PART THREE
WINTER,
1995
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IN THE THREE months since my trip to Scotland, in my home just north of San Francisco, I had gone back to my work on my book about experience at the edge of the strangeness curve. But it hadn’t been easy returning to familiar routines challenged by memories of Ryzhkov’s tower and Nadia’s radiant presence. I had been able to make the transition only by spending time every day in a vigil, however brief, that resembled the one I’d made at MacDuff’s abandoned golf course. Though I wasn’t called to Nadia’s way, or have her contemplative gifts, there was new excitement in my research, a sense I’d come a few steps closer to the life represented by Shivas Irons. But my life was still subject to distraction, and required vows to avoid activities that would lead me away from the immediate callings of work and transformative practice. That is why at first I rejected an overture to play golf with one of the world’s great players.
The proposal had come from Steve Cohen, founder of the Shivas Irons Society, a nonprofit group organized to “celebrate golf’s beauty and virtues.” For reasons political and arcane, I cannot name the man with whom I was to play, and will simply call him “John Stuart.” He has won important tournaments, influenced many golfers, and sometimes criticized the “inner game” as a distraction from golf’s simple pleasures. According to Cohen, if I played with him during a practice round before the upcoming ’95 ATT National Pro-Am, “his appreciation of the Society’s causes and sport psychology would be advanced.” My heart sank when I heard the proposal. This was the kind of activity I’d vowed to avoid. Stuart would beat me by twenty or thirty strokes, and my inconsistent play would probably cause any onlookers who’d read my book to wonder why I hadn’t learned more from Shivas Irons. Cohen’s reassurances didn’t help. I remembered the last time he’d set me up to advance the Society’s causes. That had happened two years before at a reception for golf writers where I was supposed to explain an event called “The Shivas Irons Games of the Links” to be held at the Links of Spanish Bay and Pebble Beach the following summer.
The reception was at The Gallery, a restaurant next to the Pebble Beach Lodge. But instead of the small informal affair I’d been led to expect, it included most of the press gathered for the ’93 National Pro-Am, several business and sport celebrities, and Bob Murphy, who would act as master of ceremonies. For several decades, Murphy had been a legendary presence at sports banquets and roasts in Northern California, and was famous for his invincible wit. No one had told me he would preside at this gathering. When I saw him, I sensed trouble.
“There’s Murphy!” he announced before the meeting started. “Do you know where he got the idea for his institute? In the Fiji House, when he kissed the pig’s ass!” Like me, he’d gone to Stanford, and was referring to my fraternity’s initiation. Before the evening was over, he was sure to make more connections like this.
Suddenly I thought of an Irish remark which I’d never fully appreciated. “Never let two Murphys on a podium,” someone in Ireland had told me. “One or both’ll regret it.”
Then Tommy Smothers came to greet me, bringing Bill Murray with him. I’d met Smothers and liked him enormously, but it was surprising—and a little daunting—to see him. And meeting Murray was a bigger surprise. He’d praised Golf in the Kingdom on television, but why had he come to this event? When I asked, he said it was because Smothers had insisted. Both well-known comedians were playing in the tournament. They were here to offer support.
The meeting was slow to start, and I had perhaps three or four beers, though the number would be debated later. The reporters were also drinking freely, most of them in high spirits and hard to corral for what was now taking shape as a press conference.
Floodlights made it hard to see anyone from the podium, but Murphy got people’s attention by remarking about the limited vocabulary of athletes from Southern California. The Stanford man who’d opened the meeting had used the word “myriad,” so Murphy wanted to make sure that the USC graduates who were present realized that “myriad” was not a proper name. Then he turned to Murray, a favorite of fans and reporters at Pebble Beach, and urged him to comment on the Pro-Am. A spirited repartee followed, all of it causing applause and great laughter. It was, it seemed to me, an act impossible to complement with talk about the philosophy of Shivas Irons. Smothers gave me a look of encouragement, but it conveyed a sense he thought I might not be up to the challenge.
Then Murphy announced for the second time that I’d been inspired to my life’s work by kissing the pig’s ass at the Phi Gamma Delta house, and asked me with apparent sincerity about “the game’s mystery.” There was no levity in this. He was completely straightforward, even sympathetic. It was a question I hadn’t expected.
I looked into the glaring lights, behind which the press and celebrities stood, while caustic remarks rose from the shadows. But no response came to mind. “What about golf’s mysticism?” Murphy insisted. Again I couldn’t find an answer.
Then Smothers came striding from the lights. “You don’t know how to do this,” he said to Murphy, as if he were my comrade in arms. “Let me interview him.”
But Murphy protested, and they struggled for control of the podium, causing explosions in the amplification system. After a brief but vehement argument, Murphy relented.
Smothers turned to face me. With genuine sympathy and affection, he asked about the Shivas Irons Games of the Links. What could I tell the press about them? But still I couldn’t find an answer. Inexplicably, my attention had passed beyond the floodlights to settle on the figure of Donald Trump. He stood by the bar, taller than everyone around him, waiting with what seemed high expectation. What could I tell him about Shivas Irons? “It’s a good idea.” I said at last. “It’s a good idea.”
Smothers waited. There were laughs. “What else?” he ventured.
“It’s a good idea,” I said to more laughter. But I wasn’t repeating the words for effect. It was the only sentence I could think of.
“He’s drunk,” I heard Murphy saying somewhere in the shadows.
“No, he’s shy,” said Smothers, guarding my reputation.
“Aw, he’s drunk,” said Murphy.
“No, he’s shy!” said Smothers.
“It’s a good idea,” I said to more laughter and Smothers’s dismay. Finally someone took the microphone, and explained the Games of the Links. The incident was reported in several papers. Naturally I remembered it when Cohen proposed I play golf with John Stuart. The memory of it was vivid still, and reinforced my vow to avoid distractions. But this refusal didn’t last. When Cohen called again I agreed, either from weakness or a secret inspiration, to play a round at Pebble Beach to advance the Society’s causes.
Up close, John Stuart projected a presence I hadn’t sensed while watching him on television, a combination of fire and composure, of aggressiveness and unflappability that would give him an advantage over opponents before he hit a shot. Nothing hurried him. Even his quickest steps seemed measured. His disregard for the starter’s objection to our playing as a twosome gave the impression that he owned the course. “Go ahead,” he said in a resonant voice, nodding toward the tee blocks.
My anxiety, which had grown all morning, increased as I teed a ball. Stuart had apologized that he hadn’t read my book, but his courtesy couldn’t mask his skepticism about our round together. It was unclear why his publicity person had arranged it, he said. Though it was only eight o’clock, hundreds of people were gathering to watch.
“Stand back!” a marshal shouted. “Everyone behind the ropes!” Waiting for the fairway to clear, I silently cursed Steve Cohen. It seemed there were two insurmountable bridges: one between Stuart and me, the other between my pride and imminent humiliation. It didn’t help that my drive nearly hit an onlooker who stood in rough to the right of the fairway. As I picked up my tee, I spotted Cohen. He is nearly always a jovial presence, with a short dark beard, soulful
eyes, and a stomach that waxes and wanes with the seasons. He wore a red tam-o’-shanter now, plaid knickers, and a look with at least three components. There was comradely encouragement in his face, true sympathy for my plight, and a hint of the pleasure he took in arranging these perverse challenges.
Stuart said nothing as he passed me. The look I’d seen so often on television, which enlisted his pale blue eyes in what seemed a semi-trance, was a palpable, disconcerting force. When he swung, his ball left the tee with a crack and sailed high over trees at the bend of the fairway. There were gasps. Then silence. Then shouts. “It’s on!” someone yelled. “He almost holed it!” The drive had carried nearly three hundred yards, dramatically shortening the four-par hole by cutting across its dogleg. Seemingly unimpressed, Stuart walked to the back of the tee. A marshal who stood there appeared to be caught between his need to keep players moving and deference to the famous player. “What are you doing?” he summoned the nerve to ask.
“The tee blocks’ll be here on Sunday,” said Stuart. “I’ll have to hit an iron.”
The marshal, a professorial looking man about sixty, winced but nodded assent, and Stuart hit a one-iron down the fairway as he would in the tournament. Striding past me he winked, and I jogged ahead of my caddie to join him. But he didn’t speak. The gallery was streaming along the ropes, its members straining to see him. Deciding against conversation, I found my ball and barely hacked it from the rough.
Stuart played his ball as it lay with a pitching wedge. Then he hit a second ball. “They’re holding!” he shouted in my direction as if I were a fellow professional. The second ball sat two or three feet from the pin.
My hands shook as I addressed my mud-covered ball, and I hit it into a bunker. But no one in the gallery groaned. Hopefully, most of them thought I was one of Stuart’s relatives or business partners.
Walking to the green, I silently cursed myself. How had I gotten myself into this predicament? “Pick up my ball,” I told my caddie, a shambling red-faced man about forty with a constant look of solicitude. “I don’t want to slow things down.”
“Play it,” said Stuart. “It’s all right with me.”
But it was more than all right with him. In the way he said it, there was a demand I play. Picking up my ball violated his code of honor.
Reluctantly, I blasted out, to about thirty feet from the cup, and took three putts for a triple bogey. Meanwhile he studied the green with care, assessing putts he might have in the tournament. He walked briskly while doing this, with quiet ferocity in his eyes, yet didn’t seem to hurry. After picking up the balls he’d played from the fairway, he took two putts for a birdie with the ball he’d hit from the tee.
The second hole at Pebble Beach is a straight five par that runs over gently rolling ground to a gully about a hundred yards from the green. Surveying it now from the back tees, I wondered if my drive could carry the rough between us and the fairway. The sky was overcast, and the gallery was growing as word of Stuart’s whereabouts spread. There were at least a thousand people behind the ropes to our left.
As we waited for the foursome ahead to play, Stuart turned to see me. “I’ve heard about your book,” he said with a quizzical look. “But I don’t know what it’s all about. Is it a novel, or sports psychology? People say different things about it.”
Taken aback by the edge in his voice, I tried to explain Golf in the Kingdom. “It’s a story,” I said. “Part fiction, but based on things that actually happened. I had to reconstruct dialogue and change some names.”
He pulled up the sleeves of his yellow sweater to reveal powerful forearms covered with curly blond hair. “Is it like Zen?” he asked.
My mind made an unexpected leap. Several years before, a woman had told me she’d stood near him once in Hawaii, both of them in bathing suits, feeling naked whenever he looked her way. He wasn’t making a pass, she’d said, but those eyes! They couldn’t help undressing whatever they looked at. “Not Zen exactly,” I said with hesitation. “But something like it.”
To my surprise, a look of sympathy appeared on his face. My discomfort must have been plain to see. “Tee it up,” he said. “You play first—all eighteen holes.”
And thus began a stretch of golf that gives rise to memories which, depending on my mental condition, are either a source of hilarity or excruciating embarrassment. Though I recall what happened in different ways depending on my mood, I invariably remember:
Myself lying four in a bunker by the second green, in view of a crowd that groans when I shank my ball, and again when I shank it farther right without reaching the putting surface. Someone shouts encouragement, but I hear a gruff voice just behind me say, “Jesus! I hope he’s not in the tournament!”
And my drive from the third tee landing in the gully that traverses the fairway, to the accompaniment of more groans and shouts of encouragement. Then I spot Stuart’s publicity person arguing vehemently with Cohen, who pumps his fist in my direction as if to say, Go get ’em!
And Stuart rejecting my proposal to pick up. But it takes two shots to reach the fairway, another to reach the green, and three putts to make seven on this relatively easy four-par.
And my second shot on the fourth hole sailing to an unplayable lie in bushes beyond the green, and the shot after that landing in a bunker. My caddie’s constant look of concern has turned to embarrassment. He mirrors my condition now. Indeed, he makes it worse. Then I notice for the first time that he has a Scottish inflection. “Would ye like a nip?” he asks, taking a flask from a pocket. “It can’t hurt yer shots, but might help the pain.” A thousand people are watching, though, so I reject the offer.
And finally my long iron shot on the narrow three-par fifth hole—a thing of beauty, my first well-hit shot of the day—bouncing high off a gallery member behind the green. My caddie whispers reassurances as we watch the man go down and says he’ll give the guy some whiskey.
These events were accompanied by resentment at Cohen, anger at myself, fear and embarrassment whenever I looked at the gallery, and decisions to quit on every hole. This first hour of our round was the most painful I’ve spent on a golf course.
“Ye want a nip now?” asked my caddie, proffering his flask as we reached the sixth tee. “It helped the gentleman ye whacked with yer ball.”
Turning down the proffered drink, I found a place to stand alone. The long cliffside fairway dropped steeply below us, then rose some three hundred yards away to a handsome promontory. To our right, beyond tall trees at the cliff edge, Stillwater Cove was bathed in light. The sky was clearing, and the fairway ahead was turning to brighter shades of green.
Then, without warning, my dream of the night before returned. “There are two ways to practice,” a voice had said. “As your ego or your soul.” In my sleep I’d argued against the thought, as I do in waking life. How do we ever know for certain what is ego and what is soul? The distinction is a favorite tool of moral bullies. But now the words made perfect sense. Suddenly these facts were evident:
Few members of the gallery, which stretched along the fairway for five hundred yards, knew who I was or cared. If anything, my duffer’s display gave them some laughs and suggested that they could be fools in public and live to talk about it.
Here was the chance of a lifetime to watch and learn from one of the sport’s great champions. Seeing him up close, it was increasingly evident that though he decried talk of the inner game, he was in many ways its secret exemplar.
By a simple shift of attitude, I could let go of embarrassment, resentment, anger, and fear, and replace them with uncomplaining surrender to whatever the next three hours brought. Call this a shift from ego to soul, or simply the exercise of good sense, it would at the very least brighten my mood, and help relieve my caddie’s discomfort.
Inspiration moves at its own speed, often faster than ordinary thought. No more than a minute had passed since I’d gone to the front of the tee. “You want me to hit?” I said to Stuart. “They’re out
of range for me.”
He looked across the five-par hole, then with a small, tight smile said, “I don’t know. By the law of averages, you might nail one. Beaning a gallery member is one thing, but you don’t want to hit a player.”
A moment before, I might’ve been offended, but now I detected a hint of comradeship in his hard inflection. As I looked at the clearing sky again, my mind took another leap. There was a radiance in the air that reminded me of the light around MacDuff’s old house, and I remembered my 420-yard drive. The swing that produced it was present now, waiting to be found through a state of mind like the one I’d learned from Shivas Irons. This intuition was confirmed as I stood back from my fears, and as I swung, and as we watched the ball sail far and roll on down the fairway.
“It’s hard out there,” said Stuart. “What a bounce!” His eyes narrowed as he approached the tee blocks as if he was focusing to meet a challenge.
Astonished, I looked at my ball again. It was resting near the fairway’s rise more than three hundred yards away. Had it actually gone that far? A few minutes later, I had to check by inspecting its identification number. Stuart’s ball lay three yards behind me.
Both of us now had blind shots to the green more than two hundred yards away. Stuart took a long iron with which he would try to reach the pin. But after considering the same approach, I surrendered to my new resolution. To my list of relinquished emotions, I needed to add enthusiasm. I couldn’t hit irons like Stuart, but maybe I could reach the green with a three-wood.
His shot barely cleared the rise, and there were cheers from the distant gallery. From the fairway above, his caddie waved. “It’s twenty feet from the pin!” he yelled.
“That’s enough,” Stuart shouted back. “We’ll play it this way Sunday.”
The steep rise looked like a fortress wall, and Stuart had barely cleared it. Could I do it with a three-wood? Gathering myself, I waited for my mind to clear as it had before my drive, and suddenly the rise seemed a friendly shoulder suggesting a more subtle approach. Instead of trying to reach the green, I would let its contours help me shape a high draw with my five-iron. A moment later, I took two putts for a par and watched Stuart sink his putt for an eagle.
The Kingdom of Shivas Irons Page 26