The Downhill Lie (9 page)

Day 365

Steve Archer says I’m tilting left on my setup, which can cause, among other disasters, a hard pull. At the end of the lesson he also suggests that I test-drive a Nike SasQuatch 10.5, which looks like a deformed eggplant. I swing it once and smash the ball out of sight, which is scary.

Should I stick with the new Cobra or not? If only I had some Mind Drive pills to help me decide.

Later, on an impulse, I pick up the phone and order a device called the Momentus Swing Trainer that’s being advertised on the Golf Channel. According to Fred Funk, it will forever groove my swing.

We shall see.

The Anniversary Stomp

E
xactly one year after I purchased those secondhand Nicklaus clubs, my transformation was disturbing.

I owned two pairs of golf shoes and a half-dozen vivid shirts in which I wouldn’t have been caught dead twelve months ago. I had four drivers of varying lofts, weight distributions and shaft flexibility, and I couldn’t hit any of them the same way twice. I was trying out a flashy new putter that I was concealing from my wife, and I found myself conversing about gap wedges and fairway hybrids with persons I barely knew. At nights I lay awake reliving the day’s round, shot by shot, in self-lacerating detail.

A case could be made that I was hooked. Whether or not my game had actually improved was debatable, because I played in schizoid streaks that drew dumbfounded exclamations from even my most diplomatic friends. Nonetheless, after twelve months I was, at least on paper, where I’d hoped to be.

The USGA defines “a male bogey golfer” as “a player who has a Course Handicap of approximately 20 on a course of standard difficulty. He can hit tee shots an average of 200 yards and reach a 370-yard hole in two shots at sea level.”

By those magnanimous criteria, I qualified. My Course Handicap stood at 18 on a layout of higher-than-average difficulty. My tee shots, when they found the fairway, traveled 245 yards to 275 yards depending on the wind and turf conditions. Unless waylaid by water or waste bunkers, I could easily reach (and often overshoot) a 370-yard hole in two strokes. In sum, I had reached a level of play at which I’d assured my friends and loved ones that I would be content.

Yet I wasn’t. Every golfer is susceptible to the notion that he or she is scoring far beneath their potential, and many go to their graves clinging to this fantasy. The cruel truth is that most of us bog down in a stratum commensurate with our talent, mental fortitude and fitness.

Men of a certain age choose not to believe they’ve peaked, and I wasn’t alone in this delusion. The mass-advertisers who aim at golfers know well their target demographic—and it ain’t Orlando Bloom or Jake Gyllenhaal. Before I started playing golf again, I’d never even heard of Flomax; I thought a “weak stream” was a trout creek in autumn.

But flip open any golf magazine or turn on the Golf Channel, and you’re peppered with medical remedies for enlarged prostates, high cholesterol, arthritis pain and erectile dysfunction. Obviously, millions of guys like me are out there, laboring valiantly to piss, make love and whack a small white ball as well as we did when we were young. That four-hour hard-on about which we’re forewarned in the Cialis commercials is daunting to contemplate, but personally I’d be thrilled to keep my putter working for that long.

And I mean my putter.

As the mortal clock ticks down, the window of opportunity in which it’s physically possible to post a memorable golf score grows narrower. I’m reminded of this in the dead of night when awakened by the twinge in my bad knee or the irksome throb in my right hip, which I fear will someday require surgical attention. Many people play the game until they’re quite old and they have a blast, but par inevitably becomes a stranger. The trick, as David Feherty says, is learning not to care.

But care I do. The most insidious thing about golf is the one or two fine moments that it bequeaths every round. On my one-year anniversary I stumbled to a dreary 96, thanks to a feud with the new Cobra driver. A neutral scanning of that uninspiring scorecard would show nothing whatsoever to celebrate.

Yet instead of fuming about the five shots that I’d stupidly knocked into the water, I kept replaying in my mind’s eye the impossible sidehill wedge that I’d nearly holed from the rough on No. 8—unquestionably a freak event, yet I chose to appraise it as an omen of future glory.

That’s the secret of the sport’s infernal seduction. It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting.

Day 367

Leibo says my borrowed SasQuatch driver looks like a bicycle helmet on a stick. He advises me to make up with my Big Bertha. I do as he says, and rip the next five drives straight as an arrow.

“Know what your problem is?” Leibo muses. “You’re a psycho. Your head explodes out here.”

As for my huge and complicated blue putter, he says it resembles a psychedelic spatula. For further humiliation, he calls Al Simmens on a cell phone and describes the big Ping in detail.

Big Al asks: “Does it scale fish, too?”

Despite the insults, I’m sticking with the beast for now.

Day 371

The Medicus swing-training driver, the Mind Drive capsules and my USGA membership card all arrive today, which is either High-Octane Golf Mojo or a meaningless coincidence.

Day 372

Before surrendering my meditative wavelengths to Mind Drive, I scan the ingredients listed on the box: Vitamins B1, B6, B12, folic acid mixed with “decaffeinated green tea extract” and a list of substances that I don’t recognize. My wife urges me to Google the one called L-phenylalanine, but there’s no time. I gulp two capsules and head for the golf course.

Playing the back nine first, I open with an encouraging par-5 on No. 10, a hole that usually is bedeviling. Before long, though, I lurch into an awful string of triples and doubles. I recall Mind Drive’s claim to “enhance muscle memory” so that you can repeat the same golf swing, and it occurs to me that this might not be the ideal prescription for someone with a flawed swing.

On the second nine I start out par-birdie-par. After five holes I’m even, and beginning to believe that the Mind Drive potion might indeed be magical. Then play stacks up, and a congenial older gentleman asks to join me. I’m stunned to hear myself say yes, because I know damn well what’s about to happen.

And it does: I three-putt the next two holes, dump two balls in the water on No. 8, and finish off the round with a spectacular, out-of-bounds 5-iron that lands no fewer than 80 degrees left of my intended target.

Even herbal medicine is no match for the Big Choke.

Day 373

After gulping down two more Mind Drive capsules, I go online to research L-phenylalanine. Medical Web sites say it’s a protein amino acid that is widely believed to be a natural antidepressant.

Perfect for golf!

But there’s lightning and thunder outside, so I stay home to watch the third round of the PGA Championship. At one point, ten players, including Tiger Woods, are tied for the lead.

The phone rings—my mother calling to make sure I’ve got the television on. “I’ve never seen such great golf!” she exclaims.

Mom is seventy-nine, and she hasn’t swung a club since PE in college. However, she has become a major Tiger fan, and keeps up with the big tournaments. She’s especially excited that the PGA is being played at the Medinah Country Club, in her hometown of Chicago.

It’s pretty adorable, and also ironic. If anybody has a reason not to be enamored of golfers, it’s my mother.

Blue Sundays

D
ad was a workaholic and our family seldom went on trips, even for weekends. Although we lived in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, I can’t remember my father ever joining us at the beach. He loved offshore fishing but the rest of us got seasick in rough weather, which is of course the best time to troll for marlin and sailfish.

Consequently, we usually opted for terrestrial activities. In those days, rural Broward County had no malls or video arcades, so my friends and I spent most of our free hours exploring the Everglades, fishing for bass or catching snakes.

On Saturdays, Dad either headed downtown to his law office, or worked on legal briefs at home. Sundays were for golf, period. My father would disappear early, leaving Mom alone with the kids all day. Over time she developed an understandable resentment toward Dad’s golf, believing (not unreasonably) that he ought to hang out with his family at least one day of the week.

Like many boys, my main motivation for taking up golf was to have more time with my father. A second and less noble reason was to weasel out of going to church.

Dad was a laconic agnostic while my mother was, and still is, a devout Roman Catholic. Early in their marriage he’d agreed to let her raise us in the faith, which meant we had to attend catechism classes on Saturdays and Mass (in dreary, droning Latin) on Sundays—the entire weekend basically shot, from my point of view.

Escape beckoned in the form of Dad’s golf excursions. I had noticed that his regular tee time coincided fortuitously with the mid-morning Mass at St. Gregory’s. If Dad took me along to the club, I reasoned, then I’d have an excuse to skip church.

It seemed like a no-brainer. Golf couldn’t be
that
hard to learn, I thought to myself.

Oh Lord, was I wrong.

My inability to master the game stung more sharply because of the friction that my new hobby was causing at home. Mom was perturbed because I was dodging Mass, and she felt that my father was abetting the enterprise. My little brother was too young to fret over such things, but I’m sure my two sisters were envious because I got to spend Sundays with Dad.

As frustrating as those outings often were, I don’t regret a moment spent golfing with him. I do regret my conduct, swearing and fuming and blowing up over bad shots. Had I known that Dad would be gone from our lives so soon, I wouldn’t have spoiled those days by acting like such a jerk.

Although he wanted me to love the game as much as he did, we weren’t wired the same way. I was impatient, hotheaded and self-critical—the worst possible disposition for a golfer. Usually I’d pick up my ball before the round was done, and Dad would let me drive the cart the rest of the way. At that point all the pressure was off, and I have wonderful memories of sitting at the wheel, watching my father swing a driver with a sweet, fluid rhythm at which I could only marvel.

Looking back on those weekends, I can’t help but feel sorry for my mother, locked out of such an important part of her husband’s world. She was a golf widow long before it became a cliché. Considering the arguments that took place in our house on Sunday mornings, Mom would seem an unlikely fan of the game.

Yet she is. When I broke the news that I’d started playing golf again, she said it was a great idea. During my next visit, she gave me some black-and-white photographs of Dad that were taken by one of his aunts in the summer of 1942, when he was sixteen.

In the pictures he’s tanned and lean, his hair blond from the sun. One snapshot shows him blasting out of a bunker; in another, he’s pitching to a green. There’s also a backlit photo of him holding the pose after hitting a fairway iron—hands high, hips fully rotated, belt buckle square to the target.

My father had one of the loveliest golf swings I’ve ever seen. Mom says the same thing. Although I’ll never be able to play as well as he did, the photographs are a sentimental inspiration. They’re tacked to the corkboard in my office.

Day 375

At the Sandridge Golf Club, the muni where I’d taken my first midlife golf lessons, I am walking down a hill to retrieve my ball from a pond on the 12th hole of a layout named, for self-evident reasons, The Lakes.

From over my shoulder I hear a disconcerting squeak that sounds like nothing so much as chassis springs. I spin around just in time to see my golf cart roll into the water with a concussive splash.

Frantically I wade in as it slides toward murky and uninviting depths. I clamp both hands on the bumper and dig my heels into the muck and, astoundingly, the cart glugs to a halt. Gingerly I scramble aboard, struggling to lock the same fickle brake pedal that I’d thought I had secured only moments earlier.

No luck. The port side of the Club Car is listing precipitously. I flip the gear lever into Reverse and mash down the accelerator, which is now submerged.

Bubbles rise.

Wheels spin.

My heart sinks.

Moving to the rear of the cart, I hastily unstrap my Callaways and hurl the bag up on shore. Then, moronically, I brace my legs and try to drag the vehicle backwards. It doesn’t budge an inch, but my right knee makes a noise like peach pits in a nutcracker.

Defeated, I retreat to dry land, dig my cell phone out of the golf bag and call John at the pro shop. I describe the situation and, after a thoughtful silence, he promises to send help.

In disgust I kick off my spikes and empty out the water, silt and hydrilla weed. Luckily the course is empty, and not a soul witnesses this abject tableau.

Soon, two golf carts speed to the scene—the ranger and the starter. Although they seem sympathetic, neither of them leaps out to assist in what is clearly going to be a challenging salvage operation.

“See if you can back it up,” the ranger suggests.

I wade back out to the cart and, hanging like a stagecoach bandit on the sideboard, I manage to locate the gas pedal with my left foot.

More bubbles.

The ranger and the starter can be overheard discussing the possibility of my being electrocuted. “Better watch it,” one of them calls out helpfully. “You might get a shock.”

Quickly I return to shore, whereupon the ranger says, “Oh, could you go get the key? Just in case some kids come by and haul it out—we don’t want anybody stealing it.”

“Sure,” I say, and slosh as casually as a gator poacher back into the flesh-sucking ooze.

Afterwards, the starter kindly offers up his golf cart so that I may finish my leisurely round. “This one is so slow,” he says, “you can’t get in any trouble.”

Like I was drag-racing when I dunked the other one.

“My shoes are wrecked, so I’ll have to play barefoot,” I tell the ranger. “Don’t report me.”

He smiles patiently.

The accident severely disrupts my focus, and I run off a string of sloppy, unmemorable bogeys. One errant shot lands in heavy palmetto scrub, the favored habitat of diamondback rattlesnakes, so I’m forced to lace on my slimed, sodden golf shoes before pursuing the lost ball.

By bleak fortune, the 17th fairway parallels the opposite shore of the pond in which I’d shipwrecked the golf cart. Squishing up to the tee box, I’m greeted by the sight of a Jeep Cherokee (undoubtedly a V8) with a cable strung tautly from its rear rumper to my half-submerged chariot. The leaking cart being hauled from the brackish soup looks like a scene from
CSI: Miami.
All that’s missing is David Caruso, squinting icily at the perpetrator: Me.

It’s an unnerving interlude, but I rally—smacking a rescue club 190 yards down the throat of the fairway, then knocking a pitching wedge up on the island green, twenty feet from the pin.

Lining up a possible birdie, I hear the approach of another golf cart. It’s John, my friend from the pro shop, delivering a damage report. I retell the whole story, apologizing profusely.

“The same thing happened when I set the brake near the 11th hole,” I say, “but that time there wasn’t any water around.”

“The mechanics think they can get the cart running again,” John says, “if they can hose all the mud out. If they can’t…”

I nod gravely. “Just send me the bill.”

“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” he adds consolingly. “I mean, it doesn’t happen a lot—but it has happened before.”

“But not often.”

“No. Not very often,” John says.

He waves and motors away. My birdie attempt rolls three feet past the hole.

I can’t sink a putt, but I can sink a damn golf cart.

Day 376

“You are such a putz.”

It’s Leibo, calling for the highlights of the golf-cart episode. “Did you do this on purpose?” he demands.

I tell the whole embarrassing story.

He says, “I’m totally impressed that you continued playing. Most people would have quit.”

“In all the years you’ve been golfing, haven’t you ever sunk a cart?”

“Not once,” he replies. “Not close. Not ever.”

Lupica beeps in on call-waiting.

“Tell me it was a victimless crime,” he says.

“I was alone in the cart. Nobody died.” I grind through another recap.

“Wait a minute—you went back into the water after it happened?” Lupica is incredulous. “You weren’t worried about the alligators and snakes?”

“I had to get my clubs.”

“You know what this means? You’re a golfer now!” he declares. “You didn’t even think about the gators—you went in to save your clubs! This is a huge rite of passage.”

I ask him the same question I asked Leibo: “Haven’t you ever sunk a cart before?”

“I’ve played golf since 1960,” Lupica replies. “Nobody I know has ever drowned a golf cart.”

“It wasn’t completely underwater,” I point out.

“Could you see the roof?”

“Absolutely. What do you think I was hanging on to?”

“That’s the cover of your book!” he crows. “I can see it now.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, this is epic,” he says.

“Can they eighty-six you from a public course?” I ask.

Lupica isn’t sure.

Later I speak with my Mom, who wants to chat about Tiger’s remarkable final round in the PGA. Then she asks, “So, how’s your golf going?”

“Not so good. I sank a cart yesterday.”

“Sank a cart?

“Yep.”

“How’d you manage to do that?”

As soon as I begin the story, I hear muffled laughter on the other end.

“At least you took off your shoes, right?”

“No, Mom, I didn’t have time.”

More laughing.

“How deep was the lake? Did the cart go all the way under?” she asks.

“No, I grabbed the back bumper and held on.”

Momentarily, my mother collects herself. “So this was quite a little adventure you had.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”