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A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, I returned to the press room. There were two messages from my editor in Boston. I crumpled them up and tossed them on the floor.
Woody Johnson, golf writer for the Chicago Tribune, had staked his claim to the desk behind mine. Wrinkled, balding, bifocals perched precariously on his bulbous nose, bright orange golf shirt blending hideously with a brown checked sport coat, Woody was reading the local newspaper and grumbling.
“Goddam president,” he said to himself, rustling the pages. “Goddam jerk doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore.”
“Is it foreign or domestic today, Woody?” I asked. “Foreign,” he peered at me over the tops of his glasses.
“Do you know what the goddam fool is doing in Central America?”
“Does anybody know what anybody is doing in Central America?” I asked.
He looked at me. “You’re goddam right,” he sighed, and put the newspaper down. “Who do you like this week?”
It was an inane question and we both knew it. There were148 professional golfers entered in the Cannon Carolinas Open. Every one of them had the skills and capabilities to win the tournament. Nobody could predict with any certainty which one of them would be able to connect with that inner confidence, innate talent, and pure dumb luck over four days of pressurized golf to shoot the lowest score. But everybody liked to try. I threw out a few names, Woody countered, and we spent fifteen happy minutes discussing recent hot streaks, character issues and a dozen players’ ability to handle the ocean winds.
“What do you know about Brother Ed Durkee and that Jesus group?” I asked when we were done.
Woody peered at me. His left eyebrow arched slightly. Then he began beating on his desk with a pencil. He harrumphed.
I started to laugh. “Jeezus, Woody,” I sputtered. “I’m sorry...you got a piece on him, right?”
“This Sunday,” he nodded. “You too?”
“Naw,” I reassured him. “Just curious. Ran into him today, and we talked some. Strange bird. Who is he?”
Woody leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on my desk. Like most good journalists he was a born storyteller, and he was about to tell me his story unbounded by the finite demands of newsprint.
“The Reverend Edwin Poteet Durkee, age fifty-four, is the paster of the Church of the Holiness of Eastland, Texas, out in the boonies west of Fort Worth. It is a Pentacostal denomination, kinda-sorta, which appeals strongly to the born-again types. Big into evangelism, radio and TV ministries, and missions. Coupla years ago, some players of that ilk invited Brother Ed to hold a Bible study during the Byron Nelson in Dallas. You know, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the baseball and football leagues. He seemed to strike a responsive chord and over a period of time, several other players joined the group, which began to call themselves ‘Golfers for Christ.’ There are now about two dozen members of the ‘God Squad.’”
I laughed. “Nice headline,” I noted.
Woody nodded, pleased with himself. “I thought so, too,” he continued. “Anyway, the Golfers for Christ continues on by itself every week while Brother Ed shows up at about half the tournaments over the course of a year. They do their Bible study thing on Wednesday nights and he holds a nondenominational service early Sunday morning. It’s the same thing that goes on in other sports. They talk about Jesus and getting right with the Lord and playing their best without rancor.
“But,” Woody continued, “Brother Ed has taken to spending personal time with a lot of the players whenever he’s in town. It’s more than just reading the Scriptures and singing some hymns. He has become something of a spiritual coach for a lot of guys, just like their swing coaches and personal trainers and private shrinks. It’s interesting.” Woody pushed his specs back up onto his nose and tiled back in the chair.
“To a man, the God Squad says that Brother Ed has helped them become better golfers. Helped their mental attitude, they said. Block out the evil and concentrate on the good, they said. A responsibility to use their talents to do God’s will, they said.”
“Didn’t I read about a baseball team that outlawed chapel services because they felt the players were becoming too passive and accepting of defeat,” I asked.
“Yeah,” Woody nodded. “You can carry that ‘God’s will’ stuff too far, I guess. Especially in sports. Fatalism can be fatal.”
“There you go again,” I laughed, “Writing headlines. Well tell me...does it work?”
He stared at me, not understanding.
“Are the God Squaders playing better golf ?”
“Not really,” he said. “John Turnbull has been the only real shooting star in the group. Some have had a couple good years, couple of them have dropped off the earth. They’re all as nice a group of gentlemen as one could hope to find, but I can’t really see any discernable influence of all their praying. Maybe God likes tennis players better.”
“Maybe it hurts more than it helps,” I was thinking out loud. “Golf is hard enough at this level anyway, without adding all kinds of other clutter in your head. Have any of the God Squad dropped out? Gone back to their heathen ways?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Hacker,” Woody growled. “This wasn’t an in-depth piece for the New York Times Sunday magazine. I heard some grumbling from a few guys about Ed Durkee. They said he really kept tabs on them, made ‘em march in lockstep in some ways. But that’s kinda typical for those fundamentalist types, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” I agreed.“Do they do a lot of proselytizing?” “You mean recruiting new Jesus freaks?” Woody smiled. “Not too much, except maybe for some of the younger gung- ho guys. Everyone knows its there if they want to go. I did get handed a few pamphlets, though.” “On the Watchtower?”
He laughed. “They’re pretty low-key,” he said. “About the wildest thing they do is give away some tickets to local churches in the area. And I suspect that one of them always helps that crazy guy with the rainbow wig and the John 3:16 sign get in place.”
I knew who he meant. He showed up on the TV screen almost every week, perfectly positioned for the camera angles on the 18th green so his message would get beamed out across America. He’s so ubiquitous that my fervent wish is that when the Rapture comes, everyone who ever held up a Bible verse on national TV while wearing a rainbow colored wig with be left behind. By special order of the Big Guy.
“It’s an interesting concept,” I mused. “Do they become better players because they are in God’s favor? And if God makes them better players but they still don’t win, what does that say about God and his favor? And if they do play better because of divine influence, what about the hundred other guys? Are they sinners or does God just love them a bit less? It’s a theology with a few holes.”
Woody looked at me and shook his head. “Jeez, Hacker, they’re just trying to do what everyone out here’s trying to do: shoot birdies and make a big check. Brother Ed makes ‘em feel better so they can relax a little. It’s no different, and I don’t think any more effective, than replacing their grips.”
“I dunno,” I said. “It’s tough enough to make a four-footer without God or Jesus or Buddha or anyone else looking over your shoulder.”
With that, we ended our philosophical decision and went in search of a cold beer. Malt does more than Milton can, said a wise man, to justify God’s ways to man.