Always By My Side

Connery ignored my feeble comeback and hooked his tee shot into an unraked sand dune 20 yards short and left of the green. I thought, I'll never hear the end of this from Chirkinian and the rest of the CBS golf crew.

Now if you thought Connery got away with some implausible escape stunts as 007, what he did with his second shot defied even Ian Fleming's imagination. Connery scooped the ball out of the unsavory lie and somehow guided it through the sloping rough to the edge of the green, leaving him with a 40-foot putt to save par. Then, to my further astonishment, he calmly knocked in the 40-footer for a 3.

As Connery bent over to retrieve his ball, he pointed his finger at me and flashed that "Do I look like the sort of man who'd make trouble?" grin.

"No. 7," he said, milking the moment. "Why, you were right!"

You cannot imagine how relieved I was to see that the great Connery had only been stirred, not shaken, by my faux pas.

Alas, there was a sequel to my adventure with Mr. Bond.

When we finished our round, Connery asked if I would mind giving him a lift back to the Lodge.

Would I mind? How could I resist the chance to spend more time with a man whose lines I could recite by heart?

Although my rental car was hardly the sort of vehicle Connery would use on the big screen, the trunk easily accommodated the golf bags. Then, as I made my way back around to the driver's seat, I noticed that the rear door was open, so I gave it a good shove. That, to my horror, elicited an instantaneous howl.

"Oh, my [expletive] leg!" Connery screamed. Failing to notice that his left leg was still outside the car, I had slammed the door right into that tender spot where the ankle meets the shin. His pants were torn, and blood was starting to trickle through. I envisioned that Connery, after flying halfway around the world just for this tournament, would have to withdraw because of my carelessness.

That fear was soon supplanted by a weirdly perverse thought: I had managed to do what neither Blofeld nor any of 007's other cinematic adversaries had achieved: I had bloodied the invincible James Bond!

Fortunately, the gash looked worse than it was, and with him showing his legendary powers of recovery, we even had lunch together at Club XIX at the Lodge. When the day was done, he invited me to play golf at Valderrama should I ever find myself near Marbella, Spain, where he was living at the time. "How would I find you?" I asked incredulously.

"Just look me up in the phone book, Jim," he said. "It's listed under Connery ... Sean Connery."

REMEMBERING DAVIS LOVE JR.
Along with my college amigos, Fred Couples, Blaine McCallister and John Horne, Dad's favorite golfer was Davis Love III, a fellow Tar Heel by birth. Only four days before Davis came into the world, his father, Davis Jr., delivered a 69 at Augusta National to share the first-round lead at the 1964 Masters with Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, among others. Davis Jr. was a protégé of University of Texas golf coach Harvey Penick and became a highly regarded golf instructor. He built his son's game and did an outstanding job teaching him how to become a gentleman and a winner.

AP PHOTO

Davis III was a rookie in 1986, when he almost won the Buick on our air. In 1987, he broke through and captured the Heritage at Hilton Head. Eighteen months later, Davis' dad died in a plane crash; he was only 53, and at that special point when both father and son were enjoying the peaks of their respective, and intertwined, careers.

It took Davis a long time to regain his personal and career equilibrium after that tragedy. But by the summer of 1990, he had restored his game. His first win without his father's direct guidance came at the International at Castle Pines in Colorado. As we waited together on the 18th green during a commercial prior to the winner's interview, Davis, a soft-spoken man of few words, just looked at me. The expression on his face seemed to be begging, Please ... don't ask me about him!

"I know he's on your mind," I said, sympathetically. "But if you don't want to go there, we won't."

"Please don't. I don't think I can handle it."

"It's your call, Davis."

We were almost back on the air when he drew an audible deep breath and exhaled slowly. "You know what? I would like to say something. It would be the right thing to do. Just please, make sure it's the last question."

After congratulating Davis on camera, I asked him a few innocuous questions about the tournament and his victory.

"Finally, Davis," I said, "I know this is not going to be easy for you, but how much was your dad on your mind today?"

You could feel him steeling himself for the moment. Fighting through tears of sorrow mixed with joy, Davis made a valiant effort to get out a few coherent sentences about how much he loved his father and how this victory was dedicated to him.