Dave Lubach column: An unforgettable afternoon with Jack

By Dave Lubach
Sheboygan Press staff

SHEBOYGAN FALLS - Eighteen holes with a legend, and my notebook was empty.

I had planned to keep a detailed record of the day's events, but instead, I found myself far more concerned with clubs and golf balls than pens and paper.

That's life when your job is caddying for the great Jack Nicklaus.

Friends who heard I was asked to carry Jack's bag for his first-ever round at The Bull at Pinehurst Farms (the only Jack Nicklaus Signature Course in Wisconsin), thought I'd died and gone to "looper" heaven.

Please understand that when you attend college on a caddie scholarship, like I did through the Evans program, meeting Jack Nicklaus - much less carrying his bag - almost has to be considered a religious experience.

What was I going to discuss with the man who's won more majors (18) than anybody else?

More importantly, what advice could I -- a bogey hacker at best -- offer the Greatest Golfer Who Ever Lived?

I learned the answer five minutes into my assignment, while unwittingly blocking the view of kids during a clinic on the driving range.

I guess I was there for comedy relief, not to provide advice.

"If you were built like a 1-iron, you could stand there," said Jack, evoking laughs from the crowd of about 500.

Red-faced (both from the one-liner and the hot, sun-splashed day), I good-naturedly took the comment with a smile.

Things could only get better after that public humiliation, right? And they were indeed looking up. After all, on the first tee, I actually pulled out Jack's driver without three or four other clubs falling out of the bag!

But then, all the good karma I had built up was erased while we stood in the first fairway, following Jack's first tee shot.

Jack arrived at his ball and his first words to me were, "How far to the hole?"

My response: "Uhhhhh."

Jack might as well have asked me how to split an atom, or why Mars is closer to us now than it has been in 60,000 years.

I didn't know.

At this moment, I was wondering what happened to every lesson I had learned during caddie training under then-Pine Hills golf professional Dick Suesens, who ironically is now an assistant at The Bull and was there Monday with a few pointers (and more than a couple of bottles of water).

Hole No. 2 at The Bull has a long water hazard along the right side of the fairway. Jumping head first into it didn't seem like a bad option at that point.

But instead, I soldiered on. Rumors were spreading about how long I'd last.

I could almost hear the people in the gallery thinking, "Will he wilt because of the heat, or from the heat Jack's giving him?"

It was at this point when my distance duties were stripped from me (thank you, Nicklaus design coordinator Chris Rule).

For the next 16 holes, and four-plus hours, my job consisted of: walking ahead of Jack, cleaning up balls, giving him the driver on the appropriate tees and handing him his putter after he reached the green.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Yeah, until Jack handed me the ball on the third hole and I put it in my pocket. Small problem: he wasn't giving it to me as a souvenir, but to have it washed.

Of course, the towel I so alertly grabbed before my round was drier than an Arizona summer. A member of the gallery helped me out by dabbing the towel with some water.

Jack probably wanted to dump the bottle over my head when he said: "that towel's no good if it's not wet."

I had violated rule 2A of the caddie book of life, which says always carry a damp towel (only today it would have served a dual purpose -- cleaning clubs and balls and wiping the millions of beads of sweat off my brow).

Having completely screwed up every aspect of caddying to this point, I have to say the rest of the round went quite smoothly.

Except for that moment on No. 5, shortly after Jack's tee shot, when I whiffed while trying to place the driver back in the bag and almost walked on the shaft.

That was the last dramatic episode of my day. I am proud to report that no clubs were lost or twisted, and no club covers were left behind.

Jack didn't keep score, but I know he walked off The Bull with no birdies -- during five rounds in August he said he has yet to record one -- and struggled to make many putts.

Maybe next time, Jack will ask me to read greens for him. Yeah, right.

As we reached No. 16, it occurred to me that my notebook was as empty as Phil Mickelson's major trophy case.

I had nothing.

No quotes from Jack about Tiger's slump, or why he designs a golf course the way he does, or how, at age 63, he can still hit the ball farther and straighter than just about anyone on earth. And that's following hip replacement surgery.

I had just toted a heavy bag about seven miles for four hours, and I had nothing to write about.

But, like I was most of the day, I was wrong.

I had plenty to write about. And plenty to never forget.