The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life

by Steven Pressfield

  With this realization a terrible gravity settled upon my young boy’s shoulders. I grew five years in that instant. I felt words forming inside me and knew they were his, they were Vance’s. I stepped forward and spoke directly to Junah. “The Rules require you to replace the ball. Back where it was, before it rolled. Otherwise it’s another stroke penalty.”

  Junah blinked. His eyes met mine. “Thank you, Hardy. You’re absolutely right.”

  In the emotion and confusion everyone, even Jones and Hagen, had forgotten this vital footnote to the rule. Surely someone would have caught it before Junah hit; a marshal or official, or Jones or Hagen themselves, would have recalled and stopped Junah before he played. But it was I who in fact spoke. In an instant I felt calm and centered. I knew Vance was with me as he was with Junah; I had only to open my mouth and his words would come out.

  Junah replaced the ball. The gallery had by now swarmed totally over the hillside. It took minutes to clear them back, opening the narrowest of lanes down which Junah must hit. Darkness was falling fast as he rifled a mid-iron to the collar of the upper tier. His putt stopped six inches short. He had a bogey, to Jones’ and Hagen’s pars.

  He was one shot back, crossing to eighteen.

  By now the darkness had become palpable. At least ten minutes had been lost with the Rules discussion and clearing back the gallery. We crossed the narrow elevated pathway to the tee, with its brand-new carven marker:

  18

  Valor

  Par 5 541 yards

  Glimmers of daylight still lingered to landward but to the east, out over the ocean, it was already pure dark. You literally could not see the green, a third of a mile away along the bluff front. Automobile headlights illuminated the landing area of the fairway; more vehicles were being wheeled into position around the green and in the approach areas in front. The wind had stilled with the sunset, but lightning was flashing out over the ocean. “Gentlemen,” Dougal McDermott addressed the competitors, “would any of ye lik’ tae request a call of play due tae darkness?”

  Hagen just laughed. The gallery roared. They would have strung McDermott up by his thumbs had he tried to enforce this. He laughed too. “Then play away, lads!”

  The eighteenth ran flush along the ocean, a sixty-degree dogleg left. It was and is, in my opinion, one of the best two dozen holes in the world. And this hour, with the sun beneath the horizon and thunderclaps booming out over the Atlantic, it loomed beyond awesome to apocalyptic. The drive from the championship tee required a carry of 230 over raw duneland, aiming almost at right angles to the green, to a promontory that flared westward, to the right, leaving plenty of bail-out room away from the green. To the left, where a bold shot must travel, was one of the most terrifying but tempting targets a player could imagine. A ball that carried 250 and didn’t drift left could cut the steep angle of the dogleg and, if fortune allowed it to thread the narrow lane between the seawall and a row of four pot bunkers, bound forward into perfect approach position, a spoon shot from the green off a clean level lie.

  Hagen had the honor. One thing the master never did was allow tension to build, at least not his own tension. Now he stepped to the ball briskly, too briskly, planting and waggling so boldly that he seemed utterly to disdain the hole; the club swept back in a rush, he flailed one that started too far left, flirting with the ocean, then drew even more left. The gallery held its breath as the ball, which was hit hard and long, approached the cut of the dogleg. Would it carry? No! The ball steamrollered down, turning over hard now, landed smack on the seawall and bounded wildly out over the ocean, dead along a line of abandoned concrete pilings, caissons sunk for some long-forgotten jetty. It was too dark to see the splash; we could just glimpse my brother Garland and Tawdry Jones (the forecaddies had doubled up on this final hole) sprinting like madmen toward the point of impact. It made no difference. The Haig was dead.

  To his tremendous credit under the circumstances, Hagen remained absolutely jaunty. He plucked his tee from the fast-darkening turf. “This is when a man needs pals in the Mermaids’ Union.” He winked at two young girls in the gallery, then stepped back. Now Jones came forward.

  Every golfer knows the myriad thoughts that can crowd a player’s mind at moments like this. With Hagen out of it, a miscue by Bobby could virtually hand the match to Junah. This would be horrific, unthinkable after all that the three of them had been through. I glanced up at my man as I placed Schenectady Slim in his palm. He was in the Field, focused internally, yet I sensed him keenly aware of Jones and rooting for him. He wanted the best possible drive from Bobby. Crush it. Steam it. Tear the cover off it.

  Jones swung and nailed it, flush between the screws with all his adrenaline flowing. It was so dark now you could follow the flight only for the first hundred feet, then the white streaking blur melted into black. But the gallery knew Jones had gone all out for the boldest possible stroke and had cracked it perfectly, dead on line for the corner and drawing slightly back to trim the dogleg even tighter. All eyes squinted to the landing slot, illuminated faintly by the auto headlights. You couldn’t see; there just wasn’t enough light at this distance. Then we heard the cheers; we could make out the spectators beside the cars, heads turning to follow the ball, which was bounding powerfully around the corner of the dogleg. That drive—Garland and I paced it off the next day—measured 320 yards, threading a slot between the bunkers and the seawall that at its widest was no more than eight yards. In the dark.

  Junah hammered his drive as hard as Jones but, with the image of Hagen’s hook no doubt vividly before his mind, he protected at impact a shade too much against a draw. The ball started to the right, then push-drifted further…right, right, so far right that it finished through the fairway, on the upslope of a grass bunker, at least 270 from the now utterly invisible green. The shot was so far off line that I hadn’t even paced the yardage last night with Vance. Hiking up to the ball, the only positive thing I could see was that it was so far back there would be no question about which club to pick. It was everything. The whole bag. That or lay up, which was out of the question trailing by a shot. We got to the ball. The lie was good. Enough grass to get the persimmon on it. I squinted toward the green. It was all eye-balling, trying to judge distance in darkness falling so fast you could barely see the flag, even with a dozen autos focusing their headlights upon it. I was just assessing the possible run-up lanes, straight-in all-carry or from the right trying to hook in between the two flanking bunkers, when a cheer and a shout rose from the far left, the seawall. Tawdry Jones was standing atop a concrete caisson, fifty yards out into the surf, waving his white flag theatrically.

  He had found Hagen’s ball!

  There it sat, twenty feet above the pounding breakers, atop the third concrete piling!

  The maddest of rushes ensued. Galleryites, officials and marshals swarmed toward the surf’s edge. Yes, the ball was playable…yes, it was technically still in bounds. There was Hagen, in his $500 shoes, tiptoeing across the rocks with the breakers pounding all around him. His caddie Spec Hammond waded behind, along with two marshals and Dougal McDermott. The spectators whistled and cheered as Hagen took a hand-up from Tawdry the forecaddie and hauled himself up atop the piling.

  The caisson summit was concrete, enameled white with gull droppings, and about eight feet square. It was too dark for us to make out Hagen’s ball, but from the way he took a stance, practice-swinging without a club, he clearly could get wood on it; it was playable. There was a great deal of shouting up and down between Sir Walter and the officials below, then between him and Spec, who was standing in the surf now with the Haig’s gorgeous leather bag descending rapidly to ruination from the salt spray. Junah had given up on remaining detached inside his own game; he and Jones had crossed to a mound where they watched, with O. B. Keeler, like any other spectators. “Later, when he tells the story”—Jones indicated Hagen on his pinnacle—” he’ll swear he aimed for the piling deliberately.”

  “Who
knows?” Junah grinned. “Maybe he did.”

  In point of fact, Hagen’s fluke could hardly have been luckier. Out there on the caisson, he had cut the dogleg even more smartly than Jones, taking the surveyor’s line to the green and shaving a good fifty yards off the hole. He couldn’t have had more than a four-wood left.

  Hagen had selected a club now. Yes, it was a wood. Spec was passing it up to him. Along with what…ah, Hagen’s silver cigarette case. Now the Haig was calling down to Spec, pointing toward the green. What was he saying?

  He wanted Spec to attend the pin.

  Jones was chuckling deliciously now. Keeler slapped his thighs. The gallery loved it. It took three men to haul Spec up out of the surf; one of the headlight cars gave him a lift to the green on its running board. The sun was now all the way down. It was night. You could see Hagen’s cigarette glow as he drew on it, perched atop the caisson fifty yards out into the Atlantic getting ready to address his four-wood to a green surrounded by five thousand fans and illuminated by the headlights of a dozen automobiles.

  Spec held the pin. The Haig flung his cigarette into the sea. He addressed the ball, waggled once, then swung. You couldn’t hear the ball being struck, not with the surf and the rising wind, nor could you see it, streaking greenward against the black sky. The one thing visible was the Haig in his white shirt and lightgray plus fours, finishing in perfect balance, his best swing of the day.

  Then came the cheers. The press reports the following day said the ball carried dead straight, right over the top of the flag, hit ten feet past, took one hop onto the collar and spun back, coming to rest no more than twelve feet above the hole. From where we were, we thought he had holed it. The only way we knew he hadn’t was that Spec hadn’t pulled the pin. The fans whooped and cheered. You could see the headlights rocking, from the hurrahing galleryites perched on their roofs and running boards.

  Now Junah stepped to his ball. The Haig’s shot was an impossible act to follow; I could sense Junah rallying from the distraction, recentering within his own game, focusing on the job he had to do. He had the driver. Two-seventy into a chill, solid breeze. There was no choice but to let out every inch of shaft and wail it. He glanced to me as he set his fingers upon the leather. “Hold nothing back,” I heard my voice say. “Knock the shit out of it.”

  Junah grinned. I could see the tension vanish inside him. He set up rock-solid and swung from his heels. The ball boomed off the clubface and vanished into the black. Junah gave me a look. “I can’t hit it any better than that,” he said.

  My father and Garland were by the green then. They told us later that Junah’s shot had come in toweringly high, so high it seemed to drop unseen from the ether, tore a huge chunk from the green and tumbled dead, curling in to finish less than a flag length from the hole. Now the headlights really rocked. The galleryites lost all discipline; those who had been with Junah and those who had watched Hagen now surged uncontrollably forward toward the green. Jones stood alone with Keeler amid the stampeding masses; only the two autos that had been brought up to illuminate his ball protected him from the melee. Georgia State Patrolmen and Krewe Island marshals battled the mad rush back. Bobby and Keeler vanished from view, surrounded by the multitude. There were cops around Junah and me too, holding back the fans who were clutching at Junah’s sleeves and shouting encouragement.

  We couldn’t see Bobby swing, couldn’t see the shot. All we heard was a third roar from greenside, more tumultuous than the preceding two. Bobby’s one-iron, amid all that pandemonium, had struck the apron, taken one bound onto the green, curled left and missed going into the hole by less than six inches. It finished twelve feet past. I feel absolutely secure in declaring that, of all the thousands of rounds played subsequently over Krewe Island’s eighteenth hole, no three players ever stood better after two shots apiece.

  Now came the putts. Hagen lined up first, asking that the auto headlights facing him be extinguished so he could read the break. This took a good three minutes, as the vehicle owners were either imprisoned inside their cars and couldn’t open the doors, the gallery was pressed so tightly upon them, or, in the case of one cavalier fellow, the owner of an illuminated Auburn, insisted before complying on Hagen’s signing an autograph. Finally it was done. The Haig had his line. He struck with boldness. The ball rolled fast and straight, rammed itself dead into the back of the cup, then leapt up, bobbled…and hung stationary on the rear lip! A cry rose from the gallery that could be heard for a quarter mile. The ball wouldn’t fall. Hagen sauntered with infinite slowness, milking every second, hoping for a puff of wind, an earth tremor, anything to jiggle the ball loose that last eighth of an inch. He pantomimed blowing it in, feigned punching it billiard-cue style, even knelt for an extra ten seconds to line up his tap-in. No use. The ball refused to budge. The Haig popped it in, backhand, for his birdie.

  Now it was Jones’ try for eagle. No histrionics. Just a perfect, achingly tender roll that started four inches above the cup, took the tremulous slippery break down down down, ghosting in on the upper edge of the hole, creeping so slowly that it had to topple in, had it caught even the faintest fringe of periphery. But it didn’t. It slipped past, close but not close enough, and curled to a stop like Hagen’s, dead behind the hole. Another groan rose from the throats of the five thousand. Jones grinned and tapped it in.

  All eyes now swung to Junah. Hagen and Jones had tied, one stroke ahead. This putt, this eagle, would make it a three-way deadlock. With no chance of extra holes or a playoff tomorrow, since both Jones and Hagen had commitments elsewhere, that would be it. Junah would have played the planet’s greatest champions dead even.

  He asked that all headlights be put out. He would putt by the horizon’s afterglow and the lights up the hill from the hotel. Later in the press tent Junah was asked how he read his five-footer in such blackness. “With my spikes,” he answered. He meant the soles of his feet. He didn’t mention the Field. Or the line that presented itself to his eyes as vividly as if it had been inscribed across the green in incandescent paint.

  He just stepped up and rolled it in.

  A downhill left-to-right slider, struck not too hard and not too soft, taking the three-inch break and entering the cup smack in the center, front door all the way, to tumble and rattle gloriously in the bottom of the cup.

  Pandemonium. In seconds, Jones, Hagen and Junah were swallowed in the mob of frenzied, delirious fans. All three were hoisted onto the shoulders of the throng. It was tumult, raw bedlam. You couldn’t breathe, speak or think. Your ears thundered with the cheering and the pounding of your own heart. I remember trying amid the madness to calculate the scores. It was impossible. The brain was functioning entirely from its stem and no higher. It wasn’t until an hour later, when the scorecards had long been toted up and signed and I had secured a haven with Garland and my father in the corner of the men’s grill, that my brain could return enough to itself to actually think, to tally.

  To go with his morning 76, this is how Junah scored:

  He had played the final eighteen in 66 strokes, including two balls in the ocean and one self-imposed penalty.

  The final nine he had covered in 31.

  He had played the last six, as testing a-run of closing holes as existed anywhere in the world, in six under par, including the penalty shot on seventeen.

  For those six, Junah had gone eagle, birdie, birdie, birdie, bogey, eagle. Against a card of 4 3 5 4 4 5, his scores read

  2 2 4 3 5 3

  Jones and Hagen had played the last six holes in one under par and lost five shots to Junah.

  In the main ballroom of the grand hotel, the press was mobbing the competitors with praise and questions. I looked everywhere for Bagger Vance, but he was gone. I never saw him again.

  Twenty-four

  I FINISHED THE TALE. The clock on Irene’s mantel read 4:17. It was pitch-black outside, with the storm still banging and clattering under the eaves; the children had all fallen asleep on their couches a
nd the fire had burned almost completely down. Michael’s eyes in the emberlight were dark with reflectiveness. “Thank you,” he said to me, very low. “For what?” I asked, not sure of his meaning. He reached across and took my hand. “You know exactly for what.”

  Irene too remained preoccupied. Earlier, during a pause in the telling of the story, she had slipped away and returned with several dusty cartons—Junah’s scrapbooks and diaries, some of his old handwritten journals and research notes. These boxes now spread before her on the carpet; her fingers absently traced among their forgotten papers.

  In the quiet I glanced across at Michael, touched again by the bond I had felt with him since his childhood. Two generations ago, in the South of Junah’s day, Michael would have been condemned to a life of servitude. Society would have offered him no alternative. Now here he was, barely a moment later: a stunning athlete in brilliant health, handsome as a god, a doctor or very nearly. The intelligence in his eyes bore none of the reticence of former generations. He held nothing back through deference or diffidence. Yet still tortured…by what? Not, I felt, the obvious demons of race or rage. But by the same emptiness, the same barrenness of meaning which had tormented Junah so keenly such a brief few decades ago.

  “You mentioned earlier that there was a subsequent event involving Bagger Vance,” Michael broke in on these troublous ruminations, “but before we get to that, tell me please, what happened to Junah?” He turned to Irene. “You said he was involved in research concerning navigation, but I’m more curious about him personally. Did he change? And if he was not the same man, how was he different?”

  Irene hesitated. You could see that much of the tale still hadn’t settled with her either.

  “Did he go on playing golf?” Michael asked. “And what happened to Krewe Island? Is any of it still left? Is it playable?”