Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open (8 page)

“Watson was there and [Jack] Nicklaus and [Greg] Norman and just about anyone else you could possibly name who played golf
at the time,” he said. “I went up and down the range watching them hit balls — not just the big names, but everyone. I still
like to do that to this day, watch other guys hit balls, because I really think I can learn a lot doing that.

“That day, though, I wasn’t really learning. I was simply in awe. I watched their swings, watched them hit shots, and walked
straight back into the clubhouse without hitting a ball. I called Rick Smith on the phone and said, ‘We need to get together
again as soon as possible and
really
get to work, because I have no chance — I mean
no
chance — to keep my card out here this year. There’s just no way I’m good enough to play with these guys.’

“I wasn’t exaggerating,” he said years later. “And it wasn’t that I lacked confidence. I was just being a realist. I meant
what I was saying. I could just see that these guys were on a different level than I was. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going
to try as hard as I possibly could. I just think I had a very clear idea of what I was up against.”

Much to his surprise and delight he made the cut that first week, cashing a check for $1,512. He didn’t make another cut until
May. But he didn’t get discouraged, because he wasn’t surprised to find himself struggling. He started to play better during
the summer and began to see some progress. He made the cut in Canada and found himself paired in the third round with Greg
Norman, who had just won the British Open two weeks earlier.

“That was an experience,” he said. “People forget that Greg was Tiger before Tiger, if not in terms of dominance, in terms
of charisma and aura. Believe me, back then he had it. I was really pleased with the way I played that day. I think I shot
72. He shot 64 and made it look easy. I’ll never forget, though, how nice he was to me. Encouraged me all day and told me
he thought I was going in the right direction when we finished. I mean, the guy just completely dusted me and he was telling
me how impressed he was with my game.”

By then Rocco’s game and swing had both measurably improved. He had spent long hours on the practice tee with Smith, working
on making his swing more side to side than straight up and down. “Straight up and down, I could only hit the ball one way,”
he said. “When I changed my swing I was able to shape my shots. Hit a draw, a fade, choose what I wanted to do.”

By year’s end, he had made 10 cuts in 27 tournaments, had one top-ten finish — a fifth in Jackson, Mississippi, in an event
the same week as the British Open, when most of the top players were overseas — and had earned $20,174, which left him 174th
on the money list. And just as he had predicted at Pebble Beach, he found himself going back to Q-School.

“It didn’t really bother me, because I had seen it coming right from the beginning,” he said. “Plus, by the end of the year
I felt I was a much better player than I had been a year earlier. I figured if that player could make it through Q-School,
this player should breeze. I went in there with lots of confidence. I knew the guys I was up against just weren’t as good
as the ones I’d been playing against all year. If they had been, they wouldn’t have been at Q-School.”

The finals that year were on the West Coast, at PGA West in Palm Springs. Rocco was never in trouble the entire week, always
in the top ten, never really having a nervous moment, even on the last day. “I was in third place going into the last day,”
he remembered. “I figured out if I shot 80 I was still going to make it, and I knew I wasn’t going to shoot 80.”

He shot 69 and ended up in third place behind Steve Jones and Steve Elkington — both future major champions. That sent him
back to the tour in 1987, but this time he went with a completely different attitude. The scared rookie had become a confident
veteran.

“You learn
so
much your first year out there about everything,” he said. “You learn how to travel, you learn about the golf courses, you
learn how to live out of a suitcase, and you learn how not to be intimidated. That was my biggest challenge. When I went out
there the second year, I had a lot more confidence in my golf swing and in my ability to compete. I didn’t think I was as
good as Greg Norman or Tom Watson, but I didn’t think I had to be.”

During that second year, in 1987, he started to find a comfort zone on the tour. He became close friends with Jim Carter,
who was two years older than he was and had made it to the tour for the first time at the 1986 Q-School. Because their caddies
were good friends, Carter asked Rocco if he would like to play with him in the team championships, a late-season unofficial
event in California. Mediate said yes, and a friendship was born.

“In those days Rocc was a lot quieter than he is now,” Carter remembered. “I think when he talks about wondering if he belonged
— that’s something we all feel when we’re first out there and don’t know if we’re going to be good enough to stay out there.
We spent a lot of time together with our wives until kids came along and they stopped coming out as much. Back then, Linda
was a lot more outgoing than Rocco was.”

Linda Newell had come into Rocco’s life in the summer of 1986. He had taken a break from the grind of the tour and come home
for a week to visit his family. He had walked into his dad’s salon and instantly noticed that there was a new nail technician
at work. She was a junior at the University of Pittsburgh– Greensburg and was paying her way through school by working at
Anthony’s.

“Rocco took one look at her and said, ‘Dad, is it okay if I ask her out?’ ” Tony Mediate said. “I told him it was up to her,
not me. He asked, she went, and by the end of the year she was long gone from the salon. They were a couple from that day
on.”

Rocco hadn’t had much time for a social life once he’d gotten hooked on golf in high school. His mother remembers begging
him to go to the movies with friends or to a dance and being told there just wasn’t time. In college he had a girlfriend for
a while, but, according to Janzen, that had ended when the girlfriend had said something along the lines of ‘If you want to
keep dating me, you have to spend less time at the golf course and more time with me.’

“She had no shot to win that battle,” Janzen said. “It was pretty much over after that.”

Rocco had met someone earlier that summer at the Canadian Open, but once he met Linda, things happened very fast — for both
of them.

“To be honest, I wasn’t very interested in meeting him,” Linda said. “I had started working at Anthony’s in April, and every
week starting on Thursday there was, well, hysteria in the place about how Rocco was playing, about whether he could make
the cut. If he didn’t make the cut, Tony would be in a terrible mood all weekend. If he did make the cut, that was all anyone
at the salon talked about.

“My older brother was a good golfer, he had made the state championships on several occasions, but I was never really into
golf or sports. By the time he came into the salon that day, I was pretty sick of hearing ‘Rocco this and Rocco that’ all
the time.”

Linda Newell had grown up on a farm in the tiny town of Stahlstown, the youngest of four children. “We had an apple tree in
the backyard and lots and lots of wheat growing behind it,” she said. “It was kind of the classic farm upbringing. The thing
I loved to do most was read. I would go to the library and find the biggest book I could find. Or I would throw a Nancy Drew
into my backpack and go sit at the Salamander River and read. I wanted to write when I grew up.”

Linda’s parents separated when she was eight, and finances were never easy after that. When she went to college, she paid
her own way, working forty hours a week in the hardware department at Sears. During her sophomore year, her roommate, who
worked in a beauty salon, told her that working at Sears was completely uncool and convinced her to go to beauty school. She
did and landed the job at Anthony’s soon thereafter.

“If you were going to work in a salon in Greensburg, Anthony’s was the place to work,” she said. “It was the biggest, it was
the best, and it was where everyone in town went.”

On the August day that Rocco walked into Anthony’s — August 21, Linda remembers very specifically — Linda happened to be working
on the nails of Susan Lucas, mother of Rocco’s boyhood friend Dave Lucas.

“I always worked with my back to the front door so the person I was working on was facing it,” Linda said. “I heard Susan
say, ‘Oh, my God, Rocky’s here,’ and there was this commotion behind me. To be honest, my first reaction was to roll my eyes.
But I remember thinking, ‘Okay, let’s see what this guy looks like.’ So I spun my chair around. He was standing at Tony’s
station, which is elevated, talking to his dad. I looked at him and, to this day I can’t tell you why, but I heard a voice
in my head say, ‘That’s the man you’re going to marry.’ I immediately started arguing with the voice: ‘Don’t be ridiculous,
you’ve never met the guy, he’s a
golfer,
for crying out loud, just stop it.’

“Susan and I were very friendly; we talked about a lot of things. She didn’t like the guy I was dating, so as soon as I turned
around, she started waving at Rocco to come over. She introduced us. I was absolutely convinced that everyone in the place
could hear what was going on in my head, so I was completely embarrassed. I tried to be very cool. I just said, ‘Oh, hi,’
and went back to work.

“He went off to talk to a few more people while I finished up with Susan. A little later he was in the back talking to his
uncle Joe, and I saw the two of them looking at me and whispering. I loved Uncle Joe; we always kidded around with one another.
Now Rocco’s talking and Uncle Joe is nodding his head yes, over and over.

“Finally Rocco came back to talk to the woman I was working on at that point. He sat down and said to me, ‘My sister and I
are going to this place called Tingles tonight. If you’re not doing anything, maybe you’d like to come.’ Believe it or not,
I was planning on going there with a friend, so I said, sure, why not, we’ll meet you there.”

It all happened very fast after that. Linda remembers being so nervous she spilled three drinks on Rocco’s white pants. “This
was after I asked him if he was one of those golfers who wore those awful polyester plaid pants,” she said. “He said he didn’t.
We played a video trivia game and we won. He looked at me and said, ‘So, how about a kiss for the winners?’

“I said okay and he kissed me. Don’t ask me why, but when he kissed me I remember thinking of the
Brady Bunch
episode where Peter has his first kiss and fireworks go off. My friend had been in the bathroom, but when she came back we
must have had those stupid, giddy grins you get at times like that on our faces, because she just looked at us and said, ‘Oh,
my God.’ ”

They went to lunch on Saturday and that turned into spending the whole day together, including Rocco taking Linda to his parents’
house for dinner. The next morning, Rocco had to fly out to the next tour stop in Memphis and convinced Linda to ride to the
airport with him and his parents.

“The pump in our well in the backyard was broken and we had no water,” Linda said. “I woke up at four thirty in the morning
and drove a couple of miles to find a stream so I could wash my hair before I went to the house. I guess I should have realized
I was hooked then.

“I do remember Donna being less than thrilled. Rocco had just broken up with someone and had missed six cuts in a row, and
she thought he needed to concentrate on golf.”

On Monday morning, Linda walked into the salon and found a dozen roses and a card at her chair. There was also a plane ticket
— to Memphis. “Of course I went,” she said.

She was on and off the tour the rest of the year. Donna’s concerns abated when Rocco began making cuts on a regular basis
after he and Linda started dating. “We would write to each other when I wasn’t out there,” she said. “I still have a letter
he wrote me two weeks after we started dating in which we began naming our kids. At the time, we were planning on having six.”

While Rocco was still in college, Jim Ferree had introduced him to Larry Harrison, a friend of his from Hilton Head. Harrison
had liked Rocco enough that he offered to sponsor him on the mini-tours and continued to do so while he struggled to make
money that first year on tour.

“It was pretty apparent right away this [Linda] was going to be it,” Ferree remembered. “If Linda wasn’t out, Rocco would
finish up in a tournament and jump in the car to drive back to Greensburg to see her for a couple of days before the next
tournament. I understood what he was feeling, but I did finally sit him down and say to him, ‘You know, Larry’s put some serious
money into helping you play. You really shouldn’t be spending all your free time in the car driving back to Pennsylvania to
see a girl.’ Naturally he ignored me. And naturally it all worked out.”

Linda may not have been a golf fan, but she was willing to put up with golf to be with Rocco. She went with him to both stages
of Q-School that fall. After he had made it back to the finals, they were in a hotel in Jacksonville Beach. Rocco was going
to get ready to play the finals, and Linda was flying north to go back to school and to work.

“The morning I was leaving, he said to me, ‘Look, I’m only going to ask this once, but please don’t go back to school next
semester. Come out and travel with me full-time. If it doesn’t work out, you can go back to school in a year.’ I knew perfectly
well if I dropped out of school I wasn’t going back. But I said yes anyway.”

After Rocco made it through the finals, he and Linda were a couple on the tour in 1987. The plan was for them to get engaged
once he made enough money to clinch his card for 1988. That moment came when Rocco finished second to John Inman in the Provident
Classic in Chattanooga, Tennessee. By then, everyone on tour knew what the plan was.

“The guys who did the scoreboard drew wedding bells next to Rocco’s name after they posted the final scores,” Linda remembered.
“That was a fun time to be on tour. It was much smaller and everyone knew everyone — players, officials, everyone. It was
before people traveled everywhere on their private jets.”