Looper

by Michael Conlon

  “I’m stuck on doubles, fourth team again. Brenda Richards and me.” Kate gives the ball a hard whack, and it careens off the side of the wicket, nestling up against a tree trunk.

  “I’ll bet your friend Penelope made it. She’s a helluva athlete.”

  “She made varsity.” WHACK!

  “Varsity? As a sophomore? Wow, she’s sure something.” Pop flips a burger, puts down his spatula, and tugs out an American cheese slice from its pillowcase. “Why can’t you play that well? You practiced every day this summer.”

  A sharp crack of mallet on ball. “I don’t know, Dad.”

  “Boy, that Penelope. What about Vicky Fontaine?” Pop slides cheeseburgers onto a silver tray.

  “She made singles, only junior varsity, though.”

  A looping swing of the mallet. A sparrow dives and splashes in the bird bath. Chimney lifts her lazy head from a sunny spot in the grass.

  “Singles? Wow.”

  WHOP! Chipmunks scatter in the flower bed.

  “That’s out of bounds, Kate,” I say. “You can have a mulligan, though.”

  I know exactly how Kate feels. Ever since the fourth grade, it’s always been Jack Lott did this or Jack Lott did that. Another “helluva athlete.” I’ve never minded too much, though, because I’ve always admired Jack, and he’s humble as all get-out.

  Mom brings out a plate with tomato slices, sliced onions, relish, and bottles of mustard and ketchup. “Supper’s ready.”

  I let Kate win the Quinn Open.

  Bogart snared Gigi a PGA job in a private room inside the clubhouse, serving hors d’oeuvres to VIPs. Although Owen didn’t get a bag, Gigi tells me he’ll be carrying a scorecard for one of the groups on Friday. That night, I dial Owen’s motel room number a zillion times until Jake Rooney finally picks up.

  “Think you’re the dog’s bollocks now? Owen tells me to tell you to go shove a lobster roll up your arse.” Click.

  For a millisecond, I think about handing my PGA loop to Owen. It takes me less time to drop that idea. If my guy raises the Wanamaker Trophy above his sunburned forehead on Sunday afternoon, it’ll be a life changer. Hell, my life has already changed, and we haven’t even teed off yet.

  The day before the first round, Bobby Walton hands us a sheet of paper with all the pin placements on each hole. Golf isn’t like bowling. You need to know the precise location of the hole for both the yardage and the slope of the green. (New holes are cut into the greens every day.) You want to be “below” the hole because uphill putts are straightforward and downhill putts are slippery and dangerous, leading to soul-crushing three-putt greens. Nothing ruins a golfer’s morale more than three-putting because you’re basically just pissing shots away. A caddy has to be spot-on with clubbing his player, or he’ll throw you off the course in front of a million people.

  All caddies have been issued a paper yardage book. The layout of each hole is drawn out on each page of the little red “Bible,” as we caddies call it, with distances from various sprinkler heads to the green. I’ve spent the evening penciling in the pin positions in my yardage book and noting the levels of the green around the flag stick. ^^^^^^^ means the green slopes down and away from the pin and >>>>>> means uphill and ------- means level surface, aim straight at the pin.

  I’ve been nervous before but nothing like when Pop drove me to the PGA. I have a tight knot in my stomach, and I think my gallbladder might burst. Cars are parked like canned sardines up and down Kensington Road, and spectators are bused in from the Pontiac Silverdome parking lot, twenty minutes away.

  When my player approaches me in front of the clubhouse, I can’t look him in the eye on account of Winston’s wife. Mrs. Somerset reminds me of Phyllis George—only with golden blonde hair and cleavage the size of the Grand Canyon. The pro sees me eyeing his wife and says. “Snap out of it, Fahd.”

  She makes her way off to the beverage tent, saying, “Good luck, Winnie!” Winston Somerset sizes me up and down while picking food debris out of his teeth with a golf tee. “How young might yah be, son?”

  Great start, he thinks I’m ten. “I’ll be fifteen in three weeks.”

  “Ayuh. How well do yah know this coorsh?”

  “Very well, sir.” I pull my yardage book out of my back pocket. “I have this red book with the yardages to the hole from anywhere on the course.”

  “No need to call me sir, now. Winston’s just fine and dandy with me.”

  “Yes, sir … Winston.”

  “Listen, kehd. I got a wee little problem. I have to whiz all the time.” He points at the Bible. “Draw me a picture in that little red book of yours of all of the hoppers ya got on this course. Keyna do that?” I figure a hopper must mean a Porta Potty, so I nod. “Now, let’s warm up at the range.”

  Sir Winston is thirty-seven years old, his career on the downslope, along with his kidneys. This tournament is definitely his last chance for glory. Four buckets of balls wait for Sir Winston at the practice range. He warms up with his 9-iron before pulling a driver from his bag. A few people watch the pros strike balls behind a yellow rope. A player next to Sir Winston finishes up, and a caddy with a huge gray afro and walrus mustache around Rat’s age walks up carrying a large bag with a bear’s head covering the driver.

  Someone behind the ropes yells, “Hey, Angelo!” The caddy celeb saunters over to the rope and signs his autograph. Maybe I’ll give Virginia and Kate my autograph after the tournament.

  Sir Winston turns around. “Da ya know who that iz?”

  No clue. “I’ve seen him somewhere.”

  “Yawh, like the tube.” Sir Winston yanks his driver out of the bag and tosses me the head cover. “He totes for the Golden Bear.”

  It isn’t more than a few seconds later when a bunch of “Hey, Jacks” ripple through the air. A yellow-shirted Jack Nicklaus strides up to his caddy, who holds out a 3-wood for him five yards from where I’m standing. Right then, I’m damn proud of Sir Winston. He barely glances at Jack before resuming his warm-up routine, like he hasn’t noticed the greatest player of all time standing right next to him.

  After the range work, we make our way down Yellow Brick Road and to the first tee. The south course is swarmed with bodies, fans craning their necks over the ropes to get a glimpse of the famous pros: Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Chi-Chi, Johnny Miller, Watson, Fuzzy, Gentle Ben Crenshaw, Raymond Floyd. Golf-hat heads become the rough. Sounds awfully snobbish, but they trample the grass, which royally ticks me off. This isn’t the State Fairgrounds down on 8 Mile Road. Most of these people never get a chance to set foot inside the pearly gates of Kensington Hills Country Club unless they work here, like me. I suppose caddies can get snobby and jealous, too.

  Don’t fook with my golf course.

  An announcer is stationed at the first tee. The first player in our group strikes his ball, and a flag rises in the far distance to mark the landing of the ball. If you are caddying for the pros, they don’t make you search for your player’s ball. Even the caddies get the royal treatment. The announcer steps forward. “Winston Somerset from Nashua, New Hampshire.”

  Faint claps filter through the air. Sir Winston settles into his golfing saddle and launches a cruise missile straight down the fairway gut. Nerves of Iron Man. For the first time, what I say on the course impacts another person’s life. Unlike a typical loop, a five-yard error on my yardage estimate to the hole can be the difference between a birdie or a bogey and a tee time or a plane ride home for Sir Winston on Saturday morning—if a player doesn’t score in the top fifty after the first two days, he’s cut from the tournament.

  There isn’t a large gallery following our group, but there are tons of people roaming the course and glancing over at you, so it feels like the whole world is watching you. Pop proudly follows our group, snapping photographs with his Polaroid while Mrs. Somerset trails behind in the rough in a white billowing skir
t and sun-visor hat.

  The first hole tests my caddy wits. Sir Winston strikes a fine 6-iron seven feet from the cup. He crouches behind his ball on the green, trying to study the slithery sideways putt for a birdie while I lurk behind his right shoulder, sizing up the line.

  “Where should I pahk this cah? Looksh left to right.”

  I shake my head. “Right to left, but don’t give up the hole.” In caddying lingo, this means don’t roll the ball outside of the cup’s diameter.

  He answers, “Ayuh ... ya betta be right.”

  If I miss this putt read, my pro career might be over after 444 yards.

  Sir Winston strokes his gold Bulls Eye putter blade; the ball curls around the lip, then drops with a rattle into the cup. He raises his hand in triumph. “Wicked pissah!” He slaps me a high five and runs off to the nearest hopper.

  If you’re a pro, you need to shoot birdies—one below par (a three on a par four gets you a bird, a two an eagle, a one a rare double-bald eagle). An early bird in the round gives a player confidence and faith in his caddy. Sir Winston and I are now a bit like Batman and Robin.

  Par, par, par, par…

  On the fifth hole, Owen Rooney holds a group’s scoreboard. He notices me, and I’m about to raise my hand to wave a proud hello when he flips me the bird, still pissed he didn’t get a bag, like it was somehow my fault.

  Kiss my PGA-baggy arse, Owen.

  Sir Winston Somerset plays out of his freaking N’Hampshah mind, and after nine solid holes of golf, only two shots separate us from the leader. Then downright miracles start happening on the back nine.

  “I don’t have anythin’ to lose naw, do I, Fawd?” This mental state frees up his swing, and he’s in the zone. (Golf’s all rhythm. Nothing kills a golfer’s swing more than tension.) Sir Winston birdies holes 10, 11, and 12.

  Good things happen in 3s!

  We find ourselves with a one-shot lead. My feet step through country club grass, but my mind orbits the moon. Sir Winston shoots even par the next five holes, and then birdies Number 18 after holing a sand shot, to lead the field by two shots in the clubhouse. Off the green, a reporter from ABC in a brown coat and orange tie shoves a microphone under Sir Winston Somerset’s chin, with yours truly standing at his side.

  “I had it goin’ wicked with those putts fallin’ more than soda water down a bubbler,” Sir Winston says to America.

  That night, the Quinn phone rings off the hook after Max Robinson of ABC News announces Sir Winston is the improbable leader of the PGA. They run a clip of the interview off the eighteenth green, showing me gazing into the camera with the goofiest grin you would never want to see. For twelve hours, I’m semi-famous in Kensington Hills. If this doesn’t get Cleo’s attention—and even Nick Lund’s—then what more can I do to impress them?

  Jack Lott and Fat Albert come by my house, listening like mad as I recount every birdie putt Sir Winston holed today. I tell them how I’d been a few feet from the Golden Bear on the range. Fat Albert asks me if I’d scored Nicklaus’s autograph.

  I tell him, “Geez, that’s bogus. It’d be like Muhammad Ali’s trainer asking for Frazier’s autograph or vice versa.”

  “Makes sense.”

  The next morning, the Detroit News runs the headline on the sports page: “New Hampshire Club Pro Surges to First Round PGA Lead.” If Sir Winston wins, he’ll be Rocky in golf spikes, and I’ll turn pro and caddy for him in next year’s Masters tournament at Augusta. That’s a caddy’s wet dream. Hell, maybe I’ll travel around the golf-globe with him—Europe, Asia Minor, and Australia, where I’ll visit Rocket at the Aussie Open.

  During Friday’s round, pressure starts to tighten Sir Winston’s swing, and the previous day’s steely nerves turn to jelly. He has trouble finding his putting stroke on the slick greens. Kensington’s greens are notorious for being tricky and treacherous. He manages to strike the ball firmly enough from the fairway, but his ball keeps landing in the most unforgiving spots on the green: vicious hollows, sharp slopes, furry fringes.

  A golfer can lose a lead quicker than Tang down the throat of a thirsty three-year-old. We climb the five-par twelfth hole tee box six strokes off the lead, still having a puncher’s chance to make the cut but little hope of winning the tournament. I’m hoping now just to put $200 in my pocket to buy a new set of MacGregor persimmon woods from the pro shop.

  We stand at the thirteenth par-three tee, high above the hog-back green, which sits in the valley below, surrounded by seven Japanese sand trap mines.

  “How fah ah we?” By this time in the second round, Sir Winston trusts my judgment. I survey the distant pin, check my Bible—the depth of the green states twenty-five, and I figure it’s a tweener—between a 7-iron and an 8-iron.

  He steps forward. “Wehhll?”

  “Pins down below. Eight-iron, sir. Definitely an eight.” The dance floor is two tiered with a high shelf and a low shelf, like you’d see at the edges of continents if you emptied the oceans.

  Sir Winston swings his 8-iron silky smooth. A slingshot toward the pin followed by a disappointing groan from crowd surrounding the green. From the tee, we can’t see where the ball lands. Sir Winston ducks into a Porta Potty while I head down to the green with my fingers crossed to survey the damage. The ball has flown short of the green, nestled in the lip of a front dinosaur trap. Only half of the ball’s shell is visible in the white sand. A fried egg—a golfer’s worst nightmare. I’ve misclubbed him. We should have played a gentle 7-iron rather than the 8. A slight western breeze in our face betrayed us.

  Sir Winston Somerset comes bounding out of breath down the cart path toward the green, adjusting his fly. A search for his ball, and he sees me standing next to the trap with a sand wedge dangling from my hand. “That’s my baaawwll?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘yes, sir,’ me.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Sorry, my ass.”

  Sir Winston’s voice booms over the gallery gathered around the fringe. “You gave me the wrong club, did yawh?”

  An ABC camera on a platform above my head rotates in slow motion toward me, and necks strain from under white golf hats in the gallery stands built for the special occasion.

  “How old awh ya, kehd? Fourteen? This is the biggest tournament in the world, and I’m stuck with a teenager?”

  He unleashes a Hercules swing. A sandstorm peppers my jumpsuit. The ball soars satellite high before landing a stunning two feet from the cup. The crowd roars. A high-pitched yell from the gallery. “That’s my Winnie!” A gimme putt. An amateur could take a million swings from that nasty lie and still not come that close to the cup.

  On the notoriously tough fourteenth hole, the approach shot to the dance floor is tricky as all get-out due to the downward-sloping green. Most players take one less club, which allows the ball to land in front of the green and slowly drain down toward the hole. Any shot that lands on the carpet inevitably rolls off the back.

  Still furious I misclubbed him on the previous hole, Sir Winston doesn’t bother to ask me for advice on the next shot. He yanks a 5-iron out of the bag. Too much stick, but he doesn’t ask me. The hell with him—he can crawl back into his shire to his daddy. He hits the ball, and it flies straight as string toward the pin. Winston beams like he’s landed it stiff.

  “Han’ me mah puttah,” he says, but I know he won’t be needing that. It’s my coorsh, after all. The meteor lands a foot past the cup and slides off the carpet into Bogeyville like a kid down a backyard hill on a Wham-O Slip’N Slide.

  A girl holds a flag up next to Sir Winston’s ball. Cleo? I can’t talk to her because she’s backed away to let Sir Winston pass by. I rest my bag next to the ball, and he pulls out his wedge. He pitches past the hole and misses his putt. I scan for Cleo, but she’s disappeared. A different girl holds the flag; perhaps I’d only witnessed a Cleo mirage.


  After the bogey on fourteen, the wheels come off Sir Winston’s cart. He’s caught a bad case of the yips, and it’s bogeys all the way home, missing several short putts along the way. He pees after each hole and earns a yellow warning card for slow play. The worse he plays, the more he whizzes.

  After missing his par putt on eighteen, he threatens to break his putter in half over his thigh, but at the last second, he shakes his head.

  “Here, yawh take it. I don’t caah to see that thing again.” Sir Winston hands me his golden Bulls Eye putter with its fine black leather grip. “Go home to your mom fah suppah.” He slaps me on the back. “Maybe next year.”

  The club pro from New Hampshire misses the cut by four lousy strokes. In addition to the putter, he pays me $250. That’s a fortune for two days’ work. I’ll be buying that set of MacGregor woods after all. Despite coming unglued from the pressure on the back nine, Winston Somerset’s my hero.

  On the weekend, I roam the course, following various foursomes. On late Sunday afternoon, Rat’s player loses the PGA in a sudden-death playoff. After the tournament ends, I sit, deflated, on the fringe of the eighteenth green, as the crowd melts away, thinking about what might have been with Sir Winston Somerset. If he’d won, I’d have been the talk of Kensington Hills. Darkness settles in, along with the stars and scent of damp grass. A crow squawks in the woods.

  Out of nowhere, a voice says, “Hey, Quinn.”

  Jason Sanders appears. He notices my PGA-issued caddy jumpsuit. He sits down next to me. “I saw you on the national news after the first round.”

  “My player missed the cut by a few shots.” I hurl a pebble onto the green, and it skids past the hole like one of Sir Winston’s putts. Golf trash wagons with lights flood the grounds for the post-PGA cleanup.

  “Do you know over a million people probably saw you on TV?”

  I shrug. “S’pose so.”

  “I’d have lost my load.”

  After I tell Jason about the Bulls Eye putter Sir Winston gave me, he invites me to play the famed south course where the PGA has just been held. (Caddies only get to play the north course, except for the annual member-caddy golf tournament held on the south course.) He says this without a giving a rat’s ass about my caddy status and former membership in the leprosy colony at Holy Redeemer. Maybe it’ll give me another chance at winning the Lund Gang sweepstakes.