Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  Grady Don pointed to a Beefeater martini on the rocks with six olives in it. The drink had been placed in front of an empty chair.

  “There’s your trophy, Slammer,” he said. “Sit down and tell me how you blew the Open.”

  Taking a seat I said, “First of all, Snead made an eight, I made a nine. Second, Snead made his eight on the last hole at Spring Mill. I made my nine with another nine holes to play. Third, Snead didn’t have any help from a chinless zebra.”

  I took too big a swig of the martini and chased it with a whole green olive before my chest exploded.

  Grady Don said, “Walk me through your nine. CBS don’t have it on tape. They were too busy showing the protestors jumping over flower beds and running through hedges.”

  First of all, I said, the zebra looked like what you’d expect a sap named Jarvis to look like, and he spoke in one of those upper-crust accents that made you want to tear the leather patches off his elbows. Then I hit the highlights of my artistic 9.

  “Man, you really did get fucked,” Grady Don said.

  “No shit.”

  “What’s the zebra’s name again?”

  “Jarvis Phillip W. Burchcroft.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I’m lucky? Are you crazy?”

  “It could have been worse.”

  “How could it have been worse?”

  “He could have liked you.”

  I hated myself for laughing.

  The TV screen was showing the victory ceremony. A cluster of green jackets was watching Ernie Els, the winner, having the green jacket slipped on him by Davis Love the Roman, last year’s winner. Tradition.

  I looked at Grady Don. “Where’d Ernie win it?”

  He said, “Tiger and Cheetah both hit it in the water on fifteen. Ernie didn’t.”

  I wondered what had been said about the protest.

  Grady Don said the Masters chairman had gone on TV and said the club had no intention of taking legal action against Anne Marie SprinKle. The club hoped she and her followers had learned the lesson that their protest was as futile as it was wrong. But the club was going to make every effort to determine whether any of its members had sold credentials to the protestors. If so, they would be Kicked out of the club and banned for life.

  I nodded at the locker room. “Gwen’s Kid still around?”

  Grady Don said, “He made a hasty departure. That punk. You Know how a spaniel dog whines sometimes? For food? Almost sounds like he’s singing? That’s what Scotty sounded like.”

  “In here?”

  “Out on the course—when he played choo-choo train on the greens. Man, he was a real child star. The kind that makes you walk out of the picture show before he tries to make a fool out of the grownup again. Child-star punk stormed around the locker room a while ago and perfected his act. Throwing things around. Blaming furniture for his three-putt greens. Cussing Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Bobby Jones, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, country ham, red-eye gravy . . . and he leaves without tipping the locker-room attendants. He’s got some things to learn.”

  “I’m not sure you can teach anything to a nineteen-year-old who’s already worth fifteen million,” I said. “You didn’t try, did you?”

  “Me? Naw. I just laughed at him. Well, I did tell him he was an oblong turd . . . and I said if he couldn’t act any cuter than he did today, I wasn’t going to any more of his fucking movies.”

  There was one last room-service dinner at the Magnolia Inn with Gwendolyn Gayle Turner Pritchard.

  We dined in her room this time. Her room no longer presented any danger of the Kid KnocKing on the door. Scott had jumped in his Porsche at the club and burned rubber.

  Normal people in Toyotas and things can drive from Augusta to Orlando in around eight hours, depending on the number of stops for Cokes and fries. Scott would make it in six and a half, barring speed traps. I estimated he’d be home getting a congenial blowjob by midnight.

  So it was that Gwen and I re-created some of our favorite scenes from paperback novels, and did those things before and after dinner.

  We finally fell asleep in a tangled heap.

  Breakfast the next morning was a leisurely affair on the outside terrace of the hotel dining room. I was driving to Hilton Head, having committed to play in the Heritage. Gwen had arranged for a limo to transport her to the Atlanta airport—just a two-hour drive—where she was booKed on a nonstop to LA. Another limo would transport her to La Costa.

  “What have we done here?” she said after we’d eaten. She was smoking, toying with her coffee cup. “You played in a golf tournament. I watched a golf tournament. Anything else happen?”

  I said, “You mean other than the fact that I met this incredible babe who makes me feel like if I don’t see her again pretty damn soon, I’m not going to be worth much on the people market?”

  She smiled. “I was hoping to hear something like that.”

  We came up with an engaging home-and-home series that would begin almost immediately.

  You could say we were a couple of crafty old athletic directors working on future schedules for our schools.

  Or you could say we were just a couple of crazy Kids who weren’t going to let golf get in the way of life.

  PART TWO

  DIXIE DREAMS

  20

  he night before the United States Open got under way, Gwen and I were strolling through the charming village of Pinehurst, being suitably charmed but holding our own against the quaint. We’d dined at the Pine Crest Inn, the small hotel Donald Ross used to own, a favorite haunt of mine. Gwen was staying there. The hotel’s restaurant didn’t fern you out, and its bar was lively—it could turn into a spring-breaK joint at the drop of two Chi Omegas.

  I’d liKed to have been rooming with Gwen at the Pine Crest, but we agreed that for the sake of appearances, and perhaps for the sake of my golf game at the year’s second major, it was better if I stayed at the Carolina Hotel. This was the big white Victorian joint two par-5s away. The Carolina had been revered in the grand old spa days—when the long, wide, winding porch held more rocking chairs than it did now.

  For the week of the Open the USGA had reserved the Carolina for their officials and any contestant who rated convenience ahead of cost. Grady Don and Jerry Grimes were staying there, as were Gwen’s Kid, and most of the “name” players.

  If you were staying at the Carolina, the Pine Crest Inn, or the Holly Inn you were inside the wire. You didn’t have to jack with security slugs, gate guards, traffic. Dinks were outside the wire—the press, your penny-pinching pros, a majority of the fans. They were staying somewhere in Southern Pines or out in highway motels.

  On our stroll I was telling Gwen how much I liked North Carolina.

  “It’s the California of the East Coast,” I said, meaning that as flattery. “It has good mountains and a nice-size ocean, which is even older than yours. Where we are at the moment, it’s only an hour’s drive to Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle—where they invented basketball.”

  “We’re back in Dixie, right? This counts?”

  “We are in Dixie. I don’t Know if it’s still the land of cotton. It’s more like the land of golf courses now. The South’s not all Confederate battle flags and Cracker Barrel restaurants, you Know? I’m talking about the battle flag your liberals raise so much hell about they come down with fevers. The so-called Rebel flag? Libs love it when they see it on red-neck pickups—like it was invented in the Sixties. Thousands of American lads fought and died under that flag for the glory of fried chicken and black-eyed peas, but your terminal libs love to compare it to the swastika. I think they teach it at Harvard.”

  “Didn’t the war end? I’m sure I’ve read that.”

  “Yeah, we just ran out of time.” I grinned. “Bobby Lee wanted Dicky Ewell to take the high ground at Gettysburg when he had the chance, but the lazy sumbitch blew it. We could have stepped on their throats right there.”

  “We?�
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  “Tell you how the South differs,” I said. “In Virginia they spend years trying to figure if they’re related to the Queen of England . . . Alabama hasn’t come back from Bear Bryant’s funeral yet . . . The whole Mississippi coast is turning into another Vegas . . . South Carolina used to be poverty stricken, but Beaufort and Charleston are film capitals now. Three years ago I was driving from Ponte Vedra to Wilmington, North Carolina, for an outing—a payday. I stopped in a rain storm in Beaufort. I went into a 7-Eleven and asked a guy where to stay. He said I could stay at the ‘Prince of Tides’ house or I could stay at ‘The Big Chill’ house—they were both good B&Bs. I don’t remember which one I stayed in, but I went to this restaurant in town for dinner that night. I expected to find people sitting around arguing about who was the best Confederate general, A. P. Hill or John Bell Hood. But there were these guys at the next table in jeans, beards, sweatshirts, and thicK glasses, and I overheard one of them say, ‘I think they ought to bring the bitch back and make her re-shoot it.’ . . . Some southern states are smarter than others, I admit. A friend of mine on the radio back home says in Arkansas they still point at airplanes.”

  Gwen said, “North Carolina may be the California of the East Coast, but I’ve never heard of it having earthquakes like we do.”

  I said, “No, but it has good hurricanes . . . plus it invented NASCAR.”

  “That may win,” she said.

  I remarked that when Pinehurst was built at the turn of the century, it was patterned after a small New England village.

  Gwen said, “You recognize New England architecture when you see it, do you?”

  I said, “I Know a book when I read one. Guy who built it was a pharmacist from Boston. Guy named Tufts. He invented the marble soda fountain. Got rich on that. He wasn’t a golfer. There weren’t too many golfers in this country in those days, but he turned this into the first golf resort in America.”

  “Why would you build a golf resort anywhere if you didn’t play golf? I have a better question. Why would you build a golf resort anywhere if nobody played golf?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  “Maybe he wanted to give people something to do after they left his drugstore. You think?”

  “Pinehurst is all about golf, nothing else. The people who live here, own a second home here, come here to play, they don’t talk about anything but golf.”

  “I’d never have guessed that, judging by the art galleries,” she said wittily. “Why do you like the course so much. Scotty hates it.”

  “When you’re nineteen and fly it out of the county off the tee, you hate every course that won’t let you shoot sixty-three. Pinehurst is unique. There’s hardly any out of bounds to speak of, and not a single water hazard on it. This is a course with subtleties. It tests your patience.”

  “Like how?”

  “It plays like a links. Like the links courses in Scotland and England. The ninth hole doesn’t even come back to the clubhouse. It’s way out there. The fairways roll and the greens eat you up. It’s tough to get a shot close, and if you miss the green, you have to be the god of chipping to save par. The undulations of the greens can be a nightmare. It’s a strong 280 golf course. The pros loved the old North and South Open here in the twenties, thirties, forties. They considered the North and South a major. It was black tie for dinner in those days. Amazing when you think about it. Pros traveling with tuxedos.”

  “Not to mention their wives traveling with evening dresses.”

  “This should be a good course for me,” I said. “If I’m ever gonna have a shot at the Open, this could be it.”

  “Really . . . ?”

  “I’m not a birdie machine—I don’t putt that good. Par’s a good score here. These greens won’t let anybody run the table. I’m playing good right now, and—on top of everything else—I’m forty-four.”

  I explained what my age meant historically. In terms of last chances in the major championships of your basic life.

  “I like your attitude,” she said. “The teenage girl won’t be a distraction?”

  “She shouldn’t be.”

  The teenage girl was Tricia Hurt. She was the fifteen-year-old phenom who had been capturing the hearts and minds of golf fans for over a year. The USGA had gone sick in the head and lobbed her a last-minute invitation to play in the Open.

  A teenage girl in a men’s major? For publicity reasons? For financial reasons? For any reason?

  Like everybody else on the PGA Tour, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh at the USGA or be hot at the USGA for doing it.

  For the time being, however, it wasn’t worth thinking about.

  I said to Gwen, “Pinehurst No. 2 is Donald Ross’s masterpiece, but it was famous even before he put in grass greens.”

  She said, “What Kind of greens did it have to begin with, grits?”

  Gwendolyn Pritchard, standup.

  I said, “Sand. Sand and oil. Small, flat sand greens. Most courses in a hot climate had sand greens in the old days. The golfer was obliged to drag an iron rake across the green to smooth out a line from his ball to the cup before he putted. Or after each group left the green, a worker would smooth out the sand by dragging a big heavy wet rug over it. Ross didn’t find a strain of Bermuda that could take the hot climate until 1934. That’s when No. 2’s sand greens were switched over to the grass greens you see today with all the humps and swales. Bent came along even later.”

  She made a “hmm” sound.

  I said, “Donald Ross built four courses to start with, and numbered them. Each course was for a certain Kind of player. Long, short, pro, beginner. This was between 1901 and 1920. But he didn’t intend for No. 2 to be the gem until later. Until Bobby Jones hired Alister Mackenzie to help design Augusta National. Ross was upset when Jones hired Mackenzie instead of him. He felt snubbed.”

  “And it was so unlike Jones to snub someone.”

  “I’m giving you history and you give me smart-ass.”

  “I’m sorry, Bobby Joe, but you talk about these people like I’m supposed to Know them.”

  I said, “I’m sorry. Donald Ross and Alister Mackenzie were both Scots. Ross was a golf pro and architect all his life. Mackenzie was a doctor the first half of his life. He was in the Boer War and World War One. Then he discovered golf. Just think of them as two chunky guys with mustaches who wore tweed coats. Augusta was what inspired Ross to devote the last years of his life to turning Pinehurst No. 2 into a great layout. He was trying to out-monument the Augusta National.”

  “You don’t think he did, do you?”

  “Pinehurst is tougher. But Augusta has more variety, more drama. And it wins ‘Best Postcard.’ Mackenzie and Ross were both great designers, but Mackenzie had done Cypress Point, and that may have been the reason Jones picked him to collaborate on Augusta.”

  “That would swing it for me—especially if I owned one of those homes on Seventeen-Mile Drive.”

  “I couldn’t live on Seventeen-Mile Drive.”

  “You couldn’t? Why not? It’s obscenely beautiful.”

  “Too far to drive for baloney and light bread.”

  We stopped at the window of a gift shop and studied a carved-glass table lamp. A bug-eyed golfer in Knickers was crouched over a putt, the light bulb and lamp shade growing up out of his shoulder blades.

  Electricity meets golf and does humor.

  I said, “Here we have proof that they really don’t talk about anything but golf in Pinehurst.”

  She said, “Only a person with impeccable taste would buy that.”

  In what must have been a world-weary tone, I said, “Well, people do this and that . . . but everything’s pretty much what it is.”

  Laughing, she said, “ ‘Everything’s pretty much what it is’? I’m taking that. It’s mine now. It goes in there with ‘Fate don’t have a head.’ ”

  “I’ve always been deep,” I said.

  21

  ricia Hurt could outdri
ve most guys on the pro tour by ten to twenty-five yards. Make a man looK liKe stepped-on shit. “That’s her,” I said quietly to Gwen with a nudge. We were sitting on an outdoor bench. We’d walked over to the sprawling Mediterranean-style villa that Pinehurst calls a clubhouse, and walked back to the village. Gwen was having a Merit Ultra Light when the teenager appeared.

  Meaning the fresh-faced six-foot-tall teenage girl, rather pretty, who’d come strolling along. She was with a slender, arrogant-looKing man who could only have been Dabney Hurt, her rich daddy.

  Dabney Hurt was one of those facelifted, hair-too-long-in-the-back, Wall Street–looking guys. He wore sneakers, creased jeans, and a golf shirt with the collar turned up, and a cashmere sweater was carefully draped around his shoulders. Rumor had it that Tricia’s mother, Milli-cent, spent most of her time on the computer at home, collecting the stories written about Tricia. Daughter was the family future, the franchise. Sad, really.

  Tricia Hurt’s broad shoulders and sturdy bronze arms were hard to ignore in her waist-tight white sleeveless blouse. Her snug-fitting khaki slacks suggested the strong, sculpted legs of a figure skater.

  She was from Connecticut, but she’d spent every moment since she was eight in a combination golf instruction camp and boarding school near Palm Beach, Florida. She’d been winning girls and women’s amateur titles since she was ten.

  I said, “The Kid’s got a set of legs on her. It looks like she could play any sport she wants to.”

  “Katarina Witt does golf,” Gwen said.

  Tricia was the heiress. The latest in a line of chick golfers put on earth to embarrass guys—liKe Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie, who blazed the trail ahead of her. Tricia had been invited to enter four PGA Tour events last year when she was fourteen, her against the guys. The corporate-sponsor dummies turned flips with excitement. She not only made the cut in all four, she finished in the top 20 at Doral and Reno.