Remembering Payne Stewart

This Sunday will mark the 10th anniversary of the tragic death of Payne Stewart and as I will be traveling this weekend I wanted to take a few moments to mark this sad event.
Stewart had capped a great year for his career in 1999 by winning the U.S. Open at Pinehurst and helped spur the U.S. to a Ryder Cup win three months later. Then, just one month later, Stewart left his Florida home to head for a meeting in Dallas, Texas (ironically, the same city where I will be spending this weekend) before heading down to Houston to play in the season-concluding Tour Championship.
As we all know, neither Stewart, his agents Robert Fraley and Van Ardan, the pilots Michael Kling and Stephanie Bellegarrigue, nor Bruce Borland, who was a golf architect with Jack Nicklaus' golf course design firm, made it to Dallas that day.
Many of us watched the events of that flight unfold in disbelief as the jet wandered off course and wildy climbed and dropped through the skies until finally falling to earth in a field outside Mina, South Dakota - nearly a thousand miles away from its intended destination.
Perhaps the saddest memory of that day came with the news that as Air Force jets helplessly tracked the plane across the country Stewart's wife kept calling his cell phone trying to reach him. The thought of that ringing cell phone that would never be answered is too heart-wrenching to contemplate.
There are better memories of Payne, the moments after clinching the '99 Open as he took Phil Mikelson in hand and pointed out Phil was the bigger winner that day because Phil was going to be a dad. The joy he shared with his teammates that day in September at Brookline when they all made Ben Crenshaw look like a prophet.
My own personal memory of Payne Stewart was a one-day Pro-Am at Greentree Country Club in Midland, Texas in the mid-1980s. It was my first-ever writing assignment and Stewart was playing in the event put together that day by Tom Kite.
Payne was immediately noticeable in his signature attire and most of the West Texas spectators spent most of the morning warm-ups trying to figure out, as one older gentleman put it, "why that boy couldn't afford to buy himself longer britches."
Payne was on the practice putting green when the comment was made and I wasn't sure he'd heard the remark. But as he turned, and I could see the smile on his face, I knew he had.
I followed Payne's career from that point on, and while Jack Nicklaus still remains on top of my list of golfing greats, Payne Stewart will always be one of my all-time favorites.