Jonathan Kaye's friends tell good stories. Like the time he slept in his car the night before the final round of the 1992 Southwest Amateur, shuffled his bed-headed self across the driving range the next morning and declared, "I'm going to go take a shower. Then I'm going to beat all you guys."

And then shot 64. Or the time he goaded Greg Norman into hitting his ball in the water. Or the round Kaye got into it with Jerry Pate. Or the night he bunked with his caddie in a Tour locker room. Or the day he won a tournament with a competitor yelling in his face...

What Kaye's friends don't know is whether pro golf's king of quarrels can keep up the pace. He is married now, a dog-cuddling homebody who will soon be cultivating his own organic garden. It's enough to make you wonder if the legend of J. Kaye can survive happiness, prosperity and wheatgrass. Kaye remains more infamous than famous despite a breakout 2003 season in which he won the Buick Classic and flirted with a top-20 world ranking -- still known less for his game than for a mysterious two-month suspension in 2001 and a stated desire to dunk PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem in the pond beside TPC at Sawgrass's 18th green. He is one pro who hasn't been pounded into homogenized, sanitized putty by the Tour. The flip side? Even his mother, while intensely proud of him, admits Kaye is "sometimes endearing, sometimes annoying."

"Jonathan was always... I guess the politically correct term would be confident," says Tom Woodard, Denver Parks and Recreation director of golf. "He was a cocky little kid who wouldn't hesitate to play for a few dollars." Kaye knocked his ball along the city streets between his father's Denver home and City Park Golf Course, a scruffy muni where he'd hang out 12 hours a day. He was a regular in City Park's fierce weekend skins games and cursed so much on the course he became the unofficial thesaurus of the Colorado Junior Golf Association. (What's another word for fiddlesticks?)

University of Colorado golf coach Mark Simpson, a deeply religious man, knew of Kaye's reputation when Kaye walked on to the team in 1990 but took a chance because, he says, "we're in the business of helping young men." Their relationship got off to a rocky start. Kaye wondered why he hadn't gotten a scholarship -- "I'd beaten every player on that team" -- and chafed at Simpson's discipline. Kaye soon got a partial scholarship and kept bringing color to Colorado: He and teammate Grant Wittenwyler, now one of his two agents, were driving to the state championship in Pueblo one day when Wittenwyler flipped their car 3 ½ times at 75 mph. "The car next to us drifted into our lane and Grant overreacted," Kaye says. Though he wasn't wearing his seat belt, Kaye escaped with only a cut toe.

If Kaye was reckless, he was also fearless. As a junior in 1992, he beat Phil Mickelson, already a PGA Tour winner, on the second playoff hole at the King Arizona Intercollegiate Invitational at Tucson Country Club. "I hadn't come home until 3 a.m. that day," Kaye says. "All my buddies were at the University of Arizona, so I'd partied with them."

As a senior Kaye was an All-America candidate, and the Buffaloes a contender for the NCAA Championship. They never got there. Simpson and Kaye's tense relationship snapped at the 1993 Big Eight Championship at Kansas's famed Prairie Dunes Country Club.

"Jonathan had been up all night with girlfriend problems, so he was on edge," says his friend and former CU teammate Bobby Kalinowski, who plays on the Nationwide Tour. "He got a two-shot penalty for bad behavior because he threw his club down and then tossed it over his shoulder. He said, 'You're going to give me a penalty for that? That shouldn't be a penalty. This should be a penalty.' Then he slammed a trash can -- one of those little green ones next to the ball-washers. An Oklahoma player's parents complained."

Simpson, now in his 28th year at CU, claims not to recall why he booted Kaye, only that "he couldn't abide by the rules of the team. He was a great player, and a joy to be around 95 percent of the time. The other 5 percent of the time he was a jerk, and you wanted to grab him and throw him against a wall and say, 'Wake up! You're wrong!' "

Kaye found another sparring partner at that summer's Fox Hill Invitational, an unofficial Colorado Golf Association event. Before the final round one member of his foursome, a commercial pilot, tried to hand the group's scorecard to Kaye's caddie (now wife), Jennifer Sweeney. Kaye wasn't having it. "That's not how we do it in the CGA," he told the pilot. "High man on the first hole keeps score."

There was something about Kaye, so young and self-assured, that elevated his rival's blood pressure. The man grew incensed when Kaye jokingly proposed to match his score against the other three players' best ball. So he accepted the mock offer: They would wager $300 against the title to Kaye's car.

"We're veteran amateurs and he's a college kid," says longtime Colorado amateur standout Rick DeWitt, who was in on the bet. "We're thinking we're going to kill him."

Kaye canned a four-foot par putt on the 1st hole after the pilot flubbed a five-footer and made bogey, thus earning the unwanted scorekeeping task. On the green a few holes later, steaming and screaming, he accused Kaye and Sweeney of standing in his through-line.

"He came over so we were standing face to face," Kaye recalls, "and he said, 'I'm not going to let you putt this in peace.' I said, 'Do whatever you want,' and I looked right at him and made the putt. That really set him off."

Fox Hill's pro hustled out of the clubhouse to intervene, telling Kaye he could either zip it or be DQ'd. The epilogue: "Jonathan goes on and shoots 66, beats our best ball and wins the tournament," DeWitt says. "The madder people got at him, the better he played."

{C}