by Dan Jenkins
“She like Patsy? She better.”
“She has Patsy Cline in her car, in her home, and in her store, is all. She does confess she once liked the Stones. I was never a good judge of that, I’ve told her. I still had a hard time calling it music when an unwashed, stringy-haired asshole scooted around the stage fucking his guitar.”
“Have you straightened her out on politics?”
“Not totally. But you’ll like this. The other night on the phone we were talking about the suicide terrorists. How dumb you had to be to let one of the slime buckets talk you into Killing yourself. ‘Here, Kid, strap this bomb on your waist and blow yourself up in that building over there. Maybe you can Kill some women and babies.’ Like what happened to, ‘Do it yourself, Mohammed, I got your bomb right here.’ Gwen says the death penalty is too good for terrorists. They ought to be locked up in solitary and forced to listen to rap the rest of their lives.”
“I like it.”
“See?” I said. “There’s more to Gwen than you think. You’ve just been judging her on her looks.”
“Yeah, I have. I guess that makes me a fucking retard.”
26
Just another lucky break, is all it was. On the first day of the U.S. Open, when there should have been nothing on my mind but how to handle Pinehurst No. 2, it was my honor and privilege to meet Rick Pritchard.
Yep, that Rick Pritchard. Gwendolyn’s ex, Scott’s dad, and—if first impressions count for anything—a recent inductee into the California Hall of Copper-Riveted Gold-Plated Four-Star Major-League Assholes.
He wasn’t hard to spot on the practice range. Standing behind Scott, watching the Kid launch eight-irons into the realm of Eastern Europe, was a big, tan, muscled-up guy, around six-three, with thick layers of wavy blond hair doing what Maurice of Beverly Hills instructed it to do.
Rick was a hulk in tight-fitting white slacks and a bright red long-sleeve cotton shirt, the sleeves pushed fashion-consciously up to his elbows. A brown leather bag hung from his shoulder on a long strap.
Precious shoulder bags for guys? They were back?
Even though my mind should have been solely on Pinehurst, I wanted to meet him for two Key reasons. One was to look at his jewelry up close. I’d seen the lights sparkling from a distance. He was wearing more gold shit than three Palm Springs divorcées combined. The other was to see if those really were black velvet slippers on his feet.
When I sauntered over, I first spoke to the Kid.
“Can I borrow your forearms today, Scott?”
Humor.
He was hitting 200-yard eight-irons.
Dad was on his cell, his back turned to us.
“Do you like this course, Bobby Joe?” Scott said.
“I do. But it’s tough. It takes patience.”
“It’s a junkyard. Put a tee ball down the middle, what are you looking at? A stupid unmade bed or something. Geeeaah.”
Delightful reference to Pinehurst No. 2’s classic crowned greens. What Donald Ross had in mind—a bunch of unmade beds.
I looked at Rick. He was clicking his cell off, putting it back in his shoulder bag.
“Hi,” I said pleasantly.
Blank stare from Rick.
Scott said, “Dad, this is Bobby Joe Grooves. Bobby Joe, my dad.”
Rick broke into a smile. “Hey, hey, hey.” He extended his hand.
I went with a firm, defensive grip, expecting Rick to be a guy who tries to crush your hand, let you Know how manly he is. Off and on, my right hand was still a little sore from five years ago in Dallas when I shook hands with a car dealer named Shorty who was on my Pro-Am team.
Rick gave me a civilized handshake. I noted his jewelry—the hefty gold Rolex, the gold necklace, the two gold bracelets, the treasured gold ring from the Rose Bowl. I wanted to tell him I was relieved his gold ring came from the Rose Bowl and not from Maurice of Beverly Hills.
“I owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said.
“You do? What for?”
“For Keeping my wife occupied these past two months. Gwenny says you guys have had a ball.”
Gwenny.
Now I Knew the real reason she divorced him.
I said, “She’s your ex-wife, I believe.”
“A big mistake on my part, you can lift that out of the fine print,” he said. “But if we get back together someday, it’ll only be a bump in the road. Right, Scotto?”
Scotto. Filed it.
“Yeah, whatever,” Scott said, taking a divot the size of Godzilla’s foot and sending an eight-iron into eternity.
“I’m a little slow,” I said to Rick. “Are you saying you’re planning on getting back with Gwendolyn someday?”
“Who can predict world events?” he said. “Women are like porn flicks—you have to look at fifty to find a good one.”
I tried to force a smile at that. Failed.
He continued to laugh.
I said, “What happened to Ashley, if I may ask?”
“Oh, wowser. Another bump in the road. Women. Like the man said, ‘You can’t live with ’em . . . pass the beer nuts.’ Eh, Scotto?”
“Fatage,” Scott said, ignoring dad, speaking to his eight-iron. He flipped the eight-iron aside, picked up his sixty-degree wedge.
I said to Rick, “I take it the lovely Ashley’s been traded to the Red-skins? Is that it?”
“Good way to put it, Bobby Joe. She had a pretty good arm but couldn’t hit the deep post. Heh, heh. Costly but necessary. I have the sense Gwenny hasn’t filled you in on what’s been going on.”
“I’m getting that sense, yes.”
“Short of the long, I’m working on Gwenny to come on board. She’s playing hard to get, but if I Know Gwenny, she’s interested.”
“On board what?”
“International Sports Talent. My company. IST. Damn thing’s running away with me. That’s mostly thanks to Scotto here, the big wage earner, but I’m on the verge of signing a new client that’s going to contribute heavily in the ka-jing department. It’s hush-hush, but I see no reason why I shouldn’t let you in on it—you being a friend of the family, n’est-ce pas? I’m going to sign Tricia Hurt. Is that any good? Huh? Tell me that’s not any good?”
“You’re going to sign a fifteen-year-old girl to a pro contract?”
“Pardon, monsieur,” he said. “If I may rephrase . . . I am going to sign a fifteen-year-old locomotive . . . to a professional contract.”
“Tricia Hurt doesn’t need to turn pro yet. She’s too young. Besides that, her daddy’s rich.”
“Her daddy happens to be in financial doo-doo.”
“He is?”
“Two years ago the Dabster went public, tried to become pope. Now all of his stocks are in the shitter. He’s leveraged up to his facelift. The banks own him and the banks are restless. It’s not generally Known, but everything he has is for sale—the ranch in Idaho, the house on Nantucket, the penthouse in Manhattan, the Palm Beach mansion, his yacht, his Citation, and, sad to say, his entire barn of eighty-five mint-condition vintage cars, including the incredible ’36 Cord, the ’39 Continental, the ’47 Cadillac Woodie, the ’33 Dodge Brothers sedan, and the incomparable ’53 Cunningham C-3 Cabriolet, one of only nine ever built. C’est magnifique.”
Car guy. California deal.
Rick said he normally charged 30 percent of a client’s earnings, but he was nailing Dabney Hurt for 50 percent of Tricia, the Dabster being in financial difficulty. Dabney would settle on half of the annual gross in exchange for a $10 million signing bonus. The ten mill was a bagatelle, Rick said, considering he could guarantee Tricia $20 million a year for the first three years. “With elevators,” he said.
“Deep as he’s in the ditch, how much good can ten million do?”
“It’ll Keep him afloat till he can think of something else,” Rick said. “The important thing is, I shall have the two hottest young players in the world—Scotto and Le Tricia. Le roi est mort, vive le moi.”
“What?”
“The King is dead, long live me.”
“Did you major in French at Southern Cal?”
“Took a year. Polishing up. Good for the Euro biz.”
I looked off, took a breath, looked back.
“Does Gwen Know you’re going to sign Tricia Hurt?” I said.
“I told her at breakfast.”
“You and Gwen had breakfast this morning?”
“At the Pine Crest.”
“I had breakfast with Gwen at the Carolina.”
“Must have been later.”
“No wonder she only wanted coffee.”
I would have appreciated a moment to myself to control my anger, pull the dagger out of my heart, but Rick was still talking.
“The best way for me to drive this bus is move the main office to New York City, New York. That’s Manhattan Island, Big Town, Gotham, the Big Apple. I’m there most of the time now anyway. What I’m trying to talk Gwenny into doing is running my Beverly Hills office. She should sell the La Costa house, sell her half of the boutique in Del Mar to Sandy, and find herself a place in the Beverly flats.”
“Gwen would be your employee?”
“Surely you Know Gwenny better than that. She would have an ownership position. And that ain’t just ka-jing, Groovo. We’re talking blimpo coinage. Centavos meet drachmas, Krona meet guilders, liras meet rupees, and whammo. Multo shekelroids.”
“So it’s strictly business? You and Gwen?”
“Well, not to tread on your turf-o-rama, Bobbo, but Gwenny and I do have a history. Who can say what the future holds?”
His cell beeped.
Rick answered, listened, handed it to me. “It’s the ex-o-rama.”
I took the phone, stepped away, turned my back.
“Gwenny,” I said. “Is it really you?”
“I Know you’re pissed,” she said.
“Boy, you got that one right off.”
“You have every reason to be.”
“Something else we agree on in life.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“What will we have to talk about? The round of golf I’m getting ready to play in a major championship when I’m totally mind-fucked?”
“I Know. The timing is not good.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the clubhouse terrace. I’m looking at you through binoculars. I was on my way to the range when I saw you with Rick. I came back here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he was here this morning, but I didn’t want to upset you. I never dreamed the two of you would meet up, damn it to hell.”
“What will your title be at International Sports Talent?”
“Bobby Joe, I’m not sure I want to do that, but a great deal of money could be involved. We need to talk about it.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie to you, Bobby Joe. I just didn’t mention something.”
“I’ve got to tell you, Gwenny. I am really hot.”
“And I am really, really sorry. Play good.”
“Hey, no problem. As good a mood as I’m in.”
I punched off the cell.
“Yo, Rick,” I said. He looked. I pitched him the cell. He caught it. Good hands for an old SC fullback.
“Nice meeting you,” I said. “I have to go feather my irons and nestle my wedges now.”
27
Sometimes you play better when you’re mad. That was the theory of Baldy Toler, my old high school basketball coach. When you went into a fray, he wanted you to be “hot as a pot of collards.” I recall making every effort to be exactly that, even though at the time I didn’t know what a collard was.
A Knee in a rival’s stones was Coach Toler’s idea of setting a good screen. Same as breaking a guy’s rib with your elbow representing the correct way to snare a rebound. Accomplish two things at once.
As per Coach Toler’s instructions, I thought our anger was put to even better use on defense. “Make the scogies pay for ever golldang bucket they make,” he’d say.
I never Knew what a scogie was either, mind you, or whether it had anything to do with a collard, but Baldy said the best way to make somebody pay for a bucket was to knuckle up a fist and stab the shooter in his armpit when he went up for a long jumper, a midrange jumper, or a put-back in the paint. “Give the sumbitch something to remember.”
We played full-court man defense at all times, and this involved talking to your opponent throughout your time on the floor. Mention such things to him as you Knew for a fact that your uncle was fucking his mom. Or if you noticed a cross around his neck on a chain, call him a Catholic dick, tell him St. Ignatius was a queer, and say you stopped by Our Lady of Victory yesterday and got a good blowjob from Sister Mary Agnes.
Many life lessons were learned from Coach Toler, who consistently led his youngsters to city, regional, and state championships. Torture and discipline were his allies. He made practice such insufferable agony, the games were cake.
You also learned from his long wooden paddle, which he laid on your butt instantly if you made any semester grade below a B. You learned from his fondness for ordering fifty fingertip pushups every time you missed a layup in practice. And you learned from his penchant for making you run so many 400-meter laps after practice that half the squad annually developed emphysema.
But I suppose most of Coach Toler’s warriors would remember him best for what he’d say to us before we left the dressing room and took the court for a game.
“Awwight, men,” he’d say. “What are we gonna do tonight? I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna eat lightning and shit thunder!”
How to resurrect such competitive anger and transfer it to golf?
That was my question for Mitch as we stood on the number 1 tee waiting to begin the first round of the Open.
“You mad at Gwendolyn,” Mitch said, “and you want to take it out on the golf course?”
“I would, yeah.”
“How that old coach tell you to get over a girlfriend did you wrong in high school?”
“It’s too vulgar to repeat.”
“But you remember it.”
“I’ve never forgotten it.”
“I Know vulgar. We friends. What the coach say?”
“What he’d say was, ‘Think of the tomato-mouth bitch sitting on the toilet taking a big shit.’ That’s what he’d say.”
Mitch shook his head. “Wouldn’t work on today’s generation.”
“It wouldn’t? Why not?”
“Be a turn-on.”
I pinched my arm to Keep from laughing. I wanted to stay hot at Gwen and International Sports Talent and Rick Pritchard and meaningful relationships everywhere.
I said to Mitch, “Gwen didn’t tell me her ex was in town for my own good. You Know what bothers me as much as anything about it? People who do things for you for your own good. It makes me want to say, you Know what you can do for me for my own good? Don’t by-god do anything for me for my own damn good.”
Mitch said, “Let’s punish Pinehurst and all them other things with the driver today.”
“Go with the Show Dog?”
Made some sense. The course was set up unlike any Open course I’d ever played. A man was encouraged to take out the driver. Pinehurst’s greens were so brutal when it came to putting and chipping, the USGA, in an uncharacteristic mood of fairness, opened up the fairways and Kept the rough at a sane level. The landing areas were fifty to sixty yards wide, the rough was only three inches high.
The U.S. Open was normally Known for having fairways only thirty yards wide in places, so narrow, as Dave Marr once said, you couldn’t walk down the middle of them without snagging your shirt. And the rough was so high, like halfway up your leg, you could lose your shoes in it while you looked for your golf ball.
It was the tricked-up difficulty of the courses along with the pressure of trying to win a title as big as the U.S. Open that inspired Dr. Cary Middlecoff to make a remark bac
k in the fifties that’s found its way into the hearts of most contenders. What he said was “Nobody wins the Open—it wins you.”
28
The first two rounds I was in a threesome with Claude Steekley, he of the furrowed burnt-orange brow, and my old pal Knut Thorssun, he of the wooden dick. This put two unique ladies in our gallery Thursday. One was Pookie Steekley. I wasn’t Keen on overbites, except for Gene Tierney’s, but PooKie’s made her seem sexy in the same sort of aristocratic way. Too bad she liked Bible study. Claude had shared that tidbit with me.
Pookie was wearing a sleeveless orange polo shirt, white golf skirt, saddle oxfords, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with orange feathers in it. Her hat, I felt, had escaped from a Masterpiece Theatre series on PBS. Crawled right out of their TV screen in Austin.
The other lady was Vashtine Ulberg, or I should say Snapper, Sweden’s own rap diva—and Knut Thorssun’s bride-to-be unless Bobo shrunk up on him.
Vashtine was dressed like she was there to make a music video with a plot revolving around the roller derby.
She wore crack-tight cutoff jeans, a yellow V-neck tank top barely holding in her magnificent lungs, and black patent-leather whore boots, and her wild blond hair was almost as long as Knut’s.
Vashtine drew a larger crowd off to the side than our threesome on the tee. She was surrounded by droves of her music-loving fans, an indication that none of them had finished the sixth grade.
It might not have been Vashtine’s outfit alone that caused the incident. Her fame among imbeciles may have contributed.
We heard the shouting and saw the shoving and scuffling before the golf carts arrived. I followed Knut into the crowd to see if we could help calm things down.
A half-dozen USGA officers unpiled from the carts, some of them in their white button-down shirts and striped ties of yesteryear, all of them armbanded and walkie-talkie’d up.
I recognized Jameson Swindley, the tall pinhead who was the current USGA president, and Dace Fackle, the executive director. Swindley led the group into the middle of things, saying, “Young lady, you are causing a disturbance at our Open championship.”