Miracle at Augusta (3 page)

THE PAR-5 FINISHING HOLE
is a gauntlet of palm trees, mined by bunkers, which I avoid and Peters and Trevino don't. That means they have to lay up, and I have a chance to reach in two.

Johnny A paces off the distance to the nearest sprinkler head and checks his yardage book. “Two fifteen to the center,” he says, “two twenty-nine to the flag.”

As soon as that first number falls out of his mouth, I smile involuntarily, because it's a number close to my heart, the perfect distance for my new high draw that got me through the winter. Of course, as Earl was unkind enough to point out on the range, the high draw offers no tangible advantage, and since this isn't figure skating and there are no points awarded for degree of difficulty or artistic expression, there is no sensible reason to pull it out now. Except one. If I go with the high draw, I just might be able to foster the illusion that rather than coming down the stretch with Peters and Trevino on Sunday afternoon at Waialae, I'm back at Big Oaks on a Tuesday morning with Esther Lee. And maybe, with a little luck, I can sustain the illusion long enough not to choke my brains out. Plus, as even Earl concedes, it's the suavest shot in golf.

When Johnny A hands me my 5-wood and says, “Nice soft cut, center of the green,” I don't bother to contradict him. Instead, I do what I did all winter…in reverse. Instead of savoring the reality of this Hawaiian paradise, I transport myself eight thousand miles away to a drafty, underheated warehouse in the midst of a brutal Chicago winter. The breeze rustling the palms? That's traffic whooshing by on Route 38. The waves breaking on the shore? Trucks rattling over the potholes.

I do such a thorough job of conjuring those chilly practice sessions, my biggest fear is that Esther will shank another one in the middle of my backswing. It's a feat of reverse double psychology that might not impress mental guru Bob Rotella, but when my ball drops softly on the green and settles fifteen feet from the hole, it impresses the shit out of Johnny A.

“I thought we said high cut. But let's not split hairs.”

It also makes an impression on Trevino. “Golf shot, Travis,” he says, and I swear I'm not making that up.

“Thanks, Lee,” I respond, and I would have been more than happy to carry on back and forth like this for another ten minutes, but seeing as he and Peters have their second and third shots to contend with and I've got some work left on the green myself, I reluctantly cut our conversation short and follow Johnny A to the green.

WHEN WE GET THERE,
I discover I'm even closer than I thought, which is always nice. It's more like thirteen feet from the hole, and considerably closer than Peters's twenty-one feet and Trevino's eighteen. And they're lying three.

If you watch televised golf—and if you're reading this, that's more than likely—you've heard that pros never root against their competitors. You believe that, I have a warehouse conveniently located on Route 38 you might be interested in. When Peters attempts his birdie, I'm pulling so hard for it to miss, I may have given myself a hernia. If so, it's worth a little outpatient surgery, because his putt stops three feet short. Trevino misses too, although I swear, I wasn't bad-vibing my pal Lee…at least not as much.

Once they tap in, I've got those thirteen feet, a McKinley dozen, to force a play-off with Peters. Thirteen feet is no gimme. It's about three gimmes. But it's manageable, the kind of putt even I can stand over with a certain level of optimism, if not confidence, and Johnny and I are taking our sweet time / stalling, if only to get my heart rate down. Although our extended deliberations must be boring the crap out of Trevino and Herman, I know Peters is watching. For the first time in thirty-two years, I may have his full attention.

There is another reason Johnny A and I are taking our sweet time / stalling, and it has nothing to do with the enormous consequences or the fact that there is enough mental baggage between Peters and me to fill an airport carousel. The putt is dead straight. As long and hard as Johnny and I stare at it, we can't see any break, and the last thing a pro golfer wants to see when he squats behind a putt is nothing.
Nothing
is spooky.
Nothing
messes with your head.

Canvass a hundred guys out here, ninety-nine will agree. On a crucial putt of this length, they'd rather see two inches either way than nothing at all. A dead-straight putt is like looking at a mirror with too much light. It reveals way more about you and your stroke than any pro wants to share with himself, let alone his rivals. Then again, a lot of the people in that survey would say I'm barely a pro at all, which may help explain why I pour it dead center.

IT WOULD BE AN
exaggeration to say that when Peters climbs out of the cart at 11 for the start of our play-off, he's a broken man. That's asking too much. But he's clearly dispirited by the recent turn of events, just as I'm buoyed by them. For the first time in our unhistoric rivalry, which may be a rivalry only to me, I'm the one feeling jaunty.

You can see it in my step as I hop from my own cart, and my uncharacteristic bonhomie as I chat with Marcus Azawa, chairman and CEO of Azawa Enterprises, the sponsor of the tournament. Judging from my social ease with him and his vice president of marketing, you might conclude I'm employable. And when I pump Peters's hand for the second time that afternoon and wish him, with utter lack of sincerity, good luck, there's a few extra pounds of pressure in my grip. I'm feeling so ebullient, I'm half tempted to ask Peters if he can spare a pinch of Skoal.

Eleven is a shortish par 4 with water left, and based on the numbers we draw from the chairman's palm, Peters has the tee. That's another break for me, because it gives him that much less time to recover from his disappointing finish. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply through his nose, trying to delete the memory of those missed short putts, but unless your last name is Woods or Irwin, that rarely works. As soon as Peters hits it, he knows it's wet, and when it dives into the hazard, the Azawa Open is mine to win or lose.

Now I'm the one taking New Age breaths. Before Peters's ball has reached the bottom of that man-made lake, Johnny A has pulled the 3-wood from my hand and replaced it with a 4-iron. Somehow I keep it dry, and Johnny and I head up the right side of the fairway while Peters trudges up the left. He takes his drop and hits it about thirty feet left of the hole, and I hit my 6-iron about the same distance to the right.

On the green, the lengths are so close, it takes a rules official and a tape measure to determine that I'm far. Since we're on the same line, that's a break for Peters, but I still like my chances. If I can lag it close and tap in for par, Peters will have to sink his thirty-footer to tie.

Unlike 18, this putt has all kinds of break, at least four feet of break from left to right, but Johnny A and I are far more concerned with the pace, since the last thing we want to do is run it eight feet past or leave it five feet short. On lag putts, my grandfather taught me to feel the distance, not just see it, and as I walk back and forth between my ball and the hole, I process the contours of the green and the route my ball will travel, through my feet.

“Weight. Weight. Weight,” whispers Johnny A when he finally hands me the ball, and as I place it in front of my marker, I repeat the message to myself like a mantra. My first practice stroke feels a hair tentative, the second a tad strong, and when I put the putter behind the ball for real, all I'm trying to do is split the difference.

The contact is solid, and the weight feels right. And even though we didn't grind over the line anywhere near as much as the speed, I got that right, too. Six feet from the hole, as the ball slows, takes the breaks, and swerves inexorably toward the hole, I know it's in.

WHEN THE BALL CATCHES
the high side of the hole, my putter is already in the air. It glints in the sun like a saber as the ball drops from sight, and it's still pointing heavenward when the ball catches the back edge and comes flying out the low side twice as fast as it went in. (See
physics: gravity; centrifugal force; the combination thereof.
) When it stops rolling, I'm ten feet from the hole.

I appreciate that only Jack Nicklaus has earned the right to lift his putter when the ball is four feet from the hole, but I've never hit a better lag in my life. Ever. My only mistake was being too close on the line. Ten inches left or right, I'd have a kick-in par, but because I missed by a fraction, I've got ten feet.

Even worse, I've given Peters hope. Now he doesn't
have
to make. Despite his dunking his tee ball, two putts will likely extend the play-off, and one could end it. Since I've given him such a good read, he steps up and lets it roll while the line is still fresh in his mind. By this point, I'm too exhausted and traumatized to risk another hernia. I just turn away and glance at Johnny A…until the crowd explodes.

I've got to give Johnny credit. He doesn't bat an eye. “You already hit one good putt,” he says. “We need one more.”

He's right as usual, old Johnny, and it's shorter than the one I just made on 18. But that feels like a year ago, and I'm not the same golfer as the one who sank that putt. I wouldn't recognize that guy if I were sitting next to him. I tell myself not to hit the putt until I'm ready, but that could take a week and I doubt the networks would go for that. When I can't put it off any longer, I step up to the ball and give it a roll. It's not even close. Peters, that son of a bitch, is going to be living in my head for the rest of my life.

But wait. It's not over. First I have to watch two beautiful beige-skinned Hawaiian girls in grass skirts prance onto the green, kiss Peters on each jowl, and anoint him with red leis. As I'm enjoying this lovely native ceremony, Dave Marr, the on-course reporter, comes up from behind me, lays a consoling hand on my shoulder, and asks me to tell the viewers “how I feel.”

“Like puking,” I say. “And please take your hand off my shoulder.”

FOUR HOURS AFTER PETERS
hoists his crystal pineapple, Earl and I are lifting filthy shot glasses at the horseshoe bar of the Ding Dong Lounge, a gritty dive on the border of Honolulu's red-light district.

“This place is even better than I remembered,” says Earl.

“That's the beauty of dives,” I say, “they improve with age.”

“Just like you and me, my friend.”

We toss back our shots and chase them with cold beer.

“To the Ding Dong,” says Earl.

“Long live the Ding Dong.”

“Fuck. I'm amazed it lived this long.”

After Earl heard what happened in sudden death, he felt duty bound to get me hammered as quickly as possible, and after five shots of Jameson and four cans of Primo, which I'm told is the Pabst Blue Ribbon of Hawaii, we're making solid progress. And since neither one of us sees any benefit in being photographed stumbling onto the curb at closing time, he thought we'd be better off in an obscure hole-in-the-wall than one of the glittering tourist traps near the hotel. Then he remembered the Ding Dong Lounge, first visited almost thirty years ago on an R&R trip during his second tour in Vietnam.

Despite my gloom, the Ding Dong had me from aloha. From the gentle, murky light to the pleasantly dank aroma to the scarred wood surface of the horseshoe bar, everything about it is imperfectly perfect. Halfway through my fourth Primo, even the name starts to grow on me.

“I know it was a sad occasion,” says Earl, “but it was great to spend a little time with Sarah and the kids. You're one lucky motherfucker. And not just for being born white.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” I say with a straight face.

“Oh, really?”

“Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. It's science, really. But speaking of luck, I've got to say, I didn't feel so goddamned fortunate four hours ago when that putt caught the lip on eleven and…”

Earl puts down his Primo and points an admonishing finger. According to the ground rules for this excursion, clearly laid out on our walk from the hotel, any reference to “ancient history,” as in what happened on the golf course this afternoon, is strictly off-limits. “The goal,” he said, “is not to understand it, which would be impossible anyway, since it's golf, or even to learn from it, but to forget it, or at least dilute it.”

“You're right,” I say, getting back on script. “I'm a very lucky Caucasian. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. Although I'm not sure Sarah feels the same way.”

“How could she, under the circumstances? But let's take your kids. You know how many turn out to be assholes? A lot. Yours are smart, decent, and fairly good-looking.”

“Thanks, Earl.”

Earl reaches for his Primo, and in midsip, his eyes go slack, like he just saw the ghost of an old army pal who didn't make it home.

“You okay?”

“Not really,” he says and, with the same blank expression, mumbles more to himself than me, “Motherfucker…of all the joints, in all the towns, in the whole motherfucking world, this motherfucker walks into mine.”

When I swivel in the direction of Earl's empty gaze, I see that three large, beefy men have joined us at the bar, and that the one in the middle is wearing a red lei.

“Hey, Travis,” says Peters. “Hey, Earl.”

Although his greeting could not be more innocuous, it causes his two friends to double over with laughter. All three are at least as intoxicated as me and Earl. Why shouldn't they be? They have something to celebrate.

“Hi, Hank,” responds Earl for both of us.

“Travis,” says Peters, “I got to say something. For the record. What happened on eleven was the worst piece of luck I've ever seen.” And when I don't respond, he adds, “No shit.”

“I know, Hank. I was there. Remember?”

“We're grown men here, give or take. We've seen lipouts and power lipouts. But this was another level. A tsunami to a hurricane. Your ball came out the other side like Dale Earnhardt coming out of the five turn at Daytona.”

Peters, to my surprise, has a gift for simile.

“It was like one of those putting machines some asshole executive has in his office where the ball goes up a little ramp and when he makes it, there's a bit of a pause before the thing spits it out. Then the ball rolls down the little ramp back to his loafers, the kind with little tassels on them. And then his hot secretary sticks her head in the door and goes, ‘I got Chandler on the horn. What should I tell him?' ‘Tell him what you always tell him, doll face—I'm busy.' You know the kind?”

“Yeah, Hank, I think I do.”

“Why am I telling you? You were in advertising. You probably had one.”

In the last couple of minutes, his friends have managed to regain their composure, but now beer comes flying out of their mouths and they slap the bar.

“Could we talk about something else? Believe it or not, I'm actually trying to forget it. As a matter of fact, that's why we're here.”

“I mean, what the fuck was in that hole, Travis? A snake? A frog? And one other thing, what was your putter doing in the air?”

I still hear their laughter, but now it seems far away, as if reaching me from a distant room, because at this point I'm out of my chair and flying through the air toward the red lei and his giant jug head. Even in midair, I'm aware of having crossed a line from which there is no graceful retreat. As soon as I reach Peters, I have no choice but to start punching, and Peters has no choice but to punch back.