I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  “Guys are unbelievable,” Susan said. “If these had been women playing, we would have driven her to the emergency room immediately. The only thing that could have stopped us was a good sale.”

  “How could you not go straight to the hospital as soon as your friend got that bee sting?” Nancy asked.

  “Because there was no hospital between Number 6 and Number 7,” I said.

  Women! I mean, it’s not like Jack got his foot caught in a fairway mower.

  (Did I mention how well I was hitting my five-wood?)

  So we took Jack to the hospital, and they kept him under observation in the emergency room for three hours to make sure he wasn’t suffering toxicity. Jack phoned his wife to explain he’d swallowed a bee, and he wouldn’t be home for a while. Twice he had to ask her to stop laughing.

  Jack didn’t want us to wait for him; he said he’d take a cab home, which I thought was a real nice gesture on his part, because if we left then, we’d have been back in Washington by 3:30, and we could have gotten in another eighteen before dark. But a cab from Gettysburg to Washington would’ve probably cost a hundred dollars. So we waited for him.

  “That’s the least you could do,” Nancy said. “Was there anything good to read in the waiting room?”

  “How should I know?” I said. “We had three hours to kill. We went into town and toured the battlefields and had some ice cream.”

  “You left him alone in the emergency room?” Nancy asked in horror.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Are you crazy? You never leave somebody alone in an emergency room. You never, ever leave the waiting room. Because when you come back, they’re gone! And nobody knows where they are.”

  I know where I’d be. In the rough.

  And Come out Swinging

  I can talk about it now. Now that I haven’t killed anyone.

  That was my great fear as I stepped to the first tee—killing somebody on the course. There’s got to be like, what, a two-stroke penalty for that?

  Last week I played in a nine-hole charity match with three professional golfers at the Kemper Open.

  Three pros.

  And me.

  Grant Waite, Billy Andrade, and Tommy Armour III, the grandson of the legendary golfer Tommy Armour, the “Silver Scot,” who died in 1968—and could still beat me. Among them, they have more than $9.5 million in career winnings.

  I once won a $2 Nassau from a one-legged man, and I had to sink a ten-footer on 18 to do it.

  I have a 22 handicap. I am not Tiger Woods. I am in the woods.

  Oh, did I mention the gallery?

  Yes, two hundred people lining the fairways to watch us play. It’s one thing to trust a pro’s accuracy. But the only way spectators could guarantee safety around me would be to stand in the middle of the fairway.

  There I was on the first tee, my legs shaking. There was a pool of water at the base of my spine that could fill the Grand Coulee Dam. The sole reason I wore long pants was so nobody could see the drip-drip-drip down my leg. I chose a pewter shirt, to coordinate with my ashen complexion.

  “Is there anything you need?” a tournament official asked me.

  “I need a catheter,” I said.

  It’s not like I hadn’t been warned against doing this. My friend Mike Lupica, the big-shot New York sports columnist, had called and said, “I did this last year, and I was shivering in my shoes. And I’m a good golfer. I’ve played with you, Tony. You’re rancid. You’ll make a fool of yourself. Get out of it now. Tell them you’re having a liver transplant.”

  If that wasn’t enough, I’d talked to Joe Jacoby, the Redskins’ great lineman. Joe is six feet seven and 325 pounds. Week after week, year after year, he was in hand-to-hand combat with the biggest, strongest men in the NFL. He is fearless. He said to me, “I did this once. On the first tee, I was so frightened I thought I was gonna heave.”

  Yet there I was on the first tee for all the world to see, shaking like Tina Turner—only looking less appealing.

  My friend Monty was caddying for me. He told me to take a deep breath and “think positive swing thoughts.”

  “Okay. I think I can. I think I can … avoid killing anyone. With luck, I’ll just maim them.”

  So the pros have already hit from the back tees, which are located in the general vicinity of Nebraska. Three towering drives down the middle. I’m teeing off a cab ride in front of them. I call out to the crowd, “I’m a twenty-two, boys and girls. Get ready to scatter.”

  They laughed. Nervously.

  “Slow backswing, and keep your head down. You’ll do fine,” Monty told me.

  Instead, all the failures of my life flashed before my eyes—all the way back to seventh grade, when Denise Levine refused to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with me. (The tart was holding out for Lloyd Glauberman.)

  I did everything wrong. I swung way too fast, and I jerked my head up like someone had just hollered, “Look, there goes Anna Kournikova!”

  The ball squirted dead left into grass that hadn’t been mowed since disco was king.

  “Mulligan!” I shouted, and the people echoed, “Mulligan!”

  The second ball I hit solidly, though way off line, somewhere to the right of Tom DeLay. I don’t want to say the rough where I landed was deep, but I found Amelia Earhart in there. By the time I got the ball back near the fairway, the pros had already finished No. 1 and were on the tee at No. 2.

  I didn’t hit a single shot onto the fairway in the first three holes! I crisscrossed the terrain so many times I felt like Lewis and Clark.

  Grant Waite, who’s Australian, went wading calf-deep in the rough looking for my ball and said with a big grin, “Where I come from, they call this the outback.”

  Just what I needed, Crocodile Nicklaus.

  I was so frustrated and embarrassed, I went into the crowd to get my son Michael to hit a shot for me. But apparently I had embarrassed him, too. As I approached, he said, “Get away from me. Who are you? Somebody call the cops!”

  Finally, on the fourth hole, I hit a drive straight.

  “What happened?” Andrade asked me.

  “I think the drugs kicked in,” I said.

  I got to the green in four shots. Andrade was there in two, looking over a twelve-foot putt. “Can you give me a good read?” he asked.

  “Tuesdays with Morrie,” I said.

  The fifth hole was my shining moment. I hit a good drive, with a 9-iron shot left to the green. Then with Monty lining me up—I had initially aimed myself into a guy’s backyard—I hit a shot as pure as Heaven. It landed four feet from the flag and stuck there like a dart. I walked to the green on a cloud. The gallery cheered. I thought: This is what the Anti-Hillary, Rick Lazio, must have felt like just before he fell on his face in the Memorial Day parade and split open his lip.

  I begged the pros for a “gimme.”

  It was a charity match. (All I wanted was a little charity!) Whoever won each hole got one thousand dollars for his favorite nonprofit.

  “I’ll split the money with you if this is a ‘gimme,’ ” I said.

  They said no.

  “I’ll give you the money,” I said.

  They made me putt.

  I tried to force good swing thoughts into my head, but all I could think of was the Pamela Anderson–Tommy Lee tape. Which caused me to perspire even more.

  I stood over the ball longer than Battlefield Earth was in the theaters. Finally, I swung my putter. The ball went left but caught the hole in time, rolled around and down. I’d made a birdie and won the hole from three pros in front of two hundred people.

  I was the happiest journalist in the world. Well, maybe just behind that guy who married Sharon Stone.

  Someone in the gallery called out, “What’s the secret of your success?”

  “I wear women’s clothing,” I said.

  Scuffed Links

  Once again I was invited to play in a nine-hole Celebrity Skins match with three pro golfers a couple of d
ays before the start of the Kemper Open. The reason I got chosen as the “celebrity” was because Jim “What’s in It for Me?” Jeffords’s Labrador retriever, Strom, turned them down.

  I got to the driving range early. I hoped that hitting a few buckets of balls would calm me down. I don’t want to say that I was nervous, but when I asked why my drives weren’t going very far, my caddie pointed out, “You didn’t take the head cover off, Einstein.”

  There were about twenty-five golf pros hitting, and I wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I’m a 20 handicap, which means if you’re standing anywhere near me when I swing, you’ve got a fifty-fifty shot of needing CPR. Unfortunately, the only open spot was next to two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, who had no clue that they’d let civilians onto the range. I nodded to him and started spraying four-irons. No two of them went in the same direction. My shot pattern looked like the walls in Linda Blair’s bedroom.

  When I finished, Lee was gone. Later a marshal told me this story: “Lee Janzen came up to me and said, ‘I need security.’ When I asked him what he needed security for, he said, ‘There’s a guy next to me on the range, and he must be a twenty!’ ”

  Lee Janzen was afraid of me! He takes one look at my swing and he calls security. Maybe he was scared it was catching, like foot fungus. But give him credit for knowing a 20 when he sees one, boys and girls. That’s why he’s a professional.

  I wasn’t going to be humiliated. I boldly took a few more swings, unearthing a couple of divots the size of dinner plates, then walked to the first tee to meet the pros I’d be playing with. (By the way, the range balls—which are usually so beat up they look like they tried to hold out on Paulie Walnuts—were brand-new Titleist Pro V1s. Pro V1s rule! They go about twenty yards farther than most balls. The guys where I play refer to them as “Viagra balls.” They cost at least six dollars apiece. I stuffed three in my pocket. Had I thought I could get away with it, I’d have poured a whole bucket down my pants and walked around like Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein.)

  I made some changes to my game this year. Most important, I wore darker clothing so it was harder to see the stains from my flop sweat. And believe me, I was sweating—especially when I found out one of the pros I was playing with was John Daly, who is so long even Clarence Thomas won’t play with him. So much water collected at the base of my spine you could have held the three-meter springboard competition on my behind.

  My son, Michael, couldn’t believe it. “You’re playing with John Daly!” I almost had to revive him. Later he told me: “I was scared for you. I was afraid he’d get a bogey and you’d say something ruthlessly sarcastic, and he’d spear you with the flagstick. I’d be fatherless. Then I couldn’t go to the country club anymore—because you’re the member.”

  It turned out Daly was great fun. When he found out a gathering thunderstorm would reduce the match to six holes, Daly said, “Let’s just play one and go eat.”

  The other pros with me were Bradley Hughes and my partner from last year, Grant Waite, whom I really like. Grant saw me top a shot, maybe twenty-five feet, and remarked to the gallery, “I recognize that shot. Then again, I played with Tony last year.” Grant remembered my travails on No. 2: “We lost him for a while. He went into the woods and didn’t come out. He showed up on No. 3 tee, and we welcomed him back with a fruit basket.”

  A lot of people wished me well. They said they’d followed me around last year. Which explains why they were wearing helmets. Bada-boom.

  My proudest moment was when I teed off on the first hole and hit it in the fairway. I thought I actually heard somebody yell, “You da man!” Though looking at my legs it’s possible he said, “Get a tan!” Last year I yanked my tee shot sixty yards dead left into rough so thick you could lose your Senate majority in it. My son was walking behind two guys who were amazed at my improvement. “At least he got off the tee,” they said. “Last year he was so terrible we thought they’d send a ranger out and pull him off the course.”

  Sadly, I hit my second shot into sand, and I couldn’t get out. The same thing happened to me on the next hole, too. I spent more time in the sand than the Kuwaiti National Guard. But let me tell you about Daly. The pros play No. 2 at 615 yards, the longest hole on the course. Without even taking a practice swing, Daly blasted his tee shot 310. The ball could be heard yelping in pain. If Mir had a trajectory like this, it’d still be up there.

  Meanwhile, I’m in the sand. I ask Daly what I should do. Daly has now seen me swing maybe five times. He pulls out his cell phone and calls, “Security!”

  I top a five-wood and barely get out of the trap. I hit it again. And again. I’m laying 4 and I haven’t even seen Daly’s ball yet.

  I ask Daly, “How far am I?”

  Daly laughs. “You don’t have that club. It hasn’t been invented yet.”

  We finally get to Daly’s ball. He didn’t even set his feet—he just hit it three hundred yards while he was moving! Like he was playing polo. Next time maybe he’ll hit it from a horse. The course was wet, so Daly got no roll, and he was five yards from the green in two. Then, approaching his ball like he was hurrying to take advantage of the Rudy Giuliani Three’s Company Memorial Day Weekend Package, Daly nonchalantly chipped to within a foot of the hole.

  If the rain hadn’t come then, I have no doubt he’d have birdied No. 3 while walking on his hands and eating a meatloaf sandwich.

  I felt so cowed and insignificant beside him. But then I thought, Sure, but can he write quality airline poop jokes?

  My Berlin Call

  The world needs a new Isaiah Berlin. Let it be me.

  Berlin, the noted Oxford scholar, died recently. He was very famous. Well, okay, I never heard of him—I thought maybe Irving Berlin died again—but he must have been a huge deal because The New York Times front-paged his obit and filled up a whole inside page with praise: “Sir Isaiah defied classification … a bon vivant, a sought-after conversationalist. Sir Isaiah seemed to know almost everyone worth knowing in the twentieth century. Freud, Nehru, Stravinsky, Boris Pasternak, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Chaim Weizmann, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Felix Frankfurter.”

  (Yeah, but was he ever on Larry King Live, like Kato Kaelin?)

  I want an obit like that. Of course, I don’t know that I can measure up to Sir Isaiah. He knew Nehru and Frankfurter. I’ve worn one, eaten the other.

  He defied classification. In the ’60s I simply tried to avoid classification.

  What a life Sir Isaiah led. Eating. Drinking. Partying. Schmoozing. He was like Sammy Davis Jr., but with two good eyes.

  I need to change my life. The way it’s going now, my obit will run just below the one that said: “J. W. Tinklepaugh, fifty-one, died recently while attempting to give himself a colonoscopy. Mr. Tinklepaugh was employed in the fast-growing amusement field as a coin changer. He spent much of his spare time at a Laundromat. He once bowled a 194. Funeral arrangements are pending, as no one has claimed his body yet.”

  Sadly, I have no bona fides as a bon vivant. Last week People came out with its list of the world’s sexiest men, and I wasn’t on it. Again. In fact, there wasn’t one fat white bald guy on it. Not even Marlin Fitzwater!

  George Clooney was named the Sexiest Man Alive. (Although I think there was a write-in for Sir Isaiah from the Queen Mum.) What does Clooney have that I don’t? I mean other than his fabulous Batman suit, a starring role on ER, chiseled good looks, and a coterie of drooling babes?

  (But how about his mind? Does he know the capital of Missouri? Did he ever play Yahtzee with Sir Isaiah Berlin?)

  People also named its runner-up ten, divided into categories. Sexiest Explorer: someone named Jerry Linenger, whose apparent qualification is that he spent 133 days aboard Mir, and none of the toilets exploded while he was up there. Sexiest Businessman: The guy from Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson, photographed in a terry-cloth robe that he apparently picked up at Hugh Hefner’s pad. Sexiest Royal (a short
list): Prince Felipe of Spain, who’s pictured wearing a puka shell necklace. (Phil, sweetheart, it’s the ’90s. Don’t they have calendars in Spain?) Sexiest Anchor: Matt Lauer, who ought to thank God for his spinal cord, or else his head would float away like a balloon. Sexiest Author: Serial Shirt Remover and Tree Cutter Sebastian Junger. Etc.

  So I’m not sexy. And though I talk a lot, nobody has ever called me a “sought-after conversationalist.” Often at home when I begin talking, the room clears out. I am human Glade.

  I do have my own radio show. Hundreds tune in. My audience is full of deep thinkers and beguiling conversationalists. Here’s an example.

  Me: You’re on the air.

  Caller: Yeah, I wanna fire the football coach. He’s a moron. I hate his offense. I hate his defense. He’s a moron. A monkey could come in here and do a better job. My dog knows more about football than this moron.

  Me: I gather you think he’s deficient in some areas.

  Caller: He’s a freaking moron.

  Me: And what qualifies you as a football expert?

  Caller: I drive a beer truck.

  I used to imagine ways of making my résumé more urbane. All the news about the British au pair last week reminded me that I used to think that having an au pair was an extremely sophisticated thing. My main reason for having children was so I could hire an au pair. I loved saying “au pair.” It sounded so continental. I believe it means “jailbait” in French.

  I would set very high standards for my au pair. Education, ambition, and love of children would be important, of course. But foremost, my au pair would have to be Scandinavian. She’d also have to answer a detailed questionnaire, including “What I want to do most in America is …”

  Correct answer: “… fold underwear in the basement with the man of the house.”

  So where am I? What’s my obit going to look like?

  “Anthony Irwin Kornheiser died a broken man, trying to be the next Isaiah Berlin. He never went to Oxford. He was never sexy. He never had an au pair. And the only person who ever called him ‘Sir’ was a kid working at McDonald’s.”