Puggy Looks David In The Eye example essay topic

Behind the Glasses: David Duval Chris Weymouth They tried to hide the huge needle, of course. He laid with his face planted hard into the sheets. His father and a nurse held him down by his shoulders and legs. The needle was pushed in just above his hip. He took it better than most boys his age. He clenched as it made its way through his skin.

It stopped when it met his hipbone. The doctor had to ratchet it now, hard, to penetrate the bone. He clenched harder. The doctor now rocked the needle around in every direction now, to break of the thread of marrow that was drawn. The boy's lips finally opened. His father would never forget the scream that came out.

All he did was tighten his grip as the boy thrashed. It was this, or it was death. The doctor had all that was needed for now. A sample to analyze before making a final decision. Tomorrow, if all was good, the needle would have to go in four more times, it wouldn't hurt though, promise. 'Don't worry, David, you " ll get anesthesia next time.

You " ll be numb, you " ll never feel a thing. ' He stepped out of the car and looked around. Before him he observed a stately building, manicured flowers, lush green grass. He noticed some men wearing spotless shoes, and neatly creased slacks standing on the grass observing a small white ball and trading remarks that made them smile. Everyone, everything, seemed so peaceful, so clean, so perfect at Timuquana Country Club. David Duval was just nine.

He was so short that his bag of clubs almost dragged on the ground. He was slightly chunky, with freckled skin. His bottle-thick glasses sat on his nose. He carried six bags of golf balls to the driving range. If you watched how he carried himself, you wouldn't know that he had really just started playing, or that the bag of clubs was irritating a string of puncture scars on his hips.

He poured the balls out and began sending them flying across the grass. The men finished and moved away. David left only to collect six more bags of balls, about 150 more balls, and returned, again and again. 'David,' Woodrow Burton, a club employee, begged, 'you better leave some of them balls for the members.

' David, saying nothing, opened his palms for the balls. Soon those calluses would be hard, those hands wouldn't feel a thing. He came home from school, and left. He cruised down Algonquin Avenue on Jacksonville's west side. No stopping for homework, to say hi to Mom, for a bite to eat, not even a whiff of despair. He would grab a soda and a hot dog at the club and grab his clubs.

His father, the club pro, would pay the tab for 25 to 40 hot dogs a month. It was all a routine now. A routine installed two years ago when the old one was smashed. Everday after school, every weekend, all summer, morning until dark, until his Dad was ready to go home, well, his Dad wasn't exactly going home anymore.

He dropped David off and pulled away. This was so much easier than going inside, like David, and seeing the large picture of Brent that his mother refused to put away. Brent smiled a perfectly healthy smile. He was a sweet boy, the one to whose bed their little sister, Deirdre, always ran when she had a nightmare, the one who would be the first to hold up a muddy turtle or frog and ask, 'Isn't this creature beautiful?' Brent looked most like Dad, was more outgoing like Dad. He already was showing talents in Dad's sport and a few others. David stood by his mother, Diane, and his little sister, observing the world through the prism of his thick glasses.

Diane and Bobby had noticed that Brent was looking a little pale. They were told, by the hematologist, right in front of Brent, that his bone marrow had quit making white blood cells. It was called a plastic anemia, and they were informed of their choices: Do nothing and die an ugly death within three months, experiment with drugs about which nothing was known, or a bone marrow transplant at one of five hospitals in the country equipped to do the surgery. Perhaps the transplant would yield a 50-50 shot with a decent match from a sibling.

The sibling was David. A 90% match with his brother's marrow was Brent's only chance to live. The transplant worked. Brent began to regain strength and color.

Plans were made for Brent to return home from the Cleveland hospital. To celebrate, Brent was given permission to go to dinner with the family and his nurse, Molly. Brent vs. omitted at dinner. Just nerves from being out and about again probably.

Soon the truth came though: Brent had graft-versus-host disease. David's marrow had attacked his brother's body. With infections spreading quickly, organ after organ shut down. It was decided that David should see his brother once more. He flew back to Cleveland. He froze at the door of the ICU and stared at the sunken bundle of bloodless flesh and bones connected to a tangle of tubes, inside a strange plastic bubble.

'That's not my brother!' he screamed. He turned and ran down the hall and out the hospital door. He ran across the street, through the town, around cars, intersections, and people. The moment he stopped it would all be true. His father finally caught him, sobbing and gasping for air.

He didn't say it then. It came a few weeks later in the silence of a dumbstruck home. 'I killed him!' he cried. 'I killed him!' David loved to golf alone in the fog. No one saw him. He saw no one.

It was as if there was a gray curtain lowered between him and the world. When he could not see the consequence, the place where the ball landed, it made the moment when his hands cocked and let fly even purer. Just harmony, David and the ball. Once in a while his father would materialize on a golf cart.

Bobby was good enough to play on the PGA Tour, but he gave up that dream for one that no longer existed, the stability of his family. He watched David silently. Good shot, or bad shot, you couldn't tell by David's face. You couldn't tell that he'd recently discovered that we live in a world in which, at any moment, something too tiny to see could invade your body and destroy it, and no one, not even the smartest adults on earth, could stop it. He looked numb. David would look over at his father once in a while.

Bobby was the friendliest club pro you could hope to find at a golf club. Nowhere to be found at home though, he left a year after Brent's death. David didn't understand it, so he enjoyed sharing the language of golf with Dad instead. But David would not be like his father. David would ask about how his swing looked. Bobby had taught David the fundamentals, but he believed that a player should find the swing that fit his or her body, rather than having the instructor's imposed on them.

Bobby was glad that David had found a place to turn, the safest, most soothing place in the world. The father was a little intimidated by this son. The fog turned to mist, the mist turned to rain, David did not go home. Day turned to night, David went home.

He looked at his mother. She had stopped taking her children to church every Sunday, now though, her faith, like her husband, was gone. She was an open wound, a softhearted woman racked by sobs at any time of the day, still referring to Brent as if he were still alive, whisking her two children off to bed for the day at the first stomach cramp or cough, just groping, like Bobby, just doing whatever she could to survive. David would not be like his mother.

Once in a while he would stop in the hallway and stare into Brent's bedroom. Nothing had been touched since his death, as if he would be home soon, as if it were waiting for him. David refused to see the therapist or the grave site, refused to speak of what had happened, and to look at pictures of his brother. 'Can I move into that bedroom?' he asked his mom. He left one thing on the wall: a poster of a black Lamborghini Count ach, Brent's dream car.

He stared at it one night and made a vow: To own one by age 25. Neighbors and friends of the family sensed what was happening to David. His mother sensed it too, but it couldn't be spoken of. During the summer David spent a few weeks with his grandparents Harry and Vickie Poole, who lived on a golf course at Fernandina Beach, 45 minutes north of David's home in Jacksonville. David loved Harry, and he spent most of his time with him while Diane and Bobby spent weeks in vigil at the hospital in Cleveland. One day, the boy teed of on the last hole, about to beat his grandfather for the first time.

He double-bogeyed and lost. His startled grandfather watched the stoic boy burst into tears. 'You beat me today, ' David sobbed, 'but you won't when I come back next summer. You " ll never beat me again!' If life was fair, and people got what they deserved, the boy was guilty. He deserved a dead brother and a sledgehammered family because something was wrong with him, dreadfully, all the way down to his marrow. No.

That was unbearable. Life couldn't be fair. 'Six more bags of balls. ' There were no deserves. He stood under the merciless sun, in his second shirt of the day, beating a third hour's worth of balls into the August sky. He extended his thoughts, like taffy.

If this... then that: That was how the boy's mind worked, in cool and remorseless progression, a set of marble steps. If there were no justice in the universe, then you built up no points for pleasantries, small kindnesses and gestures. All that was wasted motion. If nothing were fair, then you got whatever you settled for, or whatever you took. 'You can level your own playing filed by realizing that life only becomes fair when you realize it's unfair. ' he would say years later. To accept such a hard, jagged premise, one would have to make oneself hard, sometimes even jagged.

'Six more bags. ' Small talk? Why? Hang out? Why? The mall?

Why? Chase girls? He had to get up early and go to the club. Party?

'It's very damaging to goals,' he would say years later. 'It's not an efficient use of time. ' Manners? Yes, very efficient for a boy growing up among adults at a country club, especially being a nonmember with access to that placid, perfect place. Friends? He had four or five.

A friend he had before his brother's death and with whom he felt safe, boys who had little or nothing to do with golf. He barely had time to see them anymore, let alone did he want to add anymore. He was attending a private school with a college like campus, where none of those old friends went anyway, and his classmates had no clue what was incubating in their midst. When he was 13, the power came.

In a matter of months, it seemed, his 170-yard drive had found and extra city block, and suddenly he was standing at the open car trunks of 40-year-old members who had won club, city, and state championships, to collect bets (There was nearly a grand in the cigar box he kept at home). The men began to complain to his father and tell Bobby that they would rather play against him than lose to that 'little shit son of your's. ' Once someone suggested a driving contest when the Air Force Academy team came by Timuquana. The college boys ripped. Then 6'4', 250 pound Steve 'Sasquatch' Young, supposedly the biggest hitter on the college circuit, ripped. David stepped up and out ripped them all by 40 yards.

Golf was the perfect sport for David. It all hinged on him. No one could affect his performance, not an overpowering pitcher or acrobatic defender, not a distracted teammate or timekeeper or referee. It confirmed the logic of his experience, of his organs and tissue: Rely on no one, be affected by no one... except me. He would place himself inside a cavern with one pinprick of light high above, one way out: the PGA Tour.

'Are you sure you don't want to go to your school's football game tomorrow, David?' his father would ask. Bobby was back home now, to give marriage another chance. 'David, you don't want to go to your prom?' David would look out from behind one of the books he had taken up for company. Would going to the game or the prom inch him any closer to the pinprick of light?

'No, Dad. ' 'Why not, David?' 'Don't want to. ' An attitude was crystallizing, a philosophy, a hard, shiny integrity that sneered at compromise. At 15, David watched his father soothing a club member who was complaining about a dysfunctional golf cart. 'Tell him,' David told his dad when the whiner walked out, 'to kiss your @ss. ' While his high school classmates celebrated their graduation, David was on a plane for Texas to play a tournament.

He hadn't won any big ones yet, but that summer he took four of the most prestigious events, including the U.S. Junior Amateur. 'To really improve,' he would say one day, 'you need to rise and fall alone, and each time learn why. That can be very lonely, but I'm not afraid of aloneness. I've done it. It's not so bad. ' He packed his clothes, clubs and his black Lamborghini poster.

It was time to leave home and go to a new place, filled with strangers who might... well, he couldn't even guess. It would be safer to remain alone, of course. Alone at the top. Mike Clark, a veteran on the Georgia Tech golf team, took David to a party during his recruiting visit. That was his first mistake. His second?

'We " ve got four really good golfers coming back,' Clark explained. 'All we need is a good number 5, and we " ve got a helluva team. ' 'If I come here, I won't be number 5,' David said. 'I plan to be number 1. ' He enrolled, and instantly shocked his teammates once more: He wanted his picture on the cover of the media guide his freshman year. Maybe if he and that swing of his were on it, no one would dream how miserable the unfamiliar made him, how close he was to leaving school and turning back.

Soon after joining the team came David's first chance to bulldoze his teammates. The Shiseido Cup in Japan, where only the lowest five players over six rounds of qualifying could make the trip and play the tournament. The rest of the team would stay home. David was out of control in this new world, and couldn't focus. He didn't qualify to go to Japan. The Japanese tournament organizers though, didn't like the thought of holding a tournament without the U.S. Junior Amateur champion.

They requested that an exception be made, and that David be allowed to compete. Now, his teammates didn't like this thought. What about the Georgia Tech golfer who had worked hard to qualify ahead of David, and had to stay home? There weren't enough blankets on that plane to Japan to hold off the chill.

David lost to Phil Mickelson on the last hole of the Shiseido Cup. David had failed to do the cruelest thing possible to his new teammates, but only by one shot. Pity the poor coach. No, don't pity the poor coach. Puggy Blackmon was the smart, strong-willed man who directed Georgia Tech's golf team and was a Christian to the bone. He knew well Matthew 18: 12-14, the parable of the shepherd who left his flock to bring back the solitary lamb.

Puggy began walking, ignoring the flock's warnings: No, Coach, that's the wolf! In David's first ACC tournament, he placed second, and his team tied for fifth. Teammate Tripp Isenhour walked right up to him. 'David,' he exclaimed, 'you played great, that was awesome.

' 'Yeah,' David replied, voice flat as a desert horizon. 'If I'd had teammates worth a sh! t, we'd have won the damn tournament. ' His teammates' mouths fell open. They couldn't hear the echoes of the boy's screams and footsteps down the hospital hallways. If they had known the whole story then, they would say years later, things would have been different. What the team was seeing was a new creature to them.

They saw a creature whose self-esteem lacked a seemingly crucial element: what others felt about him. Their approval meant nothing to him. They were rendered immaterial. His mind's eye was so focused on where he was going, he didn't feel the air thicken when teammates, or opponents for that matter, offered each other the customary 'Good luck guys, hit it good' on the first tee, and David just muttered, 'Yeah.

' He didn't notice the looks his teammates traded when he snapped 'Hell, no' at a waitress asking if everything was alright, or a deli worker asking if he'd like mayo on his sandwich. He had no sense of the camaraderie and support he was missing. He didn't want it. He had no idea that if he didn't stop adding to the wall that had protected him through childhood, it could entomb him. Everything from before seemed so distant, as if it had happened to someone else. He couldn't even have told anyone exactly what it was that he was closing off.

In David's second ACC tournament, in 1991, the team led entering the final round, with David tied for the individual lead. In the final round, he gained to a five shot lead, when rain stopped play and everyone was forced to wait in the clubhouse. When the announcement finally came that the final round was washed out, and that scores would stand as they did at the beginning of the day, Georgia Tech was declared the winners, and David was the individual co-winner. His teammates high-five and cheered, 'We did it! We got a ring!' David's fist slammed the table. His mouth spat an obscenity.

At least one teammate wanted to punch him. A year before that, he was on the first tee at the U.S. Open with his caddie, Puggy. He birdie three of the first five holes and was still on the leader board the final day. Two years later, he played with the pros again in the Bell South Classic in Atlanta and amazed everyone by taking the third round lead.

He said only three words to his father on the driving range before the final round: 'I belong here. ' He shot a 79 and vanished. He wasn't ready for the tour yet, because he couldn't dominate it. He had to endure this halfway house, and improve in a way that he couldn't quite put his finger on. 'College was just another stop on my journey,' he would say years later, 'I wasn't there for college. Everything I did was preparing for the next level.

I was majoring in golf. ' His maturity as a player, his capacity to analyze all the variables before a shot and let fly, was extraordinary. But then his preparation for the U.S. Open was a little different from his preparation for the Furman Intercollegiate. Tests rescheduled and laundry dry-cleaned a week in advance, clubs spotless, grips brand-new, clothes neatly folded and packed the day before, sweaters in the dead of summer, rain gear in his golf bag on a cloudless day, just in case, one never knew, book in his lap and a seat staked in the van 10 minutes before departure while everyone else on the team scrambled around like, well, like college kids.

They clam bored aboard and started talking about opponent's swings, and how ugly they were, David just shook his head. 'I never look at anyone's swing,' he said. His teammates called him 'Rock' to his face. Reliable, sturdy, unemotional, he kind of liked it. Behind his back they called him the 'Penguin. ' It made no sense, the extra weight he carried; David had streamlined himself in every other way, made himself an arrow flying toward its target, so to speak.

Unless those extra pounds served a purpose, perhaps a guarantee that no one would get too close? He dated rarely. A golfer on the Texas women's team whom he had met on the trip to Japan was a sort of girlfriend, but they conducted their relationship mostly by telephone and letters, David's often rewritten twice to make sure that every word and punctuation mark was correct, that not a single scratch-out survived. One other thing that didn't quite fit. He was first-team All-America his freshman year... but never won a tournament. Odd for a player with such astonishing poise and talent, how often he finished second or third, how long it took, his ninth tournament of his sophomore year, for the first victory to come.

Once, during David's sophomore year, Puggy did the unthinkable. He demoted David to number 2 on the team. 'You gotta be f -- -ing kidding me!' David exploded in front of the team. He went on seething and swearing, making the new number 1, Tom Shaw, feel as if his elevation were preposterous. David's intention wasn't to shatter Shaw. Through the wall, he couldn't even see that happening.

David beat Shaw's score by ten shots in their next tournament. Joy, as David would discover when he whooped and jumped after making a hole in one a few years later, then three-putted the next hole from eight feet, was unmanageable on a golf course. But he knew how to use anger like a club. David was soon number 1 again. The tension between the team and David was growing unbearable.

Puggy called in sports psychologist Bob Rotella and held an encounter session, no holds barred, in the team lounge. The sheep ganged up on David. He was shocked. 'Why is this coming out now?' he asked calmly. 'Why didn't you have the courage to be honest with me before? At least you all knew where I stood.

' Puggy gave up on trying to knit one team and settled for the next best thing: two teams. Two rental cars. There went four Georgia Tech golfers in one car to eat Mexican. There went David and Puggy in another to eat American.

Roommate assignments? Puggy and David. Practices? David might show up at the same time, and sometimes even the same course, as the others, might not. 'It was the only way to keep them from killing each other.

' Puggy said. Hm, Puggy's taking care of the Cadillac, the others grumbled. They didn't know what was going on in the other car, or at the other restaurant. Yes, Puggy was reassuring the boy who could show no vulnerability to anyone else, affirming his greatness.

He was also waging a battle with the boy; they were two old and powerful forces wearing the disguises of the golfer and the coach. 'You need spirituality, David. You need people. You can't keep alienating them.

You " re going to fall one day, hard, then you " ll realize. There's a dimension you can't see, where all humans merge, and singular paths dissolve. Everything happens for a reason. There's a design, a loving design that we can't always understand.

' Puggy tried to get through to David one night in the quiet hotel room. 'A design, Coach? If there's a design, what designer filled my brother's marrow with poison? A man's got himself and his quest; he must't try to step on toes, but if avoiding toes means detours and delays, he's failed himself. Greatness, the very reaching for it, justifies the singular path.

' David glared straight ahead of him, without a look at Puggy. Soon after this, David would stumble upon The Fountainhead, the 695-page novel by Ayn Rand in which he would finally see himself. Howard Roark, the fictional architect and main character, was the flame that burned within him, the fire that the world kept trying to extinguish: the premise that a man's integrity could grow only from following his own truth and ego, serving his own purpose and passion. Roark's was a noble and healthy selfishness that accepted the hatred of all the sheep who called it arrogance. In the story, Roark declares, 'The basic need of the creator is independence, the reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever.

It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. ' He read passages like this and felt his life justified. The book was an eerie mirror of him. Puggy knew he had his work cut out for him.

Asking David to change his stance toward life would be like asking him to change his stance over the ball: Would those 280 yard ers still scream off the face of his driver if he opened up more, if he bent, if he reached out, if he felt? No, he couldn't risk it. He couldn't stand to deny his love for Puggy and his family though. There was a wholeness to Puggy's family that drew David to their house, where he would roll around on the floor with the kids, and ultimately show Puggy something that few others could see: 'That little soft spot,' was how Puggy put it, 'on the underbelly of that hard shell. You could see it and start to give him your heart, then he could stick his hand in your chest and jerk your heart right out.

' Puggy kept leading David back to the human flock. As a senior he won four tournaments and his fourth straight spot as first-team All-America. He was getting along better with his team mates and was beginning to believe that Puggy might have at least been... a little bit right. The day after the all import an NCAA tournament, a story about David appeared in a Louisville newspaper. The reporter had taken a few events he witnessed: David telling an opponent on the fairway to move his golf bag out of David's sight line, David spitting out apple chunks, David urinating in a patch of trees 40 yards off the fairway, and delivered them in the harshest light. Thunderstruck, David clipped the article and placed it on the inside cover of his planner, and would transfer it each year to the new planner.

A reminder to refortify his guard. There was no one with David in his green Nissan Pathfinder on June 13, 1994. Let's say we were though, it may be instructive. Odd that it's Cleveland we " re in, that it's here that David's life is falling apart again. Having been the surest bet to go straight to the Tour from Q School, having left Georgia Tech two quarters shy of a degree in management, he failed to make the cut and was cast into the minor leagues of golf, the Nike Tour. Here, he fails, and halfway into his second year on the Nike Tour, he is 12 spots away from the top 10 that he must crack to gain entrance to the PGA Tour.

For god's sake, he doesn't belong here. For god's sake, he has just shot 78 and 79 in Cleveland and missed the cut again. Bobby and Diane are divorcing. Brent's death was the fatal blow to the relationship.

Diane drinks, and Bobby can't stand and face their trouble. It's ugly. David is caught in the middle, bouncing from city to city, feeling helpless. The last bits of his foggy past are vanishing, and suddenly, for the first time, he cannot see his future.

David can't sleep. His mind tosses and turns all night with checklists for the next day, minor details. He can't cry. He's numb. The has lost his 'Roark ness,' the desire to pick up a golf club and do what saved him, all those years ago, from falling... We " re still in his Pathfinder with him by the way.

He'd thought about turning down Euclid Avenue, then Adelbert Road. That's where Rainbow Babies & Childrens Hospital is. That's where a padlocked trunk of memories waits. But he has staked his life on the premise that pain is to be locked away, and turned into achievement and character.

He never did turn. He turns to the interstate instead, and heads for his temporary home in Atlanta. Nothing happens on the 12 hour ride. That's not who David is. It's just important that we sit here, and know the smell of flatness and the silence of grayness.

This lasts six more weeks. He has to see Puggy. The one who said he'd fall one day. Puggy looks David in the eye and sees something he or no one else has ever seen: This is bad. Puggy begins to sing the old song, more fervently than ever, he knows David is listening now.

'The world's not about you, David. Bring people along for the ride. At the end of it, relationships will be all you " ll think about, not golf, not winning. ' Puggy talked for four hours as they walked around the Georgia Tech campus. They encountered the athletic director while walking, he greets Puggy, then turns and introduces himself to David.

David is dumbfounded. A first-team All-America four straight years... and the athletic director for all four of them years doesn't even recognize him? Dammit, he " ll have nothing to do with Georgia Tech, he " ll pulverize another piece of his past, and doesn't this prove, once more, the folly of looking anywhere but yourself for support, and that David is right and Puggy is wrong and... Wait, so how did Puggy get David to the College Golf Fellowship, a Christian conference, a few days later, instead of that Nike Tour tournament where David was supposed to start digging out of that hole? How does he emerge from them three weeks of being surrounded by dozens of people talking about love and letting go, and leave a trail of top finishes finally gaining him entrance to the PGA Tour? He appeared before the world in 1995, with a long-sleeved shirt in the dead of summer, and the collar buttoned to the throat, his hat tugged low over is brow, and sunglasses that curved all the way around to meet his temples, frustrating even the onlooker who tried to edge to one side to look into his eyes.

Then came the goatee. The galleries didn't see people like this at country clubs. It parted instinctively, made a path for him. This is no come-to-Jesus story. Everything David did and was, was subterranean and slow. Few gained the courage to approach him and learn that the dark wraparound glasses were there to protect his sensitive eyes from dust, pollen, wind, and glare that made them water and itch.

Or to learn of the ironic fact that it was Puggy who handed David his first pair of wraparounds. Those who did have the courage to approach David with questions were warned: 'I remember almost nothing about my past. ' But why did he have to keep the hat and glasses on when he walked off the last green? Why, everyone wondered, did he give the camera and the galleries almost nothing? A pant leg riffling in the wind, a small tightening of the lips around a chaw of tobacco, a blowing of the nose, were all a Duval correspondent could really report from the field.

His efficiency was back though. In his first three PGA Tour events, he finished 14th, sixth, and second, and was 37 under par in his first 12 rounds. The golf world agreed: Look out. Anesthesia brought David to the edge of greatness, but what if that numbness, as Puggy insisted, was the only thing preventing him from making that final step?

The media rained the questions about failure, choking, rather than the questions about his record setting $881,436 in earnings as a rookie. He began to grow short with reporters. The reporters retaliated with headlines like 'Bridesmaid Again,' when he would come close to winning, or 'David Duval Has The Personality Of A Divot. ' It didn't bother him. Finally, David be gain to talk to Bobby more, and even caddied for his father in Bobby's debut on the Senior Tour in 1996. He was finally helping his mother out and facing up to her problems by nudging her into an alcoholic rehab center.

Finally, he was beginning to talk about pieces of his past he had simply fogged out. He was making more friends, though they were mostly decades older than him. This way they would be less likely to be looking for something from him. He'd be a student, and pick their minds. He was building a long term relationship with a woman, Julie McArthur, who is now his fiancee'.

Scared the hell out of him, commitment. Even when making dinner plans with a friend, he would leave himself a loophole. Julie began traveling with him, and he finally had someone besides Puggy and Rotella, the sports psychologist from his days at Georgia Tech who he still met with to repeat the teachings: Widen the path, don't narrow it. Someone who would let him hide behind the wall, but only for a while, someone who could tease him. Someone who saw the moments when all that hardened softness burst free, over lost dogs on the road side whose owners he had to track down, over collection jars for children with life-threatening diseases, into which he was suddenly emptying his wallet of $100 bills, and who loved him for it. He changed his diet and started a grueling exercise program, shedding those extra pounds.

He gained muscle and flexibility, creating an even longer swing and more stamina for Sunday's back nine. One by one he removed the obstacles he had thrown in his own way. Until just one remained. 'Like delivering a 20 pound baby,' Puggy explained David's strain for his first Tour win. He got it in October of 1997... wait... twins! The very next week he won!

Another win the very next week in the Tour Championship! He began spending time with other players, walking away from the game for a week or two, and not even touching a club. He snowboarded on the mountains of Idaho, or stood waist-deep in clear waters with a fishing pole. He liked fishing, he caught fish a lot, but they went right back into the water. The next hurdle was celebrity. It smacked him when he learned that the hat he had signed and sent to a dying man was buried with the man.

'Think of the impact I can have,' he would say. 'If I'd known it meant that much, I'd have flown there and visited him, I have a responsibility. ' To the relief of his agent, Charley Moore, he bag an taking the glasses off after completing his round. He sometimes would hand them to young children in the crowd too.

He looked reporters in the eye. It was easier now though, because they were asking whether or not he was the best golfer in the world rather than if he would ever win. He answered questions thoughtfully and deliberately, with words no other golfers used, picked straight from the pocket dictionary he carried with him. Writers found it refreshing to talk to a man who had read Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintainance, someone who could picture himself never playing golf again, just walking away from it, and retreating to his backwoods tackle shop or bookstore-cafe. Who knew what would happen if success deserted him?

He could still be a rock. He could still answer an afternoon phone call with a voice so dead that callers would ask, 'Did I wake you up?' He could still sit down to eat at a restaurant right next to Julie's table and make good on her prediction to her friend that he wouldn't notice her. His heart still leaned toward Roark's truth, but his logic couldn't deny Puggy's. Funny thing, when he could afford to buy the Lamborghini, he didn't.

Maybe he will someday, if he wins the Masters or something, maybe be won't, it doesn't seem to matter that much anymore. Just when Tiger Woods was supposed to put the choke hold on the Tour, David was there in 1998 leading in wins, wrapping up the Var don Trophy (Awarded to the player with the lowest scoring average. ), and the money title. When the presentations were made, no one could see the tears behind the glasses, but they were there. He stood on the 18th tee at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic on a Sunday not three month's before.

If he could eagle this hole, he would become the third player ever to shoot a 59. He would be the first to do it in a crucial final round of a tournament. There was a flash of titanium. The ball soared 320 yards down the fairway.

Another flash, the ball looked like a pearl on crushed velvet when it came to rest 6 feet from the hole. He studied the putt. If he made it, he would likely win, after starting the day 7 shots back, and continue the hottest tear the Tour has seen in years. His insides shook, yet that seemed to be just fine. Before the ball was even in the hole, he pumped his fist. He continued to trample around the green, wagging his fists triumphantly, if this was David's version of body language, he was performing his victory celebration in Lebanese.

It was obvious that he had not done any practicing in the mirror. He just kept on throwing that fist into the air, sending tingles through himself, and the people who cared for him, who had waited so long to see something like this pour out of him... Then, the emotions zigzagged, and he couldn't find them. He layed awake in bed that night, unable to sleep, trying to feel what he felt. Finally he found it. 'Humbled,' he said.

'I just felt humbled. '.