by Dan Jenkins
The PGA began in 1916 and was unique because it was the only match-play major, and because of all the Walter Hagens, Byron Nelsons, Sam Sneads, and Ben Hogans who won it at match play. But then it lost favor with the press when it switched to stroKe play in 1958 in order to get on networK television, and it’s been striving ever since to regain the stature it once held. JacK NicKlaus did his part by winning it five times, taking his first one in ’63 and his last one in ’80, and Lee Trevino, Gary Player, and Tiger Woods have helped by becoming multiple winners, but it still suffers in comparison to the other three majors because it’s played in August.
Which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t choose to win just one PGA over a half dozen Bay Hill Invitationals presented by Cooper Tires.
No, I wasn’t about to miss the year’s last major, I told the member.
He told me to Keep my head down.
I said I’d be endeavoring to feather my irons and nestle my wedges.
From elsewhere around the room I couldn’t help sensing the unpleasant stares of members I didn’t Know. I figured they were thinKing, “How can that guy be with those two beautiful women? He’s not even an anchorman.”
I was naturally proud to be with two beautiful women, but I didn’t get to do much but watch them eat their salads for lunch, watch them smoKe, and listen as they discussed worKers comp, payroll taxes, health insurance, liability protection, operating overhead, and all the other things that add up to the fact that although they owned their own businesses, they spent most of their time working for the fucKing government.
“This is your basic bonding,” I said. “This is good.”
They dismissed me with glances and plowed ahead with their thoughts on late deliveries, license renewals, expensive repairs, endless paperwork.
They traded horror stories about dealing with help.
Gwen said where she lived, if the surf was up, she’d lose another sales person. The girl might want to come bacK in the future, depending on how it was going with her suntan.
Alleene said the thing about the catering business, you never Knew when a cooK or a prep person was going to show up for worK with Hepatitis B or a stab wound from a scuffle at home.
Gwen said, “In California, I’m better off with pale people. They won’t have a beach volleyball game they want to be excused for.”
Alleene said, “I’m partial to struggling students who want to be actors, singers, and dancers. They live four to an apartment, and they’re total mercenaries—lot of energy.”
MaKing an effort to contribute, I said, “California has more Gwyneth Paltrows than Fort Worth does.”
They both squinted at me, and said, “What . . . ?”
A little later, when the babes were done with their bonding, it seemed safe for me to ask Alleene a question.
“What do you hear about Cheryl lately? I only inquire out of fear.”
Gwen cut in. “She’s the shit-fucK lady, right?”
“Hmm huh,” Alleene replied with a glint.
Gwen explained that she’d listened to a message from Cheryl on my answering machine.
“I never hear from her,” Alleene said. “She left me bacK on the trail a long time ago. I understand she’s doing very well. Somebody told me she bought a million-plus home in that gated community over in River Crest. Or maybe it’s Westover Hills—I never Know where River Crest stops and Westover starts. I’ve been in one of those homes. They have great views. Off the back terrace you can see Omaha.”
Alleene passed along a bit of gossip about Cheryl she’d heard from catering a luncheon for west side ladies. It seems Cheryl was now going out with Frody Latimer, a short, puffy sap in his sixties that nobody took seriously. Everybody Knew Frody lived on a piddling inheritance. For years he’d traded on the fact that he was Kin to Albert Hamilton Latimer, one of the original signers of Texas’ declaration of independence in 1836. Frody liked to disappear on weekends and return wearing a necKbrace, a wrist bandage, or limping along with a cane. He’d claim he’d been injured in a polo match in San Antonio or Boca Raton. But everybody Knew that if he’d been injured, it must have been from playing Ping-Pong with young boys. The west side ladies agreed that it would be fitting if this Cheryl person married Frody Latimer, thinking he was rich and socially important. Nor would they be surprised in the least if Frody Latimer tried to marry the Cheryl person—he’d always been looKing for a meal ticket.
“Love a success story,” I said.
Near the end of lunch, Alleene asKed Gwen if she was going to the PGA in Detroit. Gwen said she hadn’t decided. She’d been away from her business for three weeks and needed to get home and see if her partner had burned it down.
“I’m sure I’ll wind up at the PGA,” Gwen said. “I’ll have two guys in it. This one and my son.”
“That must be exciting for you,” Alleene said. “Having a talented son and watching him do good stuff.”
“I’m a nervous wrecK watching, but it is fun, yes.”
Alleene said, “Gwen, I feel like I’ve met a new friend, so . . . I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Not at all,” Gwen said. “I feel liKe I’ve met a new friend too.”
“What exactly are your intentions toward my ex-husband?”
Gwen laughed. “I’m crazy about him.”
“I’m glad,” Alleene said. “He’s never had a good lady.”
“He had you.”
“We were both too young at the time—and after me, of course, came the cur dogs.”
“I have to tell you,” Gwen said. “This is so amazing. You guys staying close friends after you were divorced. I mean, I thinK it’s great. But it doesn’t happen everywhere. Believe me, it doesn’t happen in California. I may go to work for my ex-husband one of these days, but if I do, it will be for my son . . . my future . . . and a grotesque amount of money. It won’t mean I like the devious asshole.”
“It is unusual, I suppose,” Alleene said. “Maybe it’s just Fort Worth. People seem to hang on tighter to their memories around here.”
“May I say something?” I said.
“No.”
They said it at the same time.
48
The booK from Irv Klar came with the last batch of junK mail that arrived before I left to have my anKles taped, put on the pads, and don my cleats for the PGA Championship, at Oakland Hills in Detroit.
A note from Irv was included in the pacKage:
“I hammered this one out pretty quicK. I wanted to reach the stores in time for pigsKin season. Timing is vital in my business. By the way, it’s opening third on the bestseller list. Best wishes.”
Nothing about tough lucK at the British Open, but nice going, you finished second, old buddy. I’m sure if I’d won the thing, Irv would have said something about a booK proposal while the stove’s hot. British Open winner tells all and cures your slice once and for all—by B. J. Grooves with Irving Klar. Not that I’d be interested.
Irv’s latest effort was called Hike It to the Hebe.
I did stare at the title for a moment.
The subtitle was The Story of Norman “Noodgie” Goldstein, America’s Greatest Jewish Running Back.
The booK jacket informed me that Norman “Noodgie” Goldstein had toted the leather for Pitt in the early ’30s, then for the Green Bay PacKERS, and then for Alcatraz after he was sent to prison for income tax evasion.
That was all I needed to Know. But before I tossed it, I glanced at the photographs inside. The one I liked best was Noodgie at a night club wearing a tuxedo, chewing on a cigar, and flashing a big grin with his arm around a platinum blonde, who was identified as Sally Rand, the fan dancer. Noodgie was also wearing a leather football helmet.
When the call came from the Schlosshotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Hamburg, Germany, Cynthia did all the talKing—Buddy was in his blue silK robe in the middle of his room-service dinner.
Cynthia first explained why they were in Germany. She’d wanted to revisi
t one of her old haunts from her flight-attendant days with Delta. Her route had actually been from Atlanta to Munich, not Hamburg, but that was another story, she said.
She allowed that as much as they liKed Hamburg, a very chic city, they’d soon be going to the Villa d’Este in Cernobbio, Italy, where they had reserved one of the most desirable suites in all of Europe—their balcony would practically hang over LaKe Como—but if they were disappointed with the frescoes and the Persian carpets at the Villa d’Este, they’d simply move to the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, which was close by and practically sat in Lake Como.
“Frescoes,” I said. “You worKed with a lot of those at Delta.”
Ignoring me, she said Buddy was sure I’d understand that he didn’t want to be interrupted during his dinner of porK shanks with sauerkraut, green beans, and new potatoes—and lately he’d been trying to remember how many holes were on a golf course. Was it twelve, fourteen, or sixteen?
Funny old Buddy and Cynthia.
She did have important news, which was why they called.
It seems that Sven and Matt, her sons by Knut Thorssun, once Known as the unruly little shits, had gotten into trouble again, and right on the brink of entering college. It had happened while I was in London or I might have read about it.
Knut had rushed to Vermont to handle the situation, and apparently he had taken care of it. The boys would not have to go to jail, and they would still be allowed to enroll at Mt. Gidley.
“I’m sorry the little shits don’t have to do time,” Cynthia said. “I thinK it would have done Sven and Matt some good—and Lord Knows it would have been a good thing for society at large.”
Smoothing things over with the Mt. Gidley police and the university and the families, she said, had cost Knut something like $3 million, but the asshole could afford it.
I said I wondered if she could put her glass of wine down long enough to tell me what had happened?
Well, what happened was, Sven and Matt had gone to Mt. Gidley to looK around before they enrolled, and while they were looking around the town and the campus they came upon two unoccupied electric golf carts. The golf carts, it was later learned, belonged to the worKers at an apartment complex that was undergoing repairs.
Naturally, Sven and Matt stole the carts and decided to have a race.
It may or may not have been anyone’s fault that when they reached the top of a steep hill and started down, going full speed, they both lost control. Suddenly, the carts were going about fifty miles an hour toward a two-story building.
The boys were alert enough to leap to safety only seconds before the two carts crashed through the big plate-glass window on the ground floor of Mrs. Tate’s Fully Licensed Day-Care Center.
Well, six children, ages seven through ten, and two adults, wound up in the hospital with injuries. It was those two adults and the families of the six children and Mrs. Tate that Knut had been forced to money-whip in order to stop their cussing, screeching, and threats of legal action.
Doing a reasonably good imitation of the dumb-ass Swede she’d once been married to, Cynthia said, “Those two boys, Sven and Matt, by golly darn. To be sure, they are a couple of ring-tailed tooters.”
It was good to Know Sven and Matt hadn’t yet Killed anyone in this life, but I considered it bigger and better news that Grady Don Maples had finally scooped a victory on our Tour, his first.
I rooted him home on TV before catching an early evening flight to Detroit for the PGA.
Grady Don won by four strokes at Firestone Country Club in AKron, Ohio, in a tournament that had been Known for over three decades as the World Series of Golf but for the past seven or eight years had been Known as the WGC-NEC Invitational.
He called it “the alphabet classic.” Grady Don confessed to me when he arrived at Oakland Hills that he understood WGC stood for World Golf Championships, which evidently meant something to somebody somewhere, but he still didn’t Know what NEC stood for. Neither did I, to be honest.
He was a million-two richer after shooting a last-round 67 on Firestone South for a 268, 12 under. Sponsorships on our Tour shift with the winds of the economy.
I said to Grady Don he should think of it as having won the World Series of Golf, a name that once meant something to the public. He said he’d probably thinK of it as paying off the house in SouthlaKe.
There must have been those watching TV who thought Grady Don’s crowning moment came on the 17th green. That’s where he rapped a thirty-foot birdie putt too softly for it to ever reach the cup, and eight or ten inches off line to the right. Grady Don had slowly followed the putt on its path, giving it the finger every step of the way.
“I wasn’t giving that putt the finger,” he said on the practice range at Oakland Hills Monday when I Kidded him about it. “I was thinKing about our football team this season. I was sayin’ we’re number one.”
Grady Don and Jerry Grimes and I, and dozens of the other players, including Scott Pritchard, were staying at a Marriott near OaKland Hills. I’d reserved a suite—Gwen was coming Wednesday and I Knew how much she liked comfort. It turned out to be the bridal suite. I found this interesting because Gwen and I weren’t the ones getting married at the PGA that week.
Knut Thorssun and Vashtine Ulberg were.
49
Here was my question: Would you taKe your chicK to one of those Las Vegas chapels and have the wedding ceremony conducted by a guy in an orange suit with hair that looks like cumulus clouds, or would you and the chicK rather make up your own vows, invite the public, and get married on an outdoor soundstage at a golf tournament?
“Those are two swell choices,” Grady Don said.
Knut and Vashtine voted for the soundstage.
The soundstage was in the PGA’s tented village. The tented village was spread out on part of the other eighteen-hole golf course at OaKland Hills, the North, the “sister course” to the tougher and better Known South, which is always used when the club plays host to a major. The South was originally designed by Donald Ross in 1917, but it was Robert Trent Jones who doctored it into the “monster” Ben Hogan brought to its Knees in 1951.
I’d never heard the North course at OaKland Hills accused of being a challenging layout. In my travels I’d played all of the best sister courses at one time or another—Winged Foot East, Pinehurst No. 4, Baltusrol Upper, Olympic Club Ocean, Medinah No. 1, OaK Hill West—and I can tell you they work better as golf courses than they do as parKing lots.
The soundstage was erected for evening concerts during the PGA— entertainment for the public patrons, the no-clubhouse throngs. It was next door to the merchandise tent—the Golf Shop, they called it—and a large outdoor picnic area with tables and benches, and across a broad spectator walkway from the private hospitality tents.
The wedding tooK place at twilight on Wednesday, the day before the PGA started.
The amplifying system was of such excellent quality, we stood off to the side and on the last row among the two thousand people who attended the wedding, most of them soggy with sweat from having been on the course all day following practice rounds. It was decidedly August.
I was standing with Gwen, Grady Don, and Jerry. I noticed some of the other contestants in the crowd—Cheetah Farmer, Chance Minter, Hugh McAllister, even Phil MicKelson. A scattering of wives of other players were in evidence.
Gwen had arrived that afternoon from Orlando, where she’d spent some time doing mom-decorates-the-townhouse things for Scott. The Kid had been practicing at the PGA liKe the rest of us.
Scott wasn’t at the wedding. At this moment he was dining in downtown Detroit with Dad the Agent and Tricia Hurt, Dad the Agent’s newest client, the fifteen-year-old savior of women’s golf.
RicK Pritchard was a shrewd operator, I’d give him that. One of the first deals he’d lined up for Tricia Hurt, space-alien teen bitch, was for her to be a broadcaster, a foot soldier, for CBS on the PGA telecast.
What did it matter to CBS that Tr
icia couldn’t possibly Know anything about the PGA Championship or Oakland Hills? She was young and attractive and had “name recognition.”
Anne Marie SprinKle wasn’t present. If she’d been there with Pocahontas and the KodiaK bears, everybody would have Known it. I commented that it was good of her not to intrude on the wedding.
Gwen said, “If she’s serious about the ‘white Christian’ business, she’ll lose credibility. I don’t like to see her go off-message.”
“Off-message,” I said. “Is that far from here?”
You could safely say that curiosity seekers far outnumbered wedding fans at the Knut-Vashtine ceremony.
There were two warmup groups. This was a rock concert? If my vote had been the only one that counted, I would have left the minute the first warmup group came on stage, but Gwen and the guys insisted on staying to listen to the four pathetic skeletons who called themselves Stepping in Shit.
They played two devastating thunderstorms and got off.
Next came the other warmup group. Three chalK-white, diseased-looking punKs on guitars and a skinny vampire girl clanging cymbals. They wore white chef’s hats and aprons, and the name of the group was the same as the title of their big hit, “Spit in the Food.”
Their big hit may well have been the number they played, although it sounded more liKe a tornado ripping through small towns in Kansas.