Miracle at Augusta (4 page)

THE SPORTS BAR BETWEEN
Gates 7 and 8 in the American Airlines section of the Honolulu International Airport is no Ding Dong Lounge. There's the antiseptic airport smell and the barrage of highlights and scores blaring from overhead TVs—does a twenty-seat bar really need four televisions?—but my biggest issue is with the light. There's so much glare bouncing off the tarmac, I'd need sunglasses even if I didn't have a black eye.

A respite from the noise induces me to glance upward. ESPN has gone to a commercial and there's Earl, three miles outside of Hanoi, walking in his new Reeboks, over terrain he used to hump in combat boots. Now he's talking to some elders in a village, sharing photographs of himself as a young soldier, and now he's standing beside some rice paddies doing a clinic for the kids as a water buffalo looks on. I hope it doesn't end up as a pair of golf shoes.

When
SportsCenter
resumes, I take a sip of my Bloody Mary and assess the damage. In addition to my shut right eye, which is more purple than black, all the ribs on my left side are sore, and one may be cracked, because when I raise my left hand to push my Ray-Bans back on my nose, there's a piercing pain. That must be why I'm drinking with my right. In addition, my head hurts in a way that can't be explained entirely by a hangover.

Nevertheless, I don't feel bad. On the contrary. Sixteen hours after the fact, the thrill of having survived and almost held my own in a brawl with camo-wearing, tobacco-juice-spitting Hank Peters hasn't worn off, and my niggling list of injuries seems a small price to pay for glory. As I'm nursing my drink and my memories, the bartender, a brunette in her late twenties, pauses in front of me.

“Want to see something hilarious?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“Then check out these two clowns.”

I peer up gingerly (my neck) and see a man who looks a lot like me flying at a man with a lei around his neck. Then the two flail at each other in a highly undignified manner. When they cut back to the anchor, there's a reference to a security camera at a Honolulu bar.

“How often have they been showing this?”

“A lot. Apparently, they're both professional golfers…on the
Senior
Tour.”

I'm resisting the urge to ask her which of these two clowns, in her estimation, won the fight, when a call comes in on my cell from Ponte Vedra, Florida.

“Is this Travis McKinley?”

“Yes.”

“This is Tim Finchem.” The commissioner of the PGA tour. “I need to see you in my office tomorrow afternoon.”

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, PETERS
and I are side by side again. Instead of being perched on bar stools, our butts are nearly scraping the broadloom in a pair of low-slung leather chairs. The chairs are facing PGA Commissioner Timothy W. Finchem, who looks down at us, in every sense, from behind his brilliantly polished mahogany desk. Despite the quality of Finchem's furniture, suit, and haircut, the scene reeks of high school, specifically that doomsday moment when you're summoned to the principal's office.

For a couple of minutes, Finchem lets us twist in the over-air-conditioned breeze. As we endure the silent treatment, I notice that Peters is as banged up as me, with a badly swollen lower lip and a shiner of his own. I'm struck by how young Finchem looks. On paper, Peters and I may only have him by about five years, but he has spent a lot less time in the sun and a lot more in the gym, and it shows.

Then again, we work for a living. Kind of.

I'm also puzzled by the three black plastic cassettes on his desk. Presumably they contain the surveillance footage ESPN has been wearing out on
SportsCenter,
but why three? Has Finchem made duplicates so we can each take one home and study it before we write our essays on how we will never get caught fighting on camera in a dive bar again?

Finchem takes the top one off the stack and feeds it into the VCR, which along with a monitor has been wheeled into his office. By now I've seen the footage half a dozen times, but it doesn't get any easier. This version, which picks up the action about a minute sooner, is even more damning than the one they've been airing. A camera mounted on the far wall shows Earl and me bent over our drinks as Peters and his friends take the empty spots beside us, then captures our awkward surprise as we discover we're sitting next to each other. Finchem winces at the monitor, as if the seedy interior of the Ding Dong is desecrating his immaculate office, and seems baffled that anyone, let alone three members of the Senior Tour, would choose to be there.

For the next thirty seconds or so, the tape shows Peters attempting to engage me in conversation. While Peters's posture is upright, expansive, and friendly, I look down at the surface of the bar. Then, without any apparent provocation, I spring from my stool and attack him.

“This is from last night,” says Finchem as he ejects and replaces the tape.

The screen fills with color bars, which give way to a stage on which Jay Leno is in the midst of his
Tonight Show
monologue.

“I guess you've all heard about those two palookas McKinley and Peters? Did you know HBO's doing a rematch—McKinley and Peters II? It's going to be on pay-per-view for nineteen ninety-five. Sounded pricey to me, too. Then I realized they're going to
pay us
to watch.”

As Peters mimes a burlesque drummer providing a rimshot, Finchem switches cassettes again, so we can see what Letterman can do with the same material.

“You know where this fight took place?” asks Letterman, fingering a button on his double-breasted blazer. “A very classy watering hole by the name of the Ding Dong Lounge. I'm not making that up,” he says, then slowly repeats the name with exaggerated clarity—“the…Ding…Dong…Lounge. I know what you're thinking—what kind of person goes to a place called the Ding Dong Lounge? Well, now we know the answer: ding-dongs. The Ding Dong Lounge is a place where ding-dongs feel welcome and at home.” As the CBS Orchestra plays the theme from
Cheers,
Finchem hits Eject and the audio-video presentation is over.

“Commissioner,” says Peters, “I have nothing to say about these last two tapes, except that they remind me how much I miss Carson. As for the first, it couldn't be more misleading. Based on that tape, you, or anyone else, would think Travis started this. In fact, this fight was instigated entirely by me and my big mouth. Without sound, you can't hear me taunting Travis repeatedly about what happened a few hours before in sudden death.

“Commissioner, I didn't say one or two things. I said about five, all unnecessary, all uncalled-for, and at least one came after he politely asked me to stop. Under the circumstances, I think Travis showed a lot of restraint.”

“You call that restraint?”

“That's what I said, Commissioner. Restraint.”

“Hank, I appreciate you standing up for your fellow competitor, but the video shows what it shows. You two have embarrassed the tour and tarnished our brand. You think the banks and investment advisors who sponsor our events want to see two of our most popular players brawling in a dive? Hank, you're on probation for the rest of the year. Travis, you're suspended for six months.”

“That's ridiculous,” says Peters. “If anyone should be suspended, it should be me.”

But this isn't a hearing, and Finchem is already out of his chair.

“I feel terrible about this,” says Peters when the two of us are alone. “And you were playing great golf. That shot on eighteen was the best shot I've seen this year. You need to borrow some money to tide you over, don't hesitate to ask. It's the least I can do.”

“Thanks, Hank, I'm okay on that score. And I appreciate what you said.”

“It's all true. Not that it did any good. But what do you expect from a guy who went to college on a debating scholarship? And one other thing…my friends call me Stump.”

BEYOND THE UNFAMILIAR WINDSHIELD
is an empty parking lot illuminated by the last few minutes of daylight. On the passenger seat are a half-eaten turkey sandwich and an empty can of iced tea, and I have no memory of either. The insignia on the steering wheel indicates the car is a Chrysler, and a glance over my shoulder reveals the interior of a minivan. The odometer shows 169 miles, so that explains the new-car smell, but not much else, and the clock, when I finally find it, reads 6:09. It's not until I open the glove compartment and unfold the rental agreement from the Jacksonville Airport Alamo that I remember where I am and why, and realize I've been sitting like this in the deepening dusk for nearly an hour.

For the second time in little more than a year, I've lost my job, but this one I loved and was actually quite good at. Against lotto-like odds, I achieved a lifelong quest to play competitive golf for a living, and in forty-five videotaped seconds screwed it up. A spot on the Senior Tour is fleeting to begin with. Under the best circumstances, three or four years is a pretty good run, so losing six months of my middle-aged prime is a pretty stiff price to pay for a relatively harmless fight.

Yet as stunned as I am by Finchem's harsh penalty, I'm more undone by Peters's generosity. How could I have been so wrong about the guy? I spent thirty years hating a person who didn't exist. Pressed to come up with an explanation for my dislike, I would have cited his good ol' boy routine and his redneck shtick, but I can see that was nothing but a smokeless smoke screen.

The reason I didn't like Hank Peters is because he is a better golfer than I am. And he knows it. That's not the abridged edition. It's the entire volume. You want to earn my lifelong enmity, just be better than me at something I care about, exude a little more self-confidence, and beat me in a college match in which I have you down two with three to play.

Do that, and I'll hate you for life. I promise. And how does Peters respond to all my petty bile and cranky bullshit? How does he repay me for three decades of tight-lipped, phony smiles and bad-vibing? By treating me like a friend.

According to the dashboard clock, another twenty minutes have gone missing as mysteriously as that half a sandwich. If I'm going to make my flight, I need to hustle. I find the keys, start the car, and turn on the lights, and as I reach back for the seat belt, I catch a glimpse of the one person I least want to see.

MY RECEPTION IN WINNETKA
is more in keeping with the return of a conquering hero than a disgraced asshole. As I step through the front door, all three remaining full-time residents of the McKinley household—woman, child, and dog—hurl themselves at me with delight. Sarah plants a fat, juicy kiss on my mouth, Louie paws my legs and crows like a rooster, and in between, Noah wraps his arms around me and says, “Dad, that fight was awesome.”

“A brawl?…In a dive bar?…With a guy named Stump?” whispers Sarah breathily in my ear. “I had no idea you were such a badass.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

Although it's almost midnight, I'm hustled from the foyer into the kitchen and seated at the head of the table. Noah hands me a glass of the best red on the premises, and Sarah takes a warm plate from the oven. Artfully arranged on top of it are the best parts of a roasted chicken, surrounded by potatoes simmered in its juices, and ringed by blackened Brussels sprouts.

“I made you your death row meal,” says Sarah, and I try not to wince at the unintended irony.

“Everything is absurdly delicious. I only wish I deserved it.”

“We think you do,” says Noah, pouring himself a bowl of Cheerios.

“You've won tournaments before, Travis. This was different.”

“Not in a good way. It turns out I couldn't have been more wrong about Peters.”

“You've always disliked him.”

“For no good reason. In our meeting with Finchem, he defended me like Clarence Darrow. Insisted the whole thing was his fault.”

“Maybe it was.”

“And I assume you haven't forgotten the part about me being suspended for six months.”

“That's unfortunate and unfair. But you'll come back stronger than ever. We're sure of it.”

“You too, pal?”

“No question,” says Noah, milk trickling down his chin.

Interjecting reality into this late-night celebration makes me feel like the killjoy I am. Instead, I hoist my Pinot and toast the room. “What a meal! What a wife! What a kid! What a dog!”

“That's more like it,” says Sarah.

“By the way,” says Noah, “did I tell you that even Mr. Wilmot in gym is treating me better?”

“Big surprise there.”

After dinner, Noah trudges to bed and Sarah refuses to be talked out of washing the dishes, so I head to the couch with Louie. When he rests his head on my thigh, farts, sighs, and falls asleep, I'm grateful that at least one member of the household isn't burdened with false illusions.

THE NEXT MORNING, I
drop Noah at school, and Louie and I take a drive to the Creekview Country Club, which is as deserted as it should be on a Wednesday morning in mid-January. I park in the rear corner, and the two of us set out up the first fairway, following the cart tracks left from my grandfather's funeral. Three weeks later, the ground is still frozen, but the temperature has soared into the high twenties, and the air is heavy with forecast snow.

On the first green, Louie and I find the spot where the first installment of my grandfather's ashes were scattered, my fallible memory confirmed by Louie's infallible nose. Whenever things get shaky, and sooner or later they always do, my first instinct is to go talk to Pop. It's been that way since I learned to walk, let alone swing a 7-iron, and it's not going to change now just because he's dead. Gazing down at the green, I fill him in on what happened in Hawaii, from the last hole of regulation to the only hole of sudden death. Then I get him up to speed on my visit to the Ding Dong and Finchem's office before Louie and I move on.

Over the years I've gotten almost as much comfort from this old golf course as I have from my grandfather. It's not only where I learned to play, it's where over the course of thousands of rounds, I literally grew up. Or tried to. Even here, however, I can't escape the harsh glare of self-scrutiny, set off by Peters's unexpected support. As Louie and I wander in the cold from hole to hole, I rewind as much of my first fifty-one years or so as I can stomach, searching for an occasion, or preferably more, when I behaved as generously.

Ten holes later, I haven't come up with one. There is, however, no shortage of cringeworthy moments, incidents so damning I'm not going to share them now. Whenever I think I've unearthed something I can hold up in my defense—“Your Honor, I refer you to exhibit one A”—I soon see through it for what it was, a transparent attempt to impress a girl, or a friend or a college admissions staff. As far as I can tell, my only genuine acts of kindness have been directed at Sarah, Elizabeth, Simon, and Noah, and they're simply an extension of myself and inadmissible as evidence.

Being back on home turf isn't doing much for me, but Louie is having a blast. I know every blade of grass on these suburban sixty acres, but for Louie it's all thrillingly new, and he is beside himself at having the run of such a vast, fascinating tract. Like a canine Columbus wading ashore in the New World, he races from tree to bush to rock, raising a leg and planting the flag of Louie.

On the 14th fairway, Louie picks up the scent of Simon and, barking maniacally, follows it to the portion of the green where my older son tipped Pop's ashes. What, I wonder, did my grandfather see in me? If I were nothing more than a little sawed-off bag of shit, even he wouldn't have loved me. Since he did, he must have detected a crumb of decency. Right? Or was it all just biology, a kindhearted old coot giving his flesh and blood the benefit of the doubt? Unfortunately, that sounds more like it.

As we hover over the fresh memory of Pop's remains, Louie starts barking again, this time skyward, and when I tilt my head back, it looks as if an enormous old pillow has burst open. Like Louie last night on the couch, the sky is letting it all go. Still barking, Louie sprints out into the pouring snow, and after one last aside to Pop, I head after him.