The Golfer's Carol Page 6

  “Aye,” Johnnie said, handing me the club. “You have the honors, Mr. Clark.”

  “Thanks,” I snapped, knowing I shouldn’t be the least bit angry that Bobby Jones outdrove me, but frustrated with myself nonetheless. I can’t hit this shot, I thought, addressing the ball quickly, just wanting to get the failure over with. Holding the club lightly, I swung as hard as I could and actually caught it pure. Widening my eyes, I followed the shot as it barely trickled onto the front of the green some thirty feet from the pin. Needed more club, but at least I got it on, I thought, smiling and handing the club back to the caddy.

  “You know, Johnnie, I’m probably going to need a little more stick,” Bob said.

  “Eight or seven?”

  I watched as he picked a couple of blades of grass from the fairway and flung them into the air. The flecks drifted behind him to the right. “There’s a little wind in our face.” He paused, still gazing intently at the flagstick some one hundred forty yards away. “Let’s go with the seven.”

  He took the club from Johnnie, continuing to peer at the green ahead. Finally, he addressed the ball and swung. His back swing was shorter, and he played the ball a bit farther back in his stance. The result was a low, penetrating shot that landed ten feet in front of the flag and bounced forward, cozying up to about three feet from the hole.

  “Incredible,” I said.

  “Not really,” Bob said. As we followed Johnnie toward the green, he asked, “You knew you couldn’t get there with a nine iron, Randy. Why’d you hit it?”

  I felt my face turning hot again, but I didn’t want to play games. “You know why.”

  “Because I told Johnnie I was going to hit nine?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I wanted to hit the same club that the great Bobby Jones was hitting. I didn’t want to have to take more club.”

  “And yet I ended up changing my mind and hitting a seven iron, which was two clubs stronger than the nine.”

  “Nice trick,” I said. “You do that in tournaments to folks? Play with their ego?”

  “Actually, not much,” he said. Then he smiled. “Well, maybe a few times, but this particular time I admit that I was testing you. One hundred forty yards slightly uphill and into the wind is gonna require the club you would typically hit one hundred fifty, maybe even one hundred fifty-five yards. I figured I’d have to hit at least an eight iron, but I wanted to see what you would do. So I told Johnnie to hand me the nine.”

  “And I fell right into the trap.” As we reached the front of the green, I marked my ball with a coin that was in my pocket. I didn’t remember putting the quarter in my pocket, but voilà. There it was. Just like the clothes I was wearing and my clubs being in the back of my trunk.

  Not responding to my comment, Bob marked his ball.

  While Johnnie tended the pin, I promptly putted my ball ten feet past the hole. As Bob was no more than three feet away from the cup, I was still out. Feeling frustrated and embarrassed, I re-marked my ball, glanced at the hole for a second, and hit the putt. This time, I came up a few inches short. Sighing, I tapped in for my bogey. As I was picking the ball out of the cup, Bob said, “When you screw up, get off the field, or the green in this case, as quickly as possible.”

  “You sound like my father.”

  “Smart man,” Bob said. “Though I’m not sure that advice holds as true on a golf course as on a baseball or a football field.” He paused as he walked to the side of the ball and took his stance. “In golf, after you’ve blasted a lag putt way past the hole, you still have a second putt.” He looked up and peered at me.

  I waited for him to add more, but he didn’t. Instead, he addressed the ball and made a smooth stroke with his putter. I watched his ball, knowing that it would find the bottom of the cup, but a funny thing happened. The ball didn’t go in. It caught the side of the hole and lipped out.

  Behind me, I heard Johnnie whistle between his teeth.

  Bob looked at me again without a trace of emotion on his face.

  “You were robbed,” I managed. “It was a good putt.”

  He nodded. “It was. I hit it exactly the way I wanted.” Then he smiled. “And it didn’t go in.” He walked over to his ball and tapped it into the hole. He’d made a par four to my bogey five.

  Bob handed his putter back to Johnnie as we walked off the green, and I did the same. As we approached the next tee box—the second hole, as I recollected, was a par three—Bob stopped by a tree and leaned his arm against it. Not looking at me, he spoke in his deep southern drawl. “I have a bad temper, did you know that, Randy?”

  In the far reaches of my brain, I seemed to remember reading a biography of Bobby Jones that mentioned the fiery tantrums he’d thrown as a boy and a young man. “I think I’ve heard that before.”

  He gazed down at his golf shoes. “You ever throw your club in anger after hitting a bad shot?”

  I smiled. “Many times. Always throw it in front of you, right? That way, you pick it up on your way to the hole instead of having to backtrack.”

  “Right,” he said, still peering at the ground. “Ever hit anyone with a club you were throwing?”

  I shook my head.

  “I did,” Bob said. “I hit a terrible shot in the 1921 U.S. Amateur. I threw my club and hit a spectator in the leg.” He sighed. “Lucky I didn’t kill the poor woman.”

  “Good grief.” It was the only thing I could think to say, and it sounded stupid and dull coming out of my mouth.

  “Got a letter from the USGA saying I needed to clean up my act.”

  “Well, I’d say you cleaned up pretty well. You won five U.S. Amateurs after that, didn’t you?”

  Finally, he looked up at me, his eyes radiating intensity. “I wouldn’t have won anything if I hadn’t learned to control my temper.” He took a step toward me. I had always envisioned the great Bobby Jones as a tall man, but now, looking him right in the eye, I noticed that at six feet tall, I was actually several inches taller than the great champion. Still, as he leaned closer to me, I felt myself shrinking in his presence. “Being able to control yourself—your emotions, your temper, your ego, your thoughts, your imagination, your anxiety—has a tremendous impact on performance and success.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk at him. “So does talent. You were a prodigy. You could break par by the time you were ten years old and were playing in national tournaments at fourteen, right? Self-control, my butt. What has the most impact on success and performance is God-given talent.” I spat on the grass. “Look, I have no interest in living out a self-help book where dead ghosts spout on about things that everyone knows is true. Control your emotions. Work hard. Don’t quit.” I ground my teeth together. “That all sounds good until life grabs you by the throat and starts to squeeze.”

  Not waiting for his response, I turned my back on him and strode toward the second tee box. I bit my lip to stop it from quivering and gazed up at the sky. “Darby, get me out of here,” I said out loud, wanting nothing more than to be left alone.

  12

  “How far?” I barked at Johnnie as I reached the second tee box.

  “Well, it’s about 178 yards. The wind is coming from the—”

  “Give me the five iron.”

  His eyes widened, but he didn’t hesitate. “As you wish, Mr. Clark.”

  I snatched the club from him and stuck my ball and tee in the ground. Without taking a practice swing, I took my stance and swung as hard as I could. I caught it pure and watched as the ball started just left of the flag and drifted to the right, coming to rest a couple of feet right of the hole.

  “Nice shot!” Johnnie roared.

  But I was still too angry to get any satisfaction from the shot. I handed him the club without a word.

  “You’ve always played your best golf a little mad, haven’t you?” Bob said, teeing his ball. I didn’t watch his
shot, instead peering off at the Tudor clubhouse. I want out of here, Darby. Right now. I’m tired of this charade and I want out.

  “Nice shot, Bob,” Johnnie said.

  “Thank you.”

  I walked toward the green without looking at either the caddy or Bobby Jones. Why am I so mad? I wondered.

  “You think you are being patronized,” Bob said.

  I didn’t look at him as I picked up my pace. “You can read my thoughts too?”

  “You think that it’s easy for someone like me to say these things, because everything worked out for me. I won the Grand Slam. I won thirteen major championships. I founded the Masters golf tournament.” He paused. “Am I right?”

  “So, what if you are?”

  “Randy, I want to show you something, come here.”

  “I’m gonna make my birdie and move on to the next hole, got it? You are one of my heroes, Mr. Jones, and under other circumstances, I might think this little dream was pretty cool, but—”

  “But you’re planning to kill yourself, and you don’t have time to learn anything before you jump?”

  I stopped and wheeled toward him. Legend or no, Bobby Jones was about to get his butt whipped. But when I turned, I noticed that he was holding his putter out in front of him with both hands. The grip end was closest to me.

  “I want you to use this on your putt.”

  I blinked at him and then at the club he was holding. Calamity Jane, I thought. I was gazing at the most famous putter in the history of golf. I took hold of the club’s grip with both hands and took a practice stroke. The club’s rusty-bladed head looked irregular and small. How in the world did he make all those putts with this thing?

  “You’ll see,” Bob said, gesturing toward the hole.

  “But I’m closer to the hole than you. It’s your turn.”

  “Go on. We can take some liberties with etiquette. We are the only players on the course.”

  I marked my ball and flipped it to Johnnie, who cleaned it with a towel and tossed it back to me. I placed the ball over the quarter and put the money back in my pocket. Then, as the caddy removed the pin, I addressed the ball. The worn leather grip felt soft in my hand, and I held the club lighter than usual. After looking at my line—the putt was almost dead straight—I made as smooth a stroke as I could muster. The ball dropped dead in the hole, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “That putter has eyes, Randy, I would swear it,” Bob said.

  “Nice birdie, Mr. Clark,” Johnnie chimed in.

  I reached inside the hole to grab the ball but felt a strong tug on my fingers, and the next thing I knew I was hurtling downward into the ground. What the . . .

  Seconds later, I was standing on a tee box surrounded by hundreds of people. There were men and women in the crowd, and I squinted to get my bearings. The men were wearing suits and ties, and the women had on light-colored dresses and hats. A golfer was approaching a teed-up ball, and I immediately recognized Bobby Jones. He appeared to be wearing the same thing he had on a few seconds ago, but we were no longer at East Lake. “Bob?” I whispered, but he ignored me. “Johnnie?” But I saw no trace of the Scottish caddy.

  Before I could say anything else, I watched Bob hit his ball. On contact, I saw his face twist into a grimace. Then, after yelling something I couldn’t make out, he hurled his club into the air.

  Subconsciously, I brought my hands to the sides of my face, watching as the club seemed to twirl in slow motion down the left side of the fairway. Then I heard the squeal of a woman and a collective gasp from the audience. As Bob took off toward the sound of the scream, I heard several murmurs from the crowd. “Can you believe he did that?” a woman asked. “Come on, Bobby, you are better than that!” came a high-pitched male voice. “Spoiled little rich kid,” a male baritone grumbled. “They should never let him play this tournament again.”

  I followed Bob down the fairway until he reached the spectator who had been struck by the club. This man, who a few moments ago at East Lake had looked unflappable, now was red-faced, his embarrassment and shame palpable. “Ma’am, I’m very sorry.”

  The woman, who was holding her knee with both hands and sitting on the grass, glanced up at him. “It’s . . . okay,” she managed.

  Bob started to say something else, but then he sighed and began to walk away toward his ball. “They ought to kick him out of golf altogether,” a voice rang out. I ran to catch up with Bob, who was walking with his head down and his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Eventually, he looked at me with sad, defeated eyes. “Can I have my putter back?”

  I glanced at my right hand and realized I was still holding on to Calamity Jane. “Of course.” I handed the club to him. When he took it, he latched onto my left arm.

  “Hey!”

  The next thing I knew I was hurtling upward again. I closed my eyes as dizziness began to set in. When I opened them, I was back on the second green at East Lake and looking straight into the eyes of Bobby Jones. “How would you describe how I looked a second ago walking down the fairway after hitting that woman with my club?”

  My legs felt shaky. “I don’t know. Bad.”

  He squeezed my arm tighter. “Come on, Randy. Don’t be lazy. Think about what you saw. What did I look like?”

  I thought back to a few seconds ago. In all of the images I’d ever seen of Bobby Jones, he was the picture of confidence. Clear eyes and a charming smile on his face. His swing was always one of fluidity and grace, and everything about him oozed southern style. But the man who threw the club was none of those things. His swing had been faster and jerkier. And, after the incident, he had looked. . . . what? His hands had been in his pockets, eyes downcast.

  “Think, Randy,” Bob whispered.

  “Defeated,” I said. “Like a loser.”

  Finally, he let go of my arm. “Exactly.”

  I waited for him to say more, but he walked away, handing Calamity Jane back to Johnnie. I placed my hands on my knees and gazed down at the green grass. The world was still spinning from the vision Bob had shown me.

  “Let’s go, Randy,” Bob called from ahead of me. “We have a lot more golf to play.”

  I took in a deep breath and rose up. When I did, I noticed that Johnnie was a foot away, gazing up at me with a mischievous grin on his face. “You look a bit pale, Mr. Clark.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask. “A little pinch of Scotch whiskey for you?”

  I exhaled, thought about it for a second, and grabbed the container. I took a short pull and closed my eyes as the warm liquid eased down my throat.

  “Better, aye?” Johnnie asked.

  “Thank you,” I managed, forcing myself to follow after him. I felt a bit steadier on my feet but still out of sorts.

  “You know what hole Mr. Jones was playing when that club-throwing incident happened?” Johnnie asked.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Hole number eleven . . . in the third round.”

  I waited for the punch line or point to whatever Johnnie was trying to say, but he said nothing.

  “There was a lot more golf to play,” Bob said from up on the tee box. “Twenty-five holes, to be exact. But I was already beaten.” He paused. “I beat myself.” He smiled down at me. “That ever happen to you?”

  My eyes narrowed, thinking of all the times I’d lost control of my emotions in my short-lived golfing career. “You already know the answer to that, but I’ll humor you. Sixteenth hole of Q school. Sharp dogleg-left par four. I hit a great drive and cut the corner. Had ninety yards to the flag. There was a sucker pin in the back-left portion of the green. Smart play is middle of the green. I went for the pin with a sand wedge and airmailed everything. Short-sided myself with a brutal chip, which I ran well past the flag and was so pissed about it that I three-putted. Double bogey.”

  “And you missed getting
your card by one stroke, right?”

  I nodded. “If I had collected myself after the bad shot from the fairway, I could’ve easily made a bogey. Might have even gutted out a par.” I paused. “But I was so mad about the poor decision that—”

  “—that the bad choice cost you two shots instead of one,” Bob interrupted, and took another drag off his cigarette. “That’s a good example. I’m sure that one keeps you up at night.”

  “Missed my chance at the tour,” I said. “I could have been a professional golfer and lived my dream.”

  “You understand, don’t you, Randy, that Q school I believe had six different rounds and one hundred eight holes of golf?”

  “Is this where the wise guru and winner of thirteen majors tells me that one hole doesn’t make a tournament and it wasn’t that one lapse in control that cost me?” I stepped up onto the tee box. “I’m getting tired of all the patronizing, Bob. Can we just get on with it?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t you birdie four holes in a row on the front side of that round?”

  I looked at him, more curious now than angry. “What?” I finally asked.

  “You birdied four holes in a row during that round. On the front nine. Four, five, six, and seven.” He paused. “Remember how the eighth hole went?”

  I tried to but couldn’t. Everything about my failure at Q school had been whittled into the tunnel of what had happened on sixteen.

  “Come on, Randy. Think harder. For someone so obsessed with a failure, I can’t imagine you forgetting what happened on the eighth hole.” Bob took another pull off his cigarette. Then, smiling, he reached into his pocket and flipped a ball toward me.

  13

  I tried to catch the ball as it spun toward me, but Bob hadn’t tossed it hard enough. The ball dropped in front of me. As I bent to pick it up, I saw that it was now on a tee. I pulled my hand back and stood up. Bob was no longer there. Neither was Johnnie. The tall pines and grandeur of the Tudor-style East Lake clubhouse behind us were gone, replaced by palm trees covering the sides of the fairway. The air, which I hadn’t noticed before, was now sticky and sweltering. I felt sweat beads on my forehead. I glanced to my right and noticed a vaguely familiar face. The man was young, probably in his twenties, with a portly belly. His thin blond hair was covered with a white cap that said Wilson Staff in red letters on the top. He grinned at me, but his eyes weren’t friendly.