Pair Game

Because of his problematic back, Couples missed most of 2007; Love is healing from an ankle injury.
Photo: Dom Furore

Love figures he went to more movies and ate more dinners on tour with Couples than he did with his wife, Robin. When Fred won the Players for the second time in 1996, he drove to Love's home in Sea Island and the kids hung banners for him in the front yard. When Love three-putted the 72nd hole to lose the 1996 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills, Couples was the only player to call and offer consolation. When Love won his second Players in 2003 with a final-round 64, he was paired with Couples. Couples loves to talk about the time he rented a motor home just so he could park next to Love's motor home. "After that they gave me a bus one week and talked to me about buying one," Couples says. "I told them, 'Davis, unless I'm parked next to you every week, I can't do it.' I'd go to his bus at 10 o'clock [at night] and all the lights would be out. I'd shuffle back into my bus and sit there."

This past year Couples took a figurative bus ride off the golf map, disappearing for nearly eight months after a performance at the Masters that was arguably the year's most courageous. In brutal cold, with excruciating pain running from the bottom of his spine down both legs, he extended his cuts-made streak at Augusta to a record-tying 23 straight. "You know how much he loves the Masters," says swing instructor Butch Harmon. "He'd go to the first tee in a wheelchair."

That was Couples' last public sighting until the Tiger Woods Block Party Oct. 6. Even longtime caddie Joe LaCava didn't hear from him until September, when Couples called wanting tickets to a Yankees-Angels game in Anaheim. "Of course he wanted to be on the field before the game and a have a parking space," said LaCava, who knows one of the Yankees coaches. "I told him, 'Let me see if [Joe] Torre can get you in the lineup while I'm at it.'" Couples didn't make the lineup, but he did get into the Yankees clubhouse, where he hung with the manager and the players for the three-game series. He and Torre went to dinner. "Since he's based in California, now he's a so-called Dodger fan, wearing Dodger blue instead," says LaCava. "Next year Fred plans to spend some time on the road with [Torre and the Dodgers]."

Couples spent most of 2007 in Santa Barbara, Calif., trying to work things out with his wife, Thais, from whom he is separated but not divorced. He also dealt with a career-altering decision. With two different opinions on his back, he chose rest over surgery and has found some relief recently through John Patterson, a specialist based in Waco, Texas, who works with basketball's Tracy McGrady and baseball's John Smoltz.

The situation at home is just as tender -- and is not the first time he has experienced marital trouble. Couples' first marriage ended in 1993 with Deborah Couples receiving a reported $600,000 a year in alimony. Eight years later Deborah jumped to her death from the roof of a chapel at the Claremont (Calif.) School of Theology. Asked about his marriage to Thais, who has been fighting cancer, Couples says, "the best possible answer is that I spent most of the year [with her], we're talking every day and we're seeing each other enough to make both of us happy. There are a couple of things that happened, and we need some space. We're together, but it's certainly not perfect."

Love is four years removed from the best year of his career, but the most turbulent of his life since his father died. Love won four times in 2003, but that year his brother-in-law, Jeffrey Knight, committed suicide and so many rumors abounded about the state of his marriage that Love had to debunk them on national television. All that is behind him now, as he and Robin face the challenge of raising teenagers. Their daughter, Lexie, 19, a sophomore at the University of Alabama, has won Grand National championships in Paso Fino horse riding. Their son, Dru, 14, is an apsiring junior golfer. Between hunting trips, golf tournaments, horse shows and a fantasy football league, Love stayed busy in October and November while his ankle was in a cast.

While Freddie is famous for sitting on the couch with a TV remote control, Davis is the consummate Type-A personality. They have made plans for Fred to bring his stepson, Oliver, for a week of recreation at Camp Love -- but it's hard to book a time on Love's schedule. "I will say this, the last two times I've been to Sea Island, I've never seen him," Couples said. "He's just a busy, busy guy."