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I DROVE BACK TO MY villa as the shadows began to lengthen across the fairways. The angle of the sun turned the marshes golden and hazy, and the constant pulsating buzz of the insects seemed to lighten, as if they knew the workday was almost over.
I pulled into my driveway next to a blonde struggling with an armload of grocery bags piled in the trunk of her car. It was Becky Turnbull. She had changed into a loose scoop-necked blouse, tight stonewashed jeans and big sunglasses. Her soft blond hair was piled atop her head. It made a nice picture of housewifery.
“Need a hand?” I asked gallantly.
She peered over at me. “Mr. Hacker! Gosh, yes, thanks,” she said. “If you’ll carry in the beer, you can have one with me.”
In short order, we had the bags carried, unloaded and food put away, and we sitting in the overdecorated living room of the Turnbull’s villa. It was almost exactly the same as mine next door, with its floorplan of two bedrooms, two baths, plus carpets, overstuffed upholstery, cathedral ceiling with endlessly circulating fan, skylights, trendy pastel wallpaper and essential lifelessness.
Turnbull, I learned, was at the practice range. “Christ,” she said, “He will spend a solid hour hitting a wedge at this one flag, getting mad if the ball lands more than ten feet away.” She held the cold bottle of beer to her temple. Her striking features were flushed with the simple effort of grocerying in the humid af- ternoon heat. “It would drive me stark, raving mad,” she said.
“That’s what it takes to win out here,” I said. “But I can imagine being a tour wife takes some getting used to.”
“Tour wife?” she chortled. The telephone rang. She went over to the kitchen counter to answer it.
“Charley? I’m glad you called back. Hang on a sec...” She reached over the counter and dragged out a bulging leather attaché. “Listen, we need to go over some of the figures on the Dectron deal.”
She pulled a bar stool up to the counter and perched her very nice fanny on the edge. Sheafs of paper, computer printouts, a hand-held calculation and various other implements of business came tumbling out. She began to discuss stock options, floating debentures, hedged discount rates and other financial esoterica. I pulled on my beer, and to avoid staring at her stool-perched parts, leafed idly through the magazines on the coffee table in front of me. She hung up thirty minutes later with a sigh, got another beer from the refrigerator, and sank down in the chair opposite mine.
“I stand corrected,” I said. She raised her eyebrows in ques- tion. “About the tour wife thing.”
She smiled. “I’m chief financial officer for Tectronics. We make keyboards for all the big boys in Silicon Valley. We make lots of money and I’m in charge of growing that money and keeping the tax man from taking too much of it. Hell, it’s not too hard. We make more money each year than the year before. I could probably screw up three years in a row and not make a dent in anyone’s pocket. But I don’t. Screw up, that is.”
“Where did you meet your young golfer?” I asked.
She smiled again, this time with evident pleasure at the memory. “We put a lot of sponsor dollars into the San Diego tournament a couple years ago. So they invited us down to one of those watch-the-golf cocktail parties. I hardly ever go to those things, but I was told to show up for this one. Hated it. Everyone there was either a golfer who liked to talk about golf, or the other half of a couple. I was neither. John was there for some reason, but he was hiding on the sidelines too, so I started talking to him.” She smiled at another memory. “Funny...we didn’t talk about golf at all.”
She pushed her hair back and sipped at her beer. “We escaped. He took me out to dinner. I decided to stay around for the rest of the tournament. He barely made the cut and finished third from last. I was the only one in his gallery.” We both laughed.
“Looks like another good investment,” I said. “He’s a good one, and he’s getting better by the week.”
Her eyes shone. “I know,” she said quietly. “I’m so proud of him and what he’s accomplished so far. I’m looking forward to watching him hit his peak.” I saw a cloud pass quickly over her eyes and the edges of her mouth tightened. “That’s why it’s so damn frustrating –”
The door to the villa opened and John Turnbull walked in looking hot and tired. Becky jumped up and ran to kiss him, taking his hand and leading him into the living room. “Come sit down and cool off, sweetheart,” she cooed. “Hacker’s here. He helped me unload groceries. Let me get you a beer.”
Turnbull sank down on the couch with a groan. “God, I forgot how hot it gets out there at this time of the year,” he said. “Playing the tournament is going to be a snap compared to this.”
Becky came back with his beer and curled up at his feet.
This was a different person from the one I had been listening too on the telephone a few minutes earlier. That one had been a self-assured predator, stalking her jungle territory with assur- ance, expertise and even cockiness. Knowing what she wanted and knowing how to get it.
This Becky was different. She sat comfortably on the floor next to her husband while we chatted. She was always connected to him in some small way. An elbow thrown casually across his knees. A hand reaching out slyly to touch his calf. A happy glance thrown over her shoulder while she laughed at his jokes. This was a nurturing woman, also assured and expert, but committed to the other in a total and all-consuming way. John Turnbull, it occurred to me, was a lucky man.
Becky turned to me. “How long have you been covering the tour, Hacker?” she asked.
“Been out here for about six years,” I said. “Before that, I worked the crime beat back in Boston. Covered murders, rapes, terrorists, larcenies, armed holdups, corruption...the works.”
“And before that, you were a golfer,” John Turnbull said. “I’ve heard you were a damn good one. Why did you give it up?”
I paused a moment before answering. As I’ve said, I get asked that question a lot. Some people can understand, most can’t. I decided the Turnbulls were good bets for understanding.
“Golf has always been a game for me,” I said. “I started playing when I was a kid. My father would take me out to his club late on Sunday afternoons, when the course was empty. Golden summer afternoons, just him and me and all that green grass and lengthening shadows and birds flittering about before darkness fell. Those were special times.”
Becky and John Turnbull listened raptly. I could tell that they would understand.
“My dad always made it fun...a game. It was never ‘What did you have on that hole?’ or winning or losing. It was always skill games, like ‘See if you can hit a low shot and bounce the ball onto the green,’ or ‘I bet you can’t bend it around that tree,’ and ‘let’s play this hole with just a six-iron and see what happens.’ It was never about keeping score and keeping track of pars and birdies and stuff...we were just out having fun, whacking a ball around God’s green earth.”
The Turnbulls were listening. I saw John nodding once or twice.
“Of course, there was an ulterior motive to my dad’s games,” I continued. “He was making me into a shot-maker. Teaching me that golf was a game of infinite subtleties, not just raw power and scoring. A game that is shaped, shot by shot, much as a sculptor unveils a shape from the block of granite.
“The net result was that I became a champion as a junior. Everyone else was trying to make a score. I was just trying to have fun, overcome the challenges of that particular round, and see how creative I could be in getting the ball into the hole. That was the game to me. And the more I won, the more was expected...by other people. I was just out there having fun, playing a game, me against me, trying to use my knowledge and abilities to do something I found fun. It was never about winning making me a better person, or losing make me a worse one. I just played golf on my own terms and had fun doing it.”
I shrugged. “Until I got to the pros. Then it stopped being a game and became a business. It stopped being fun. I had to please other people – my investors, the press, fans. The prior- ity became winning money...as much as possible and as fast as possible. With those pressures, golf stopped being a game. And I couldn’t bear to lose that. So I got out. Simple as that.”
There was silence for a moment as they digested what I said. “I don’t think it was quite that simple,” Becky finally said. “Because it sounds like you made quite a leap. From a fantasy world of green grass, golden sunshine and unending adulation, into the real world of murders and blood and crime and, for you, anonymity. That sounds more like an escape, or perhaps a search for absolution.”
“You might be right,” I admitted. “I majored in journalism in college, in between golf tournaments, so I had something of a skill to fall back on. Plus, journalism classes were reputed to be easy.” We all laughed. “But I asked for the crime beat. I think I did feel a need to get back into the so-called real world, make up for lost time, do something worthwhile for a change.”
“And now?” Becky Turnbull looked at me questioningly. “And now I’ve got a satisfying assignment,” I said. “I’m involved again in the game I really love, but I let other people deal with it as a business instead of a game. Being that one step removed makes it okay, for me anyway. I’m good at what I do, and I like doing it. And I get paid for it, which is a bonus.”
“No regrets?” John Turnbull asked.
“Oh, Lord, no,” I said. “I’ve gotten everything I wanted from the game.”
“And what’s that?” Becky leaned forward. She was not just keeping the conversational ball rolling, but was seeking an answer to something that had apparently been burning inside. I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts before I answered.
“There’s not a whole lot right with the world these days,” I said finally. “Our cities are full of drugs and death and de- spair...more than half the world lives in abject poverty...gov- ernments are out there killing people and manipulating us in various ways. Life is basically chaos everywhere you look. But golf is still a world of order. It’s based on a system of honesty and values.”
“You mean counting all the strokes and calling penalties on yourself and stuff like that?” Turnbull asked.
“More than that,” I told him. “For instance, the thought that all strokes count the same, both the long drive and the shortest of putts. The shank, the top, the dead-pull, the blown one-footer...they each count exactly the same as a magnificent 300-yard drive, the dead-solid iron shot or the lucky 50-foot putt. There is a measuredness about golf that is reassuring. Take out the emotional peaks and valleys and each shot counts as one and represents just a small part of the entire round.”
“That sounds very Zenny,” Becky laughed. I chuckled with her. “Probably is,” I admitted.
“But what about all the rules?” she persisted. “That’s not very Zen-like. All those ‘do-this’ and ‘don’t do that.’”
“Not really,” I said. “The first part of the rule book simply explains how the game is to be played—”
“Yeah,” Turnbull chimed in. “What was it somebody said: ‘Golf is a game where you hit a small ball into a smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose?’”
We all laughed. “Winston Churchill said that,” I said. “But the second part of the rules tells you what happens if you screw up...or I should say when you screw up. And the penalty for screwing up ... hitting a ball into the water or out-of-bounds ... is predictable and mild. One stroke. But it’s when you try to bend the rules, or cheat, lie and steal ... then the boom is lowered. Two-stroke penalty. Loss of hole. Or the dreaded DQ...dis- qualification. Go directly to jail and do not pass Go.”
I paused and thought some more. I don’t think I had ever given voice to some of this. I wondered if I sounded hokey. Bravely, I plunged on.
“You see, in golf, as in life, everybody screws up,” I contin- ued. “We’re imperfect and human, and we always make mistakes. So when we do, we just add one stroke to remember the mistake by, and play on. It’s only when you ignore the basic, underlying value system that you get in real trouble. That’s a very honest, insightful and basic way of structuring one’s life.
“And the whole thing rests on a valued code of behavior. You try like hell to beat the other guy, but if he wins a hole, you give him ‘the honor’ on the next tee. And if he beats you in a game, you shake hands with him at the end, and buy him a beer. The rules of engagement are largely self-imposed and spring from a common sense of fairness. Victory is acknowledged as the main goal, but good play by the defeated is always admired and cherished. You don’t have to finish first to gain satisfaction from the experience. It’s –”
“It’s almost like a chivalry code,” Becky finished for me. “‘He loved chivalry, truth and honor, freedom and courtesy.’” She blushed. “It’s a line from Chaucer. I only remember it because I had to write a paper on it once.”
“That’s exactly it,” I said admiringly.
We sat there for a minute or two, thinking. Then Becky be- gan making noises about starting dinner, and John mentioned his need for a quick shower. I suddenly felt like an intruder on the domestic scene and, thinking of freedom and courtesy, I thanked them for the beer, quickly excused myself and left.