As his Champions Tour colleagues pound balls on the range, Floyd is done for the day. It's 2 p.m. The kid who left Fort Bragg over 40 years ago has come full circle; ready to embrace life off the course. He's just a little wiser this time around.
In 2002, Floyd was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was sedentary for eight weeks and almost a year later would still feel fatigued on the course. "I'm a hundred percent, but what if it had been too late?" he asks. "That was the wake-up call. A lot of people don't get that." Floyd decided to call time on his Hall of Fame career.
"The two slaps upside my head were when Maria said I could change my career and the cancer. I never did things, because I was so engrossed in my profession," he says. "I didn't take trips to Europe, I didn't go ice-fishing in Canada, I didn't go bird shooting in Mexico. Now I want to enjoy life while I'm healthy."
His main hazards these days are those of fatherhood. His son Robert, a golf pro, was good enough to win the Office Depot Father/Son Challenge with his dad twice but has made only one cut in 17 starts on the Tour. (Ray Jr. won the event three times with his dad.) "He just hasn't played well," Floyd says. "Same with Nicklaus's sons or Player's sons. It's always, 'Oh, I knew your dad. He did this.' That has to get old. He's in real estate now, he's easing out of golf." In that respect, Robert is still emulating his father.
Last year, Floyd's 24-year-old daughter, Christina, appeared in the HBO documentary Born Rich, a fly-on-the-wall look at privileged kids. In it she suggested that blacks would not be welcome at the exclusive Bathing Corp. of Southampton, where her parents are members. Driving by another club in her Mercedes, she saw a black man playing tennis. "He's probably a pro," she said breezily. Her parents were deeply embarrassed. "We had a chat with her about it. It was a learning process for her," Floyd says. "We all learn coming up."
The old lion will arrive at his Southampton den before the summer crowds. He will spend a few days each week at Shinnecock, where he spent last summer playing fairways already narrowed to penal USGA width. He figures six under par will win the Open if conditions are benign, over par if the wind blows. His pick? The gambler in him won't look beyond the predictable favorites. "The winner will be a past major champion because the quality of the course is that good, or it will be a player who everybody already thinks is going win a major."
Floyd no longer maintains a set schedule for playing the Champions Tour, where his appearances have diminished since the cancer scare. So too has his game -- he hasn't won in four years. "Raymond and I know we can't win again,".says Trevino, reflecting on earlier times. "You know something great about the old days? When you got up in the morning, that wasn't the best you were going to feel. Now when you get up and every bone in your body hurts, it's gonna hurt all day."
The Last Gunslinger 
