I climbed the wooden stairs onto the front porch and walked through the old screen door into the pro shop. Standing behind the counter at the end of the room, frowning at a thick sheaf of papers, was Shuttlecock’s head pro, Ted McDaggert.
“Hey, Teddy,” I called out.
He looked up from his work, recognized me, and his face broke out in a wide smile.
“Hacker!” he exclaimed, coming around the counter to shake my hand. “How the hell are ya? Jackie told me you were coming up to play with him this weekend.”
McDaggert was about six feet tall and thick around the torso. His ruddy Irish face was topped with a mop of unruly orange hair – I’d heard it called an “Irish ‘fro.” His face was freckled, slightly jowly, and, I noted, unusually pale for someone who nominally spends a good part of his time out in the sunshine playing and teaching golf. But I also knew that few people who actually work in the golf business get to play the game, especially club pros. He was wearing the “uniform:” Kelly-green polyester Sansabelt slacks, a white pique knit polo with a green and purple geometric design, and black-and-white oxford teaching shoes.
As we made small talk about the events in the world of golf during the summer, I glanced around Teddy’s pro shop. The room was small, maybe twenty feet by forty, and dark, with just one side window and the screen door permitting some filtered natural light to penetrate. The golf merchandise was crammed into every nook and cranny. Four wooden shelves took up most of the center of the room, and were filled with stacks of golf shirts, shorts and sweaters. More clothes hung on racks against two of the walls. Boxes of iron sets and long rows of drivers and putters competed for attention with a glass-fronted counter filled with boxes of balls. It was claustrophobic.
I have been in pro shops around the country that rival the selling floor at Bloomingdale’s for retail presentation, with soft, indirect lighting, piped-in Muzak, stylish mannequins modeling the latest chic couture, and thick plush carpeting. Teddy McDaggert’s pro shop was the antithesis of that kind of retail elegance. His carpets were worn in well-used traffic patterns in and out the doors, his fixtures were old and scratched, and he seemed to be presenting the theme of golf as chaos. But I imagined it worked for Teddy, who, after all, had something of a captive audience in the members of the Shuttlecock Club. He probably knew exactly where everything was, too.
“Have you seen Jackie this morning?” I asked.
“I think he’s upstairs playing cards,” Ted said, smiling at me. “Hope you can keep him sober enough to play some golf this weekend.”
“Good luck to me and the Red Sox,” I said, smiling and shaking my head. We both knew that Jack Connolly pretty much did whatever Jack Connolly felt like doing, and never worried much about the consequences. And if he decided he wanted to get, and stay, tanked for most of the weekend, golf tournament or no, that’s what he would do.
I waved Ted back to his paperwork and pushed through the swinging door that led into the main grillroom. There were about a dozen men having an early lunch, drinking beer or staring at some sporting event blaring out from the huge television screen that hung from a corner of the ceiling. Big windows along the front of the room looked out on the first tee, where a foursome was getting ready to set off. I wandered to the back of the grill, past the long mahogany bar, pushed through another door and ran up the stairs.
The top floor of the golf house at Shuttlecock was the sanctum sanctorum for the male members of the club. While political correctness had invaded even the hallowed fairways here, where women had equal membership rights and could get prime weekend morning tee times, there was still once place in the club where men could act like men, and that was the upstairs locker room. It was mostly one big, open room, with the ceiling following the lines of the hip roof and gables. Rows of old metal lockers ran off a wide center aisle, and in the middle of the space, there was a row of brown-tiled showers. On the opposite side, a bathroom area held stalls and urinals, and a row of sinks outfitted with combs, brushes, throwaway razors and even a couple hair dryers.
The front of the room, with a row of large windows overlooking the first hole, was the game room. There was a big billiards table on one side, its brilliant green baize gleaming in the light of a Tiffany swag. On the wall, a wooden rack held a half-dozen cue sticks, and a dusty blackboard showed the score of a recent game. Three hexagonal card tables were grouped opposite the table, also covered in baize, with wooden shelves along the edges to hold drinks and stacks of chips. Two big ceiling fans whirred slowly overhead in a useless attempt to move the thick, steamy, cigar-scented air around.
Only one of the card tables was in use, but the six men sitting there were fully engaged in their game. The colorful chips were tossed into the pile in the center, the ashtrays were overflowing with crushed butts, and the drinks glasses of the players were beaded with moisture in the fetid air.
Jack Connolly sat on the left side of the table, his face a profiled study in concentration. He didn’t see me right away, and I let him play his hand while I watched quietly from the side of the room. Jack was a handsome man. In college, he had been absolutely irresistible to women. His hair was still a tawny shade of gold, cut short, with small curls around the edges. He had a high brow, deep blue eyes, a patrician’s hooked nose and a wry, off-center way of grinning. The fingers that held his cards were long and elegant and I noticed his well-trimmed, manicured nails. He wore a thin gold chain around one wrist, but was otherwise without watch or jewelry of any kind. He wore casual golf shorts and a shirt that was neatly pressed, but not expensive looking. Jackie was never flashy or loud. But he did have a nice-looking cashmere sweater casually draped around his shoulders and knotted at the front.
The poker hand was nearing its denouement. The pot was being fought between Jack and a fat guy sitting across the table from him. I watched as Jack coolly raised his eyes from his cards to stare at the man.
“Fifty,” he said quietly, throwing a handful of chips into the center of the table.
The other man stared back at Jack for a long count, then blinked and folded his cards in resignation. Jack just smiled quietly to himself as he raked in the chips.“Roland!” he called out. A pudgy young fellow dressed in medical white from head to toe materialized from out of nowhere at the call. “Drinks all around,” Jack ordered, motioning at the table. “They need it. Hell, I need it.”
Roland vanished as quietly as he had appeared. Jack finally looked up and saw me standing there.
“Hack man!” he said with genuine pleasure, and stood up to shake my hand. “Gentlemen,” he announced to his pals at the table, “This is Hacker, my able-bodied, poor son-of-a-bitch partner for the weekend. He will accept your pity, but would appreciate your dollars instead.”
Jack introduced me around the table, and I shook hands while giving up trying to remember all the names. The fat guy who had lost the last pot to Jack held my hand for an instant longer than normal, and peered at me through his thick round glasses.
“Hacker, eh?” he said softly. “I’ve heard about you. Didn’t you used to play on the goddam Tour?”
“Only a couple years,” Jackie said, a huge grin breaking across his face. “And before that we were college teammates at Wake. Hacker made it to the finals in the Amateur before he turned pro. He’s since regained his amateur status, so he’s legit.”
“Legit my ass,” the fat guy said. “What’s his handicap, plus four?”
“I’m a certified three,” I said, smiling. “Don’t get to play as much as I used to.”
“He’s too busy raking muck for that despicable fishwrapper in Boston,” Jackie said, laughing.
“Three? That’s awful strong for a former Tour player,” said the fat guy. “I don’t think that’s fair …”
“Oh, Charlie, quit your whining,” Jackie snapped at the guy, although he was still smiling. “You’ll be getting, what? Ten shots from him? Besides, he’s gotta carry my sorry ass around all weekend, and that’ll put anybody off their game.”
There were nods of assent all around, and the table began a spirited discussion of handicap strokes and the general inequities of golf in loud and happy voices. Roland came bustling out of wherever he hid with a tray full of freshly made cocktails. Jackie grabbed his, pushed back from the table and motioned at me to follow. He led me back to his locker in the last row at the rear of the building. An ivy-covered window overlooked the parking lot down below.
“You can change and stuff here,” he said, pulling his locker open with a loud clang. “Now, for tomorrow, when the tournament starts, I want you to wear this.”
He reached into his locker and pulled out a hanger with slacks, a golf shirt and a belt. The slacks were a strange blue color the clothing catalogs like to call teal. The shirt had a white background, with a scattered design in greens and blues that looked like someone on crack cocaine had gone wild with a brush. Embroidered over the heart on the front of the shirt were the words “THE BROTHERS.”
“If we’re gonna play team golf, we’re gonna dress like a team,” Jackie said happily, pulling out the exact same outfit for himself. “You know, it’s a gang thing, like the Crips and the Bloods. We’ll strike fear into the hearts of our opponents. I got different outfits for each day. Wait’ll you see Sunday! That is your size, isn’t it?”
I was just staring at the clothes and shaking my head. “’The Brothers?’ Jack, you just invited me to play in this thing a couple of days ago. When did you have time to custom order matching outfits?”
“Hell’s bells,” he said. “You gotta look stylish if you’re gonna kick some Shuttlecock butt. Now look, here’s the piece de résistance!”
He reached up on a shelf inside his locker and came out with two huge, wide-brimmed white Panama hats, trimmed in a wide band swimming in colors of red, yellow, pink and green.
“We’re each going to go outside wearing one of those?” I asked, unable to mask the incredulity in my voice.
He nodded.
“In the daytime?”
He grinned his wry, one-sided grin at me.
“On purpose?”
“I thought the Greg Norman straw-hat look would complete the look, even if he was one of the biggest choking dogs who ever lived. Did I ever tell you how much money I lost on his sorry ass in the Masters of ’90?”
“You are certifiably insane,” I said. “What have you got for Sunday?”
Jack Connolly laughed. “I knew you’d like it,” he said. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”