by Dan Jenkins
Grady Don Maples and Jerry Grimes were among the guys who’d been outdriven and outscored by Tricia on separate occasions.
Jerry said there was no doubt she was from another world, and furthermore she had not come here on a friendly mission. Grady Don sometimes referred to Tricia and her daddy as “Anastasia and the Czar,” but mostly he referred to Tricia as the space-alien teen bitch.
After being paired with Tricia in the third round at Doral last year— and having her 71 beat his 73—Jerry Grimes reported that she wasn’t only long with the driver, but she was long all through the bag, like Scott Pritchard.
Jerry observed that her grip was a classic Vardon. Her swing was big, slow, picturesque, a thing of beauty. It was said by noted swing gurus that she “possessed a genius.”
Jerry admitted he was stunned on the first hole at Doral, a par-5, when she John-Daly’d him off the tee by twenty yards.
He said, “I thought she hit a rock in the fairway, but no such luck. She hits this little foomp out there with her Bertha, but it goes, man. She only went with the driver five more times, or I’d be in traction. She Americaned me at the second . . . Continentaled me at the sixth . . . Air Force One’d me at the tenth . . . space-shuttled me at the twelfth.”
There were four or five of us listening in the locker room at Doral that day. I was as fascinated as the others.
Jerry said, “I couldn’t believe she was outknocking me. I decided I’d get her at eighteen. I came off the ground at it. I solid clubfaced it. I laid titanium on Titleist’s ass—and bam!” He smacked his palms together.
“Did you get her?” somebody asked eagerly.
Jerry shrugged. “She Goodyear-blimped me.”
How Tricia made it into the Open at Pinehurst was no big mystery if you Knew how much the U.S. Golf Association liked money.
The USGA didn’t used to like money so much. It just wanted enough to run its annual tournaments smoothly and pay the hired help. But one day the organization looked around and saw a group of fools getting rich for no good reason, and somebody said we have to get in on this cake.
That’s when the USGA jumped on the greed train. Waved goodbye to most of the organization’s honorable traditions. Started partying with their two best new friends, network TV and corporate sponsors.
This led to Dabney Hurt. He owned UniCorp and LifeData. UniCorp sold something by the millions that nobody needed. LifeData did something to help hospitals Kill old people faster.
It so happened that UniCorp and LifeData bought the two largest corporate hospitality tents for the Open at Pinehurst. Some of Dabney’s other companies bought space. In all, Dabney’s “participation” was worth $20 million to the USGA.
But the USGA was aghast when Dabney Hurt asked that in return for his generosity his teenage daughter receive a special exemption to compete in the men’s Open championship of the United States of America.
To anyone’s Knowledge, dating back to the first National Open in 1895, there’d never been a female in the championship, although the unknowing could be excused for wondering about such names in the record book as Laurie Auchterlonie, Val Fitzjohn, and Fay Ingalls.
The current USGA president, Jameson Swindley, said under no circumstances would such a request be granted to Dabney. Jameson Swindley said he was appalled by the request.
First, Dabney Hurt said he’d changed his mind about the hospitality tents and was Keeping his $20 million. When the USGA said he couldn’t do that, Dabney said, “Did I mark my lip?”
Jameson Swindley then made the mistake of telling someone he should have Known Dabney Hurt hadn’t gone to Yale.
Big mistake. The remark drifted back to Dabney, and Dabney said he was going to buy Jameson Swindley’s Manhattan law firm and fire Jameson Swindley and see that Jameson Swindley spent the rest of his life living in the doorways of abandoned buildings in Queens.
Other high-ranking USGA officials likewise suffered financial threats from Dabney Hurt. They dwelled on that, and they dwelled on losing the $20 million. But they didn’t dwell long. They were busy voting unanimously to grant a special exemption to Tricia Hurt.
None of that made the papers. The news release from the USGA only quoted President Jameson Swindley saying, “The USGA has a long history of granting special exemptions. We believe a young lady competing against the men in the U.S. Open Championship is an idea whose time has come. We are therefore delighted to grant a special exemption to Miss Tricia Hurt of Greenwich, Connecticut.”
When I was done relating all this to Gwen as we sat there on the bench, she said, “I think it’s great, don’t you? It’ll be interesting to see how she does against you guys.”
“It could be more fun,” I said.
“How so?”
“It could be Anne Marie Sprinkle.”
Got smoKe blown in my face.
22
Nine events on the Tour had been played between the Masters and the U.S. Open, which had long since been scheduled for the sandhills of North Carolina in June. I’d entered only five of the nine, what with my busy home-and-home schedule requiring me to visit Gwen twice in California and entertain Gwen once in Fort Worth.
La Costa’s hotel bar and golf course were familiar territory, as was the whole area. I’d played in the Tournament of Champions six times at La Costa before it moved to Kapalua, and a number of San Diego Opens at Torrey Pines, but when I visited Gwen she treated me liKe a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops with a throw-away camera from Wal-Mart in my hand.
I saw the Pacific Ocean from numerous vantage points. Sunshine was often called to my attention. Surfers and surf babes were pointed out to me, as were sailboats and aircraft carriers.
I was shown the flocKs of thin ladies doing their daily shopping and lunching in downtown La Jolla. We had cocKtails at the La Valencia Hotel, “the PinK Lady.” Mandatory. I’d done it before. It’s liKe missing a step and falling into the 1930s. Bump your head on Jean Harlow.
Die Shopping, Gwen’s store in Del Mar, was in a made-to-looK-RUSTIC strip mall with other stores. Places that sold yogurt, bagels, ladies’ shoes, paintings, Rolls-Royces.
Gwen’s shop sold prints of fish, birds, and rock formations, mugs, vases, cushions, datebooks, leather goods, ladies’ sports togs, and coffee makers that grind the beans and do everything else but pour it for you.
I was introduced to the two Gwyneth Paltrows who worKed in the shop, and I met Gwen’s partner, Sandy Knox. Sandy was a pert little blonde with a racK. That day she wore baggy slacks and a slipover dark blue Knit shirt with a message stitched on it in gold sequins: GET TO THE POINT.
“He’s a doll,” Sandy Knox said to Gwen, referring to me. “Can I have him when you’re through?”
“Lay one hand on him and you’re a dead bitch,” Gwen said.
I was grateful to discover that Gwen’s house at La Costa didn’t have a fake waterfall amid the landscaping, like the houses on either side of it. Hers was a Spanish-style split-level deal, white with a red-tile roof, large rooms, fireplaces, patios, view of the golf course.
Some of Scott’s trophies and medals were easy enough to spot in the living room and den, especially the tall silver replica of the U.S. Amateur trophy. The hardware sat on tables and book shelves, and the medals were displayed in a glass case that Gwen called a vitrine. I think that’s right.
Gwen said half of Scotty’s cups, goblets, pitchers, pie plates, and medals, dating back to when he won the world junior something-or-other at the age of ten, were with Rick, his dad, now the president and CEO of International Sports Talent.
I asked why her Kid didn’t Keep some of the treasures in his own home in Florida. She said, “He’s into different Kinds of trophies now. Of the female and automotive variety.”
I was curious to Know if Gwen had heard of any new clients Rick the Agent might have signed. I hadn’t read of any in the golf magazines. She said she’d heard from her Kid that Rick was trying to sign two teenage girls who might achieve fame a
nd fortune in tennis and ski racing, and he was working on a top-secret prospect.
The best thing I could say about Gwen’s home was that the master bedroom was cozy and comfortable.
When Gwen visited Fort Worth I did what you do with other friends who come to the city for the first time. You mix the cowboys in with the culture, and add barbecue, Tex-Mex, and chicken-fried deals.
Gwen admired our downtown, the modern towers rising above turn-of-the-century buildings. I explained that it was once a rowdy stop on the Chisholm Trail. That Butch and Sundance used to frolic in Fort Worth. That Etta Place had died in Fort Worth of a broken heart in Mary Porter’s Sporting House after she found out she didn’t look like Katharine Ross.
Gwen gave high marks to the “historic stockyards district,” to the real cowboys, play-like cowboys, saloons, and boutiques, and she enjoyed learning that the Stockyards Hotel, having been overwhelmed by nostalgia, offered a luxury accommodation called the Bonnie and Clyde Suite.
She sampled Tex-Mex cuisine at Joe T.’s, at the Original, at El Fenix, and at Mi Cocinita, the little café in the converted garage in a neighborhood over by the grain elevators on the south side. As for barbecue, she swooned at Railhead’s ribs, the sliced at Angelo’s, and the chopped at Cousins.
She ate the three good corners of a chicken-fried steak with cream gravy at the Paris Coffee Shop and again at Herb’s Café, a haunt for almost everybody who’d ever gone to TCU, or played golf locally, but I mainly took her there to meet the legendary waitress, Lois “Get It Yourself” Deaton.
Lois didn’t disappoint me. She gave Gwen the once-over and said, “Where’s the Christmas tree you found this one under, Bobby Joe?”
I ran Gwen through our world-famous art museums, the Kimbell, the Carter, and the Modern. She pronounced the Kimbell sublime, inside and out, the Carter fabulous, and said everything in the Modern was badly in need of an explanation.
I drove her around Colonial, River Crest, Shady Oaks, and Ridglea, the country clubs where in my college days I made Phi Beta Kappa in smoking, drinking, and automatic one-down presses.
Mira Vista had come along later, after I was on the Tour. It was a lush country club and residential community inside security gates on the southwestern edge of the city.
A surprisingly sporty golf course was woven up, down, and around Mira Vista’s mansions and townhouses that were built on the hills and in the bottomland. Some of the mansions were so staggeringly large they were sometimes mistaken for the clubhouse itself.
Gwen saw Mira Vista and all that went with it the night we went to dinner with my folks.
23
n preparing Gwen for Louise and George Grooves, I said my mom was a sweet-natured, still-attractive lady in her early seventies who’d be wearing slacks and a turtleneck, and I added that she still liKed to drink coffee, play bridge, and smoKe cigarettes. As for my dad, I said he’d be the silver-haired grump in the blue golf shirt and gray cardigan who wasn’t nearly as unhappy as his expression might lead her to believe—not when there was still a lot of chili and rice to eat in this world.
Soon as we arrived—Gwen in pants and a lightweight sweater—my mom whispered to me, “My word, Bobby Joe, she’s lovely as a spring day.”
My dad said hidy and immediately asked Gwen if she Knew what was good for arthritis—right now he couldn’t tell whether his left leg hurt more than his right shoulder or the back of his neck.
When Gwen shrugged and said, “I don’t really Know—Advil?” my dad said, “Naw, that don’t get it done, but make yourself at home, anyhow, seeing as how you’re prettier than a homemade waffle. You’re the best one he’s ever run through here.”
Gwen acknowledged the compliment with a hunched-shoulders smile.
My mom served a cottage cheese and pear salad, a ham steak with navy beans, rice and brown gravy, and cornbread. Nothing green anywhere near the plate. Anything green on a plate, other than green beans cooked with bacon, or canned asparagus, would put George in such a foul mood it wasn’t worth the trouble to Louise.
Gwen commented on how good everything was, the cornbread in particular. She’d never had better cornbread, she swore.
“Louise don’t put sugar in it,” my dad said. “Life’s too short to eat cornbread with sugar in it.”
Our dinner conversation covered a range of topics.
According to my dad, Mira Vista’s security gates were the envy of the other country club neighborhoods in town, which didn’t have any. Mira Vista was built and developed in the eighties, but the security gates were envied more than ever nowadays, he said, since burglary, car theft, Kidnapping, armed robbery, child molesting, and murder had become more popular in the United States.
“What would help more than security gates,” George Grooves said, “would be if we could find us some courtroom judges who weren’t so eager to put criminals back on the street every day of their lives . . . or I should say every day they don’t have an early tee time or haven’t gone off to shoot birds or ducks.”
Gwen made the mistake of asking my dad what people should do if they didn’t live in a neighborhood with security gates.
Looking at her like Lyndon Johnson used to look at the American people, he said, “Arm yourself and wait.”
Which caused Gwen to make one of those “ulk” sounds you make when you’re trying to catch an out-loud laugh before it gets away from you and flies through the room.
Gwen learned that my mom loved movies and went to every movie that came out, except for the ones where people live on other planets.
“Your interest in movies must come from your mom,” Gwen said to me. “You’re always saying lines from old films.”
I said, “No, I’ve just always liked the ones where everybody smokes.”
My dad wouldn’t go near a movie if the theater was in a mall next door to a discount golf store.
He said, “Don’t even try to trap me into going to a movie. Ever since we’ve owned a washing machine with a window in it, I’ve been able to see things that make more sense than anything Hollywood has to offer.”
Gwen said, “You must watch a lot of sea epics, huh?”
That made my dad chuckle.
“You got you a comedian lady here,” he said to me. “I’d hang on to her, if I was you, for them days when your putter stabs you in the back.”
“I’m doing my best,” I said.
My folks were happily retired from their dry-cleaning and florist businesses, which had been successful because they worked hard at it. My dad spent most of his time these days playing golf from the whites by his own rules—mulligans are free, roll it over everywhere. Another hobby of his was letting local sports teams and anti-American politicians piss him off.
The “overpaid sissies” who played for the Cowboys, Rangers, and Mavericks annoyed him almost as much as the “jock-sniffing egomaniacs” who owned the Cowboys, Rangers, and Mavericks.
He didn’t recognize ice hockey as a Texas sport, therefore he didn’t much care what went on with the Dallas Stars.
Of all the things that annoyed him, however, he was certain that if our TCU Horned Frogs didn’t develop a reliable pass defense it was going to give him a heart attack quicker than CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN.
“I don’t wander too far away from Fox News,” my dad said.
I said to Gwen, “I ought to explain that he hasn’t learned how to say things to the TV screen without having it bother his heart.”
“Say what things?”
I said, “Oh, like, you Know, ‘Get off my TV set, you rug-hugging, bug-eating, raghead pissant cowards.’ ”
“Oh, that,” Gwen said.
Louise said, “I do believe Omar Sharif is the only Arab I have ever liked ... Gwen, I want a cigarette. Will you join me?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Gwen said, reaching in her pocket.
They lit up their own brands, each with a Walgreens lighter, the Kind people leave on table tops and in car seats.
Gwen
innocently offered my dad one of her long slender lights, unaware that evil doctors had taken my dad’s heart off cigarettes years ago.
He said, “I’d love one, honey, but there’s undercover cigarette police all over the house. I’ll have one of my skinny cigars on the patio later.”
My dad moved on to one of his favorite subjects. “We’re in an all-out war with terrorist filth. We didn’t start it, but we damn sure better win it if the world wants to survive. What I don’t understand is why there’s folks in our own country who think we can win it with hugs and Kisses. Only thing the hydrophobia, shit-in-the-street, fanatical shitasses understand is an ass whippin’ . . . You a Democrat? You’re too pretty to be a Democrat.”
“George, I’ll swan,” my mother said.
“I have a mind of my own,” Gwen replied.
“You a liberal?”
“I like to think I’m an independent.”
He said, “How do you feel about people burning the American flag?”
“I think most of them do it to be on TV.”
“I don’t think it ought to be against the law.”
Gwen looked shocked. “You don’t?”
“No, I don’t. But I also don’t think it ought to be against the law to beat the livin’ shit out somebody who burns the American flag.”
I said, “My dad was too young for World War Two by a year, I guess it was, but he served in Korea.”
George Grooves said, “I was in the seventh grade at E. M. Daggett Junior High when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. Miz McGuire brought her RCA Victor radio to our home room so we could listen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt declare war on the yellow-belly sons of bitches.”
Louise said, “He talks like that and we both drive a Toyota.”
“That’s ’cause we scrubbed ’em up,” my dad said.