Golf balls: fighting Lou Gehrig's Disease on the PGA Tour.

• Author: Rapoport, Ron
• Position: Book Review

John Feinstein, who has done perhaps as much for golf writing as Arnold Palmer has for golf, puts down his driver in his latest work and delivers instead a lovely little pitch shot dead to the hole.

Feinstein chose broader themes in his earlier books on the sport: the pleasures and the pains of playing on the professional tour (A Good Walk Spoiled), a history of the four most important tournaments (The Majors), a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for the U.S. national championship (Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black).

In Caddy for Life, Feinstein gives us nothing more ambitious or less compelling than the story of a golfer and his caddy, and of how, after more than two decades of a successful, easy going boss-employee relationship, they suddenly found themselves facing catastrophe.

The golfer is Tom Watson, who was, in the interregnum between the supremacies of Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, the greatest player in the world. The caddy is Bruce Edwards, who was unknown to the public but a popular figure on the pro tour and, because of his long relationship with Watson, a giant to his peers.

Then, early last year, Edwards was diagnosed with the crippling disease ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), and as the word spread--and as he and Watson shared a moment at the U.S. Open that would have shamed any Hollywood scriptwriter who dared to imagine it--their roles were reversed. Before Edwards died on the first day of this year's Masters in April, Watson began carrying the load for him.

Feinstein takes his time with this and to good effect. Two-thirds of Caddy For Life takes place before Edwards gets the bad news at the Mayo Clinic. In these pages we learn why, despite the fact a caddy's life consists of long hours, menial tasks, and too many weeks when there are no bags to carry, it still exerts a tug on American boys looking to light out for the territory.

Edwards was raised in a middleclass family (his father was a dentist, his mother a dental hygienist) which did things together, joined a relatively inexpensive country club, and sent all its children to college.

All except Bruce. One weekend caddying at the Greater Hartford Open and he was hooked. Joining the tour, carrying another man's bag, enjoying the life of the open road was for him. As far as his parents were concerned, he might as well have run away and joined the circus. The concept was so foreign to them, in fact, that even many years later, after Watson's success had...