Nineteen years after going No. 1 in the NFL Draft, Drew Bledsoe is on top of the world once again — making world-class wine, scoring birdies at Tetherow and living life on his terms.
By Jim Moore
The first time I talked to Drew Bledsoe was the last time I had talked to him, during his senior year at Walla Walla High School.
The year was 1989, and I was covering high school football for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I remember sitting in the office, trying to come up with the newspaper’s all-state prep football team.
I was about to select Richland’s Nate Holdren as the quarterback on the team when someone asked me: “Have you checked out the kid’s numbers at Walla Walla?”
“The kid” was Bledsoe, and his numbers blew away Holdren’s. I changed the pick and called Bledsoe to congratulate him. I remember only one thing from the interview – how respectful he was.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Moore,” Bledsoe said.
At that time, I was 32, and Bledsoe was the first person to ever call me Mr. Moore.
I followed Bledsoe throughout his football career, and especially early on when he played at Washington State. As a WSU alum and passionate Coug, I loved the Drew Bledsoe years, watching him stand tall in the pocket, firing passes here, completing passes there.
If you ask Bledsoe about his favorite game ever, He’ll tell you about the 1992 Apple Cup, the so-called Snow Bowl, when he passed for 259 yards as the Cougars upset the fifth-ranked Huskies, 42-23, in a whiteout at Martin Stadium.
Drafted as the No. 1 pick overall by New England in ’93, Bledsoe played for 15 years in the NFL in New England, Buffalo and Dallas, passing for nearly 45,000 yards before retiring in 2007.
I’d seen him play in person at Washington State and countless times on TV in the NFL. I’d also seen him at Cougar functions and games after he retired, but I had not actually talked to him since that first phone call more than 20 years ago.
So it was that I pulled into the parking lot at Bend’s Tetherow Golf Club on a windy spring morning with an assignment to play 18 holes with Bledsoe, and learn more about two other sides of one of region’s most famous athletes — Bledsoe the golfer, and Bledsoe the winemaker.
The 23 years in between have turned us both a lot grayer, but otherwise, Bledsoe is just as respectful as I’d remembered him — and just as talented in everything he does, from raising kids to making award-winning cabernet at his new winery in Prosser, Doubleback.
He’s not a shabby golfer, either — a 6-handicapper, to my 13. We played a $5 Nassau that he won easily, despite giving me advice on every tee box — where to hit it, what to avoid — advice it must have seemed like I ignored, given that most of my shots went precisely where he said not to hit.
Bledsoe, on the other hand, hit it a mile — as you’d expect from a guy who stands 6-foot-5 and weighs in the neighborhood of 230 pounds. I’ll bet his drives average 300 yards in benign conditions, and the rest of his game is pretty good, too — his putting stood out to me because he has a nice, smooth stroke.
Bledsoe didn’t take up the game of golf until his sophomore year at Washington State, when he took a golf class. He didn’t really like it.
“I just wasn’t very good,” he says.
He started playing more frequently with his buddies, however, making bets and drinking beers, and soon it became a lot more fun.
One of his good friends is Oregon alum Ben Crane, one of the best putters on the PGA Tour. I asked Bledsoe if Crane ever gave him putting tips.
Bledsoe said that Crane would go to the putting green at the Portland Golf Club at night, using lights from the parking lot. He wouldn’t go home until he made 300 consecutive 5-foot-putts – 100 from left-to-right, 100 from right-to-left and 100 straight in. If he missed, he’d start all over.
“If I did that, I’d be there all night,” I said.
“Me, too,” Bledsoe replied.