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Making amends with Faxon
Updated: Thursday January 25, 2001 10:30 PM
HONOLULU -- Moments after holing out on the 72nd hole of the Sony Open, a euphoric Brad Faxon told a network mannequin that he had been spurred to victory by a five-year-old dissing he had received at the hands of an unnamed writer. In fact, Faxon spent much of last week alluding to this faceless scribe, leading the Honolulu Star-Bulletin to say, on the eve of the final round, that Faxon had something to prove "to a Sports Illustrated writer who once challenged his manhood." Well, I am that writer, and I'm glad I helped Faxon bury a day we would both like to forget. Allow me to explain. Way back in the winter of 1996 I was in my last quarter at UCLA. Following a whirlwind internship at SI in 1994, I had returned to school to finish my undergraduate studies, under contract as a Special Contributor to the magazine. Over my last five quarters in Westwood I wrote more SI stories than English papers, but as a non-staffer I was in the unusual position of being able to say no to assignments. When I got the call asking me to cover the Hawaiian Open, I actually had the chutzpah to decline. You see, the tournament fell on the same weekend as the birthday of my then girlfriend (now wife), and I was not inclined to be 2,500 miles away, on a rock in the middle of the Pacific. When the omnipotent SI editor on the other end of the phone offered to pick up Frances' airfare, too ... well, that was an offer I couldn't refuse. Happy birthday, darling -- we're going to Hawaii. As it turned out, we had another writer at the tournament that week, a freelancer who was being given a tryout with SI. She was supposed to write a big featurey piece on the army of Japanese players who annually invade the tournament. My meager assignment was an early-week note and then a shortish sidebar on the victor. Piece of macadamia-nut cake. As I recall, I spent all of an hour at the course on Thursday, and didn't even bother showing up on Friday or Saturday. Frances and I checked out the surfers at the North Shore, snorkeled halfway to Japan and back, bathed in piña coladas, and basically acted like a couple of college kids spending Dad's money. Then came a fateful phone call early Sunday morning, rousting us from our hangovers.
It didn't help that, on this fateful Sunday, Jim Furyk beat Faxon in an ugly three-hole playoff (last week Faxon called that final round the worst of his career). As the playoff was being decided my editor informed me, with a yawn, that he wasn't interested in a story about Furyk -- we had written about him a couple of months earlier following his victory at the Kapalua Invitational. "Why don't you focus on Faxon," the editor said drowsily. "He always seems to choke down the stretch." That little tossed-off comment had a profound influence on my story. I cracked open my tour book (for the first time that week) and discovered that Faxon was going on four years without a victory. Considered a late-blooming star after winning twice and finishing eighth on the money list in 1992, he had sneaked into the top 30 only once since. In '95, he posted five top-10s without a victory, and at that year's Ryder Cup he had struggled to a 1-2 record during the European upset, including a pivotal singles loss to somebody named David Gilford. I crunched all these factoids, scurried around desperately trying to collect a few quotes, and then sat down and wrote one of the worst "hit" pieces in the history of golf journalism (as one of my colleagues subsequently called it). There's no use going halfway on these kind of stories; if you're going to be negative, you've gotta let it rip, and rip I did. Having failed to do any reporting of substance I just fell back on mean-spirited vitriol, calling Faxon "overrated" and writing, "The other players love him because he's not much of a threat to take any money out of their pockets by doing something rash like winning a tournament." Now, everybody knows Faxon is one of the most well-liked players (and people) in golf. He's warm and inviting to fans, witty and insightful with reporters, and coveted as a playing partner for his agreeable nature. He also does double duty as the unofficial putting coach of the PGA Tour, selflessly helping out numerous players who come to him for advice involving the flat stick. I like Faxon as much as everybody else, and always have. The story I wrote in Hawaii in some ways wasn't even about him, or so I rationalized at the time. It was about his record as a player, which, looked at from a very narrow perspective, was open to criticism. So the story comes out, and hell breaks loose. Irate readers are flooding the magazine with letters, Faxon's caddie is threatening to kick my ass, pissed-off players are refusing to talk to our other writers, big-name manufacturers are threatening to pull their ads, etc., etc. All of this, and I still had to study for midterms! Anyway, I subsequently graduated in March and moved to Manhattan, and my first trip as a staff writer was to Rhode Island, to Faxon's home. Tail between my legs, I called his agent and asked for an audience, so I could write a mea culpa. Proving what a good guy he is, Brad actually welcomed me into his home. We sat in the sun room and made awkward small talk as he absently stroked his cat. I didn't apologize per se, only tried to explain. He was quite magnanimous, of course. After the visit I wrote a Teeing Off for the Golf Plus section, which quoted a few of the many letters that had arrived in Faxon's support and said, basically, that winning isn't everything. The golf editor killed the piece. "This is Sports Illustrated," he snarled. "We don't say we're sorry to anybody." So the years go by, and here I am in Hawaii again, and Faxon runs away with the tournament, the third year in a row he's won on tour, part of a second prime that should take him well past his 40th birthday this August. Funny thing, I didn't see Brad all week. After writing game stories from the World Match Play and the Mercedes Championships, we had decided at the start of last week to pursue a more featurey angle, settling on Matt Kuchar's pro debut on the PGA Tour and the long, tortured decision that preceded it. While I was dining with Kuchar in Waikiki, watching him play and doing a number of phone interviews, Faxon was tearing up Waialae Country Club. My story was due Sunday morning, and after three weeks on the road I was eager to get home. I was watching in an airport bar when Faxon holed out that final eagle on 18 on Sunday, and my face reddened at the comments that followed. I didn't get to tell him in Hawaii, but ... Brad, this is Sports Illustrated. We're sorry. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alan Shipnuck periodically waxes about life On Tour for CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or a nice, friendly comment.
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