No Man Is An Island

His maturity as a player, his capacity to analyze all the variables before a shot and then let fly, was extraordinary. But then his preparation for the U.S. Open was 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. When they clambered aboard and began talking about how ugly an opponent's swing was, he just shook his head. "I never look at anyone's swing," he said.

Rock, his teammates called him to his face. Reliable, sturdy, unemotional—he kind of liked that. 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. Unless those pounds had a purpose that no one, not even he, was aware of: as one more warranty that no one would get too close. David 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.

Oh, yes: One other thing didn't quite fit. David was a 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.

At an event at Doral, in Miami, during David's sophomore year, Puggy did the unthinkable. He demoted David to No. 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 No. 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. Shaw shot a 77. David shot a 67. Joy—as David would discover when he whooped and jumped after sinking a hole in one at a tournament a few years later, then three-putted the next hole from eight feet—was unmanageable on a golf course. But anger he knew how to use like a club.

David was No. 1 at Tech again. The tension on the team 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 corning out now?" he asked. "Why didn't you have the courage to be honest with me before? At least you knew where I stood."

Puggy gave up trying to knit a team and settled for the next best thing: two teams. Two rental cars sometimes. There went four Georgia Tech golfers in one car to eat Mexican. There went David and Puggy in the other to eat American. Roommate assignments? Puggy and David. Practices? David might show up at the same time and country club as the others—might not. "It was the only way," Puggy says, "to keep them from killing each other."

Ahhh, Puggy's taking care of the Cadillac again, the others grumbled. They didn't know what was occurring in that other car, at that other restaurant. Yes, Puggy was reassuring the boy who could show no vulnerability to anyone else, affirming his greatness. He was also going hammer-and-mace with the boy; they were two old and powerful forces wearing the garments of golfer and coach.

You need spirituality, David. You need people. You can't keep alienating them. You're going to fall one day, and 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. In so many words, that was Puggy's hammer—the mallet of Jesus.

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 mustn'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. That was David's mace, so hard and sharp inside him that he could never quite put it in those words—the mace of Roark.

Roark?