Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  I suppose he shouldn’t have grabbed her arm . . . or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Vashtine still might have let loose.

  She snarled, “I am here to vatching the focking golfik! Vut you donk to me, you focking ateshatten slakfort! You dat Knownin who the focking shitek you focking wit?”

  Knut said to one and all, “This lady is my fiancée, it is so. She is to be my wife as soon as I can work it into my commitments, to be sure.”

  Jameson Swindley said, “If that’s the case, Mr. Thorssun, I suggest you tell her not to dress so indecently at our championship.”

  Knut said, “Her way is not to be considered indecent in Stockholm, or anywhere in our homeland, the point you are making. But to make an effort for peace in this matter, I must say to Vashty, my love, it is perhaps best for you to rethink your costume for today, is it not?”

  “Oh, jah?” she screeched at Knut. “Vut taken dot side of the pussy lickink dirgen shiteks? Vell, vut you tank of these, you clocksocking modderfockings?”

  With that, she lifted up her top and flashed her tits. It was more like a full display than a flash. She turned this way and that as thunderous applause and joyous shouts accompanied her act.

  That clinched it. Vashtine was forced into a golf cart and told she would be transported to the clubhouse and given the option of changing her attire and behaving herself or spending the rest of the day under house arrest.

  “Voo tellin the modderfockers, Noots!” she yelled as the cart rolled away. “Callin jag lawyers, Noots! . . . I vant sue ever focking rotter assenholin golfik dinkin!”

  Dace Fackle, the executive director, smiled apologetically at Knut. “I’m terribly sorry about this. We’ll see that she’s comfortable in our private hospitality suite in the clubhouse. She’ll be with some of our officers and their wives. There’ll be food and some rather nice wines.”

  “ ‘Noots’?” I said to Knut.

  It so happened I Lucilled it off the first tee with the Show Dog and gestured a thanks to the appreciative souls who applauded.

  I hoped it would be a trend, parking my tee ball in the fairway.

  Thus, after settling down to a medium boil over Gwendolyn Pritchard’s treachery, and after having accidentally been in the right place at the right time to observe Vashtine Ulberg’s healthy set of lungs, I was able to devote the rest of Thursday—for whatever financial or sentimental value it might have—to my golf game.

  An unexpected incident occurred at the second hole, which was one of the holes where you could hit it out of bounds on Pinehurst No. 2. Elsewhere you can hook it into the houses at the 3rd, slice it into the houses at the 5th, and hook it into the practice range at the 18th, but to do any of that you have to try very hard.

  A village road runs along the left side of the 447-yard second hole, and Claude Steekley’s looping hook off the tee found it. He reloaded and cautiously steered the next one into the fairway, leaving himself about 180 yards to the green, from where he was shooting four.

  But he snap-hooked this one to the left with his six-iron, and he Knew it could wind up OB as well. He played another provisional.

  “Brown shit Aggie boot!” he shouted.

  His words rang through the pines.

  We started looking for his ball in the pines near the road, his wife, Pookie, included in the search party, milling around, nudging leaves and pine needles with the toe of her saddle oxford. She didn’t look happy about the situation. Wives seldom do.

  Claude found his own ball. It was one foot out of bounds.

  “Baylor, Aggie, Sooner squat!” he shouted.

  Claude stomped around in a circle, grumbling, kicking at the dirt, leaves, pine needles. He Knew he’d have to march out to the fairway and would now be shooting six, and was on his way to no better than an eight.

  It was while Claude stormed around in the pines that everybody’s attention was drawn to the automobile.

  This blue Lexus pulled up and stopped. How the lady at the wheel, a complete stranger, managed to slip through all of the Pinehurst security check points was a mystery that Lucas Davenport would have to solve someday, but there she was nonetheless.

  A window slid down and the lady hollered, “Do any of you Know where I can find a hotel room?”

  Most of us only stared at the lady in the car, but Pookie Steekley dryly called back to her: “In a few minutes you can have ours.”

  29

  A lesser man would have shuddered at the sight of his name at the top of the dreaded scoreboard. I say dreaded because if you’re not Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, or Bobby Jones, you’re not comfortable on top of the scoreboard after the first round of the United States Open. It’s an engraved invitation for destiny to put his foot on your throat.

  Or her foot. It depends on what the meaning of “foot” is.

  There’s a long line of first-round leaders of the Open who not only didn’t win the Open they led, they double disappeared. Some vanished without a trace while others spent the rest of their days in club jobs, handing out prizes for low-gross, low-net, and fewest putts in the ladies weeKly nine-hole play day.

  A partial list of guys who led the Open and dropped off the world would include Lee Mackey Jr., Henry Ciuci, Al Krueger, Les Kennedy, Al Brosch, Bobby Brue, Dick Knight, Bob Gadja, Tim Simpson, and T. C. Chen. I’ll take a breath and add Nolan Henke, Mike Donald, Charles Hoffner, Stewart Gardner, Wilfred Reid, Harry Hampton, Charles Lacey, Frank Ball, Tommy Shaw, Clarence Clark, and Terry Diehl.

  And I haven’t mentioned Sam Snead.

  Sam was hardly a nobody. He was a huge somebody. But he never won a U.S. Open, as even Kurds Know by now. Never won it despite the fact that he led the Open after the first round five times. In ’37 at Oakland Hills, ’39 at Spring Mill, ’40 at Canterbury, ’46 at Canterbury, and ’51 at Oakland Hills. He finished second four times. By two strokes to Ralph Guldahl in ’37, by one stroke in ’47 to Lew Worsham at St. Louis, where he missed a thirty-inch putt on the last hole of their playoff, by one stroke in ’49 to Cary Middlecoff at Medinah, where he three-putted the 71st green, and by six strokes to Ben Hogan at Oakmont in ’53, where he was only one back with seven to go but Hogan put a 3-3-3 finish on the case.

  Snead’s four silver medals say nothing about the time he truly, seriously, honestly should have won the damn thing. This was on the Spring Mill course at the Philadelphia Country Club in ’39 when he made that eight on the last hole.

  Eight. Compulsory figures. Two Olympic rings.

  A routine par-5 on what was actually an easy hole would have won it for him. A bogey 6 would have tied it for him. But the eight slung him down to fifth place behind Byron Nelson, Craig Wood, Denny Shute, and Marvin “Bud” Ward, the finest amateur of the era.

  Sam found a creative way to make the eight. He unwisely chose a driver off the tee and hooked it into the rough. He impulsively tried to hit a brassie out of the rough—a two-wood for those too young to remember persimmon—but he pull-topped it into a bunker. He slashed into another bunker. Slashed out. Pitched on in five. And three-putted from thirty-five feet.

  Delve into the literature of the game and you’ll find Sam’s explanation for the catastrophe. Find him saying, “I thought I needed a birdie on eighteen to win. There wasn’t no scoreboards on the course in those days. Nobody in the gallery told me anything. Hell, if I’d Known what I needed, I could have played the dern hole with a seven-iron and made a five.”

  When I first started going to the Masters I made it a point to meet Sam, spend time around him, listen to his stories in the clubhouse. I asked him about making the 8, if it caused him to lose his hair and nearly have a nervous breakdown. Things I’d read.

  “Aw, I made that up,” he said. “It was only my third National Open. I was a young feller in my twenties. I thought I’d win the thing five or six times before I got done. I believe I would have, too, if I’d won that one back there in Philadelphia.”

  I don’t Know how many people I put to sleep with my history lec
ture at the press conference. I didn’t Keep up with it. But some of the media looked less like they were characters in The Day of the Living Dead when I said the fifth hole was the Key to my 67 and three-stroke lead.

  For those who never left the TV sets, food, and beverages of the press lounge, I felt an obligation to let them in on the fact that the 482-yard 5th hole on Pinehurst No. 2 was undoubtedly the greatest par-4 in America that doesn’t have an ocean, bay, lake, pond, river, creek, or irrigation ditch on it. Or a bulkhead, waste area, or quarry.

  Just golf shots. That’s all it required.

  Start with a long, rumpled fairway tilting left through a corridor of pines, leaving more room for your tee ball on the right side. Best drive is a slight fade. Then you need a precise long iron to a well-bunkered green with humps and slopes and ripples all over it, and a dangerous drop-off to the left. Try not to overpure it to the back of the green. Try not to thin it or fat it short and hang it up on the front of the green. Dead in both places.

  After opening up with four straight pars, I was fortunate to make good swings on the drive and the approach at the 5th. My three-iron bounced neatly into the green and caught the right curve on a hump and left me with an eighteen-foot birdie putt. When that putt hit nothing but net, the three there felt like a double eagle. Made a man say, “Oh, shit, oh, dear.”

  I described my other two birdies for the press. The seven-foot birdie putt at the 15th, a 200-yard par-3, where I almost holed out a four-iron. And my no-brain forty-foot birdie putt at the 490-yard par-4 16th, which is longer than the 5th hole but flatter, wider, and more forgiving. The putt wandered over hill and dale and hung on the left side of the cup, then dropped.

  Which sent Mitch prancing around the green, doing a baton thing with the flagstick in his hand. I thought he looked like he was leading the Grambling band, and said as much to him.

  “Ohio State,” he said. “Doin’ the Buckeye Battle Cry.”

  I remembered he was from Columbus originally.

  I took the opportunity in the press center to publicly congratulate Knut Thorssun and Claude Steekley, my playing partners, on their rounds. They’d each fought their way to a respectable 74.

  It’s easy to shoot a low score when everything goes your way, I said to the press. The toughest thing to do in golf is turn it around, hold it together, when you’re off to a bad start.

  Claude had been four over after his quadruple bogey on the 2nd hole when he’d worn out the boundary stakes. Knut had bogeyed the first three holes after the embarrassing incident with Vashtine before we even started.

  Knut expected to find Vashtine waiting for him when we completed the round, but she wasn’t anywhere near the 18th green. He asked Dace Fackle, the USGA’s executive director, where she was.

  That took a moment. The executive director was in the midst of explaining to three angry golf writers why they could no longer have clubhouse parking passes, and why he didn’t think this should make him a prime candidate to have the shit beat out of him—he was trying to please as many people as he could at the same time.

  The writers walked away after telling the executive director not to leave his wife and children unguarded.

  Dace Fackle then turned to Knut. “Vashtine was taking a nap in the clubhouse, the last I heard. I’m told she said it was no problem for her to mix rum, gin, Crown, beer, and red wine, but apparently it was.”

  The first thing I was asked after I went to the interview room in the press center was about the “Vashtine problem” on the first tee.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” I said. “There are autograph hounds everywhere she goes. Sometimes they get out of control. Today it just happened to be on a golf course.”

  OK, I lied. It was for the good of the game.

  They wanted to Know if I Knew Vashtine personally.

  “Not well enough,” I said and smiled.

  Some laughed.

  They wanted to Know if I liked her music.

  “I didn’t Know rap was music,” I said.

  Some laughed again.

  I said the only funny thing that happened today was on the 2nd hole, and told them about the woman in the car stopping and asking about a hotel room, and related Pookie Steekley’s response to her.

  What I didn’t share with the press was the shock I received after I walked off the 18th green, courtesy of Pookie, she of the sexy overbite.

  While Claude was examining his scorecard, Pookie rushed over and gave me a tight hug and a tongue-exploring Kiss, and left me with a look that said, “Next time you’re in Austin, Bobby Joe, call me up—we’ll slip away and slide your Jimmy Dean sausage roll into the warm, juicy oven of my Krispy Kreme donut ring.”

  Well, that’s how I interpreted it, anyhow.

  The press heard that I went with the Show Dog off every driving hole and still Kept it in play. I missed only three greens but was lucky to pull off good chip shots when I did.

  I made a stab at humor, saying, “It’s fun to play that way. I find golf less stressful when you hit fairways and greens.”

  I envisioned a humorous headline—“Golfer Says Low Rounds Less Stressful”—and figured my interview would make their day.

  But that was before the space-alien teen bitch came in with a 70 that put her in second place.

  30

  he current lady in my life had been in my gallery since the 5th hole—I’d heard Gwen’s whoops and caught her glimpses—but I pretended I didn’t. I played Ben to her Valerie. Legend has it that at times Hogan concentrated so deeply in a major, he frequently didn’t recognize his own wife. It was as if he’d stare at Valerie when she’d offer him a sip of iced tea out of the thermos she always carried, and he’d say, “Have we met?”

  The first time Gwen and I spoke was after the round, a moment after Pookie Steekley retrieved her tongue from my mouth and moved on.

  Gwen walked up and faced me with her arms folded and a look.

  “Saddle oxfords?” she said.

  Some people might have called that an accusation. Others might have called it wise-ass.

  I said, “Saddle oxfords have always turned me on. Some guys like a woman in a sailor hat and a garter belt. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be on a computer or a cell phone or at a board meeting?”

  “Who was that woman?”

  “The woman congratulating me?”

  “No, the one hanging from the tree.”

  “That was Claude Steekley’s wife.”

  “They must be quite happily married.”

  “I don’t really Know her well.”

  “I could tell.”

  “Where’s your husband today, Gwenny?”

  “If you mean Rick, my ex-husband, he’s back in New York by now. He was here overnight. He ate dinner with our son and breakfast with me this morning.”

  “What will your title be at International Sports Talent?”

  “Are we going to fight this out right here?”

  “No. I have to do something. I need to go to the merchandise tent and buy caps and stuff for the pals back home. I want to get it out of the way before I forget about it.”

  “I’ll go with you. Maybe they have saddle oxfords.”

  The merchandise tent was a huge temporary plastic bubble, but it might not have covered all of Luxembourg.

  You entered at one end and checked out at the other. It was a department store of golf. Shirts were here, other shirts were there. Sweaters in that corner, windbreakers beyond. Caps hard right, visors hard left. Mugs and plates in between. Bag tags, watches, money clips, divot tools, towels, and headcovers were here, there, everywhere. Everything with a logo. A person could even purchase a golf ball or a golf club.

  The combination book store and art gallery located over in a corner was where we stumbled on Irv Klar. He sat at a table behind a stack of his books and in front of a wall of bad paintings of golf holes. He was signing his name in copies of his new book—for nobody in sight.

  “Put your name in
it, good as a sale,” he said as we stood looking down at him. “Long line an hour ago.”

  The title of his new bestseller was Three and a Half!

  At the bottom of the jacket in smaller print you could read what it was about: “The Story of Howie Berger, America’s Greatest Jewish Golfer.”

  I explained to Gwen that Howie Berger was a pro back in the thirties and forties. A guy who won the Canadian Open and not much else. But he was a mainstay on the Tour, a friend of the big names, and was said to have a sense of humor.

  Old story. When Howie would hit a wild shot, a ball that might fly into the gallery, he was Known to holler, “Three and a half!”

  Get it? Three and a half instead of fore? A nice saving? Him being Jewish? And having this Keen sense of humor?

  “Hence, the book title,” Gwen said.

  “Funny, huh?” Irv spoke up, still writing his name in the books. “That popped right out at me in the research. I Knew it was the title.”

  Leafing through the book, Gwen said to Irv, “Is there much about anti-Semitism in here?”

  “What for?” said Irv.

  “ ‘What for’?” Gwen said.

  Irv said, “Oh, you mean the Jewish thing? No. I didn’t come across much in the research. Howie’s dead or I could have asked him.”

  I seized the moment to introduce Gwen to Irv.

  I said, “Irving Klar, Washington Post columnist and famous author, say hello to Gwendolyn Pritchard. Gwen is Scott Pritchard’s mother.”

  “Hi, hi,” Irv said hurriedly, signing a book.

  A good-looking chick meant nothing to Irv Klar—unless she was a book reviewer or hosted her own radio or TV show somewhere in America.

  Gwen said to him, “I was assuming your book deals with prejudice. I remember hearing from the golf teachers who worked with my son that the club pro in the old days—Jewish or not—wasn’t allowed to dine in the clubhouse. The members would insist he take his meals in the Kitchen. That was apparently true at country clubs everywhere.”

  “Really?” Irv said, glancing up for a second. “I can use that in the paperback edition. I Know a good spot.”