Bob Tway’s game was as brilliant as the weather at the Masters Thursday, but it’s too early in the tournament and too late in life for him to bask.
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About a year ago, just a week after not being invited to Augusta National again, Tway climbed out of golf’s black hole by winning at Hilton Head, S.C., his first triumph after four endless summers. He sobbed through the interviews and all over that trophy.
But within 72 hours, Tway entered the locker room at the next tour stop and noticed his fellow pros clustered around a TV set. They watched in silence: fire and smoke and wreckage, bloodied children being pried from devastation.
“April 19, 1995,” Tway says. “The Federal Building in Oklahoma City, my hometown. I called my wife, Tammie. We live 20 miles from the bombing. She was OK, but it rattled windows on the house.
“I hung up and felt guilty. I finish first in some golf event and think everything’s great, and there are 168 innocent people dead practically in my back yard. It makes no sense, it’s not fair, but no matter what happens, you have to move on. Or else.”
Tway had been there and done that too. He was Player of the Year in 1986, when he won four times, including the PGA Championship where he canned that famous bunker shot on the 72nd hole to shock Greg Norman. Tway, the sweet-swinging, purest of ball-strikers, jumped up and down in that trap, like a kid in a sandbox.
At age 27, how high could he go? The sky seemed his only ceiling.
Alas, Bob Tway landed with a horrific thud. He tried to tinker with what wasn’t broken, and this natural golfer became a mechanical mess. He missed nine straight cuts and plummeted to 179th on the money list with $47,632 in 1992, when only sleep interrupted his occupational despair.
“It was like what Ian Baker-Finch is going through now,” Tway says. “You don’t know when, or if, you’ll ever get it back. Everybody wants to help, the guys out here really care, but in the end, it’s still you and the ball. Nice to have friends, though.”
Tway’s best pal is Scott Verplank, his Oklahoma neighbor, a phenom who won the 1985 Western Open as an amateur before checking himself into golf’s heartbreak hotel. They practiced and played and commiserated. As Verplank rues, first you lose your swing, then your confidence, then your mind.
Finally, from the bottom of the rock pile, Tway listened to his former Oklahoma State coach Mike Holder. Be yourself, don’t be a robot. Tway surely looked at peace while shooting 67 Thursday at Augusta National, a postcard he fell in love with while attending high school in nearby Marietta, Ga.
“If ever I wanted to win anywhere, it would be here,” Tway says. “But it’s nice just be back for the first time since 1991. I’m playing better, and after his funk and series of injuries, so is Scott. That’s nice too. He’s back home rooting for me. I know that.”
So is Tway’s father, Bob, in Australia, where he’s awaiting a heart transplant.
“Got the call that he’d had a serious attack on Sunday at Doral, early March,” says his son. “Flew 20 hours to see him, not even knowing whether he’d still be with us when I got there.
“He’s fine now. He’s all tubes and pumps but he’s in good hands. You just never know. Like April 19. Not fair. Makes no sense. Never did go to see what was left of our Federal Building. Don’t care to.”
Tway and Verplank have donated money and pro-am time to help ease the grief in Oklahoma City, where they’re appreciated for being the princes they are. The same notion exists on tour, where they’re affectionately referred to as “Dial Tones” for their monotonous, dull facades.
“Yeah, we’re boring,” says Tway, smiling. “But as Scott says, I’m older, so I guess I’ve been boring for longer.”