Jericho approached two other men who stood on the tee box at the first tee of Newcastle Golf Club and called out, “Hello, there!”
“You must be the prospective member Kowalski set us up with,” one guy called back. He was a doughy guy of medium height, age about seventy, and wore a gray golf shirt with Vitamin Angels embroidered on the left side.
Jericho swung his clubs to the side, and the legs of his bag popped out to prop them up. “I’m Jericho Parr. Were you at the Vitamin Angels charity tournament this year?”
The guy scoffed, “Nah, Gerald here gave me this shirt because it was too small for him.” The guy laughed and patted his expansive beer belly. “It fits my girlish figure better.”
The other guy laughed uproariously, and Jericho smiled at them as they introduced themselves.
The chubbier man’s bulbous eyes splayed out slightly above his flopping jowls, and he seemed to regard Jericho with first one eye and then the other. Jericho was not surprised when he introduced himself as Gerald Jorgenson. “A friend of mine works for Excip Chemicals. Excip bought a table. When one of the purchasing managers over at Gnostic Pharmaceuticals who buys powders and stuff from him got the flu and had to drop out, Billy had an extra seat. That was a swanky get-up over there on Long Island. I got a goodie bag. I hadn’t gotten a goodie bag since my grandson’s seventh birthday!”
Jericho’s firm Last Chance, Inc. had bought three tables at Vitamin Angels the year before, inviting potential investors to schmooze. He said to Gerald, “I think I met your wife in the clubhouse.”
“Yep, I imagine you did. She’s setting up yet another bridge club. Every year, she and Maisie go through all that trouble, and then the few people who do sign up all drop out by the third week. It’s like she can’t wrap her head around the fact that this is a golf club and nothing else.”
The other guy said, “Maisie tries to talk her out of it every year, but Imogene won’t let it go. Maisie’s my wife. I’m Ron Lincoln.”
Newcastle Golf Club certainly had many problems, but that meant it had significant potential to improve its ROI. Every time Jericho heard about more of these lost opportunities, though, he winced.
But their lack of foresight would be his opportunity when he bought the country club.
If he bought the country club.
Jericho had appointments and tee times at four other clubs over the next week. Newcastle GC was far from his only opportunity, and two of the other ones were located near wealthier areas that would probably be smarter buys.
They teed off, and Jericho striped his ball nearly three hundred yards down the fairway.
“Nice,” Gerald said.
Jericho twirled the club in his hand as he untwisted his body. “Thanks.”
The ball landed on the far-left side of the fairway and bounced and then rolled into the rough grass on the side.
“Even if it is off the fairway,” Gerald continued.
Ron patted Jericho’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll get there eventually.”
Jericho asked the two guys, “Tell me why you like it here at Newcastle.”
As they walked down the wide fairways that were in pretty good shape, Ron and Gerald extolled how easy it was to walk right onto the first tee of the golf course most days, except when the high school team had reserved the course every dang afternoon, of course. They grumbled about that, and they grumbled enough that Jericho thought Tiffany Jones might not have her finger on the pulse of the membership quite as much as she thought she did.
The three of them played the hole pretty well, but Jericho misread the slope of the green and had to settle for a tap-in par instead of a birdie.
As they walked the course, Ron and Gerald talked about the easy availability of tee times, the lack of a monthly minimum in the restaurant, and how they sneaked in whisky flasks to top up their drinks to keep their bar bills low.
Those were signs of an unhealthy country club, Jericho mused. These guys were sucking the all-you-can-play golf out of the club and not giving anything back.
No wonder Newcastle Golf Club’s balance sheets were bleeding red, and the club was up for sale. Everything about this place made more sense when regarded in the light of a bunch of hacker-members who wouldn’t part with a penny at the club beyond their dues. The grounds committee probably hadn’t had the funds to replace the roof that looked like it was several years past its expiration, the shingles rough on the wide planes.
When Jericho’s ball landed in a bunker and ran up the far side to plop in the grass, he stuck a finger into the sand to gauge its depth.
The sand in the bunker barely came halfway up his fingernail when it should have been at least six inches deep. New sand was expensive though. The grounds committee probably hadn’t been able to refresh the sand traps for years, either.
He bet Imogene would appreciate a bunch of new members who played bridge, and the restaurant’s balance sheets would appreciate a bunch of bridge-playing members who liked appetizers and mixed drinks with their cards.
Yes, Jericho had plans for the Newcastle golf course when he bought it.
If he bought it, Jericho reminded himself. That was not a good mindset for a venture capitalist with a bet to win.
When they were on the green of the seventh hole, a short par-three, Jericho meandered around the subject of the various golf pros and other staff until he outright asked the two of them, “So, what about Tiffany Jones? What’s her story?”
The two of them exchanged glances and chuckled. Jericho watched them out of the corner of his eye as he lined up his putt, imagining the path the ball would take to the hole in the center of the sloped green.
Ron guffawed, “I would’ve thought Zoe was more your type.”
“Who’s Zoe?” Jericho asked and glared at the smooth, grassy surface under his ball. Something didn’t look quite right, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“The blonde who works in the pro shop.”
Jericho chuckled. “Yeah, she seemed a little ditzy. Tiffany’s hot.”
“Yeah, but Zoe seems more your type,” one of them said.
These guys didn’t know Jericho or his dating history. “Nah, Tiffany’s my type.” His mind returned to her lush curves and her bee-stung lips instead of examining the golf ball and grain of the grass under his putter head, which was not what he needed to be concentrating on just then.
Oh, but the way she’d lectured him on doing something with his life might get him hard right there if he thought about her too much. Not only the hustle in her voice, but the huskiness and intensity.
He’d like to hear that voice screaming his name.
Dammit, think about the golf, Jericho.
One of the guys said, “Yeah, but Zoe’s more the type to bring home to mother if you get my drift, and she’s got a great rack. She should be working at the yacht club because I’d like to motorboat her.”
Jericho straightened and looked up. “What the hell do you mean, bring her home to my mother?”
The guys looked at each other. Ron said to Jericho, “Like, you know, bring home to your mother. Like, for Sunday dinner.”
Jericho glared at them. “Tiffany is exactly the type of girl I’d bring home to my parents.” If he had ever brought a girl home to his parents, which he hadn’t. “She’s educated, ambitious, and wouldn’t be intimidated by my father.”
Gerald and Ron immediately backpedaled, explaining that they hadn’t meant it that way.
Yeah, whatever. Jericho leaned over to examine his putt again. “So, what’s Tiffany’s story?”
He stared at the ball and the grass that seemed to be growing in the wrong direction underneath it. What the hell was up with this green?
Gerald shrugged. “She’s the assistant pro. Kowalski hired her over a year ago.”
Jericho tapped his golf ball with his putter, and it meandered the exact opposite path he thought it would go. Instead of curving toward the hole, the ball rolled straight uphill as far as he could tell and ended up three feet away from the flag.
Dammit, that ball had defied the laws of physics.
Jericho said, “Right. Anything else about her I should know?”
Ron frowned. “I think she’s a Methodist?”
That would explain the delicate gold cross nestled in the hollow of her throat that had glinted in the sunlight and kept drawing Jericho’s attention.
He walked over to his ball and tapped it again, powering it uphill toward the hole to take any break out of his line.
Again defying the law of gravity, that devil ball picked up speed and bounced off the back edge of the cup, popping up into the air and curling to a stop a foot from the hole.
Oh, God. Maybe he had the yips.
Please, God. Not the yips.
The yips were a dreaded malady that afflicted golfers young and old, tall and short, hairy and bald. The feared condition began with a wobble in the putts and often ended with a complete inability to swing or even look at a golf club. It was rumored to be psychological, but other golfers treated people with the yips as if it were highly infectious, just in case.
Through his embarrassment about his imminent three-putt, Jericho growled, “What else about her?”
The two other golfers looked at each other and then back at him. Finally, Ron asked, “What are you asking about?”
He stood over the ball again. “You know, anything about her.” He stared at the ball as if he could shoot lasers from his eyes and set it on fire.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ron backhand Gerald on the arm. Ron said, “I don’t think she dates members, Jericho. She’s not a beer girl, and this isn’t that kind of club.”
He said all that in Jericho’s backswing of his putt, and the insinuation about Tiffany made his hand shake and his putter head wobble. His golf ball staggered three inches sideways and then stopped.
Yep, definitely the yips.
It couldn’t be anything else, right?
Jericho said, “I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t even ask that, jeez.”
This time, Gerald slapped Ron on the arm. “I don’t think she’s dating anybody if that’s what you’re asking. Her father’s been a member of this club for decades, and I don’t think anybody here would have the nerve to date Master Sergeant Sherman Jones’s daughter. If anybody made her cry, Sherman is a townie who knows every secluded deer-hunting spot for a hundred miles. The police would never find the body.”
And that made Jericho completely miss the golf ball, but the breeze from his whiffing putter head blew the ball a few inches closer to the hole, close enough for him to tap it in.
Five putts.
Jericho hadn’t taken five putts to finish out a hole for years.
Absolutely mortifying.
Must be the yips.