Johnson Wagner is Ready

Johnson Wagner was a Nationwide Tour cliche when he started the 2005 season: He oozed talent but lacked seasoning. Over his first two years he'd made 28 cuts, with an unremarkable five top-10s, in 50 starts. Once, upon finding himself in the lead and live on The Golf Channel, he panicked and played himself out of contention over the weekend. He knew the value of a good caddie — he'd looped for three summers at Hudson National in Westchester County, N.Y. — but for the sake of comfort he'd initially used his older brother T.J. on the bag. When T.J. went back to his day job, Wagner upgraded to a career caddie, a fatherly Englishman named Tim Pressman who was so pierced full of holes he went by the nickname "Rings." It was a start.

Steve Hale hadn't caddied since he left the PGA Tour in 1992. He'd gone home to Denver to work in golf retail, then for Charles Schwab, and finally on an Internet venture that ended badly. It was January 2005 when Hale wrote a letter to Nationwide player and neighbor Shane Bertsch, stuck it to his door down the street and hoped. Bertsch called an hour later with a one-week offer, and the next day the two were on a plane bound for the BellSouth Panama Championship. Hale is a big believer in fate, and why not? Not only did Bertsch tie for second, he also played a practice round with Wagner, the man who would bring Hale back to the Show a dozen years after he left.

"From the very first time I saw Johnson there was a crispness to every single shot," says Hale, 41. "He just hit the ball solid. Nearly every single shot sounded so pure. The ball striking was heads and tails from what you saw from other people, especially on that tour."

If Wagner could ever chip and putt as well as he hit full shots, Hale thought, the kid would be more than dangerous. Not wanting to step on any toes, Hale bided his time, lugging clubs for former U.S. Public Links champion Brandt Snedeker and then a New Zealander named Steve Alker. In late June, Rings had to return to England to attend a wedding, which left an opening on Wagner's bag at the Northeast Pennsylvania Classic in Scranton. Alker was off that week, so Hale was free to jump when he got the call. Wagner fired an opening 66, and a partnership was born.

File this one alongside Hepburn and Tracy, and Hope and Crosby. The relationship between Wagner and Hale sounds like a love story because it is one. Hale was completely deflated after his Internet implosion. "I was sitting around on my ass feeling sorry for myself," he says. Wagner, a Virginia Tech graduate, was spinning his FootJoys, even though his ability was beyond question, a big kid (6' 3, 230 lbs.) whose physical skills had always amazed. When Wagner played dodgeball at James I. O'Neill High School in the Hudson Valley town of Highland Falls, N.Y., his gym teacher worried he might decapitate the other kids.

"I coached the baseball team, and he threw harder than anyone I had ever seen," teacher Skip Feinberg says. "I told him, 'Pitch for me. You don't even have to come to practice.'" (Johnson politely declined.)