GOLDEN TOUCH
8:35 on an impossibly clear and bright morning at a private resort in the Bahamas A whisper of wind rustles the palm trees, and tucked down a golf-cart path, shielded by flowering bushes, there’s a freshly marked-out football field with two yellow uprights on either end Apart from a gallery of seagulls, there’s no one around except Tom Brady, his trainer and best friend Alex Guerrero, and Brady’s assistant Kevin Bonner In person, the 42-year-old Brady looks about 30, and he is not the kind of celebrity who seems less handsome or more normal in real life He’s bigger and taller than you might expect, with huge hands and thick limbs, and he radiates confidence with his icy blue hawkish eyes and disarming smile “We need you to catch some balls today,” he says, grinning my way “You ready?”
“I BELIEVED IF YOU WANT TO GET GOOD, YOU GOTTA GO SQUAT AND BENCH”
Every summer for the past seven years, the quarterback of the New England Patriots has come to this remote island for a beach boot camp. It’s an intense part of his regimen, which has him training two to three hours daily to strengthen his arm, pack on more upper-body muscle to absorb hits, and sharpen his footwork and acceleration so that he can elude pass rushers. As Bonner unzips an egg-carton-like duffel bag with six game balls nestled inside, Brady uses a golf laser rangefinder to check the yardage. It’s slightly off. Guerrero walks down the sideline, putting down cones every ten yards as measured by Brady. The QB slips into his shoulder pads, dons a silver helmet, and warms up using a white hand towel instead of a ball. He unfurls that smooth throwing motion that has tortured opposition players and thrilled New England fans for 19 years, culminating with a flick of the wrist that snaps the towel.
Bonner and I put on receiver gloves and spread out ten yards downfield. Bonner’s advice: “Just put your hands up and the ball will hit them.” Brady starts off throwing short bullets, and Bonner’s tip is dead-on: the balls slice through the hot air and slam into my hands. Brady goes through the gears, throwing 20-yarders and then 30-yarders. Then we drop to 60 yards. This is a maximum-effort drill for distance. Brady is throwing down the sideline, launching six passes as far and as straight as possible. Our job is to catch the balls and put them down right
