The tournament began Friday morning. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to tee off until late morning. Ted McDaggert had utilized a computer to schedule all the matches – ten flights, eight teams in each flight – and while some flights had three matches scheduled the first day, our group was in a 2-3-2 schedule over the three day weekend. That gave me time to sleep late at Jack’s house, pour some extra strong coffee down to offset the alcohol consumption of the previous evening, and make a few phone calls.
I called Suzy Chapman at the PGA Tour’s press room in Endicott and got a report on my intern. Tony Zec had checked in, been assigned a workspace in the press tent and had managed to avoid getting mugged, rolled by the caddies in cards, arrested for drunk driving or sneezing in anybody’s backswing. In fact, he was sitting there at this early hour watching the scoreboard as the has-beens and never-weres of the PGA Tour were dew sweeping in search of the paltry thousands available at the B.C. Open. Suzy punched me through to him.
“How’s it going, kid?” I asked.
“Great!” came his enthusiastic reply. “Harrison Frazer is three-under after six.”
“Stop the presses,” I said. “What else ya got for me?”
“Well, I covered the caddie tournament on Tuesday,” he said. “I wrote up the piece.”
“How long is it?” I asked.
“Four thousand words, give or take,” he said.
I groaned silently to myself. If any newspaper anywhere in the country were to consider running such a piece — which they wouldn’t, especially during football season— it would run maybe five graphs, max. Two hundred words. But I didn’t want to burst this kid’s bubble. He seemed to be having a great time, and he was providing me with some cover for the weekend.
“OK,” I sighed into the phone. “Here’s my email address…cut it down to a thousand words, send it in and I’ll take a looksee. In the meantime, I want you to file a daily update on the tournament. Try to keep it to maybe five hundred words. Eliminate all the flowery b.s. and just give us the facts, OK?”
“Right,” he said. I could hear him taking notes. No bullshit. Just facts. Ah, to be young and impressionable.
“And keep your ears open for some interesting tidbits. There’s always somebody complaining about something, or changing club sponsors, or planning to play in the next three tournaments to try and make the 125 money-winning list. Read the local paper – it’s usually a good source of leads. Capisce?”
“Got it,” Zec said, scribbling furiously.
“Send me your stuff every night by 7 p.m.” I finished. “I’ll look it over and try to get it into the paper. Can’t guarantee there’ll be room – it’s football season and my fuckwit boss seems to think that the report on the Holy Cross game is more important than whether or not Harrison Frazer is gonna win the B.C. Open."
“Got it, Hacker,” he said. I laughed to myself. Kid’s on the job for one day and we’re buddies and pals.
I called home and got Mary Jane.
“How’s Mister Shit?” I asked. “He miss me at all?”
“Ducky is fine,” she reported. “But he crapped in the corner of the dining room, which puts him on the endangered species list around here. Hasn’t he ever been introduced to the concept of a litter box?”
“How,” I asked, “Do you think he got his name?”
“Oh, great,” she groaned. “When are you coming back?”
I laughed. “Think of it as an opportunity to teach Victoria that having pets is a responsibility,” I suggested.
“I’m thinking of it as a weekend spent picking up cat feces,” she snapped. “You’d better be home on time Sunday night or I’m feeding Mister Doo-Doo something extra-spicy and putting him back in your apartment.”
“Right,” I said. “Love to Victoria.”
“Bite me,” she said and hung up.
I took a long, hot shower, thinking about the Shuttlecock Club and the tournament ahead. Jackie eventually rolled out of bed, looking disheveled and refused to speak until he’d had three cups of coffee. Eventually, he came back to the land of the living, and we got to the club at about eleven, and changed into our Blues Brothers uniform for the day. Or, at least I did. Jack sat in front of his locker and moaned a little, so I went to hit some balls to loosen up. After twenty minutes or so, I went back up to the locker room to find my partner. He was sitting slumped in front of his locker, dressed only in underwear and socks, looking a bit pale.“Mornin’ pards,” I said cheerfully. “Ready to kick some major butt?”
He looked up at me with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Gimme a Bloody Mary,” he groaned. “My head’s killin’ me.”
I looked at him sadly, shaking my head. “Do I hear you saying ‘Play hard, pard?’” I asked.
He nodded, holding his head in his hands.
“Well, screw that,” I said sternly. “I’m not gonna carry your sorry ass around this course all by myself. Go take a shower and I’ll find some hot coffee.”
He moaned again, but he did what I told him. When he got back from his shower, his skin flushed to a more healthy shade of pink, I handed him a steaming mug. I stood there until he drank it.
“Wow,” he said. “I can feel my toes again. I think I’m gonna live!”
Jack was back. The man had amazing recuperative powers. Knowing he would now be halfway contributive to the team effort, I left him to get dressed and went out to the practice green to hit some putts. Vitus Papageorge was there, lecturing poor old Fred about how to read a putting green. I ignored them and worked on feel and speed. I could feel the licks of competitive fire begin to alight somewhere deep inside. It had been a while. I play a lot of golf every year, charity events, media days, occasional friendly rounds with friends. But those are just outings, relaxing days when the results really don’t mean anything important.
But a tournament – even just a fun event like the Shuttlecock Invitational – is different. As a professional, playing on the Tour, I learned how to get myself “up” for every round. How to block out the distractions. How to make my body relax and focus on the task at hand. How to visualize every shot before I hit it. How to make every shot count. How to make myself believe that every shot I faced could be made flawlessly, with the result I wanted. On the Tour, I made myself think and do. And it worked enough that I came to believe I could do that every single time, with every single shot, whether a 290-yard booming drive, or a tricky three-footer for par.
But that had been years ago. I couldn’t do that now. Didn’t really want to, in fact. Because to get to that higher level of concentration and confidence requires total devotion to the game. It requires months of practice, and endless repetition. That’s what the professional game demands. But I was no longer a professional golfer. I was a journalist. When I left the Tour, I had to reprogram myself, once I started playing the game again, to enjoy golf as just a game, a pastime, a recreational event. I had to learn how to play for fun and relaxation, for the fellowship of my friends, for the fresh air and the birdsong, and for the occasional pleasure of hitting a ball squarely on the screws and having it obey my command.
Did I want to win my flight in the Shuttlecock Invitational? Sure – winning is always more fun than losing. But my main goal for the weekend was just to have a good time. Enjoy the experience that was Jack Connolly, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Meet some nice folks. Have a few laughs. Quaff a few brews. Try to make some difficult shots when I had to, sink a few putts. Play the game with something on the line. That’s what I wanted. Winning some silver-plated little trophy was secondary.
So, while I could still feel those competitive little flames inside, I didn’t try to fan them, or stoke them either. I concentrated only on working on my putting stroke, and trying to get a feel for the fast Shuttlecock greens. And I stopped to feel the warm fall sunshine on my face and enjoy the feeling. I putted for about five minutes, and then picked up my practice balls.
Vitus Papageorge, who apparently had been watching, stared at me in disbelief. His face was shiny with sweaty exertion, and his whole body seemed strained with effort. “That’s all?” he said to me. “You’ve only been practicing for a few minutes.”
“Vitus,” I said nonchalantly, “When you’re a world-class athlete like me, you don’t need a lot of practice.”
I couldn’t help one final look back as I strolled off the putting green. He was staring at me, his thick, dark eyebrows knitted together in envy and fury.
He was an odd, odd man.
I went back upstairs and collected my partner. Together, in our matching outfits, wide-brimmed white Panama hats and wraparound shades, we made quite a stir as we walked together down the stairs, through the members’ grill and out onto the first tee. There were wolf whistles, catcalls, and loud laughter all around. I think the psyche job was working.
Our first opponents were a local furniture-store owner and his brother-in-law from Cleveland. First-hole tournament nerves were in evidence as we teed off and my partner had to make a tough up-and-down from the front bunker to halve the hole after I sculled a sand wedge over the green and made a bogey.
As we waited to tee off on the second, Jack reached behind the seat of our cart and flipped open a cooler he had stashed there. He pulled out a cold beer, hissed it open and took a deep draught as I just looked at him. He plunked it down in the cup holder.
“Jack,” I said, “Do you really need that?”
“Hell,” he said. “I won the first hole. How much more do I gotta do?”
I had to laugh.
It was a good close match. The member was a friendly, gregarious sort who had been a member at Shuttlecock for years. He told me of the pre-war days when the club had made most of its money from the slot machines in the clubhouse, and of the big flood of 1936 when the river had covered most of the island and threatened to wash away the entire city of Lowell. I was giving away strokes to everybody, of course, and they played us tough for the whole match. I finally managed a birdie on the long seventh to get our team to one-up, and Jack and I held them off on the last two holes to win.
We shook hands all around and enjoyed a cold beer and a thick, juicy hot dog on the picnic tables set out underneath the trees behind the ninth green snack shack. The other teams in our flight were coming up behind us.
Vitus Papageorge and his partner Fred were in the foursome that came up the ninth behind us. As he had the day before, Vitus sprayed his drive to the right, into the rough. Fred and one of their opponents were in the valley down below the green, while the other fellow caught one of the bunkers next to the green. Vitus chipped on to about eight feet and the others followed suit, none closer than 20 feet from the hole. All three missed their attempts for par, leaving the green to Vitus.
The little man stalked his putt, walking around the green looking at the break from every possible angle. Then, he asked both Fred and his caddie for a read. One of his opponents, who had been standing on the back edge of the green while all this was going on, finally turned and walked away.
“Fuckin’ asshole,” he muttered under his breath.
“How do you guys stand?” asked the furniture store owner.
“Oh, they’re one up. They’ve got the match,” he said.
“Vitus get a stroke here?” I asked.
“Oh, hell yes,” the guy said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why he’s taking so long. All he’s gotta do is lag it up and we’ll give it to him, for Chrissakes.”
“He’ll make it,” I said. “He likes the dramatic effect.”
“Asswipe,” the guy said and went inside the shack for a beer.
Vitus, of course, drained the putt. When the ball rolled over the lip and disappeared from view, he let out a victorious shout, jumped into the air and pumped his fist to the sky, like Tiger Woods winning another major. When he landed, his spikes gouged out some marks in the surface of the green. But Vitus, naturally, didn’t notice. He continued to jump around in a self-congratulatory dance.
Fred shook the hands of the opponent standing next to him and they walked off the green together. Finally, Vitus noticed he was celebrating all by himself and stopped. He motioned to his caddie to return the pin to the hole, handed him the putter and strode off, his shoulders pulled back and his head held high in a patrician pose.