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One more chapter An update on the stars of Bud, Sweat & TeesPosted: Tuesday December 18, 2001 10:09 AMUpdated: Thursday January 17, 2002 12:18 PM
In January I published my first book Bud, Sweat & Tees, a PGA Tour tell-all that chronicled the misadventures of Rich Beem, the colorful 1999 Kemper Open champ, and Steve Duplantis, his hard-living caddie. The book followed them across two very turbulent seasons, through the end of 2000. Ever since "B,S & T" came out I've received an endless number of e-mails here at On Tour from fans of the book, dying to know what happened to these two outsized characters. Beem's stats can be found at pgatour.com, but not the details of his life. Duplantis has burrowed further out of sight. Here, then, is the rest of the story... Last Friday, December 15, Beem married his girlfriend, the former Sara Waide, in a lively ceremony at his old stomping grounds, the El Paso Country Club. Held in a tent pitched on the driving range, the wedding capped three years of growth for Beem, both personal and professional.
When he arrived on Tour in 1999, Beem couldn't have been more of a greenhorn, a logo-free rube who actually bought his own lunch throughout his first tournament, the Sony Open, unaware of the sumptuous (and free) buffet available to the players in the clubhouse. Beem was barely three years removed from having quit the game to hawk cell phones for $7 an hour, and had never even played a Buy.com event, let alone had a glimpse of the big show. His victory at the Kemper was one of the biggest upsets in the recent annals of the Tour, and he spent the rest of his rookie year partying like a rock star. There was a price to pay for all this fun. The week of the British Open, just two months after the Kemper, Beem wound up in a Scottish jail, having been cited for driving under the influence. After suffering through a season-long hangover in 2000, when he plummeted to 146th on the money list, Beem finally grew up in 2001. "I'm more settled now than I've ever been," he told me a week before the wedding. "I'm starting to understand what I'm capable of as a player, and I've finally got a handle on the lifestyle." Much of Beem's contentment is attributable to the love of a good woman. Sara -- readers of the book will recall Beem met her at the Las Vegas Invitational at the tail end of his tumultuous rookie year -- is a cool chick, and far more grounded than the average Tour wife. She has no plans to quit her job post-wedding, and will be on the road only part time in 2002. Beem has also prospered from moving back home to the tight-knit golf community around Las Cruces, N.M., after having tried to fit in with the cliquish scene among all the Tour players around Scottsdale. A married homeowner? This certainly doesn't jibe with the party-hearty Beem that populates the pages of "B, S & T", but worry not, there is still a little rebel in Beem. Early last year he had the tips of his hair frosted blonde, not something, say, Scott Hoch is likely to do anytime soon. But Beem's grown-up approach to his golf is a reflection of the sobering realities of Tour life. The golden exemption he earned for winning the Kemper carried him only through 2000. This year he was playing for his livelihood. Beem began to put the pieces together last offseason. He made three trips to Dallas to work with his instructor, Cameron Doan, the head pro at the macho Preston Trail Golf Club, with its men-only membership that boasts Byron Nelson, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, and Lanny Wadkins. Beem worked hard on his posture and alignment, and correcting a swing path that had veered too far inside. This kind of offseason grinding was a big step for guy who previously acted as if he was allergic to practice. (How ironic that he would get married on a driving range.) For New Year's, Beem took Sara to Hawaii, and it was there that he proposed. By the time he arrived at his first tournament of 2001, the Tucson Open, Beem was, he says, "more relaxed and rested than I've been since I made the Tour." And it showed -- he broke par all four rounds and finished smoothly, tying for ninth-place. Early in the year it was apparent Beem had matured as a player. He opened the Phoenix Open with a 74, but instead of packing it in, as he had so often in the past, he came back with a 67, just missing the cut by one stroke. At the Bob Hope Classic he opened with a pair of middling 72s, but he ground out a 65 on Friday to make an important cut. A 20th place at the Nissan Open in L.A. was followed by a little swoon -- four missed cuts in five events, which Beem attributes to vagaries of the Bermuda greens of the Southeast, which he had never encountered until arriving on Tour. "Every time I get to Florida I putt like Stevie Wonder," he says. But, after going 76-74 at Hilton Head and 77-74 Houston, Beem came strong at the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic, finishing 12th. "That was a huge confidence builder," he says. Greensboro was an even more momentous week for his old sidekick, Steve Duplantis. Duplantis, as those who read the book may remember, was once the boy wonder of the caddie ranks. At the tender age of 21 he began packing for Jim Furyk, and together they enjoyed five blockbuster years. Alas, Duplantis was the polar opposite of Furyk's controlled fastidiousness. Duplantis enjoyed the high life, which helps explain how he married a stripper after a 19-day courtship. Together they would have a daughter, and after the subsequent unraveling of the marriage, Duplantis was forced to juggle the vagabond lifestyle of a caddie with the demands of being a single dad. Eventually this tension -- and his off-course excesses -- would lead to his firing by Furyk, in the spring of 1999. Duplantis's first tournament back on Tour was with an unknown rookie at the Kemper Open, and the rest is caddie history. However, Duplantis and Beem were too volatile a combination to last; their appetites were too similar. Four months after their epic victory at Kemper the partnership came to an end. Duplantis spent the rest of the 1999 and most of 2000 caddying for Brian Gay, the soft-spoken, short-hitting young Tour player who Duplantis felt had limited potential. [In 2001, Gay was golf's most improved player, nearly making the Tour Championship on the strength of a dozen top-25 finishes. Says Beem, "Boy, Stevie, did you really not get that one right. That guy kicked the s--- out me this year."] Without a bag early in 2001, Duplantis was forced to latch on to Buy.com staple Sean Murphy. In six tournaments together Duplantis saw the weekend only once -- in L.A., where Murphy went 74-79 to finish second from last. At the Houston Open in late April, Duplantis overheard Gabe Hjertstedt talking on the putting green about needing a caddie. Here he picks up the story: "During the first round Sean shot a million [actually, 78] and since Gabe was only a few groups back, I waited for him to finish. We decided I would caddie for him the next three weeks. So now I have to tell Sean I'm quitting, which was hard to do, because he's such a good guy. He was already paying me a thousand bucks a week, good money from a guy like him. So Friday in Houston, he forgets his checkbook, so we go back to his hotel room, and he cuts me a check for $1,500. He's like, 'You're such a good caddie, I feel bad I'm not playing better, and you're not making any money.' Then he mentions his wedding is coming up. He offers to fly me from my home in Florida to Phoenix for the wedding, then out to D.C. for the Kemper. How many guys would do that? Hearing all of this I couldn't tell him about Gabe. I just couldn't. So Sunday, I'm driving to Greensboro, and Sean calls. He's like, 'What's this I hear about you caddying for Hi-jert-stet?' He doesn't even say his name right. Anyway, that was a tough phone call." Did Duplantis still get flown out for the wedding? "Uh, no." As it turns out, Hjertstedt was a much better fit for Duplantis than a straight arrow like Murphy (or Gay). A stylish, rakish fellow, Hjertstedt is sponsored by one of Sweden's leading pornographers, though he only flies the company's logo when playing overseas. After winning the 1999 Tucson Open -- thus becoming the first Swede with two Tour Ws -- the talented but enigmatic Hjertstedt had fallen into the abyss, and he had started 2001 by missing seven of nine cuts. Owner of a beautiful swing and fragile psyche, what he really needed was a kick up the backside, and Duplantis was just the man for the job. His defining moment as a caddie will always be the 1999 Kemper Open, when he led Beem around like a wet nurse. Duplantis was the star of the Sunday telecast, inspiring Gary McCord to refer to Duplantis and Beem as "Yoda and his pupil", and Jim Nantz to hail him for "one of the greatest caddying performances you will ever see." In their first week together in Greensboro, Duplantis poked and prodded and cajoled Hjertstedt to rounds of 70-69-67. Idling in the fairway of the par-5 15th hole on Sunday, they were just two strokes off the lead. Hjertstedt proceeded to rip a 3-wood that faded just right of the 15th green, where it hit a cart path and took a freakish hop O.B. He saved bogey, but victory was no longer a possibility. Now he was playing for money. Hjertstedt got up-and-down for pars on 16 and 17, and made a good-sized putt for a birdie at the last. "It was a different kind of feeling," Duplantis told me over dinner late in the season. "If Furyk makes a putt on the 72nd hole to finish tied for 4th, instead of tied for 9th, it was like, big deal, whatever. This was big. I was three months behind on my mortgage. I watched the rest of the telecast, doing math the whole time. If this guy misses, we make this. If he makes, we cash that. It was serious business." Hjertstedt and Duplantis continued to ride the good vibes of Greensboro. In their next two tournaments -- the Compaq Classic in New Orleans and the Byron Nelson Classic in Irving, Texas -- they broke 70 in six of eight rounds. Of course, if there is one constant in Duplantis' caddie career, it's that he always manages to complicate what could be a good partnership. At the St. Jude Classic in Memphis he decided to share a room with a veteran caddie known far and wide as The Punk. "You know The Punk, right?" Duplantis asks. "He's a good guy, fun to hang out with, but you should never, ever stay with him. I have a couple times in the past, and I always get in trouble. Anyway, one night in Memphis I went out, got back to the room at like 4 a.m., and I tell The Punk to wake me up the next morning. Of course he doesn't. At 7:05 a.m. my phone rings. It's Gabe. We're on the tee in 40 minutes. I'm like, Oh, I'm in the car right now, I'll be there in a couple minutes. I jump up, don't shower, don't even look in the mirror. I get to the course 20 minutes later. He double bogies the first hole, and it's just a death march the rest of the way. "After the round he's just steaming. He's like, I want to fire you right now. I want to fire you so much right now. He didn't, though. It must mean I'm a pretty good caddie." As the Tour's spring schedule wore on Beem was having his own adventures. At the Compaq Classic he was thunderstruck to discover he had been paired with Nicklaus -- and we're not talking Gary. What followed was "one of the highlights of my life," Beem says. On the first tee on Thursday, the third member of the group, Brian Henninger, was to tee off first. Here Beem picks up the story: "So the starter introduces Brian. You know, Winner of the 1994 Deposit Guarantee and 1999 Southern Farm Bureau. Then it's my turn. Rich Beem, winner of '99 Kemper Open. Jack's just standing back there, watching, and I'm feeling it. I'm pretty nervous, but I rip one down the middle. So now Brian and I are hanging out on the back of the tee, and they start reciting Jack's bio, and it's just a joke. We have these meager little resumes, and they're like, Jack Nicklaus, winner of a record 18 major championships, 70-something victories on Tour, captain of all these Ryder Cups, etc, etc. We're laughing, the fans are laughing, the whole scene was just so funny." A jittery Beem opened with a 73. Early on in the second round, Beem's and Nicklaus' approach shots came to rest within a foot of each other. Beem: "I marked my ball with a quarter, like I usually do. Jack's like, 'Don't you got anything smaller than that? You know, the USGA recommends a dime.' I mean, guys out here use hubcaps, but what am I supposed to say? He's Jack Freakin' Nicklaus. I'm feeling a little slighted, but walking down the next hole, I ask my caddie Billy (Heim), 'You got a dime on you?' So Jack and I hit our approaches into the green, and it's the same deal, our balls are right next to each other. I throw down my dime, and Jack's like, 'Hey, you switched!' I'm like, 'You tell to me switch coins, I'm gonna switch coins. You want me to play a pink ball, I'm gonna do it. You're Jack Nicklaus.' I think he liked that." From New Orleans, Beem went to the Nelson in Dallas, and spent much of the early week at Preston Trail, working on strengthening his grip. "I was hitting it so good I just wanted to go out and try to get the ball in the hole real quick," he says. In both the second and fourth rounds he didn't record a bogey, a far cry from his typical round -- "eight jagillion birdies, and just as many bogies." With rounds of 71-65-70-71 he finished a very solid 11th. Though the Nelson was Beem's fifth straight week on the road, he received a sponsor's exemption to the ensuing Colonial Invitational, and away he went. With four consistent rounds he finished 26th. Enjoying one of best stretches of his career, Beem roared into the Kemper Open, site of his greatest triumph, played on a course he loves, the TPC at Avenel. He promptly went out and missed the cut by a mile, shooting 72-75. "I've come to the conclusion I'm either going to win the tournament or miss the cut every time I go there," Beem says. "I'm just ruined for life on that course, because of what happened there my first time. Every hole there is a birdie hole in my mind. There's just too much stuff floating around in my head. I can't just plod around, I gotta go for every flag." As a result of his good standing on the money list, Beem earned an invite to the next week's Memorial. It would be his eighth tournament in a row, but Beem felt he couldn't skip this exclusive event. With rounds of 71-70 he went into the weekend in eighth place, but faded to 46th. Because he wanted to go through U.S. Open qualifying, Beem played the following week in Memphis, but he was so exhausted he W/D after one round. But at the ensuing qualifying he almost earned medalist honors and a chance to play in his first U.S. Open. Beem missed the cut by one stroke at Southern Hills ("broke my heart," he says), and the very next week he went to Westchester for the Buick Classic, one of his favorite events. It was his 11th tournament in a row. Beem sleepwalked to a 47th place finish, then finally went home, deciding to skip British Open qualifying. On the PGA Tour, playing four tournaments in a row is considered taxing. Six in a row is exhausting. Eight in a row is sheer lunacy. Eleven? As they say in The Princess Bride, inconceivable. Gabe Hjertstedt hadn't planned to qualify for the British, either, but after a pep talk from his swing coach, David Leadbetter, he lit out for England. When Hjertstedt offered to buy his caddie's plane ticket, Duplantis was in, too. One problem: His passport had expired. "So I bust ass down to Miami," Duplantis says, "because my flight is leaving the next day. You need all this documentation to renew your passport, which, of course, I didn't even know about. All I've got is this letter that says,"I need Steve to caddie for me next week, signed Gabe Hjertstedt," which I had scribbled myself. Somehow, I get a new passport, race to the airport, and catch a flight to London. I can't even get a connection to Manchester, so I jump in a car, drive on the wrong side of the road for four hours, go straight to St. Annes, and meet Gabe in the pro shop. I'm like, 'I don't know how I'm here, but I am.' We stumble out there for a practice round. Afterwards, Gabe is like,' you want to go get some sleep?' 'Hell no, let's go play.' The course was closed, but we met on 10th tee and snuck in a quick nine." Hjertstedt shot a credible 72-67 in qualifying, but failed to make it into the Open Championship field. This hardly dampened Duplantis' enjoyment of the trip. "I love Blackpool," he says of the grungy resort town favored by Scottish dockworkers on holiday. "I slept maybe a total of four hours in four days. The European caddies, those are my boys. You go out with caddies here and everyone is all uptight, like, 'Hey, man, isn't it your turn to buy a round? The Euros, they don't give a s---. You've got two full glasses of beer at all times." Beem took only one week off following his 11-tournament deathmarch, and he looked tired the rest of the summer. In his eight tournaments following Westchester he missed four cuts, and never finished better than 60th. "I wasn't scoring worth a damn," he says. "I got so into my swing, I forgot to get the ball in the hole." All this work on his long game would pay off. At year's end, Beem -- 5-foot-8, weighing a buck fifty -- would finish a robust 47th in driving distance, at 284.1 yards a pop, and be accurate enough to rank 17th in total driving. Only 28 guys on Tour would make more eagles. But, as he struggled with his scoring, his position on the money list became increasingly tenuous. Beem slipped from the low 90's to 114 to 118 to 122 by the beginning of October. With enough doubt in his mind that he would remain in the top 125, he went ahead and sent in his Q School application. Feeling down on his game, Beem almost didn't play the Michelob Championship at Kingsmill, but decided to go at the last minute, blowing in on Wednesday afternoon. Instead of cramming in a practice round, he leisurely strolled the course, charting yardages with a laser guide. For the first two rounds Beem drew a good pairing, a couple of sticks in Frank Lickliter and Jeff Sluman. His approach? "Just stay out of Frank's way, don't piss him off, and you'll be OK, and don't take anything Slu says seriously." Beem started the first round birdie-birdie, and, with a 66, put himself near the lead. Friday he came back with a solid 70. All he needed was a top-10 finish to secure his card. Saturday it was hailing sideways. "I thought 75 would be a great score," he says. He fought his way to a 72. Heading into the final round, "I was sweating it, big time," Beem says. "I knew what an important round it was." Throughout the season Beem had displayed tremendous patience and resolve (he would finish 45th on Tour in final round scoring average), and Sunday at Kingsmill, Beem was finally rewarded. He birdied the first hole and brawled with the course on every ensuing shot. On the 16th hole he drained a 15-foot birdie putt, pushing him into the top 10. "Now I'm really nervous," he says. "I've come this far and I really don't want to screw up." On the tough 17th, Beem "puked it onto the green" and two-putted for par. The 18th at Kingsmill is already an exceedingly difficult driving hole, but when Beem arrived on the tee, two groups were waiting to hit, and he had to stew on the shot for some 20 minutes. "I was just getting more and more nervous," he says. "I've been in this position before, and have usually hit a quick hook, because I'm too jacked up. This time I did everything I could to relax." When it was finally his turn to hit, Beem ripped a 3 wood down the middle, followed with "the best 6 iron of my life," and two-putted for par. He finished T7, securing his card for 2002. Duplantis also got some closure at Kingsmill, as he was fired by Hjertstedt. Since mid-June -- when they finished 30th at the U.S. Open and 13th Westchester -- Duplantis and Hjertstedt had been in a free fall. Kingsmill marked the eighth time in nine tournaments they had missed the cut. After the second round Hjertstedt told Duplantis he needed to make a change, just to try and shake things up. (It didn't work. He would miss four more cuts in a row to end the season). Duplantis finished out the year caddying for David Morland at Vegas (58th) and Doug Dunakey at Disney (m/c) and the Southern Farm Bureau Classic (54th). One thing about Duplantis: He makes his share of mistakes, but he's got a good heart, and no one ever stays mad at him. He and Beem have evolved into best friends; he sometimes plays golf with Gay in Florida; and Hjertstedt invited him back to caddie at Q School. They finished a distant 94th. Afterwards Hjertstedt overpaid Duplantis for his services, and sent along a note saying thanks for everything. Hjertstedt will be lucky to get into 15 events next year, so Duplantis is looking for another bag. "I need to work more than that," he says. "I've been on the phone a lot, I've got some feelers out. Something will come up." "Steve's due for some good luck," says Beem. He should know. After a series of fits and starts Beem has finally arrived, and he's already looking forward to next year. "I can't wait to get to Hawaii," he says. He is at peace with his place on Tour. "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel," he says. "I'm not trying to be something I'm not. I'll be a grinder forever and a day." There are two central questions left unanswered at the end of Bud, Sweat & Tees. Will Beem ever win again? And will Duplantis ever find contentment? The answer to the former looks like a definite yes. Beem is finally ready to realize the promise of his Kemper Open victory. Look for him to have a big 2002. As for Duplantis, we'll just have to wait and see. That chapter has yet to be written. 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. |
