P.G.A. Spells Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  “Standby sixteen,” Oswald said. “Parker, that’s Justin Thomas. Van … send it to 16…”

  The main announcer finished up what he was saying and then said “Let’s go out to sixteen…”

  “Sixteen-A,” Oswald said and the camera shot from the fairway showed Justin Thomas and his caddie talking as they sized up his next shot. Parker Long began narrating the scene, telling us how far Thomas had left to the green and what the wind was doing.

  “Standby ten,” Oswald said, “Kelsey, you’re up.”

  Thomas hit his approach shot and the camera followed it to the green.

  “Closer, Sammy, tight in,” Oswald said as the ball landed on the green. The camera zoomed in and we watched the ball bounce twice then check back and rolled to about fifteen feet from the hole.”

  Parker Long, in the booth, said “He’s got a great look at birdie there. Let’s go to Kelsey on ten. She’s got Billy Sommers.”

  “Ten,” Oswald ordered and the camera shot flipped over. Kelsey started talking about what an excellent season Sommers had going so far, and said he was really looking forward to playing in his first Masters in a few weeks time. Sommers was lining up his putt while she talked, and he stepped up and hit the putt.

  “Tight,” Oswald said and the camera zoomed in again. “Tighter!” We watched as the screen showed the ball creeping up to the edge of the hole, stopping there momentarily, and finally dropping in. There weren’t a lot of people in attendance on a Wednesday, but the ones who were there cheered lustily anyway.

  “Replay?” Oswald said.

  “Got it,” one of the assistants on the side of the room called out.

  “Cue it,” Oswald ordered. “And run replay.”

  Kelsey said something about how well Sommers was putting and that this effort demonstrated how his touch was still there.

  While we watched the putt again, Oswald was looking ahead for the next shot. He quickly scanned the banks of monitors, found a player ready to make a shot, and had both camera and announcer ready for his segue.

  Just in the first ten minutes, I found myself impressed with how seamlessly Oswald was able to move around the golf course, finding the next player and the next shot. Almost every one of the thirty or so monitors, each connected to a camera, showed a player either getting ready to hit a shot, hitting a shot, or reacting to a shot he had just made. Oswald was able to find, amid all those images and events, a narrative story line that progressed from one to the next without interruption. It was quite a performance. Ben Oswald was in his element, the Svengali making the story happen right before our eyes.

  For the next hour, I watched in amazement as Ben Oswald choreographed the cameras and announcers and replay tapes almost perfectly to show the golfers playing their way around the course. Four or five times, when one of the production assistants in the back of the room signaled, he announced commercials, and one of the announcers would say “We’ll be back to Plantation Pines right after this message.”

  It all looked quite effortless and easy, but I knew it wasn’t. But this was why IBS paid the Assassin whatever he wanted. I couldn’t see any mistakes. But when the hour was over and rehearsal was called, Oswald threw a pencil across the room at one of the assistant directors, a young woman on one of the replay controls.

  “You fuckin’ missed that putt,” he muttered. “It looked to me like Barnaby rushed that putt, left the face open. But you missed it. Left poor Fairfield with his thumb up his ass trying to describe it. Television is a goddam visual medium, you idiot.”

  “Sorry, Ben” she said, turning a little red.

  “Yeah, you are sorry,” he snapped. “Get the fuck with it or get the fuck out.”

  The woman turned red but said nothing. I figured everyone who worked for Ben Oswald must be on some kind of chemical assistance, or he would have been murdered years ago.

  At the end of the rehearsal, Oswald stalked out of the trailer. Arnie Wasserman stepped forward. “Good job everyone,” he said. “Let’s make sure we do it just as good tomorrow. Two o’clock call. We’re on-air at three-thirty. See ya then.”

  Nobody answered. There was no collective ‘yeah, aww-right’ response from the team. They all kept their heads down, finishing up with whatever buttons they had to push.

  Had I still been a golf writer with a newspaper column and a readership, I would have written something about how Ben Oswald was the kind of leader who inspired an ‘esprit de corpse’ from his team. That made me smile. Then I realized the only audience I had who I could share my wordsmithing brilliance with was my wife, Mary Jane. That made me sigh.

  9

  The next afternoon the golf tournament got underway. I took up my position at the back of the control room. A little after five, an hour or so after the telecast started, Ben Oswald told Van Collins, the head announcer, to intro my history segment.

  “OK Van,” he said, “Let’s cue up this Hacker crap. See what he came up with. Hide the women and children. Standby Hacker video.”

  When the live feed came back from a commercial, Van’s dulcet tones filled the speakers in the room. The screen showed a nice visual of one of the water holes at Plantation Pines, reflecting the bright-white clouds in the deep blue water of a pond.

  “We here at IBS are excited to introduce a new segment to our regular golf broadcasts,” Van said. “We call it Hacker’s History of Golf featuring noted golf writer and historian Pete Hacker. Here’s his first contribution …”

  “And…run tape,” barked Oswald, and the soundtrack began.

  The famous picture of golfer Bobby Jones, dressed in a jacket soaked through by rain, hair plastered against his skull, wearing an exhausted expression, filled the screen. And my voice-over began.

  In 1929, the great Bobby Jones had one of his most embarrassing losses as a competitive golfer. He was at the peak of his career and, like dominant golfers to follow like Hogan and Nicklaus and Woods, he was expected to win every tournament he entered, even though he remained an amateur.

  So in September of 1929, when Jones—the two-time defending champion-- ventured west to play in the U.S. Amateur held at the ten-year-old golf course at Pebble Beach, California, everyone assumed that the title was not in doubt—Bobby Jones was going to win, it was just a question of by how much.

  And the tournament began playing out according to form. After two rounds of qualifying stroke play, Jones indeed led the field. But in the first round of match play, the unthinkable happened. A young kid from Oklahoma, a caddie no less, beat the great Jones one-up. The two-time defending champion was gone. Mighty Casey had struck out.

  Jones didn’t play another competitive round of golf for six months. With time on his hands, he did go down the road at Pebble Beach and played at the new Cypress Point Club, and was so impressed that he immediately sought out the architect of that course, Dr. Alister Mackenzie, to come work with him to create the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.

  It wasn’t until February of 1930, a new decade, that Jones again got his clubs out, when he came to Savannah, Georgia to play in the Savannah Open against a good field of professionals. They played four rounds at the Savannah Golf Club, which claims a pedigree back to its founding in 1792, just about seventy years after General James Oglethorpe had founded the new colony of Georgia and laid out the grid-like streets and parks of old Savannah.

  And after a spirited weekend of golf . . . Jones lost again. This time, it was professional Horton Smith who nipped Jones by a single shot.

  Few people today remember the 1930 Savannah Open. But they should. Because that was the last tournament Bobby Jones ever lost. 1930, of course, was the year of Jones’ great Impregnable Quadrilateral, or what today we call the Grand Slam. 1930 was the year he never lost again.

  Jones went to Scotland in May of that year and won the British Amateur at St. Andrews. Two weeks later, he captured the British Open by two shots at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake.

  After
a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, Jones went out to Interlachen in Minneapolis and won the U.S. Open by two, and in September, at the famous Merion Golf Club in Philly, he beat Eugene Homans in the final round to capture the Amateur title he had lost the year before.

  And then he retired as a competitive golfer.

  Nobody since 1930 has repeated Bobby Jones’ greatest accomplishment, either by winning the old Slam of the two Amateur and Open titles in the same year, or in the modern version, which is winning the four major professional titles. In a few weeks, the only person this year with a chance to duplicate Bobby Jones’ greatest feat will be unveiled, when we find out who wins the Masters.

  But his journey that year started right here in Savannah, Georgia. So if you believe history can repeat itself, pay attention this week … not to the one who wins the title here in Sunday. But take a look at the runner-up. And wonder.

  And maybe go plunk down twenty bucks on the second-place guy this week with your favorite bookie or your local sports betting shop. Because you never know…stranger things have happened in this royal and ancient game.

  Shooter was right. Becky Ann Billingsly had taken Shooter's artsy video shots of the course at Savannah, a bunch of historical footage and my narration and created a great three-minute segment. She had found lots of historical stuff on Bobby Jones, and mixed it with the shots we had taken a day earlier, in Savannah and at the Savannah Golf Club, and added some dramatic music in the background. My voice did the narration, but it was only at the end that I was shown on screen. I thought I looked like a dork, but then I always think that when looking at a picture of myself. But otherwise I was pleased.

  When my piece was over, they went to a commercial. The control room was silent.

  “Where did you learn how to dress?” Oswald said finally. “Christ on a stick, you never heard of an iron?”

  That was all he said. They came back from commercial and he was quickly engrossed in doing his maestro thing, calling for the next important golf shot to be brought to the screens of the viewing audience, and telling the announcer how to set the stage.

  I heaved a silent sigh of relief. One of the replay editors caught my eye and gave me a smile, a nod and a brief thumbs-up. I guess I was now, officially, a TV guy.

  I felt my cellphone vibrate in my pocket. I knew better than to let in ring out loud when I was sitting in here. I fished it out and saw it was Mary Jane calling. I got up, went outside and answered.

  “Was that my handsome husband I just saw on TV?” she said. “It looked just like him.”

  “Yeah, I think it was,” I said. “Did I look like a dork?”

  “Are you saying that I married a dork?” she said. “That’s kinda insulting.”

  “Ben Oswald said my shirt wasn’t ironed,” I said.

  “No, I don’t expect it was,” she said. “You should ask him for a wardrobe consultant. That’ll fix his little nasty wagon.”

  “So, you saw the whole thing, right?” I said. “What did you think?”

  “I made sure I got home early today so I could watch,” she said. “You told me it would likely run in the first hour. I thought it was good. History, Savannah, Bobby Jones, the Masters, the Grand Slam. You touched all the bases.”

  “I think you mixed your sports metaphors there, toots,” I said. “But thanks. The video editor did a great job.”

  “No,” Mary Jane said, “The writer did a great job. As usual.” She paused. “When are you coming home? The kids miss you.”

  “Sunday night,” I said. “I’ll probably get in late. Gotta go through Atlanta and anything can happen up there. Tell DJ to save up some extra poop for me.”

  “Not a problem, there,” she said. “If I’m not still up when you get in, wake me up,” she said. “I’ve never kissed a TV star before.”

  “And I’ve never made love to a groupie before,” I said. “I hear it’s extra hot.”

  She made a purring sound and hung up.

  I went back into the control room and sat down in my chair on the back wall. The golf tournament wasn’t very interesting—it was the first round and nobody was exactly setting the place on fire. Still, Oswald and the crew tried to show a lot of players making a lot of shots, and they kept returning to show the top ranked players in the field, even the ones struggling on the day. I’m sure that Neilsen or Gallup or somebody has ironclad research that shows your average TV viewer would rather watch Tiger Woods at 12 over par than Joe Nobody who’s made five birdies in a row.

  The afternoon passed quickly. I was still fascinated by the interplay and coordination going on in the control room, and beginning to learn how the thing came together. It all still focused on Ben Oswald. The cameramen knew the shots he liked. The announcers knew the comments he wanted to hear. The replay people were constantly busy rewinding and cuing up tape in case Oswald wanted to see a particular shot again. The guys on the Chyron kept the stats and scores flowing across the bottom of the screen. It all worked like a well-oiled machine, at least for the folks watching at home, or sitting at the bar of a hundred country clubs.

  And then the well-oiled machine threw a rod.

  We were scheduled to telecast until six o’clock. That was the inalterable deadline: it was just the first round and our local affiliates has newscasts to broadcast and ads to run.

  By five-thirty, most of the A-level players were off the course. One of the benefits of being a leading money winner or a past tournament winner is that you don’t get the earliest or the latest tee times. The dew sweepers in the morning and the sunset closers in the afternoon all tend to be the young, the hopeful and the no-names on Tour.

  So at five-thirty, the only players left on the course were about ten players no one, including me, had ever heard of. So Oswald had his crew of announcers start talking among themselves while he threw a few shots up on the screen.

  “Van,” he said, punching through to his main announcer in the booth behind the 18th green, “Let’s talk about the Masters. We got twenty minutes to fill. Everybody join in.”

  For the next few minutes, all the announcers were chatting with each other about who was hot, who was not. Who always played well at Augusta and who hadn’t made the cut there in years. The kind of stuff golf fans eat up.

  After about fifteen minutes, Oswald mashed his talk button.

  “Parker? Are you still awake?” he said. “You care to join in?”

  There was silence. He tried again.

  “Earth to sixteen,” Oswald said. “We’re handicapping the goddam Masters. Your participation is required, dammit!”

  Silence.

  “What the fuck,” he said. “Did Parker Long decide to go home early? Benny? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here, boss,” Benny the cameraman on sixteen said. “But my platform is right above the booth. I can’t see if he’s in there or not.”

  “Jeezus X. Christ,” Oswald was seething now. “Parker? Can you hear me, you fricking idiot?”

  Silence.

  Oswald spun around and his eyes fell on me, sitting quietly against the back wall.

  “Hacker,” he said. “Get your ass out to sixteen green and find out what the hell’s going on with Parker Long. Now!”

  I did what I was told. From the area where the TV trailers were parked, it wasn’t a long walk over to sixteen green. The last three holes all bent around the TV compound to some degree. So it took me less than five minutes to get to the green. I saw the squatty TV tower behind the green: it was constructed out of metal tubes all bolted together like an Erector set, rising about fifteen feet in the air. Dark colored plastic had been wrapped around the tower to disguise all the metalwork and hide the cables.

  Benny the camera man was standing on the top of the tower, where a plywood platform had been constructed. Beneath him, two rectangular windows provided the view and thick plexiglass muted the sound of the announcer sitting inside at his wooden desk. But I couldn’t see insid
e.

  I went around to the back of the structure and climbed up the metal ladder steps that continued up to the rooftop deck. Halfway up, I pushed through the plastic sheet covering the opening and went inside.

  Parker Long was in there. He was sitting upright in his wheeled office chair, wearing his headphones with the mic attachment curved around in front of his face. There was a TV monitor, a notebook and a sheaf of papers spread out on the plywood shelf that functioned as his desk. He was facing out the windows looking at the green. But he wasn’t moving.

  “Parker?” I said and went closer. There was an acrid smell of something burning in the air. I went up and looked at his face.

  His eyes were open and staring. His mouth was arranged in an open grimace. A silent scream. His two hands were clenched on the plywood desk, fingers tightly contracted in an odd shape. I reached over and felt for a pulse on the front side of his neck, where the carotid artery runs up next to the windpipe. Nothing.

  I could hear something buzzing softly, insistently. I wasn’t sure what it was. Carefully, I reached up and removed Long’s headphones. The buzzing got louder. I held one ear pad up to my ear.

  “You stupid goddam lazy bastard…” Ben Oswald was in full meltdown. “Wherever you’ve gone, Parker, I will hunt you down like the dog that you are! You’ll never work on my network ever again after this, you sorry piece of puke. Goddam it, answer me!”

  I found the button labeled “Internal” on the desk in front of Parker, and mashed it down. “Uh, Houston,” I said into Parker Long’s microphone piece, “We have a problem.”

  10

  For most of the broadcast crew, the next few hours unfolded in what must have seemed chaotic, frustrating and endless circumstances. That’s what happens whenever the police are investigating a suspicious death, which Parker Long’s certainly was. But I’d been through the drill before, so I just wrapped myself in my invisible patience cloak and let it all play out.