Return to No. 18 : Bob Tway Is Back at Inverness, the Scene of His Greatest Triumph

Had it been, say, Fuzzy Zoeller and not Bob Tway making his triumphant return to Inverness this week, there would have been a beach bash, complete with sandcastles and marshmallow roasts. Zoeller would have plopped himself in the middle of the now-famous greenside bunker at No. 18 and partied hearty. Anything to honor a memory of 1986.

But Tway is no Zoeller. He’s hardly Bob Tway anymore.

Long gone are the weekly Tway sightings on the leader board of your choice. He has become an afterthought, a reminder of what used to be, of what could have been.

Pro golfers can usually recite every shot of every final round they have ever played. But ask Tway about his recent Sunday adventures and there is only an awkward pause.

“Most of the time I haven’t been there on Sunday mornings,” he said. “I haven’t had any chance to win tournaments.”

He can remember 1986, though. Inverness. The 18th hole. The bunker shot heard ‘round the world.

During Monday’s practice round for the 75th PGA Championship, Tway found himself trudging up the 357-yard 18th, savoring the memories of his only major victory. But as he approached the oyster shell-shaped bunker that guards the right front edge of the 18th green, Tway kept walking. Warm and fuzzy feelings only go so far.

“I just looked at it,” Tway said.

Seven years earlier, he had ground his cleats into the soft sand of that bunker, poked his head above the mound, studied the flag placement, drawn his wedge back and then, as Greg Norman watched in disbelief, sent the ball into the cup.

Tway was 27 then, only two years on the PGA Tour. When the ball disappeared from view, Tway raised the club over his head and began jumping up and down in the sand like a little boy. The lead in the final round of the 1986 PGA Championship was his.

A grim-faced Norman, who had a poor lie just off the green, looked as if he had just been summoned to police headquarters downtown. He missed his birdie chip for the tie. Then he missed the par putt, as if it mattered.

Inverness members now call it “Tway’s Twap,” sandy home of the shot that energized one career and haunted another--or so it had seemed at the time.

Donald Ross might have given the bunker its birth on a drawing pad in 1919, but Tway made it famous. Yet, when reunited with the 18th hole earlier this week, Tway chose not to try to re-create the magic of 1986. He could have dropped a few golf balls in the trap and hacked away, but he knew better.

“The pin wasn’t in the same spot, so it just didn’t seem like it would be worthwhile,” he said.

Anyway Tway had tried it before. A month after winning the 1986 PGA Championship, a golf magazine brought him back to Toledo. They told him they were doing a layout on proper bunker play. So they stuck him in Tway’s Twap and asked him to make a one-in-a-thousand shot twice.

What they didn’t mention is that they were keeping count of each miss. Twenty tries, 20 misses. What did they expect?

Not that it mattered. Tway had better things to do, like win money. Lots of it. He won four tournaments in 1986 and nearly $700,000, good enough for second place on the money list.

But something happened after that year. The money still poured in--$212,000 in 1987, $381,000 in 1988, $488,000 in 1989, $495,000 in 1990 and $322,000 in 1991--but Tway’s swing, never the best, was beginning to cause problems.

Tway went to assorted swing doctors, won a couple of tournaments and then found himself more confused than ever.

“In the pursuit of trying to get better, I got worse,” Tway said.

So here he is at Inverness again, trying to recapture whatever it was he lost. At last look, he was 170th on the PGA Tour money list, good for $49,070. In 1992, he was 179th.

During one miserable stretch this year, he missed eight consecutive cuts. At the U.S. Open, he hit one fairway during his second round. He wasn’t asked back for the third.

“I’ll be the first to say that my confidence level isn’t anywhere near where I’d like it to be,” Tway said. “I think that’s just because of my play. People are asking me the last few weeks, ‘Are you looking forward to going back to Inverness?’ Well, I really am. But then I have kind of mixed emotions about it. It’s nice to come back here because of what happened in ‘86, but then again, I’d like to come back playing better than I have been.”

It’s a nice thought, but the truth is that Tway’s swing is still under rehabilitation. Johnny Miller, the NBC golf analyst who slashes away as if he were in two-feet deep rough, recently criticized Tway for tinkering too much with his mechanics. Tway agreed.

“Sometimes you get away from your natural instincts,” Tway said.

That explains why Tway has junked his golf gurus and concentrated on returning to his style of yesteryear--or, at least, of 1986. On occasion, he even pops in a VCR tape of his finer days. As always, there is Inverness.

He wore light gray pants, a turquoise shirt and a white visor that day. He started the round four strokes behind Norman. The margin stayed that way through the first nine holes.

But then Norman faltered, and Tway closed in.

The 18th hole is most memorable, but the tournament might have been won on No. 17, where Tway, tied for the lead, salvaged par after sending his second shot into the deep rough to the right of the green.

“When I walked up to the ball, I asked the marshal, ‘Did somebody step on the thing?’ You could barely see it,” Tway said.

Tway pitched it close and then knocked down the four-foot putt for par.

“That (pitch shot) was probably a tougher shot than the bunker shot,” he said.

Tway knows the rest by heart. He has seen replays of No. 18 hundreds of times. He never grows tired of the sight: He swings, he stares, he celebrates.

Now, Tway searches for more than memories. He compares his swing of 1986 with the one he owns today. He sees differences, but for the first time in years, he also sees similarities.

Is it hope or wishful thinking?

“I think I’ve learned a big lesson,” he said.

Tway takes nothing for granted. When he arrived at Inverness Sunday evening, he looked out onto the course from a clubhouse window. From there, he saw a past to cherish. “Just being here brings back good memories,” he said.

Now he’d like something more: a future.