P.G.A. Spells Death

by James Y. Bartlett

  While I was glad to get away from the atmosphere in the locker room, which was rapidly turning toxic, it really had been a few months since I’d swung a golf club. Having a small baby at home tends to put a crimp in your golf game, as most new fathers eventually discover. I did some stretching at first, trying to get loose in the cool air, and took out a few irons to swing together, using the extra weight to unlock my back and legs, still stiff after the long drive across Massachusetts that morning.

  Kelsey apparently wasn’t as stiff as me: she began hitting some sand wedges at the nearest target green, about fifty yards away. It had been more than ten years since she played on the LPGA Tour, but she still had that wonderfully rhythmic swing, and her wedges flew low, hard, and in control, landing on the practice greens, jumping forward once and then sitting down hard on the second bounce.

  “Swing looks good,” I told her as I continued to stretch.

  “Oh, thanks,” she said. “I live in Port St. Lucie now, and I’ve been working with Johnny Hanlon,” mentioning the name of one of the golf gurus then in favor. He’s helped me out a lot. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be able to play all year round.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. I pulled out my pitching wedge and began hitting some half-speed shots, just trying to get a rhythm and make solid contact. The first few felt a little squirrelly, but eventually I started using the center of the clubface, and that felt pretty good. The golf swing is like riding a bicycle: it can be wobbly at first, but eventually you remember how it all works.

  I switched to a nine-iron and made a few full-swing shots. Same rhythm, same thought: hit it in the middle of the face. Surprisingly, it worked. Kelsey was in the hitting station to my right, so she couldn’t see my swing unless she stopped and looked, and she was busy going through her own warm-up. But she did call to me.

  “The sound is good, Hacker,” she said. “Don’t know where they’re going, but they sound good.”

  I laughed. “Is there a box on the scorecard where you get extra credit for a good-sounding shot?” I said. “I might need that against Jimmy today.”

  “Oh, you’ll need way more than that, Hacks,” Jimmy said, coming up to us and, finding his clubs leaning against one of the hitting stands, rooting around inside the pockets for a glove.

  “What’s the game, Jimmy?” I asked. “I thought we were just going to play teams.”

  “Oh, we can play any team game you want,” he said. “But I want you straight up. Match of cards? Even up?”

  “Fine with me,” I said.

  The other guys eventually came out to the range. I was hitting some nice three-woods now, having worked my way up through the irons. Amazingly enough, I was still hitting them mostly with the center of the clubface. One of the first lessons I learned when I played on the Tour, all those many years ago, was not to fiddle around if the swing was working. If you were hitting them sideways or thin or fat, well, you could and should try to make some kind of adjustment. But if you were hitting them solid and square, don’t do anything. What are you gonna do, hit ‘em squarer? Don’t think so.

  “Nice swing there,” said a voice behind me, after I hit another sweet little three-wood off the deck, the ball flying low and hard, with a nice little controlled draw, well out there past the 275 yard sign.

  I turned. A short, swarthy guy was standing there, dressed in well-pressed tan slacks, and a navy-blue Hudson Links windbreaker over a white turtleneck and golf shirt. He had a surprisingly deep tan for mid-April. He stuck out a hand.

  “Danny Abbate,” he said. “Head pro. Glad to have you with us today.”

  I shook his hand. “Thanks,” I said, “Looking forward to seeing the course.”

  “Just so you all know, there’s a lot of activity out there,” Abbate said. “We’re in full-go mode at the moment for the PGA Championship. Building the grandstands and hospitality tents. We’ve got most of the fairways roped off already. So you’ll likely hear some banging and might have to dodge around some trucks and cranes here and there. But everyone in the work crews knows to keep off the golf course proper if possible.”

  “Got it,” I nodded. “Everything on schedule so far?”

  “Pretty much,” the pro said. “The weather this spring has been helpful. We had a little snow at the end of March, but it wasn’t much, and only delayed us for a day or so. We’ll be ready.”

  “Well let’s get going then,” Jimmy Williams chimed in. “What are we waiting for? None of us are getting any younger.”

  “We’re just waiting for Clyde to get here,” Abbate said. “He’s on his way up from the city. We thought it would be helpful for you guys to have me and Clyde along to talk about the course while you play.”

  “I’m sure it will,” I said. I turned back to my practice. I wanted to whack a few drivers before I went to the putting green.

  “Hey Danny,” Jimmy called out from a few stations away. “Make sure you put me and Hacker together, will ya? We got a little side match going.”

  “Will do,” the pro said with a grin. “We’re not really busy today, so if you guys all wanted to play together as a group, I’m not gonna call the USGA on you.”

  I laughed. “Naw,” I said, “You go ahead and pick the groups. We’ll be fine.”

  A couple of us made our way, a few minutes later, over to the putting green. Here at Gold’s Hudson Links, they had installed a huge rolling acre of putting green and beyond that, routed around some small trees, hedges and park benches, they had built one of those putting courses—18 holes with actual miniature fairways, bunkery places, thick rough and even some water hazards. I’d seen courses like that in Europe in a few places, and had some fun trying my luck playing them. Only a place like Conrad Gold’s pleasure emporium would have the budget to install and maintain one.

  I was hitting some putts when another golf cart came zipping up and a big burly barrel-chested brute of a man climbed out. He was wearing tan corduroy plus-fours with dark green woolen knee socks, a heavy woolen sweater and a royal green tam o’shanter which matched the color of his socks, and which contrasted nicely with his bushy red beard and did nothing to contain a wild head of frizzy red hair.

  “Ach, lads and lassie,” he said, his brogue thick enough to walk on. “Sorry I’m late. New York is a big city, is it not? At least we ha’ a braw day for it.”

  Clyde Stewart, the course architect, went around and shook everyone’s hand. Then Danny Abbate came out and announced who was playing with whom. Jimmy and I were assigned to the second foursome, along with Kelsey and Stewart.

  The first group—Van Collins and the other three guys—made their way down the hill to the first tee. We were all riding in carts, but the club had a forecaddie, decked out in his white Augusta-like coveralls, to go around with us, helping us look for lost balls, read the greens and otherwise keep us organized. And moving.

  “You going to hit any balls?” I asked Stewart.

  “Nae, lad,” he shook his head. “Gawf is in me blood. Wasting time in practice is of no use to me.”

  I shrugged. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

  “So, Hacker,” Williams said as we waited for the group ahead of us to clear the way on the first tee. “What do you think, hundred a side? Birdies an extra twenty-five, eagles fifty?”

  One of Hacker’s Rules for Golf, developed over many years, is that the guy who proposes the bet has the most to lose. It’s simple psychology, really. Jimmy Williams thought he was top dog at IBS. And he deserved to think that: he had won several PGA Tour events, including two majors, in his career. That got him bragging rights, certainly over little ole me.

  But the Boz and I had suddenly leapt into the public glare. People were talking about us, how we did a golf tournament. They weren’t talking about Jimmy Williams, except perhaps to contrast his usual style with our new, brash way of broadcasting golf. I’m sure that pissed him off a little. Maybe made him feel a touch insecure. I don
’t know. So he probably thought a good and thorough thrashing of me on the golf course would help restore the equilibrium, at least in his world.

  Me? I could find no good reason to give a major crap about a match against Jimmy Williams. My reason for coming this brisk spring day was to familiarize myself with a golf course I had never played, so I could make some halfway intelligent comments about it when the PGA Championship was played here in another six weeks or so. Otherwise, I’d rather be at home in Boston’s North End, taking my kid for a walk.

  So I was really not all that interested in playing along with Jimmy’s little swordfight scenario. I’d gladly sign an affidavit to the effect that he was a better golfer, and had a larger dick. No biggie for me.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  The forecaddie told us the fairway was clear. Jimmy motioned at me to go first. “Tee is yours, Hack,” he said. “For this hole, anyway.”

  I smiled, teed my ball and took a look down the fairway. The first hole at Hudson Links was a straightaway par four, a healthy 470 yards or so, playing downhill in the general direction of the river off in the distance. There was a nest of bunkers on the left side and another big one on the right, but the latter was way out of my range. I aimed at the right-side bunker and hit a nice controlled little draw that came back to the center, hit on the fairway and bounced away down the hill.

  “Ach, laddie,” Clyde Stewart said. “Ye hit that one jest like the bloody architect designed it!”

  “Good shot, Hacker,’ said Kelsey, who was waiting to hit from one of the more forward tee boxes.

  Jimmy Williams was uncharacteristically silent. He was next to play, and he tried the opposite attack: he started his ball down the left and tried to cut it back to the center. But it didn’t cut, and it dropped out of sight into one of the bunkers.

  “Fuck,” he said. “If I could find the bloody architect, I’d kick his sorry ass.”

  Clyde thought that was funny, and was chuckling when he hit his own tee shot. Kelsey followed and we were off. Kelsey and the forecaddie drove the carts and the three of us walked.

  “It’s lovely country up here,” Stewart said. “Very ancient rock formations, millions of years old. And the river here runs as deep as anywhere along its length. If we were in Scotland, we’d call it the Firth of Hudson, even if there’s no tidal flow way up here.”

  “How’d you meet Conrad Gold?” I asked.

  “He was planning to build a fancy new club along the River Clyde west of Glasgow,” Stewart said as we marched along the fairway. “I went to meet him for that job. But the finances fell through, as they often do, and the project came to naught. But we seemed to hit it off fair well, and he hired me to do a course in the south of France and then this one.”

  Kelsey hit her second—for which she needed a hybrid iron club—and Jimmy climbed down into the bunker for his second. He had about 170 yards left, but had to get over the front lip, which meant he’d probably have to lay up. He took a more lofted club and managed to get his ball to the front edge, just off the green.

  Clyde hit his ball, then came over to where I was standing.

  “He’s a strange wee man, Conrad,” he said. “But he knows the gawf. Knows what he wants as well. After I did the first routing here, on paper, he came and walked the ground with me. Naught but trees and weeds and brambles, but he could see the holes. Even with naught there, he understood. So he was tellin’ me to move a green twenty feet left or add a tee box there. Quite impressive, really.”

  I pulled a seven-iron and made a nice relaxed swing. The ball flew down the hill and ended up hole high, about twenty feet to the left of the hole. It was just like on the practice tee—I had a good rhythm and, by not trying too hard to do anything, I hit the ball square on the clubface. Makes it an easy game.

  Jimmy chipped up to five feet and, after I had missed my birdie, he sweated over his putt. But he made it, and did a little celebratory dance before plucking his ball out of the hole.

  “Nice putt,” I said. “Hope you can keep that stroke going.”

  “Keep your mouth off my game,” he growled.

  We played on in the breezy and cool morning. Clyde Stewart, despite his aversion to practice and warming up, played a very respectable game, especially around the greens, where he was deft with chipping and pitching, and ran in enough putts to keep most of the bogeys away. By the time we made the turn, he was two over, about the same score as Kelsey Jenkins, who was also playing good golf, save for the seventh hole which she doubled when she found herself trapped behind some trees. She birdied one of the par threes, after a lovely four-iron over a blue-black pond to about three feet.

  There was a lot of pre-tournament construction going on in the background. Workers were laying plywood and block foundations, erecting metal scaffolding and installing long rows of aluminum bleachers. Later, others would wrap the scaffolds and bleachers in dark plastic to hide “the bones” and make the structures look neater. The workers mostly ignored us, save for a couple of cat whistles at Kelsey. She smiled at them and raised her middle finger in their general direction.

  I was playing par golf, probably because I wasn’t even thinking about my score. I had somehow stumbled upon a rhythm back on the practice tee, and I just kept hitting shots with that same relaxed, even, unhurried tempo. My drives found the fairways, my approach shots found the greens and I two-putted everything. I don’t think I was ever in the rough or a bunker on the front side, and missed just one green, but even then was able to putt it from the fringe. Pretty ho-hum, although I was enjoying myself, but I put that down to the company. Clyde Stewart kept us all loose with his rambling tales of courses he loved, European players he knew and occasional stories about how Conrad Gold had made him move this green thirty feet further up a hill, or bring a water hazard closer to the edge of a green. It was interesting to talk about shot values and think about how the best pros in the world would play this course in six weeks.

  But my steady and unexciting play was driving Jimmy Williams slightly crazy.

  “Another goddam par,” he said when I tapped in a ten-incher on the long ninth. “Do you ever make anything else?”

  “Bob Jones used to say Old Man Par was the main opponent,” I said, picking my ball out of the hole. “Not the other guy, not the course…just Old Man Par. Beat him and you win.”

  “You’re supposed to beat him, not bore him to death,” Williams said. He was one down for the front nine, after he had bogied the sixth.

  The chef had set up a charcoal grill outside the clubhouse, and had a selection of burgers, fat sausages and assorted kinds of salad waiting for us. I was starved and loaded up.

  Jimmy looked at me. “Aren’t you worried about eating too much, throwing your game out of whack for the back nine?” he said.

  I rummaged around in the cooler filled with ice and pulled out a bottle of beer, a locally brewed IPA. I popped the cap and took a long pull. Then I smiled at Jimmy.

  “What, me worry?” I said. I heard Kelsey chortle.

  We all heard the chop-chop of a helicopter approaching the club overhead. We all looked up and saw the bright gold fuselage with the dark tinted glass bubble at the front of what we assumed was one of Conrad Gold’s corporate fleet of copters. This one slowed, circled a bit, then headed for a helipad on a grassy level just below the front facade of the clubhouse. It made a perfect soft landing, the engines gave out a final roar and then went silent, and we watched as the blades continued to go round and round. The side door slid open and the unmistakable bald head of Conrad Gold climbed out. He looked up the hill, saw us, and waved.

  “That guy knows how to make an entrance, doesn’t he?” Jimmy Williams said.

  15

  “Gentlemen,” Conrad Gold said, when he had climbed the hill up from the helipad and joined the group of us sitting around in our golf carts, munching on lunch. “I hope you left some food for me. I’m starved.”

  He went over to t
he barbecue and helped himself to a burger with all the fixings and a canned soft drink. He came back and sat down in the cart next to Kelsey. He nodded at her.

  “I meant ‘gentlemen’ in the broadest sense,” he said.

  “No offense taken,” she said. A woman who knows how to choose her battles.

  “How have you found the course so far?” Conrad continued, as he chewed. “Think it will present a good test for the PGA?”

  “Lots of elevation change,” Van Collins said. “Every shot seemed uphill or down. Add in some May weather and they might have a hell of a time out here.”

  Gold nodded, wiping some mustard off his chin with a napkin. “True enough,” he said. “The back nine is quite a bit flatter, as the holes are mostly down along the river. But there is water to be found on almost every hole, right Clyde?”

  “Oh, aye, Mister Gold,” the big Scotsman said. “Plenty o’ places to get off the straight and narrow.”

  Gold looked at me.

  “I enjoyed your, er, unique commentary the other week,” he said. “Are you planning to continue with that? Or has the network asked you to tone it down?”

  “Be kinda hard to tone down who I am,” I said. “Probably holds true for Boz as well. No, Ben Oswald hasn’t told either of us to change anything we’re doing. So we’ll probably keep doing it.”

  “I see,” Gold said. “Well, like I said, I found your banter quite amusing. At least it’s different.”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Mister Different.”

  “You guys finished?” Jimmy Williams chimed in, probably upset that no one was talking about him. “I’m ready to hit the back nine.”

  “Well, let’s get to it, then” Collins said. “You gentlemen ready?” He didn’t apologize to Kelsey for his gender assumption.

  Most of us were, so the first group headed to the tenth tee. Kelsey went inside the clubhouse to visit the ladies room. The rest of us went to the tee to watch. Clyde Stewart announced he was going to join the first group, with Van Collins, so he could expiate on the golf course with him for a change. Conrad Gold announced he would ride back and forth between groups.