The message of the week was sent by Stewart. "We are reminded how short life really is, and how we are just passing through," said Hal Sutton. "So all the people you haven't told you love lately, tell them, and live your days like you mean it." Issue date: November 8, 1999
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