The Legend of Bagger Vance (9 page)
Read The Legend of Bagger Vance Online
Authors: Steven Pressfield
M
ORE THAN SIXTY YEARS HAVE PASSED
since that day, yet I can still bring to mind as vividly as if I were witnessing them this instant every shot as it flew and every putt as it rolled. Most excruciating were the first six holes, which I cannot recall even at this remove without wincing. But here, Michael. Let the card speak with its own eloquence.
This is not Junah’s actual card, the one Jones kept, with his and Junah’s signatures. That relic vanished mysteriously after the match and was never recovered, despite the fevered efforts of Savannah’s sporting scribes, the Chamber of Commerce, several University of Georgia historians and the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy. No, this is the card I kept as a double-check, following Bagger Vance’s instructions and under pain, I felt, of eternal damnation should I slip and record a hole
incorrectly. Here, against a par of 5 4 4 3, is Junah’s tally for the first four holes:
6 5 4 5
The first he bogeyed ignominously by dumping a pitch of twenty yards smack into a bunker and barely struggling out onto the fringe. He followed this with an equally egregious bogey on number two, duck-hooking his drive so viciously that it wound up in rough behind the gallery and found a playable lie only by the chance of coming to rest in a trampled area near some portable toilets. The third Junah parred without incident, allowing the Savannah gallery its first normal breath in half an hour. But then he sent them into paroxyms on the par-three fourth, double-bogeying it like the sorriest hacker with a half-shanked mid-iron and a three-putt from eleven feet.
Hagen’s card, with two birdies and a bogey, read:
4 4 3 4
And Jones’:
5 4 4 3
In other words, Junah had fallen five medal strokes behind in the first four holes!
His card would have been even more appalling over the next two except for a stroke of blind luck at the fifth, an eminently birdieable par four of 378 yards that Junah was butchering mightily, lying two in a bunker 30 yards short of the green. From
here, out of a clean playable lie, he cold-skulled a sand iron, sending the ball rocketing across the green, the far-side gallery ducking in terror as it screamed toward them at an altitude of five feet, when it struck the pin and dropped straight into the hole. A birdie! Junah bogeyed the sixth after letting a driving iron get away from him in the wind, watching it dive-bomb into the left wall of a revetted greenside bunker and having to pitch rearward just to get a chip at the green. Still he hadn’t lost any more strokes on those two, as Hagen and Jones parred both.
We now stood on the seventh tee. The state of the Savannah gallery was approaching apoplexy. Judge Neskaloosa River Anderson looked ready to burst from the crush and strangle Junah personally, while it was all my father could do to force his eyes to watch. Junah’s swing, which for grace and power was every inch the equal of Jones’, was utterly gone. He couldn’t even take his grip. You could see his hands struggling futilely to find position on the leather. Nothing fit. His fingers looked bloated and swollen. The club was an alien instrument; he couldn’t set his hands on it right no matter how he tried.
But let me recount the gallery’s emotions from my father’s recollections, which I heard him tell and retell in subsequent years at various cocktail parties and club dances. This, the tale from his point of view as he strode the galleries with Judge Anderson, Joel Dees and Dr. Eben Syracuse, the three most prominent elders.
As Junah’s play got worse [my father invariably began the tale], I feared not just for his reputation but for his
life. These birds wanted his scalp. None more so than Judge Anderson, who had been his most ardent champion what seemed like mere moments ago. How they hated him now! “What the hell’s wrong with his grip?” Anderson clutched my arm as tight as a tourniquet. “He looks like he’s holding his pecker out there, not a goddamn golf club!”
Junah was not trying hard enough. He was trying too hard. He didn’t give a damn about Savannah. He cared so much he was freezing up. “By God, look at his Adam’s apple,” Judge Anderson declared in a voice raging with frustration. “If he was choking any harder, he’d suffocate on the spot!”
The solons began casting about for ways to pull Junah off the course. A fabricated emergency. An injury. Anything to bring this ignominious display to a swift and merciful close. “If I ever open my fool mouth again,” the Judge declared of his idea that recruited Junah in the first place, “shoot me and put me out of my misery!”
It was inevitable that the elders’ wrath would swing from Junah, who despite their frustration in this painful moment they nonetheless acknowledged to be a patrician and a hero, to some more easily sacrificeable target. His caddie. The mysterious stranger, Bagger Vance. “What the hell advice is that sonofabitch giving him?” Dr. Syracuse fumed as Junah took his excruciating rearward stance in the bunker on the sixth. “He hasn’t stopped talking since the
first tee! Look at him, he’s lecturing the man! Insolent bastard. Since when did he become Harry Goddamn Vardon?” The Judge and Syracuse ordered Dees to get closer, to find out what fool nonsense the caddie was stuffing into their champion’s ear.
Crossing from the green Dees succeeded. He scurried back to us with his report. “He’s talking about detachment. Telling Junah not to root for his ball. Don’t say, ‘Get legs!’ or ‘Bite!’ Just let it be.” “Don’t root for his ball? What the hell does
that
mean?” Judge Anderson thundered. Dees continued, “He’s telling Junah to release the shot mentally the instant he hits it, not to be attached to where it lands or what happens to it.”
The Judge declared that the most damn-fool thing he had ever heard. How the hell can you play golf and not care where the ball goes? He caught up with the caddie on the rise just below the tee and demanded an explanation. Vance coolly explained that he would be glad to address the subject in detail at a later date but that now he must focus all his energy on assisting Junah. “You’ve done a helluva job of assisting him so far,” the Judge snorted in fury. The caddie’s unruffled calm enraged the elders. This was no time for philosophy. Junah’s swing was gone. His plane was out, his rhythm was shot, his timing was nonexistent! What was wrong with him? What on God’s earth was his problem and what on God’s earth could we do about it?
Here the caddie, who had been moving with the players’
and gallery’s flow toward the tee, stopped, turned and met the elders’ eyes.
“Junah’s problem is simple,” he said. “He thinks he is Junah.”
“What in damnation does that mean?” The Judge’s face flushed crimson. “He
is
Junah, you damn twit!”
“I will teach him he is not Junah,” the caddie answered with his accustomed calm. “Then he will swing Junah’s swing.”
Vance turned and climbed powerfully up the slope to the seventh tee. Anderson wheeled to Dees, Syracuse and me. “I don’t care what the Rules say”—the Judge jerked his thumb in Bagger Vance’s direction—“get that lunatic sonofabitch off Junah’s bag!”
Of course the Judge couldn’t. The Rules of Golf forbade replacement of a caddie other than in an emergency or for voluntary withdrawal, and Bagger Vance was not about to withdraw, voluntarily or otherwise.
In fact on that tee he came forward and more powerfully than ever seized control of Junah, to my own shock and even horror, and to that portion of the gallery who overheard the exchange.
“Why don’t you hook this one out of bounds?” Bagger Vance spoke directly to the champion, wiping a new Spalding, a high-compression black Dot, as he readied to hand it to him. I was there, not three feet away, and couldn’t believe my ears. Neither could Junah. For an instant he tried to take it as a joke. Surely Bagger Vance was trying to loosen his man up with a little re
verse psychology. One look in the caddie’s eyes dispelled that notion. Vance placed the ball in Junah’s hand and tugged the oversize persimmon driver up from the bag. “Just snipe it over that first bunker, it’ll hit the road and bound off to hell and gone. Then you’ll be so far out of the match, you can relax.”
Junah stared at him stricken. Golfers in general are suggestible, and never more so than under the pressure of a desperate match. Junah knew (as did I, and the closely pressed part of the gallery including Judge Anderson, Dees, Syracuse and my father, who overheard) that merely to give voice to such a prospect was to guarantee its happening. Junah would step to the tee with that horrifying self-fulfilling thought in mind and…“Go on”—Bagger Vance pressed Schenectady Slim, the driver, into the champion’s hand—“what are you waiting for?”
Hagen and Jones had already driven; Jones about 260 down the right side, Hagen five or ten yards to Jones’ rear, in the center. Now Junah stepped between the markers. His hands were trembling as he set his right leg back and bent over his left, using the driver for balance as he stretched down to tee the ball; you could see the dimples and the little arched Spalding logo wobble atop their wooden perch. Junah actually had to steady the ball with three fingers to keep it from tumbling. He rose, shaken, and tried to settle, shifting and rocking and replanting his spiked soles into a comfortable address position. There. He had his stance. He waggled. A swift glance to Bagger Vance, as if pleading for a reprieve. But the caddie’s eyes met Junah’s sternly; Vance even threw a curt nod for emphasis, as if to say, What’s keeping you, get to it!
Junah swung. You could hear the sickening turnover blow as the ball arced hard off the clubface, left and low, then dove even farther left, spinning furiously over the exact bunker Bagger Vance had indicated, striking the greenskeeper’s road precisely as he had said, and bounding wildly to vanish into the marsh grass. Out of bounds. Stroke and distance. Tee another one.
The gallery groaned. Junah couldn’t bear to look up. He certainly couldn’t make his eyes meet Bagger Vance’s. I saw Jones and Hagen exchange a glance of pity, then avert their gazes simultaneously, eyes lowering to an absent focus on the turf. The match, or Junah’s inclusion in it, had reached its nadir. It had become an embarrassment, a joke, a fiasco. It hurt Jones and Hagen. Cheapened them. And everyone knew it would only get worse. No one rallies from the place Junah inhabited now. Jones knew it, Hagen knew it, the gallery knew it and most painful of all Junah knew it. A stony misery settled over his handsome features. He stepped with numb resignation, like a captive condemned not just to execution but to a lingering public humiliation beforehand, back toward his caddie, who now paused before placing a second ball in the champion’s palm.
“Do you want to quit?” Vance spoke quietly, so Junah and I alone could hear. “We can easily fabricate an excuse that will be embraced by everyone. No disgrace. No one will quibble with your parting under these circumstances, least of all your friends.” Vance indicated the Judge and the other elders who hovered painfully in a knot at the rear of the tee. “They will be grateful to you.”
Junah used his thumbnail to scrape a small clod of soil from the soleplate of his driver. “You know I can’t quit,” he answered.
Vance nodded gravely, then dropped the fresh ball into Junah’s palm. “I know it,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you did.”
A
N ATHLETE OF YOUR CALIBER
, Michael, can well imagine Junah’s state of mind at this juncture. But to bring it into even bolder relief, let me show you something.
It’s a magazine article by Arnold Langer. Remember, the writer from the
Atlanta Constitution
who mesmerized my mother and father over breakfast with tales of Junah’s heroism in the War. The article did not appear until two years after the match in the Summer of ’33 issue of
Susquehanna Quarterly
. This may seem an odd place for a piece of sports journalism except that Langer, as you will see, sensed that an event of significance beyond sport was taking place and therefore submitted his piece to a more serious journal. If you skim the first pages, you’ll see the article covers a number of sports: it refers to Dempsey, Tilden, Lou Gehrig; quite a bit of it is about prize fighting. It’s not until page 4 that Langer, advancing his line of thought, turns to the match at Krewe Island.
GRACE UNDER FIRE
The writer covering a variety of athletic endeavors is inevitably asked by acquaintances to render an assessment as to which sport is the most difficult, which tests the competitor to the utmost. Most expect the response to be a physically violent sport, perhaps football or ski racing, or one in which danger to life and limb predominates, as in motor racing or alpine mountaineering
.
These acquaintances are invariably startled (and occasionally outraged) when I without hesitation declare that Supreme Sport to be golf
.
Golf is the most grueling sport, the most testing sport, the sport which more than any other strips the competitor bare, mentally, psychologically and emotionally. Rarely have I seen this demonstrated more vividly and painfully than in the 1931 exhibition match at Krewe Island, Georgia. Here before our horrified eyes, the sporting press witnessed a man of unassailable credentials in courage, Captain Rannulph Junah, a decorated officer and bona fide war hero, come utterly undone under the pressure of what one would think would be to a man of his grim experience the merest trifle. A golf match
.
One watched the opening nine holes of that contest with an emotion that can only be described as horror. Your heart broke for the Captain, who was so clearly overmatched, not so much in a technical sense (his shotmaking capabilities were very nearly the equal of Jones’ and Hagen’s) as the psychological. That aspect of mind, that discipline which enables one to retain his focus on that peculiarly mental battlefield we know as golf
.
Consider Jones for a moment. Bobby’s swing, for all the adulatory prose it has inspired over the years, possesses a number of flaws, which Jones himself would be the first to acknowledge. His footwork has always been suspect, he invariably overrotates his hips when straining for distance and, most heretical of all, his grip at the top of the backswing quite frequently comes loose! His fingers partially release the club, then regrip as he starts down. But these flaws, which in a lesser mortal would spell calamity, are overridden by Jones’ spectacular cardinal virtue: his rhythm
.
Jones has been quoted on the subject, to which he confesses in his typical self-deprecatory fashion that he has devoted far too many hours of study. “Rhythm and confidence are twin names for the same quicksilver element. They are two sides of the same coin; rhythm the physical manifestation, confidence the mental. You may start with either; it will irresistibly produce the other.”
In other words for Jones, rhythm is the touchstone, the haven, the physical/mental core around which he centers himself and from which he draws his confidence
.
Hagen on the other hand can never be accused of anything so civilized as rhythm. The Haig’s wild lurching motion is almost laughable alongside Jones’ languid Olympian tempo. Everything is hands, arms and the slashing wristwork for Sir Walter. Yet Hagen, like Jones, possesses an equally unbreachable harbor: his profound and uncanny feel for the clubhead. That gift of consciousness, that absolute sense of where the blade is, its precise orbit and alignment at all times in the swing’s wheeling constellation
.
What makes Hagen so exciting to watch is his capacity for midcourse corrections. He will seem to topple, roll, lurch, yet so
sure is his sense of the clubhead that even from some wildly off-balance posture he manages somehow to right himself and recover in midswing, whipping the blade back to true and slashing the shot home. Then of course he’ll wink as if he had that very stroke in mind all along
.
Hagen does it with clubhead sense, Jones with tempo. But both do it with the mind. That is what makes them champions
.
Now consider our struggling warrior, Captain Junah. Junah’s swing, unlike Jones’ and Hagen’s was merely perfect. He stood to the ball flawlessly, his backswing unfolded straight from the copybook, his move through the ball was poetry itself. Yet all this availed him nothing under the pressure of the match. Over the ball the hero seemed to fall not so much into a state of fear as a fog of confusion. Of disfocus. He was lost. He looked, I don’t know what other word to use
, innocent.
I recall his caddie, a peculiarly intense fellow, struggling mightily to steady him. The bag carrier kept up a nearly constant monologue, apparently of counsel and instruction which, on this front nine at least, seemed more to unnerve the competitor than to rally him
.
So is it courage then? Is it physical courage, the kind required in wartime, that equates to success on the field of golfing combat? Apparently not. Apparently some other quality is needed. A quality which Jones and Hagen possessed but which Captain Junah, at least over the first nine holes, did not
.
It is my thesis that performance under fire (in the lesser world of sport, at least) is not a function of physical courage, but of consciousness. Of
awareness.
Or, perhaps more accurately
, awakeness.
This is not conscious awakeness, I believe. It doesn’t spring from the front of the brain. Its source is rather, I suspect, something far deeper, proceeding from a far more profound quadrant of consciousness
.
Jones and Hagen, in this match as in their other championships, were both capable of rising to necessity. Not, I believe, because of any superiority in their physical swings. But because of their ability to center themselves in a quality of consciousness which linked them absolutely and vividly to what they were doing. Jones with his rhythm and Hagen with his feel for the clubhead were capable of remaining connected to the moment via some mysterious current of consciousness, an awakeness, an immersion that rendered them capable of correcting and adjusting in midswing, enabling them under pressure to deliver shots which lesser mortals are incapable of. Let me draw it to a finer point. Their swings are
capable of responding to their wills.
What is the nature of this will, this awakeness? Where does it reside? And how can we tap into it?
We could ask Jones, but for all his brilliance, he has never been able to articulate it. Sir Walter is wise enough not to try. Perhaps we should ask Captain Junah, who wrestled with it so valiantly
.
Or maybe we should ask his caddie
.
Langer was being facetious, of course, and even condescending. What he didn’t know was that he was dead right.
I stuck tight beside Bagger Vance through seven, eight, and nine and he kept pounding Junah relentlessly, demanding an answer to the same question:
“Who are you, Junah?”
Vance would ask this, then answer for Junah, keeping up an unbroken harangue as they strode from shot to shot.
“Tell me who you are, Junah. Who, in your deepest parts, when all that is inauthentic has been stripped away. Are you your name, Rannulph Junah? Will that hit this shot for you? Are you your illustrious forebears? Will they hit it?
“Are you your roles, Junah? Scion, soldier, Southerner? Husband, father, lover? Slayer of the foe in battle, comforter of the friend at home? Are you your virtues, Junah, or your sins? Your deeds, your feats? Are you your dreams or your nightmares? Tell me, Junah. Can you hit the ball with any of these?”
Junah tried to stammer no….
“No?” Vance pressed yet harder, “Then who
are
you? Answer me!”
We were crossing between the nines now. The surge to the tenth tee carried the massed throngs away from the ocean to a run of five inland holes. The gallery’s weight and depth seemed to cut off all breeze; the heat hit you like a blast oven. The backs of Jones’ and Hagen’s shirts were drenched with sweat as we climbed the rise to the tenth tee. Junah removed his hat and buried his face in a towel; the moisture was dripping from it; I gave him tea and an apple and a big chunk of ice, which he wrapped in his pocket kerchief and applied to his burning neck.
The big scoreboard by the tourney tents was visible when he reached the height of the tee. Hagen 35, Jones 36, Junah 41. The nine behind felt like a war zone; it seemed impossible that the competitors still had a siege of 27 more holes to play.
I watched Junah peer around, trying to gather himself. The massed humanity, the heat, the blistering sun; across the dunes the galleries surged in massed battalions, one hole ahead, two holes ahead, swarming over brows of ridges in a relentless advance, flanking and maneuvering for position. Junah’s face was flushed; you could see his temples pound. He was not here on Krewe Island, but somewhere else, somewhere…
“Yes, this is war, Junah. As you said before.”
Bagger Vance moved beside the champion on the tee. “But this war is not between you and your opponents, or even you and the course. No, Junah, this battle like Reality itself takes place on a higher plane. The plane of the Self.
“That higher battle is the one you are losing, Junah. It is why you are losing here.”
Jones lashed a monster down the right side, a screaming yardage-devouring hook that arced out and back over the rough, hit the fairway steaming and bounded forward with overspin to slow finally, curling safely around the flank of a bunker I’d paced off the night before at 285.
Junah barely noticed, so tightly was he held by Bagger Vance’s eyes. “What can I do, Bagger? Tell me.”
Hagen was stepping to tee his ball; Vance kept his voice low. “I require only one thing of you, Junah. That you swing your True Swing. Your Authentic Swing.”
“What the hell do you think I want?” Junah hissed. “How do I do it?”
He paused for Hagen’s address. Sir Walter ripped one, a high dead-straight boomer that was all carry, splitting the middle
and landing just a few yards behind Jones’, settling onto a clean flat lie, 190 from the 464-yard green. The applause echoed; then the gallery turned to Junah, who still stood over his bag, his face inches from his caddie’s.
“Who are you, Junah? Nothing you call yourself can help you now. I have emptied you of all that. This match, this heat, this day have emptied you.
“Listen to me.” Vance moved closer yet as the gallery shifted impatiently, wondering what the hell was keeping Junah from the tee. “All your ‘selves’ are exhausted and gone. Now: hit the ball with what is left.”
Junah’s glance was desperate. “But there’s
nothing
left.”
Vance nodded. “Exactly.”
The caddie held out the champion’s driver.
“Remember, the game is simple. The ball doesn’t move. It simply sits and waits. Now strike it, Junah. Hold nothing back. Hit it with everything you have.”
Vance set Schenectady Slim in Junah’s hands. You could see the champion’s head was whirling, his brain beyond overload. The gallery sensed an apocalypse. Hagen and Jones did too. I was in terror that Junah might faint, collapse, actually fall down, so dizzy and disoriented did he seem. I shut my eyes, too terrified to watch as Junah teed his ball and stepped to it. I squinted to see him look back at Vance, one last time. Then he set himself, glanced once down the fairway…
Junah’s clubhead started back. Before it reached the top, the gallery knew. Judge Anderson knew, my father knew, everyone who had ever seen and marveled at Junah’s swing when it was on
…they all knew. He was on plane. On track. On rails. The big persimmon hit the slot at the top exactly, you could see Junah’s wrists cock fully into their ultimate power position, his knees and hips had already started rotating forward into the shot as the clubhead reached its zenith, high and geometric, left arm at full extension, and then, not with a slash or a blast but almost in slow motion the club powered through the hitting zone. The sound was like a bomb. The gallery gasped as the ball exploded off the clubface, low and hissing fire, and boomed down the narrow alley between the massed formations. Heads snapped, trying to follow its speed. There was a quick intake of breath, then a joyous release of tension, applause and a rush of awe and appreciation. I looked at Jones and saw a small curl of pleasure in his lip; he appreciated it too. Hagen was already striding off the tee, head down, ignoring the shot, which meant of course he had seen it and took it seriously. I peered toward the far right bunker, the one Jones’ ball had rolled to, whose carry paced off at 285. Junah’s drive cleared it on the fly, took one long hard hop, then settled into a low, ground-hugging roll, coming to rest 30 yards farther on, 315 from the tee, with Tawdry Jones the forecaddie sprinting in its wake to jubilantly plant his bright white flag. Three-fifteen cold. Thirty yards past Jones, nearly 40 beyond Hagen.
Junah himself could barely believe it. Not so much the prodigiousness of the blow, as he had hit many as well and better, but that somehow it had appeared at this time, when his swing had seemed utterly incapable of producing it. He turned to Bagger Vance, as if expecting a winking smile or a thumbs-up. But the
caddie was already striding for the fairway, instructing me to give Junah another of my iced apples and make sure he ate it. “You
are
your swing, Junah,” he muttered to the champion as he passed. “We will find that swing today and, having found it, nothing will ever take it from you again.”