Fairway Phenom

by Matt Christopher

  “Okay, deal,” Luis said. “But I’m keeping score.”

  “No way.”

  “You don’t like it, we can both keep score.”

  “Cool.” Malik breathed a sigh of relief. This time, there would be no cheating — they’d each be on guard against the other — and it would be a real match between them. Malik had had enough of Luis’s bullying. He, Malik, was the more experienced golfer, and he was going to beat Luis fair and square — no matter what.

  He hit a tremendous drive, right down the center of the fairway, then stepped off the tee without a word.

  Luis took a deep breath, swung, and hit his best shot of the day. It landed right by Malik’s ball, then bounced another twenty yards. Luis turned to Malik with a smirk of pride on his face. He, too, said nothing. The match was on.

  Responding to the challenge, both boys played their best golf of the day. Malik had to admit that Luis was a fast learner. Oh, sure, his swing was too long and too fast, but he was a good natural athlete, and that made up for a lot. With some lessons, Malik thought, he really could be great.

  Man, what he himself wouldn’t have given for half a dozen lessons from Thurman — or Al Sheinman at the driving range. Maybe Al would let him help out around the range in exchange for some lessons.…

  They were tied after the fifteenth hole, when the first clap of thunder sounded.

  “Now what do we do?” Malik said. They were as far from the clubhouse as they could be. It would take them a good ten minutes to walk back — maybe five if they ran full speed.

  “We play faster,” Luis said. “The thunder’s still far away. Just hit.”

  Malik had his doubts. He had seen a news story on TV once about a golfer hit by lightning. The guy was in a coma for a week before he pulled through. The story said golfers were “at risk,” because of the metal in their clubs, and that they weren’t supposed to hide under a tree, but stop immediately and head for the clubhouse.

  “I think we’d better quit,” Malik said, hearing another distant rumble of thunder.

  “You quit, I win,” Luis said.

  Malik bit his lip. Luis would tell everyone that he’d beaten Malik his first time out on the course. He’d say Malik was a quitter and a chicken.

  Malik stepped up to the tee and hit his drive. It duck-hooked off to the left and down a rocky slope. Luis tried to hide his smile of satisfaction as he took the driver out of Malik’s hands.

  Luis’s drive was right down the middle of the fairway. Malik swallowed hard. If Luis beat him on this hole, the sixteenth, he’d have only two holes to make a comeback. And if the thunder got any closer, he might not even get the chance!

  His only hope was to tie Luis on this hole. That way, if the storm came, it would be Luis who chickened out and said, “Let’s quit now.” The match would end in a tie. That would be okay with Malik. He didn’t need to win — just to not get beaten.

  He walked down the fairway, then cut to the left to find his ball. Luis could see Malik from the center of the fairway, but he couldn’t see Malik’s ball, which was halfway down the slope, lodged behind a rock.

  There was no way Malik could hit it. If he dropped the ball back onto the fairway, he’d have to take a penalty stroke, and Luis would win the hole!

  Thunder rumbled, closer now. It was do or die. Malik heard the little voice of temptation in his head. Go ahead, drop another ball, it said. Drop it onto the grass where you have a clear shot to the green, but where Luis can’t see you do it.

  Malik felt in his pocket for his spare ball. There it was. A sudden twinge of guilt hit him, and he almost stopped himself. But when he heard Luis yell, “Come on!” he took out the ball and dropped it on an open patch of grass. Then he pulled out his nine iron and hit a perfect shot!

  The ball landed on the green, not far from the hole. “Hey!” Luis shouted in obvious dismay. “Good shot, yo!”

  “Thanks,” Malik said, his voice humble. He sure hoped Luis wouldn’t notice the guilt that had to be written all over his face.

  Luis’s second shot fell short of the green, and he whacked the ground with his club again. Malik didn’t stop him. Luis had a right to be mad — if he knew what had really just happened, he’d be furious.

  Malik dropped his second putt for a par — four. Luis got a five. The thunder drew closer and closer. “Come on, man, let’s quit now!” Malik urged.

  “You quit, I win,” Luis repeated, stalking off the green and over to the seventeenth tee.

  Malik followed, watching the darkening sky and wondering if they were both going to get fried.

  They hit their shots quickly. They were the only golfers in sight now. Glancing at his watch, Malik saw that it was nearly eight o’clock. Maybe the darkness was from night falling, he thought hopefully. Maybe the storm would miss them.…

  They could barely see their tee shots land, and they trotted toward their balls, in a hurry to finish. Malik was off to the left, Luis to the right.

  Malik watched as Luis took another huge “practice shot.” “That’s two!” he shouted.

  “No way, man — I was practicing!” came the predictable response. Luis hit again, and this time his ball landed on the green.

  “That’s three!” Malik yelled, ignoring Luis’s cries of protest. Malik hit his shot, and it landed on the edge of the green, close enough to putt. “That’s two!” he said, making sure Luis got his meaning.

  Each boy holed out in two putts. “I still lead by one,” Malik said. “With one hole to go.”

  “Yeah?” Luis responded, whipping out his own card. “Well, according to my scorecard, I lead you by one.”

  “How do you figure that?” Malik exploded.

  “You cheated on the last hole, that’s how. You think I didn’t notice you switched balls? I checked it when you took it out of the hole, yo. You think I’m some fool or what?”

  The fact that Luis had caught him made Malik even more furious. “Yeah? Well, you took an extra swing on your approach shot this hole — and don’t say you didn’t!”

  Luis was about to answer, but there was a huge thunderclap, and both boys jumped with fear. “Yo, let’s finish out!” Luis ordered. He hit a quick drive, not a bad one considering, and gave way to Malik.

  They played the eighteenth so fast that neither of them hit very well. Malik had trouble counting his own shots, let alone Luis’s. They putted out in a hurry as the rain started to fall, then ran to the shelter of the clubhouse, pelted by the sudden downpour. Lightning flashed out of the darkness, lighting up the course behind them.

  “Are you kids crazy?!” a maintenance worker shouted at them as they came into the building. “Don’t you know you could get killed like that? Next time you hear thunder, you come in right away — you understand?”

  Both boys nodded dumbly, then sat down on a bench to catch their breath and count up their scores.

  Malik’s card was soaked, and some of the numbers had run. He added up his own score, giving himself a seven on the eighteenth. He had a fifty-one for the second nine. Not bad. If he hadn’t been rushing through the eighteenth, he could have broken fifty. Now he wished he knew what his true score on the first nine had been. Maybe he would even have broken one hundred for real. Now, he’d never know for sure.

  “What’d you get on eighteen?” he asked Luis, dreading the answer.

  “I got a six, man,” Luis mumbled.

  Malik could tell he was lying, even if he didn’t know for sure that Luis had taken at least seven shots.

  “Come on, yo!”

  “No, for real,” Luis insisted. “What did you get?”

  Malik frowned. “Six,” he lied, staring Luis right in the face.

  “You lie like a rug!” Luis said, giving him a little shove to the shoulder. “Don’t cheat, yo! I beat you fair and square!”

  “What? No way!” Malik shouted, shoving back.

  Before he knew it, the two of them were throwing punches at each other. “Hey, hey, cut it out!” the maintena
nce man yelled. “None of that in here, or you won’t be allowed in anymore!”

  Malik and Luis allowed him to pry them apart. “Go on home, now,” the man ordered them. “You wanna play golf, you gotta grow up a little.”

  The rain had almost stopped by the time they stepped out onto the cobblestone driveway in front of the clubhouse. “I beat you, man,” Luis muttered.

  “You are such a liar!” Malik shot back. “Give me my clubs back, yo.”

  “Here,” Luis said, removing them from his dad’s fishing-rod bag and dropping them on the hard ground. “Take your ratty clubs back. Who wants them, anyway? This game is stupid — just like you!”

  “Hey, you dweeb, don’t drop my clubs like that!”

  “See you in school tomorrow, loser,” Luis said, taking off by himself as Malik stooped to pick up his clubs.

  “Yeah? Not if I see you first!” he called after his friend — make that former friend. Man! Luis is such a baby, Malik thought. Can’t stand to lose, even to his friend who had more experience than him. Luis had ruined a perfectly good day of golf for him, and didn’t even care.

  Now Malik was holding the 3 wood in his hand — the club with the partially broken neck. Seized by a sudden rage, Malik took the club and walked over to a nearby sycamore tree. With a mighty swing, he wrapped the club around the tree, then threw it as far as he could.

  8

  The next day, Friday, Malik woke up in a foul mood. His arm hurt above his elbow, probably from hitting the tree so hard with that club. He wished he hadn’t done that. What was he thinking? That a new club would just appear in his bag the next day?

  But the worst part was the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He and Luis were enemies now. All day today in school, Luis would be telling everyone that Malik played golf—and even worse, that he cheated!

  In school, Malik found himself glancing around to see if kids were giving him funny looks. He thought he spotted a few — friends of both him and Luis who were giving him plenty of space. He spaced out through most of science class, busy the whole time coming up with a strategy for dealing with Luis and his lies.

  Denying it wouldn’t do any good, he knew. So he decided to counterattack.

  “Hey, Hector,” he said, leaning over to the kid sitting next to him. “Guess what?”

  That was how it began, and he kept it up all day, telling everyone he knew what a cheater Luis was. At lunch in the cafeteria, Luis was sitting with a bunch of kids, making them laugh — with a story about Malik, no doubt.

  Luis spotted him, then turned away again. He said something to the other kids, and everyone laughed even louder, shooting glances at Malik.

  By the end of the school day, Malik had had about all he could stand. Spotting Luis coming out of the building, he went over to him. “Yo!” he called, ready to hash things out.

  But Luis was in no mood to talk. “You liar!” he yelled. Dropping his book bag to the ground, he launched himself at Malik, fists flying.

  Malik put his arms up in self-defense, then started swinging back. “Yo, cut it out, man! You’re the one who’s lying about me!”

  “Yeah, right,” Luis said, still whaling away. “You tellin’ everybody I played golf with you and cheated! What’s that about?”

  “You did! And anyway, you were telling everyone I was the cheater!”

  “That’s a lie!” Luis roared, launching another round of punches.

  “Hey, hey, hey! Cut that out right now, you two!”

  Mr. Ridley’s voice rose above the din of kids yelling “Fight! Fight!” and cheering on the combatants. The teacher stepped between the two boys, ending the free show. He held Malik by the back of his shirt with one hand and Luis’s shirt with the other. “What’s going on here? I thought you two were pals.”

  “He’s been talkin’ trash about me,” Luis claimed. “Lyin’ and stuff. Tellin’ people I’m a cheat.”

  “He is a cheat,” Malik said. “I beat him at golf yesterday, and he lied about his score.”

  “Golf?” Mr. Ridley said. “Golf is not a contact sport, guys. And if you cheat on your score, you’re only cheating yourself.”

  “I beat him fair and square,” Luis said, still hot with anger.

  “Did not!” Malik shot back.

  “Look,” Mr. Ridley said patiently. “I want to talk to both of you in my office, right now — one at a time.”

  He walked them back inside the building. Malik could hear the kids behind them, talking about them, giggling. He and Luis were now the laughingstocks of the whole school — first of all, for playing golf, second of all, for caring enough about it to fight over it!

  “Well, I’m through,” Malik told Mr. Ridley while Luis sat and steamed in a chair outside the office. “No more golf for me.” It was going to take long enough to live down as it was. The last thing he needed was to keep going out on the course with his ratty set of clubs and no friends to play with — only fat guys with cigars who yelled at him, and fantastic players like Thurman who played better than Malik ever would in his dreams. What was the use of torturing himself?

  Mr. Ridley sighed and sat back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “Malik,” he said, “I know you’re feeling frustrated and disappointed right now — but don’t quit playing golf. You liked it right away, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah… I guess.”

  “In fact, you loved it, until you and Luis had a fight about it — until it came between you and your best friend.”

  Malik sat stone silent, listening.

  “You know,” Mr. Ridley said, “I’ve been frustrated by golf plenty of times. Everybody gets that way — it’s such a difficult game. But mastering golf is all about mastering your own frustration. You can’t hit a good shot if you’re angry. Have you noticed?”

  Malik had noticed, all right. But he couldn’t see himself ever really mastering his frustration.

  “Tell me something, Malik,” Mr. Ridley said gently. “Why did you invite Luis to play with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Malik said. “I was stupid, I guess.”

  “No, really — why did you?”

  “Because… because I liked golf, and I wanted my friend to like it, too.”

  “Exactly. But what both you and Luis have to understand is, with golf, you’re really playing against yourself and against the course. It’s true, you can compete against each other, but you’re way too new at the game to be doing that — neither of you even has a handicap.”

  “A handicap?” What was Mr. Ridley talking about? Did you have to limp or be blind to play golf?

  “A handicap is an amount you subtract from your score when you’re playing against someone, to make the game fairer.”

  “I don’t get it,” Malik said.

  “Well, say your average score is one hundred, and par for the course is seventy. You’d subtract seventy from one hundred to get your handicap — thirty. And when you play, you’d subtract thirty from your score to get your score with handicap. So if you shot one ten —”

  “I’d have an eighty!” Malik said, liking the idea.

  “Right. And if Luis had a one twenty, but his handicap was forty-five —”

  “He’d have a seventy-five. Wait a minute — that means he’d beat me, even though I played better.”

  “Right. That’s how you do it if you want to compete with each other. And naturally, you can’t get a handicap unless you play enough times to create an average score.”

  “I get it,” Malik said. “But Luis isn’t ever going to play again, Mr. Ridley. Not with me, anyway.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Ridley said. “Go outside, and let me talk to him.”

  Malik headed home, not waiting for Luis to come out of Mr. Ridley’s office. Luis could call him if he wanted to apologize, because Malik sure wasn’t going to be the one who blinked first.

  But Mr. Ridley had convinced him not to give up on golf. Maybe sometime, he could get one of his other friends to play. Curtis or
Hector, maybe.…

  Meantime, he would keep playing and improve his game. He would be way better than any friend who decided to try playing. That way, there’d be no competition between them. They’d listen to Malik’s advice on how to grip the club and swing it. They would understand that, until they got good at the game, he, Malik, was the man.

  Too bad about Luis. He and Malik had been best friends since third grade. But oh, well — if Luis was too immature to admit he was wrong, that was too bad. Malik would have to leave him behind, until Luis did some growing up.

  On Saturday morning, Malik went to the driving range to see if Al Sheinman would give him a lesson in exchange for some work. He was walking down Fourth Avenue, headed toward the bus stop, when he saw something that made him stop short. At first, he thought it was a collection of junk on somebody’s front stoop. As he got closer, he realized it wasn’t just junk. This was a “garage sale” — and there, on the steps, leaning against the handrail, was a full set of golf clubs!

  Not old, crummy ones like the set he’d gotten for free from old Mr. Quigley’s daughter. These were really nice clubs. The woods had big metal heads, the kind that all the other golfers at Dyker had. The grips were in good condition. None of the necks were shattered, and the clubs were clean and shiny.

  “How much for these?” Malik asked the man who was holding the sale.

  “Seventy dollars.”

  Malik felt his heart sink right into the ground. Seventy dollars was way more than he could afford. “Oh. Never mind.”

  He was about to go when the man said, “Okay, sixty.”

  “I’ve only got thirty,” Malik explained. “Could you hold them for me till next week? I could have sixty by then.”

  “Sorry,” the man said. “I can’t hang onto any of this junk anymore. Today’s the day. Sale’s over at five o’clock. Look, you got fifty bucks? I could let you have ’em for fifty. By five o’clock, they’re gonna be gone at that price, I can tell you for sure.”

  Malik wanted the set of clubs so badly he could taste it. If only he had fifty dollars! But where could he get his hands on that kind of money?