The Amateurs

by John Niven

  The southern perimeter of the course ran along the right-hand side of the tenth fairway–a treacherous dogleg right, uphill par five–and formed the dividing wall between the golf course and the gyppo camp. The whole right-hand side of the fairway was out of bounds: any ball flying into the gyppo camp was never coming back. And a good few balls that landed squarely on the fairway too. For the gypsies were bold. Many a Ravenscroft golfer had stood on the tenth tee, posing in his finishing position, elegantly cocked like a proud stag as he watched a perfect drive sail high in the air and land softly on the fairway, only to see a filthy figure streak from the undergrowth, snatch the ball and disappear back into the wilds of the camp. Under an unwritten local by-law called the Gyppo Rule, the unfortunate golfer was allowed to play a new ball from the tee without penalty. Everyone was very happy with this ruling. Alas, in recent years some of the younger gyppos had grown more experimental in their tortures. They would run out onto the fairway and you could only watch helplessly from a few hundred yards away as they straddled your ball, pulled down their trousers (trousers, some of the more bigoted members conjectured, that had probably been freshly stolen from a neighbourhood washing line) and repeatedly and theatrically inserted your pure white Titelist or Spaxon into their anus before replacing it exactly where it was. In this instance there was much debate among players as to what the exact ruling should be. Some argued that the ball, complete with its brown film of gyppo bum residue, had to be played exactly as it lay, but could of course be changed after the hole had been completed. Others argued that the soiled ball should simply fall under the general Gyppo Rule and that a new ball should be dropped without penalty. Often players would try and argue the grey area to their advantage: a gyppo-arse-wiped ball in a bad lie would often be deemed unplayable while one with a perfect lie would mysteriously be found acceptable. Where there was usually complete agreement was in a refusal to pick your gyppo-arse-wiped ball out of the hole when your final putt dropped; on hot summer days you would often come to the tenth green to find the cup filled to the brim with abandoned golf balls, which would have to be fished out by Auld Basil, the long-suffering head greenkeeper.

  No, it is safe to say that Ravenscroft Golf Club was not a world-class facility. It is unlikely that the walnut-panelled walls of the locker room at, for instance, Augusta National, ever bore witness to an exchange like this:

  ‘Fucking gyppo stuck ma baw up his erse at the tenth!’

  ‘Black bastard! Ah hope ye played it.’

  ‘Did ah fuck. Dropped wan. Gyppo Rule.’

  ‘Ya fucking wide-o ye…’

  Not a world-class course, but it was Gary’s course.

  It had been since 1980, when, as a besotted five-year-old, he first scampered down its fairways after his dad, too small to carry his clubs yet, but eagerly holding the flagstick while they putted (his dad showed him how to hold it so that the flag didn’t flap in the breeze and put people off their putting stroke) and joining in the hunt for lost balls. His dad liked Gary to hold his clubs for him between shots, because his wee hands were sweaty and his dad liked the stickiness this imparted to the rubber grips. So Gary held the clubs and watched as his father smashed the ball distances that were incredible, inconceivable to a child, the ball seeming to vanish into the next county, his father’s five-foot-seven frame looking to him like a rippling powerhouse of muscle. He held the clubs and listened as the men talked about things he didn’t understand, feeling privileged to be there with the grown-ups, among the talk of football and work and wives and the smell of aftershave and cigarettes and foosty sweaters pulled from golf bags when the wind got up. Gary knew every blade of grass on this course (thanks to his errant driving he knew some of its more obscure byways better than most players) and–despite his shanking, despite never having won a medal, despite his maddening inability to progress at the game at all–he loved it here.

  He shouldered his bag and headed towards the locker room, to see who his playing partners for the Monthly Medal would be.

  Meanwhile, Billy Douglas moved quickly along the aisles of Oklahoma Dan’s Discount Golf World, past the racks of putters, golf bags, woods and irons. (A cardboard cut-out behind the irons section featured a grinning, thumbs-up Oklahoma Dan–six foot three of furious Republican–with a speech bubble saying ‘I LOVE IRONS’. Some of his advisers had considered telling the great man that this expression might not play in the UK due to confusion with something called cockney rhyming slang, but they decided against it. It would have meant discussing homosexuality, something the boss refused to believe existed.)

  Billy surveyed the stacks of gleaming cartons: Titelists, Top Flites, Callaway, Nike. 5.99 for a sleeve of three brand-new Spaxons? They were 7.99 at the Ravenscroft pro shop! Billy picked up three cartons and made his way to the tills, feeling in his inside jacket pocket for the voucher as he went.

  The number 3 ball was in the first tube he picked up.

  ‘Anything else for you today, sir?’ The beaming wee lassie in the baseball cap behind the till was asking him.

  ‘Naw, jist these thanks, hen. Jist the balls.’

  They would be enough.

  The first tee: a fresh start with all previous sins absolved. Every time a golfer steps onto the first tee they are stepping into opportunity; the opportunity to commence a new love affair, this one not like all the other ones, free from bickering and squabbling. This one holy and sacred and…well, not perfect, perfection would be stretching it a little in Gary’s case, but there was always the hope of improvement.

  The first tee at Ravenscroft held particular meaning for Gary as it was along this fairway, the fairway he now looked down as the match ahead began to move out of range, that they had scattered his father’s ashes. Thirteen summers ago now, Gary and Lee, both a little drunk, running down the hill, throwing handfuls of the man who had made them into the air, clouds of him catching on the breeze and blowing into their faces, into their mouths, the two of them laughing until they realised they were crying, their father disappearing in silver-grey skeins into the Ayrshire skies above them, the cancer reduced to dust and carbon along with the rest of him. Like many Protestants, Gary only thought of the dead watching over him when he was doing something that he imagined would have pleased them. So, on the rare occasions he drove the ball straight and long, or when a snaking putt clicked into the cup, he would sometimes look up, picturing his father’s face rippling through the clouds and thinking–Were you watching? Did you see that?

  Gary’s four ball stood on the tee. When the match ahead of them was past the second bunker on the left-hand side of the fairway–a little over two hundred yards away–they decided that Auld Tam, the shortest hitter, was safe to play. Like a lot of the old boys, Tam didn’t mess about: tee up and a quick wee practice swing to get the rhythm. With a punchy half-swing he sent the ball safely up the middle of the fairway, just short and right of the bunker.

  ‘Shot, Tam,’ his partners chorused.

  Tommy Wilson played next, but he teed too high and came under the ball, sending it sky-high and short, the ball plopping back down to earth like a sand wedge rather than a drive, finishing short of Tam’s ball.

  ‘Bastard,’ Tommy said simply.

  Rab Forest, a four-handicapper, the best player in the group, stepped up. He prowled the tee, searching for just the right spot, finally choosing to tee up on the left-hand side of the tee box, aiming out to the right, looking to hit a draw, moving the ball from right to left in the air, following the curve of the fairway and making best use of the slight tailwind they had. It was a difficult shot for the amateur player to hit on demand. Get it wrong and you could end up with a duck hook, the ball jerking violently off to the left, towards the telegraph poles and thick rough that separated the first and fifth fairways. Forest was good right enough, but this was a ballsy opening shot.

  He took a couple of easy practice swings, sighted down the shaft of his driver and addressed the ball. He shuffled down into his stance, wagglin
g the clubhead four, five, six times. Suddenly he stopped, looked up and stepped back.

  ‘Sorry, lads,’ Forest said. ‘I’d better wait a minute. Make sure they’re out of range.’

  Gary squinted down the fairway. The match ahead were passing the far right-hand bunker–nearly three hundred yards away–and Forest still thought he should wait? Aye, Gary thought, yer fucking maw. (A curious Ayrshire-ism–meaning literally ‘Yes, your mother’–its only living relative in the slang world of mother-abuse is the American expression ‘Yo moma’. Like that expression it is used sarcastically to cast doubt. For instance: ‘I had sex with five women last night.’ ‘Aye, yer maw.’)

  Forest waited. Auld Tam raised an eyebrow at Gary–both of them thinkng ‘fucking show-off prick’ as Forest ran through his pre-shot routine again. He stepped up to the ball, shuffled down into his stance, and creamed the fucking thing: a beautiful draw, catching the wind and a good bounce, the ball trundling up to just thirty or forty yards short of the green, and just a few yards behind the group in front. Over three hundred yards, easily. The audience behind them burst into soft, sincere applause and Forest gave a little nod as he reholstered his driver.

  ‘Beauty,’ Gary said, feeling faint.

  ‘Ah’ll take it,’ Forest said. Smug cunt.

  The crowd–nearly thirty strong now–fell silent as Gary settled the clubhead behind the ball. It was a new driver, a Titan Pro XIII, with a huge, sleek metal head of sparkling titanium the size of a cat’s head and it had cost nearly three hundred quid–three hundred quid he hadn’t quite got round to telling Pauline about yet. Gary took an exploratory waggle, settled his breathing and pulled the trigger.

  The dreadful clang of metal misconnecting with ball and he was looking up to see the shot rocketing off crazily towards Auld Basil’s tractor, which was safely parked about fifty yards to the right of the tee box. The ball whanged into the metal frame of the machine and–with a slapstick ‘KA-PING!’ noise–flew a hundred feet straight into the air before it dropped down, clanged once off the tin roof of Auld Basil’s maintenance hut and came to rest on the gravel path that led from the tee to the fairway. There was a two-second pause, almost scripted in its comic perfection, before Auld Basil’s puzzled face appeared at the door.

  Then everyone burst out laughing.

  Head down, Gary stumbled back towards his bag, his face humming with shame.

  ‘Ho, Irvine!’ someone shouted. ‘Ah’ll gie ye a hunner poun’ if ye can dae that again!’

  Nodding and smiling good-naturedly at the abuse, while dying inside, Gary shouldered his bag and set off on the horrifically short walk to his ball. ‘Don’t worry, son,’ Auld Tam said, clapping him on the arm, ‘it can only get better, eh?’

  Thank fuck Dad’s dead, Gary thought.

  12

  LEE SLUMPED BACK AGAINST THE TREE AND SLID DOWN onto the ground, his feet dangling into the hole he’d just finished digging. Fighting tears, he looked around the woods–green sunlight filtering through the treetops and the busy chatter of birds filling the air. Lee had loved the woods when he was a kid; finding skud mags, reading skud mags, finding frogs, torturing frogs. But now it was hard for him to imagine a more hateful sight. He looked around the clearing, at all the other holes he’d dug in the past few days, seven or eight of them, all about three feet wide and two to three feet deep. This was the third clearing he’d tried. How could he have been so stupid?

  It happened like this…

  Sammy mentioned to Lee that a couple of his mates–Alan somebody and wee something-or-other, a couple of Glasgow fannies Lee had met once or twice–were looking to move their speed-dealing operation up a gear or two. They wanted to buy a kilo of decent, uncut gear they could then turn into two kilos of undecent, very cut gear. Lee thought about it (2,000 grams at a tenner a bag = 20 grand) and told Sammy to tell them he could get them a key of pure rocket fuel for five grand.

  Lee called Alec Campbell and asked what price he could sell him a kilo of amphetamine sulphate for. Alec said two grand. Lee said ‘Come tae fuck’ and began negotiating. They settled on two grand.

  The only problem (other than the fact that the entire enterprise was a cluster-fuck of bams) was that Lee did not have two grand. Would Alec be willing to extend him a (very short) line of credit?

  He would, with the usual caveats of course: 4 per cent weekly interest and ‘Your life is at risk if you do not keep up with your repayments.’

  Fair enough, Lee thought. He’d only have the gear in the house a few days, a week at the most, so, even with the interest and Sammy’s finder’s fee, he’d still clear nearly two and a half grand profit. No bad for a week’s work.

  Lee collected the gear and stowed it in the bottom of his wardrobe. Sammy said the Glasgow boys were just getting the last of the cash together. Be a few days. ‘Tell those boys tae get their fucking arses in gear,’ Lee said, feeling very much the kingpin. Business taken care of Lee went back to his regular daily routine–that is to say he smoked cannabis and watched daytime television.

  He was sitting stupefied watching an obese single mother being physically restrained from assaulting a thirty-five-year-old grandmother who was sleeping with her teenage boyfriend when Lisa waved the front page of the Daily Standard at him–‘DEALER SCUM GETS TEN YEARS’. Lee read the story; a Glasgow boy had indeed been given ten years for possession of 0.5 of a kilo of amphetamine sulphate. ‘A class-B drug,’ the article pointed out. ‘This will send a strong message,’ a policeman was quoted as saying. ‘Drug dealers can expect zero tolerance in Scottish courts.’

  It certainly sent a strong message to Lee: ten years for a wee bit o’ billy? Ten fucking years? Cunt would probably only do five but still…

  Driven by hashish-fuelled paranoia, he’d leapt from the couch, grabbed the bag-of-sugar-sized package from the bottom of the wardrobe, a shovel from the shed, and drove to Annick woods, where, by torchlight, he buried the speed in a shallow grave. Lee paced out the route he had taken into the woods and drew a careful map, ‘X’ marking the spot.

  Then Lee lost the map.

  Still, no danger, he thought. He could find the place easy enough. In a clearing, just next to the roots of a big tree of some kind.

  Fucking trees, he thought, lighting a cigarette and looking around. Fucking woods were full of them. And the clearings all looked the same. Why hadn’t he thought to mark the tree with spray paint or something? (Because you were stoned tae fuck, a quiet voice told him.)

  Anyway, here he was. He owed Alec Campbell (and by extension Ranta Campbell, a thought that turned his blood to icy urine) two grand and counting and the Glasgow fuds wanted their speed pronto or they were going to go somewhere else. What was the worst-case scenario here? He didn’t find the speed in time, the deal was off, and he’d have to tell Alec that he’d pay him back when he could. No big deal.

  Aye–yer maw.

  Lee wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He thought about his mum’s poem–‘Don’t Quit’. It was stuck on her fridge along with a load of other magnets emblazoned with amusing or motivational nonsense: ‘If I’d known grandchildren were so much fun I’d have had them first!’ ‘TODAY IS YOUR DAY!’ ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips…’ The penultimate couplet of ‘Don’t Quit’ always troubled Lee.

  Success is failure turned inside out,

  The silver tint in the clouds of doubt.

  ‘Clouds,’ the doctor had said, looking at the X-rays of his dad’s lungs. Dark shadows on the milk-grey celluloid plates. The Regal. Forty a day. Smoked–pounded–right into the filter. Into the wood. Game over.

  Lee picked up the spade and got to his feet.

  Auld Tam had been wrong. It hadn’t got better. It got worse. Much worse. Gary snap-hooked drives, he thinned wedges, he foozled putts and he shanked any iron that came his way until, a little over four hours later, he watched in horror as his four-foot putt for triple-bogey seven lipped out of the eighteenth hole. The four
men shook hands on the green and then walked to the car park to tot up the scorecards–Forest and Gary marking one another’s, Auld Tam and Tommy doing the same.

  With a trembling hand Gary moved the pencil down the little column of boxes on the card; box after box containing neat 4s, the occasional incredible 3, a smattering of enviable (to Gary) 5s and one rogue 6, at the fourteenth, where Forest had pushed his drive out of bounds, incurring two penalty strokes. Numbly Gary wrote the total at the bottom.

  Rab Forest had shot 75, less his four handicap, for a net score of 71–one under par and 15 shots better than Gary’s best ever performance on a golf course.

  Gary passed the card to Forest for him to check and sign. Forest took it and stuffed it in his back pocket. He was still frowning over Gary’s scorecard. It looked like he was doing long division. Come tae fuck, Gary thought. It can’t be that…

  ‘Ye might want tae check that,’ Forest said, finally passing him the card. ‘I’m not sure if it was 11 or 12 you had back at the eighth…’

  Gary looked at the scorecard, at the tumbling columns of 7s and 8s, the sickening 10, the terrible twin down strokes of the 11, the 15 he’d taken at the eleventh hole; where he’d put two drives out of bounds, and then, for good measure, flown his approach shot over the green and into some thick rough. A 7 at the par-three fifteenth? Could that be right? Surely he, no, it was right. His eyes kept trying to scan down to the bottom of the card, towards the final score, like someone reading a horror novel, knowing that some appalling atrocity is about to take place down the page, seeing out the corner of the eye some awful sentence standing alone between two fat paragraphs, something like: