So Close to a Great Tale

It isn't just his often fall-down-funny, self-deprecating sense of humor or the fact that our political views are similar. His struggle to stay afloat on tour go well beyond trying to figure out how to par the 18th hole at Sawgrass on Sunday. He went through a divorce several years ago that had the kind of heartbreaking twists and turns that would make a soap opera scriptwriter blush. He's had custody of his teenage daughters since then and took a year off the tour because he felt he had to be there with them every day, not every other week. He's had hip surgery and has played all this year with plantar fasciitis in his foot and, through it all, has never lost that off-the-wall sense of humor.

He has always referred to himself as, "the worst player in the history of The PGA Tour," which clearly is the farthest thing from the truth. Several years ago, Paul and his daughters walked into a restaurant in Seattle for dinner during the PGA Championship. I was sitting at a table with Steve Stricker in a corner of the room where he couldn't see us. I asked our waitress if she wouldn't mind asking him for an autograph by saying, "I hear you are the worst player in the history of the PGA Tour, would you sign this?"

The waitress did what I asked and Paul never flinched. He grabbed the piece of paper and said, "Yup, that's me. Make sure John gives you a good tip."

A few years ago in another restaurant in another city an attractive young woman who worked for one of the tournament sponsors sat down at our table. After a few minutes she looked at Paul, single by then, and said, "has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?

I was stunned. I didn't know what color Paul's eyes were because he always squints. She was serious. "She'd also been drinking," Paul likes to point out.

Needless to say I repeated the story a few (hundred) times, earning Paul another nickname: "Angel Eyes." (For years he's been called 'Sunshine,' because of his ability to find a dark cloud in every silver lining). Several weeks later, Paul called me and said, "Would you mind calling my mom and telling her the story about the woman who thought I had beautiful eyes?"

Sure, I said, but how come?

"Because she's the only person I know you haven't told the story to so far!"

He had a point.

Everyone on tour has a Goydos story or a Goydos one-liner they like to repeat. When those who cover the tour regularly need a funny line or a smart comment on an issue, they find Goydos. It is no knock on Sergio Garcia to say a Goydos victory at The Players would have been extraordinarily popular inside both the locker room and the media room.

One last story on my boy. Four years ago, Watson and I started a charity golf tournament named for Bruce Edwards, Tom's longtime caddy, who died of ALS in 2004. We scheduled the first one in September of 2005 in Baltimore, knowing the Champions Tour was there that week and the PGA Tour was close by in central Pennsylvania. Goydos was one of the first golfers to commit to play.

A few days before the event, Paul called me to say he had changed his plane reservations and, because he was arriving at 5:30 a.m., was going to take a cab to the golf club instead of having one of our volunteers pick him up.