The Downhill Lie (17 page)

Delroy read the line as straight, and if I’d stroked it that way I might have lucked out and hit the pin. But the slope was like frozen grease, and the ball got away from me. Malcolm two-putted with ease, and the match was over. We lost 6–4.

Back at the clubhouse, Delroy hopped off the cart and shook our hands. When I apologized for the way I’d chopped up the course, he smiled and said, “It wasn’t your week, that’s all. That’s golf, captain.”

The next day, he would be flying to Jamaica to watch the world cricket championships. It sounded like a great way to forget about the tournament.

Leibo dragged me to the scoreboard for the postmortem. We finished with 21.5 points—not the worst of the forty-eight scores, by far, but low enough to dock us dead last in our flight.

I asked him, “When’s the last time you finished last in one of these things?”

“Never,” he replied. “But I feel good about it.”

At first I figured he was being a smartass, but he wasn’t. “Are you kidding?” he said. “Three days of beautiful weather on a beautiful golf course—what’s better than that?”

How about a partner who doesn’t fold like a cheap accordion?

“Lighten up, would you? It was your first tournament,” Leibo said. “I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t ask me back next year.”

“That may be the next time I play golf,” I said.

“Seriously. I had fun.”

“But you carried me the whole way! I was useless.”

“That’s not true,” Leibo insisted. “You had a couple of bad nines, that’s all.”

Which is like saying: Don’t let an iceberg or two spoil the whole cruise.

After a snack, we grabbed a cart and rode out to watch the playoff among the eight pairs that had won their flights. The format required teammates to take alternating shots, with scoring adjusted for the differing handicaps.

The scene reminded me of a Mad Max movie—sixteen harried golfers pursued by a streaming convoy of Club Cars, many of the riders enjoying adult beverages. I couldn’t imagine trying to steady myself over a golf ball amid a throng like that; the possibilities for soul-scarring indignity seemed boundless.

Later, Leibo returned some business calls while I pensively assessed the tournament experience. Playing forty-five competitive holes against ten strangers was no lighthearted romp for a reclusive, neurotic, doubt-plagued duffer. To sink that clinching putt in our only victory was a gas, but overall my performance had been sloppy and unpoised. Worse, I’d let down my partner and friend, who was too kind to say so.

Before leaving Quail Valley, I tossed the blister pack of Mind Drive capsules into a garbage can. Eventually I’d have lost the damn things, anyway.

Day 577

The day after the tournament ends, I drive out to Quail Valley resolved not to swing a club—and I don’t.

Because I’m burned out. Fried. Whipped.

For a year and a half, I worked hard, played adequately in spurts, and now I’ve smacked the wall and spun out.

Facts are facts: I am not a young man with untapped talents, supple joints and nerves of titanium (or even Titallium, whatever that is). Tomorrow I’ll be fifty-four years old, and the limits to what I can achieve on a golf course have been starkly presented. A strong case could be made that I should park my sticks for another thirty years.

But today is a dazzling March morning, breezy and cloudless, and despite the fresh wounds from the tournament it feels all right to be standing in the sun on the practice range, just watching.

The mighty Quinn wields a midget driver, while his beautiful mother is trying out a new 5-wood. They’re both spanking the ball, and they’re happy. When the sport is new, every crisp shot is a wonder and a thrill.

I believe this is how you’re supposed to feel with a golf club in your hands: Full of heart and free of mind. This is the whole slippery secret; the only way to survive, and possibly enjoy, the game. Hit the ball, forget about it, then hit the ball again.

Quinn’s current swing model is part Tiger Woods, part Russell Crowe with a barstool. With a grunt he tops the shot and finishes in a comic pretzel, holding the pose.

From under his crooked visor he peers at me with a sheepish expression. “I looked up, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He tees up another one and bangs it a hundred yards straight down the pipe. He spins around, grinning proudly, to make sure I saw the shot.

For a second, I’m a kid again and my father is standing behind me on the range, watching me whack one ball after another. And I can recall exactly how fantastic it felt to pound one—really crush it—then peek back to catch the look on Dad’s face.

I’m wondering if he knew what those Sundays meant to me; if he understood that even when I was playing poorly and fuming like a brat, there was nowhere else I’d rather have been, and no one else I’d rather have been with. I hope I told him so, but, sadly, I cannot remember.

Now Quinn Hiaasen, who never got to meet his grandfather or see him hit a golf ball, says, as if on cue: “Dad, this is so much fun!”

Word for word, I swear to God.

The Sweet Spot

W
hen my mother asked how the tournament went, I answered with glum honesty: “Not too well. On some holes it was horrible, like I’d never touched a club before.”

I didn’t mention that I’d worn Dad’s watch for good luck. No mojo was potent enough to have saved me from myself.

“Was it your putting?” she asked delicately.

“A little bit of everything, Mom.”

“But wasn’t this the first golf tournament you’ve ever been in?”

“Yup,” I said, “and very possibly the last.”

“So you didn’t have fun?”

Again with the fun.

“That’s a good question,” I said.

Since it was Mom on the other end, there was no choice but to tell the truth. “Some of it was fun,” I conceded.

She understood completely. Golf is a vexing, soul-stomping sport for perfectionists, and she’d been married to one.

I recall often hearing my father grumble after striking what appeared to me as a dandy shot. What I hadn’t realized was that he’d hit an unintended fade instead of a draw, or that he’d been aiming left of the flag instead of right, or that he’d been trying to spin the ball dead at the front of the green instead of rolling it to the back. The shots that he’d executed so dependably in his twenties no longer flew easily and true, and Dad realized that his skills were slipping. I remember how quiet and weary-looking he became as his shoulder pain worsened and his scores began drifting into the mid- and then upper 80s, never to descend.

It’s probably a blessing that I wasn’t a low handicapper the first time around, when I was young, because otherwise the failure to play well in midlife would be withering and possibly unbearable. With mediocrity as my only personal frame of experience, I have no conception of how it must feel for a really good golfer to hit a really bad golf shot.

I do, however, know how it feels for a hacker to hit a good one. It feels great.

That’s the killer. A good shot is a total rush, possibly the second most pleasurable sensation in the human experience. It will mess with your head in wild and delusive ways.

One day I took Mike Lupica to play Quail Valley. The course was gusty and heartless, typical for early spring. After parring the first two holes I commenced the Big Stumble, finishing with a 97 that included four ignominious putts on No. 16.

Lupica himself got mugged by the back nine, and slouched off muttering unprintable slurs about Messrs. Fazio and Price, the course designers.

Later, in a more reflective mood, he said: “You couldn’t have picked a harder place to try to get good at golf. You have to factor that in when you’re evaluating yourself—this course is really tough…. You’re a good person trapped in an abusive relationship.”

Here’s what feeds the addiction: On No. 8, the most pitiless of the par-3s, I’d slashed a 4-iron through a savage crosswind, landing the ball six feet from the flag—one of those startling golden scenes that seem surreal at the moment.

That night, instead of sensibly fixating on the grisly four-putt at the 16th, I found myself reliving that lovely tee shot on the 8th as if it wasn’t the fluke that it was, but rather a lightning glimpse of my true potential. Hope bloomed like a staph infection, and I was back at Quail Valley the very next day.

The Member-Guest had provided so few such moments that rosy self-deception was impossible. Leibo kept urging me to focus on the good holes, but the highlight reel was woefully brief.

There was The Putt, that tricky three-footer that I’d sunk for our one and only win. As thrilling as that dinky little par had been at the time, alone it seemed hardly enough to justify prolonging a struggle that had taken a melancholy turn.

An impartial review of scores from the past nineteen months would confirm that I’d peaked the previous autumn, and was now skidding downhill toward an unacceptably ragged level of play.

Maybe the time had come to quit all over again, while the brighter memories remained vivid and untainted….

That eagle with a 9-iron from the fairway bunker on No. 7.

Those three birdies I’d made one morning with Bill Becker.

The absurdly long, sidehill sand shot that I’d nearly holed out with Lupica last summer at Noyac.

A 306-yard drive that I’d hit with Leibo, chortling, during the practice round of the tournament.

And that singular shining round of 85, which seemed destined to stand forever as my personal best.

The comeback had unfolded as neither a storybook tale nor a total fiasco. I’d reached my two simple goals of besting the lowest eighteen-hole score of my youth, and of completing a tournament without crumbling to pieces.

What I had
not
been able to do was to get good enough at golf to be satisfied. Such a distant state of mind might be attainable, but slogging onward carries the risk of poisoning me forever against the game, which would be a damn shame.

The decision won’t be easy. As every golf addict knows, all it takes is one great shot to keep you hooked.

Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be your own.

D-Day

In the weeks following the tournament, I’ve played a couple of rounds without disaster or distinction. The orthopedic surgeon says there’s not much to be done about my bum knee, and advises me to take a pill whenever it hurts.

On the day after tomorrow I’m supposed to show up at the PGA complex in Port St. Lucie as a one-day substitute in an informal tournament that includes a half-dozen of my old high school classmates. I’m reluctant to put my present golf game on display, but it’s a favor for Leibo—the least I can do after conscripting him for my Member-Guest. After this I’ll be able to throw out my Callaways and have a clear conscience.

Or not.

From Feherty comes droll Irish advice: “Finish the book, and
then
give up golf again. That way you’d feel good twice in the same day.”

Not a bad plan, although it’s possible that he’s kidding.

This afternoon I drive Quinn out to the Sandridge Golf Club, where I haven’t shown my face since sinking that cart. I wear no disguise, but I tiptoe past the pro shop like it’s Ann Coulter’s sex dungeon.

The club hosts a weekly clinic for youngsters, and today’s event is a three-hole “scramble.” First prize: An honor pin from the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund, which has nothing to do with golf but it looks pretty cool.

Since I haven’t a clue how a scramble works, Quinn’s coach patiently explains: The kids are paired in teams and play off the best ball. Each golfer takes a shot from that lie, the best ball is again chosen, and on it goes.

Quinn’s partner is a tall, sturdy kid named Dakota, who is blessed with a splendid short game. Quinn’s having a banner day with his driver (“The Big Boy,” he calls it), so the two of them are ham-and-egging from tee to green. My job is to pilot the cart and, still skittish from my last tour of The Lakes, I navigate with heightened caution.

Approaching the final hole, a par-3, we think that our team might be leading the match. Quinn belts another straight drive, Dakota pitches to the fringe and moments later we’re putting for bogey.

Both boys are a bit exuberant with their lags, and now there’s a ten-footer sneering back at us. Dakota goes first, the ball dying two inches shy of the lip.

The other players, who finished a few minutes ahead of our team, are gathered at greenside with their parents and the coach. Except for a couple of kids playing tag around the bunkers, everybody watches quietly as Quinn Hiaasen lines up his putt.

“Just take your time,” is Dad’s brilliant contribution to the effort.

Showing no fear, no yips and—most importantly—no genetic predisposition to choke, my youngest son drills the ball straight into the back of the hole. I am totally surprised. Quinn is not.

The small crowd breaks into applause—Quinn and his buddy have won by 4 strokes. The coach presents the medals, and gently cautions against overcelebrating. There will be days, she says, when it’s someone else’s turn to win, and your turn to clap.

Back in the cart, my boy is chattering and antic with joy. The great part is, he’d be no different if he had missed the putt. Sometimes it’s astonishing to think we have the same DNA.

When I put him on the phone with his mother, Quinn adopts a more Norwegian attitude about his first golfing victory. “It’s just a kids’ tournament, Mom,” he says.

Nice try, but I couldn’t help notice the 500-watt smile when his ball dropped in the cup; the glow was unforgettable. There’s nothing to do but admit the truth: Regardless of my own foolish and overwrought tribulations, this really is a great game. Truly it is.

I see warmer days ahead, when a certain young player might want his old man to join him for nine holes after school. For some reason he enjoys watching me hit the ball, so I suppose I’ll bring my clubs.

What the hell.