Parent Trap

Marc O'Hair wanted nothing more than for his son to succeed. But now that sean has, Marc is left with nothing

All he wanted was the chance to say, "That's my boy!" and have someone hear him. He turned on every television in the house, filling the dead space with the sounds of his son becoming a star. He always knew this day would come. His screams echoed off the walls of that empty house, rolled into the yard and down the street. Yes, that was his boy, there on the screen. Nobody could deny the man that. That was a bond forged by blood, and blood was about all he had left. He saw things nobody else saw. He saw the way his son's fingers moved on the grip as he prepared to hit a shot, and he knew those movements originated in martial-arts lessons that made his son a black belt at age 10.

The father watched those fingers move, and he knew his son was calm, poised, disciplined. The stress and pressure flowed from that pipestem body through those dancing fingers. His drives hit fairways, his irons hit greens, his putts hit bottom. The fingers kept moving. The son had a chance.

Who else noticed that? Not the father-in-law carrying Sean's bag, big cigar popping out of his mouth like a fifth limb. Not the pretty young wife carrying baby Molly. And not the lawyer/agent walking the ropes with a knowing smile. Sean O'Hair was playing for the win on a Sunday afternoon at the Byron Nelson Classic outside Dallas, playing the way he'd been taught by a domineering father who demanded excellence and left nothing to chance. Marc O'Hair was at home in Lakeland, Fla., and he hadn't spoken to his son in 2¨ years. Still hasn't. Doesn't matter. Nobody saw what he saw, and to hell with anybody who says he did.

He saw the swing, a swing so perfect it flows like liquid, a swing Marc knows as well as he knows his own thoughts. He fussed over that swing and cussed at it for most of the kid's 22 years. He knew it down to the molecular level, its angles and torque and velocity, the quanta of future fame. These announcers who spoke in condescending tones about his relationship with his son, these guys who reveled in the father's exile, they marveled at the most obvious things and acted as if they'd invented water.

Two holes left, but this Ted Purdy guy kept playing out of his mind. He holed out on 18 with a two-stroke lead, which meant Sean had to eagle 18 to force a playoff. He was about 100 yards out. It would take a miracle, but Marc O'Hair told that empty house what his son would do. The fatherin-law on the bag said get it close, just get it close. Sean listened to Steve Lucas' advice and politely discarded it, taking dead aim at the pin and coming within 18 feet. It was over. Second place, a payday of almost $670,000. But do you know what Sean O'Hair did? He walked up to the 18th green and drilled that putt for birdie. That's the kind of young man Marc O'Hair raised. The empty house heard about that one, too.

Put yourself in the father's position. Is there such a thing as heartbreaking joy? Marc's not blameless. His solitude is well earned. God knows he made mistakes, and he thinks about them every night when he sits down to read the Bible straight through for the fifth time. It's a good bet he thinks about them in the therapy sessions that help him control the rages caused by a mental illness, either bipolar disorder or the relatively new diagnosis of intermittent explosive disorder. Marc O'Hair overcame alcoholism and a split with his own father, but the mistakes he made with his son are a stubborn virus. More than anything, what Marc did was catch hold of a dream and grip it so tightly he strangled it. Nothing would get in his way, no detail would be unexamined, no feelings spared. He wanted it for his son and he wanted it for himself and he wanted it so badly, maybe there was never a chance in hell he'd get it.

So he sat there alone and watched his son prove him right. The kid would be a star. He would make it big. Marc was only surprised that Sean didn't win the Nelson. As he tells anyone who listens, his son is that good. All those people who questioned his methods and pitied the son and hated the father-he told the empty house they could kiss his big Irish ass.

They say failure is a bastard child, but there is nothing lonelier than Marc's success. And yes, Sean's success is his success. Nobody can tell him otherwise. When you ask why father and son have not spoken in all this time-since the day Sean married Jackie Lucas, a young golfer from Florida Atlantic University by way of Philadelphia's Main Line-you might as well start there.

Marc's wife, Brenda, and daughter, K.D., flew in for the final round of the Nelson to see Sean receive the benediction of future stardom. At the press conference, a Florida writer named Steve Elling, the one who first chronicled the tortured O'Hair dynamic, notes the extended family gathering (mother, sister, wife, daughter, mother-inlaw, father-in-law) and begins a question with, "That leaves one person who wasn't here." Sean answers gracefully. He says he loves his father and wishes him well. He's got this disarming charm. He's quite a young man.

And Marc sits alone, the pariah. On the screen, his absence is presented as the reason Sean is succeeding. After all this young man's been through, they say, meaning one thing: Marc. They're telling the story of the caddie/father-in-law getting in Sean's face and challenging him to knock down the three straight birdies he needed to get through last fall's Q-school and earn his PGA Tour card after five failed attempts. With the help of his new family. This man in the empty house has been reduced to an obstacle, something every great athlete must overcome, like poverty or drugs or a bum ankle. File Marc under Adversity.

Meanwhile, Sean's thoughts drift back to the empty house, to the burly 52-year-old martinet alone with his pride and his joy and his sadness. At some point that night, after the Nelson, he tells Jackie, "You know what? It would be nice if I could share this with my dad." And when his mom hugs him good-bye and heads for the airport, Sean says, "Be sure to tell Dad I love him."

NOBODY CAN pinpoint the moment Sean and Marc stopped being father and son. Maybe it was gradual, as Sean suggests. Golf got in the middle and expanded concentrically, like ink spreading across cotton. The family moved from Arizona to Florida, Sean entered the Leadbetter Academy in Bradenton at $40,000 a year, and golf became God. He was good, damned good, and on Sept. 9, 1999, before his senior year, father and son decided to turn pro. Few golfers had ever played professionally prior to finishing high school. But there had never been a Sean O'Hair before. Or a Marc.

Before either knew it, golf got bigger and family got smaller. They headed out on their own, and Sean went months without seeing his mom.

Family became father and son in a Ford Taurus talking-often arguing-about golf. Father and son became employer and employee, management and labor, manufacturer and product.

The Marc O'Hair stories have built on themselves, a new layer added with each retelling. How he stood on golf courses wearing mirrored sunglasses, cussing and intimidating anyone who crossed his 6'3", 230-pound path. How he cooked for his son in hotel rooms and made him run at 5 a.m. and lift weights afterward. How he backhanded the boy across the nose from the driver's seat of the car and in hotel rooms when Sean back-talked. How Marc claimed to have spent $2 million from a $2.75 million family business settlement he reached with his own father-a wealthy shutter manufacturer from Lubbock, Texas-on Sean's golf career. How he tried to protect himself by making Sean sign a contract at age 17 that called for the son to pay the father 10% of his earnings for life. How he made him sign it again when Sean was of legal age-all of 19 years and five months. By then, Sean says, he couldn't sense much family at all.

In a 2002 segment of 60 Minutes II titled "The Tiger Formula," Marc said: "I was in business 20-plus years and I know how to make a profit. You've got the same old thing-it's material, labor and overhead. He's pretty good labor."

Marc's been paying for those words ever since. When his son made his PGA debut earlier this year, Marc was savaged by everyone from Golf World to Sports Illustrated. "While the results speak for themselves," Steve Elling wrote in Golf World, "those who watched the duo believe there was madness in the method." In his column in SI, Rick Reilly wrote, "You'd be amazed how freely you swing when 230 pounds comes off your back."

Marc's words propel the stories like rocket fuel. "My dad comes on strong," Sean says. Strong like a herd of pissed-off buffalo. Still, it's hard to escape the image of this hard-driving father sitting alone at home, TVs blaring, as his son, the second-youngest player on Tour, beats Tiger, Vijay, Phil, Ernie and everyone but a guy named Ted Purdy to collect the biggest check of his life. Ten percent of $669,600 … sorry, Marc can't help thinking about that, too.

SEAN'S BEEN off the course at the Nelson about an hour when I dial Marc's number. He answers on the second ring. I identify myself.

He pauses a moment and says, "Why don't you guys f- off?" and hangs up.

Bad timing. Maybe Marc thought I was calling to take him up on his offer to "crucify" his son after he made it big. Oh, that's another story about Marc, how he told Elling that he was going to get back at his son through the media. Marc says those words became as misunderstood and tortured as the family saga that precipitated them. He says he was listing things he could do but probably wouldn't. Elling says he wrote what he heard. Layer upon layer. Fuel on fuel.

But I wanted to tell Marc O'Hair something. I wanted to tell him about the conciliatory tone in his son's voice a few days before. Sitting in a hotel lobby on the eve of his breakout weekend, the most forceful thing Sean said was, "I'll get one thing straight: I definitely would not be here on Tour this early if my dad didn't do what he did. I truly deep down inside think he loves me and meant the best for me."

I wanted to talk to him about another story, maybe the most famous of all Marc O'Hair stories. The one where Marc forces Sean to run a mile for every shot over par in tournament play. Well, it's not true, and Sean says so himself. Other players talked about watching Sean run nine miles in 90°-plus heat in California after a junior tourney, but those were just layers. The truth is they had a onetime deal: Sean would get $20 for every shot under par, and he'd run a mile for every shot over. It happened at an American Junior Golf Association event in New Orleans. Sean shot nine-over and had to run the miles after the round, in an air-conditioned workout room atop the Downtown Hilton. "The rumors got ridiculous," Sean says. "People said he would beat me after every round. They said I ran all the time. Stupid stuff."

A layer added, a layer stripped away.

After he turned pro, Sean didn't play very well or very often. Instead of the relative stability of a mini tour, he opted to play Monday qualifiers for the Nationwide Tour, golf's version of Triple-A. The O'Hairs were on the road more than 20 weeks a year. Sean missed his mom. He missed his sister. He had no friends. His senior year in high school was spent in hotel rooms, studying between practice sessions, qualifiers and endless car rides.

The more they traveled, the smaller their world got. They put 100,000 miles on the Taurus. Marc kept a storage bin for dry foods, a cooler for perishables. He would go to the grocery store and cook a healthy meal each night in their room. Marc would be waiting with fresh fruit after the 5 a.m. run, then Sean would lift weights and hit the golf course. In his first four years as a pro, Sean never qualified for more than seven tournaments in one year. He made a total of $5,844.

"My dad had an idea of what I needed to do in everything, from the way I dressed, the way I acted, the way I played golf—everything," Sean says. "He had it down to the number of minutes I needed to get ready in the morning."

Life was Marc, Sean, the Taurus and that week's hotel. Sean began taking Accutane, an anti-acne medication that has been linked to depression. He and Marc say the medicine may have contributed to their problems. "There was a lot of pressure on me," says Sean, who no longer takes Accutane. "There were times when I asked, why the hell am I doing this? It's not fun anymore. Then I'd ask, well, what else am I going to do?"

During the second round of PGA qualifying school in 2002, when he was 18, Sean started to cry as he walked up a fairway. "I fell apart," he says. "It wasn't just my dad, but he wanted me to succeed so badly, and it was just brutal." They called the golf coach at Florida to see if Sean could regain his amateur status. They were told there was no way. "We were both lost," Sean says. "My dad was very depressed, and so was I. I made mistakes. He made mistakes. We spent a lot of time together, but I never got to a point where I understood him. I never knew what made him happy." I decided to wait a few days and give Marc O'Hair another chance.

HE ANSWERED, he listened, he began to talk. "There have been no good comments made about me at all in the last two or three years," he says, his voice pounding through the line. "You guys have massacred me. You guys take what one article says, the next guy copies that, and it keeps on going. There were twisted truths and outright lies, and I can't stop it. It's not fair. I've been treated like a piece of s—. But Sean knows how much I love him. He knows deep down inside I would give my life for him tomorrow."

His life has become a great American morality play. Everything is simple: Sean, good; Marc, bad. Nobody mentions Marc's mental illness or his ongoing efforts to treat it. "I made a lot of enemies out there," Marc says, "but everything I did was for my son." He wants to be clear. His system didn't fail. He had a reason for every decision. He made his son work out every morning because that's what great athletes do. "Look at the two best golfers in the world—Vijay and Tiger. They run, they lift, they eat right. Why not Sean O'Hair?" He steered his son away from college, he says, for one simple reason: "I'm an alcoholic, and alcoholism runs in my family. I was scared s—less of college for Sean." He made Sean sign those contracts because money was running short. "The second time I told him, you're of age now. I need some protection. He knew what he was signing." Sean met Jackie at a Florida driving range when he was 19, and the impossible happened. Remember that inkblot? It began to recede. One day the father said something nasty about the girlfriend, and Sean stood up for himself. He didn't give up golf, but he did give up his dad.

Marc says the decision was a case of faulty logic. Sean, according to Marc, made the assumption that his happiness resulted from his split from his father instead of from his relationship with Jackie. She made him happy, and Marc's absence was purely coincidental. In fact, Steve Lucas has become Marc O'Hair in a minor key: father-in-law, caddie, nonthreatening mentor. "If someone needed to be the bad guy, that's okay," Marc says. "I'll take the blame. Most kids these days are tattooed, body-pierced, godless children, and my son Sean is not."

What else did Marc see from that empty house? A son who married the first girl he kissed. A son who carried himself with class. A son who made his father proud. "Tell me, where did I go wrong?" he asks, his voice rising. "Where did I go wrong steering him away from all the bad things out there?"

Back in the hotel lobby, Sean says, "I gave up my childhood, and that's something no kid should do. You can never be 18, 19, 20 years old again." He is sitting upright in that hotel lobby, perfectly still except for the fingers. Calm, poise, discipline.

He says, "I just wanted to be happy. Now I am. I've got a great wife and a little girl that lights up my life. My dad's not in my life anymore. Some of that's good, some of that's bad.

"We both made mistakes. I made the mistake of being too open with the media, and things blew up from there. I would love to have a dad. I don't have a dad right now. It's a matter of us saying, let's put all this behind us and be a family. Money's not important. Golf's not important. Family's important."

The Taurus was a traveling dream, father and son and all the supplies for greatness. Dry food in one bin, perishables in another. There's irony in that word. Perishable.

Marc O'Hair wants to put the system back in place. "I want to be paid, and I want to earn my money," he says.

He's been talking for nearly 90 minutes, and suddenly there's a catch in his voice. Does he realize his dreams are just that-his? Before I can ask, he says he's got a message for his son. Marc O'Hair is tough and strong and intimidating, but he's got a favor to ask a stranger.

"Can you tell Sean something for me?" he asks. His voice has lost its authority. He exhales into the receiver. "When you talk to him, just say, 'Oh, by the way, your dad loves you.'"

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