No Man Is An Island

"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 cart. "Tell him," David told his dad when the whiner walked out, "to kiss your ass."

The night his high school classmates were out celebrating graduation, David was on a flight to Texas for a tournament. He hadn't won any of the big ones yet, but that summer, his last in the juniors, 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."

The boy packed his clothes, his 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. The safest place of all would be alone at the top.

Mike Clark, a returning veteran on Georgia Tech's golf team, had taken David to a frat party during his recruiting visit. That was his first mistake. Then came his second. "We've got four really good golfers coming back," Clark said. "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 at Tech and shocked his new 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.

For autumn of that first year, 1989, the team had been tossed a plum: the Shiseido Cup in Japan. Only the lowest five scorers over six rounds of qualifying would make the trip; the rest of the squad would remain home. David felt out of control in this new world, couldn't focus. David didn't qualify to go to Japan.

Japanese organizers blanched when they learned that the U.S. Junior champion wasn't coming. They requested that an exception be made, that David be permitted to compete as an individual.

Now it was his teammates' turn to blanch. What about the Tech golfer who had finished sixth in the team's qualifying rounds, ahead of David, and had to stay home? There weren't enough blankets on the flight to Tokyo to counter the chill.

On the final hole of the Shiseido Cup, Phil Mickelson sank a 15-foot breaking putt to beat David. Georgia Tech's seventh-place qualifier had failed to do the cruelest thing to his new teammates that he possibly could, but only by one stroke.

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!