We were paired with a sturdy-looking couple from Oslo, Norway, who were characteristically polite and quiet. They flinched but did not complain whenever Bogie bellowed the f-word, which happened on more than one occasion. In a way I felt sorry for him, now outnumbered three-to-one by tightlipped Scandinavians.
He and I both started ignominiously, posting 7s on the same dogleg par-5 that Choi had eagled on the final day of the Chrysler. My ball visited three different bunkers, all superbly groomed, before landing anywhere close to the green.
The second hole was equally comical, Bogie and I racking up another nasty pair of 7s. The Norwegians played briskly and with purpose, spending little time mulling club selections or studying putts. We picked up our pace, so as not to be left in their dust.
On the front nine, a rare triumph: Bogie and I parred the hole known as “Snake Bite,” a long par-3 that had inflicted upon Choi his only double-bogey of the tournament.
Bogie made the turn at 49, while I shot 47 with three pars. I wasn’t totally displeased, but I feared the wheels would soon fly off—and did they ever. I debauched the back nine with three 7s and three 6s, on the way to a 53 and the malodorous sum of 100. My lag putting was so inept that at times Bogie seemed dumbstruck.
Only once were the Norwegians rattled, and not by us. Copperhead is home to a bizarre species of squirrel that looks like a cross between a howler monkey and a fox with thyroid problems. Agile and crafty, the squirrels specialize in preying upon unwary golfers by stealing snacks and slurping from unattended beverages. It was behind the 14th green where the Norwegians encountered one of the pointy-eared beasts looting their cart. They frightened it away with their only emotional outcry of the day.
Despite being terrified of the squirrels, Bogie played revoltingly well on the home stretch, finishing with a 42 that could easily have been a 39. As was his custom, he kept the scorecard to himself until we were in the car, when my hands were on the wheel and free of sharp lunch utensils. He endeavored to put a positive spin on my sorry performance.
“It’s better than you did last time,” he said.
“By one fucking stroke,” I pointed out.
“Hey, it’s a tough course.”
“Paul, for me they’re all tough courses.”
The next morning found us somewhere east of the Sarasota airport, hunting for the Ritz-Carlton Members Club. It turned out to be a stunning tract bordered by a nature preserve—and not a condo in sight. In fact, the clubhouse hadn’t even been finished.
A gloss of dew was still on the grass when Brian and Frank, our caddies, led us to the first tee. We were the only human souls on the course, which felt eerie but liberating after the traffic jams at Copperhead and Grande Pines.
Frank advised us to be cautious searching the woodlands for our wayward balls, due to a robust population of rattlesnakes. There were also wild boars, Brian added, fully tusked and disinclined to give ground. Bogie said we should make a pact not to venture off the fairways.
He was flying back to Jersey that afternoon and, because the following day was his birthday, I agreed to play from the tips. Even though the distance was intimidating (7,033 yards), I vowed to remain upbeat.
Like Quail Valley, the Members Club is a Tom Fazio design, which means man-made elevation, deep lakes and a plague of sprawling sand traps. I told myself that nearly a year of playing Quail Valley had prepared me for another Fazio challenge. Besides, an experienced caddy would be helping me pick my clubs and read the greens. Theoretically, there seemed no reason not to score better.
Again, I failed to factor in the most corrosive fundamental of golf, the Suck Factor. On any given Sunday, any course can be butchered.
The final damage was 105, the worst number I’d posted since buying my clubs. Even with Brian at my shoulder, I was putting like a caffeinated chimpanzee. The round included an especially macabre stretch of three three-putts, followed by a triplet of hard-earned 7s. Even Bogie ran out of encouragement.
Inexplicably, amid the carnage I managed to par the two longest holes on the course. Another sunny interlude occurred on the 15th, when I hit a rescue club 210 yards off a trampled ridge between two bunkers dotted with fresh tracks of feral pigs. The ball poinged over the green, but it was still an awfully crisp shot.
That I had not destroyed my Callaways by the end of the morning was, I felt, a sign of growing maturity. The hike itself had been glorious under a porcelain sky teeming with birds—cranes, wood storks, ospreys, curlews, swallows, blue herons and red-tailed hawks. There are worse places to play bad golf than on the edge of a wild cypress swamp.
After surrendering the scorecard for my review, Bogie left to catch his flight home. I was bitterly amused to see that, having miscounted my flails on the 16th, he’d given me 104 instead of 105. Dourly I corrected the mistake, which I hoped was not a deliberate act of pity.
With the Member-Guest tournament at Quail Valley only thirteen weeks, five days and eleven hours away, I phoned Leibo to warn him of my decline. He absorbed the news extremely well, probably because he’d shot 73 that afternoon.
It seemed impossible that only a few weeks earlier I’d been scoring in the low 90s—and bitching about it! Now I would happily trade places with Scooter Libby, just to break 100.
The gruesome gauntlet resumed at the melodramatically named Black Course at Tiburon (Slope: 138), a Greg Norman project in Naples. Playing alone, I made exactly one decent swing all day: a choked-down 5-iron from a waste bunker, uphill into a mean wind. The ball landed eight feet from the pin, but I squandered the opportunity by clumsily stubbing the putt.
At one point I found myself trapped in a construction site roaring with backhoes and bulldozers. A wide roadbed was being laid through the back nine, undoubtedly to accommodate future high-end homesites. It was an offensive but commonplace Florida scene—greed on the roll, a tide of concrete and asphalt where once there were tall pines and creeks.
A forklift operator eventually noticed me wheeling the golf cart in circles, and he hoisted an immense water pipe to clear a path to the next tee. By now, the din and dust from the earthmovers had pulverized the wispy remnants of my concentration. Queasy from diesel fumes, I hooked the next drive into a mesh-lined borrow pit, and sullenly moved on.
By the time I departed Tiburon, the state of my demoralization was complete and seemingly irreversible. I’d missed sixteen of eighteen greens, posting only two pars on the way to another rancid 100. The most exhilarating moment came when I almost flipped the cart while speeding along a boardwalk toward the 17th tee.
Back at the hotel, I began scheming cowardly ways to bail out of finishing the golf book. One possibility was to schedule another operation on my right knee, which would put me on crutches long enough to blow my publisher’s deadline. The only drawback to that plan was my profound aversion to pain—rehabbing a knee joint is no fun.
The following morning, I got up early and drove to Miami to appear on a live television program. The segment preceding mine featured a peppy performance by the cast of Altar Boyz, an off-Broadway musical about a Christian boy band. It was a challenging act for a novelist to follow.
Afterwards I headed to the Lago Mar Country Club in Plantation, not far from where I grew up. I was filling out a foursome with Al Simmens; Tommy McDavitt, another old friend; and Al’s stepson, Patrick, a nice kid and a sharp golfer. To make me feel better about my own erratic play, Patrick recalled that he’d once shot 109 a week after posting 76.
The story did cheer me up. The only reason I couldn’t top it was that I’ve never come close to shooting a 76.
When Al, Tommy and I were kids, the Lago Mar area of Broward County was the boonies, a vast and almost impenetrable stand of melaleuca trees. A papery-barked species that sucks water like a giant soda straw, melaleucas had been imported from Australia to drain the Everglades for development—a mission that flopped.
Many thousands of acres of native flora were displaced by the exotic pests, which wreaked mayhem o
n the ecosystem. The trees proved so durable and prolific that the state of Florida has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to eradicate them using helicopters that squirt potent herbicides.
The developers of the Lago Mar golf community came up with a localized solution to the melaleuca epidemic: They bulldozed an immense clearing in the trees. Hanging in the clubhouse was an old black-and-white photograph that showed a canal where I once fished for bass. If the waterway still existed, it was now irrigating acres of suburban backyards.
Despite the bittersweet memories, the round at Lago Mar was therapeutic. It’s hard to embarrass one’s self while playing golf with guys you’ve known since childhood. I couldn’t make sense of all the betting, which was just as well. I carded a 91 and Al had an 81, and somehow we collected $28 from Tommy and Patrick. More importantly, I broke 100 for the first time in a long, demeaning week. The relief was indescribable, and a bit pathetic.
After being brutalized in swift order by Grande Pines, Copperhead, the Ritz Members and Tiburon, Lago was a pardoning intermission. Afterwards I felt ready to go home and be punished by a familiar golf course.
I missed Quail Valley’s turtles, the mutant carp and even the savage 18th hole.
And, of course, there was a tournament to prepare for.
Day 484
A jolting and unforeseen complication:
“Guess what I’m doing next Wednesday,” my wife says.
“What?”
“Having my first golf lesson.”
“Really?” Me, thinking: Easy now. This will pass.
Day 488
A Christmas card arrives from the David Leadbetter Golf Academy: Santa Claus wearing a golf glove and sunglasses. He’s carrying a bagful of swing aids and other clubhouse goodies bearing the Leadbetter brand. Call me Scrooge, but the greeting fails to put me in the holiday spirit.
Meanwhile, Fenia is seeking fashion advice for her upcoming lesson. I tell her to dress comfortably.
The skirt she chooses is cute, although she’ll have to be careful when teeing up the ball.
As for footwear, I advise her to wear sneakers. She is reluctant, because she doesn’t want tan lines on her ankles.
“They won’t let you wear flip-flops,” I say.
“How come?”
“They just won’t.”
Day 489
Today’s the day—my wife’s first lesson. Afterwards she calls from the car to say she had a grand time, which catches me off guard.
“I was using a pitching wedge,” she reports proudly.
“That’s great. It’s very important around the greens.”
“What’s a green?” she says.
Me, thinking: One step at a time.
“Did you schedule another lesson?” I ask.
“Not yet. It’s kind of expensive.”
I hear myself saying, “You should do it again, if you enjoyed it.”
“It was fun!”
After Fenia says goodbye, I immediately phone Lupica for advice. He can hardly stop laughing.
“She liked it?”
“Apparently so,” I say.
“This is the greatest,” he cackles. “I was just thinking: How many different ways can golf screw you?”
Although I love spending time with Fenia, Lupica’s right—the golf course can be dangerous territory for a marriage. The last thing a struggling hacker needs is a spouse who wants to learn the game, and the last thing a beginner needs is advice from a spouse who’s a struggling hacker. Delicacy and reserve—not my strong suits—will be necessary to ensure that the conjugal relationship survives our relationship with golf.
Sensing that my days of solitude at Quail Valley are numbered, I head straight to the club and tee off—alone—under overcast skies. During the round I soak five balls, but on the upside I one-putt four consecutive greens, a personal best. The final damage is 93, which, after my calamitous road trip, shimmers like a gem.
Day 491
Baffling but true: After posting those four humiliating triple-digit scores from the book tour, I watch my USGA handicap rise a measly one-tenth of a stroke, to 15 even. Einstein couldn’t unravel this tangled formula.
Day 497
Delroy Smith is back in town after a season of caddying at Burning Tree, the premier power-golf venue in Washington, D.C. I’m hoping for tales of dissolute congressmen galloping naked with their bimbos on the fairways, but Delroy says the summer was routine.
His eyebrows hitch when I tell him I’ve signed up for the Member-Guest Invitational.
“Okay,” he says, “this is important for the tournament: Always make sure you know which holes you’re stroking on.”
“Stroking” is one of those terms that has come to mean something entirely different in middle age than it did when I was young.
“I’m still not sure how that works,” I admit.
“Say your handicap is eighteen—is it eighteen or fifteen?”
“Eighteen on this course.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re playing a guy who’s a nine. That means you get a stroke on nine of the holes.”
I stare as if he’s speaking Slovenian.
Delroy patiently takes out the scorecard and pencils an asterisk below the holes that are handicapped 1 through 9, in descending degrees of difficulty. I’d just parred the first hole, which—because I was “stroking”—would count as a birdie in a match.
The system, which is actually quite simple, rewards average players who play well on the hardest holes. Unfortunately, I customarily save my double- and triple-bogeys for the easiest holes, which in competition would nullify the benefits of stroking.
Although it’s mid-December, the temperature in central Florida is 79 degrees and a hard wind blows from the southeast. The greens at Quail Valley are so dry and fast that every downhill putt becomes a runaway train. I limp home after another body blow to the handicap.
“We’re peaking at the same time,” Leibo quips when I check in. “Remember when I was a five? Now I’m a seven, with a bullet.”
When I gripe about the pace of the greens, he chuckles. “As bad as they were today, I promise you they’ll be worse for the tournament. Same with the pin placements.”
A survivor of many club tournaments, Leibo tells me to prepare for the “pucker factor,” referring to the nervous and involuntary constriction of a certain orifice.
The puckering, I assure him, has already commenced.
Day 498
An improbable scene: My wife in the backyard swinging the Fred Funk–endorsed Momentus Training Club.
“This thing really is heavy,” she comments.
“Forty ounces,” I say. “That’s why it did a number on those rats.”
Fenia frowns in disgust. “This is what you used on the rats?”
She shoves the Momentus into my hands. Practice is over.
Earlier, she and young Quinn each had a golf lesson.
“Dad, I hit a bird!” Quinn announced excitedly when he got home. “But don’t worry, it flew away.”
“How did you hit a bird?”
“I don’t know. The ball went really high.”
My wife confirms the incident. Her own lesson, she reports, was uneventful.
Day 503
Fenia and I head out to practice, a trip fraught with volcanic risk. Following the stern counsel of experienced golfers, I keep my mouth zipped until my wife shows an interest in my advice, which on occasion she does.
For clubs she’s using loaners that are too long, although she doesn’t complain. She whiffs a few balls, tops a few and yet remains undiscouraged; in fact, she acts like she’s having a blast. Such a healthy attitude seems eerily out of place on a driving range.
Afterwards, at Fenia’s urging, we try a short par-3, her first-ever complete hole of golf. She’s so stoked that we play another. On the way home, we stop at a golf store and she picks out shoes—but only one pair, an act of retail restraint that I accept as a small miracle.
&n
bsp; My friends are of two views regarding spouses who take up golf. One faction thinks it’s very cool, while the other believes it’s Shakespearean tragedy.
“Unacceptable,” David Feherty weighs in by e-mail. “As they say in Spanish, ‘Feliz Nueva Anus!’ ”
Which he translates loosely to mean, “Congratulations on your new orifice.”
Day 508
New Year’s resolutions:
1. Improve my short game.
2. Find an antacid that works.
Lupica’s got his whole family scouting magazines and catalogues for lame golf gimmicks that I can purchase under the guise of “research.” Son Zack has triumphantly unearthed an advertisement for Visiball sunglasses, which supposedly filter out greenish hues so that you can locate missing balls in deep rough or heavy woods.
According to the manufacturer, “Visiball glasses are equipped with a specially designed lens that blocks out the majority of the foliage and grass from your field of view when you are looking for your lost golf ball. With the foliage and grass out of the picture, your lost golf ball stands out like a sore thumb.”
The product carries an intriguing warning: “Visiball lenses are NOT golfing sunglasses. In fact they are not meant to be worn while playing. They are designed to be worn only when searching for a golf ball.”
This could be a hot item on the South Beach party scene.
At $40, the X-ray-like shades look like a bargain compared to the expensive and disappointing RadarGolf system. However, the online demonstration of Visiball is lame. The “missing” golf balls are conspicuous in the Before picture, and only slightly more so using the special blue-tinted lens.
“I’m not falling for this one,” I tell Lupica.
Day 509
After a week of diligently practicing chips, bumps and lobs, I disgrace myself around the greens. Two positive notes: I’m suddenly driving the ball well and also executing decent bunker shots.
These trends are, like all progress in golf, ephemeral. At this point I couldn’t make the Flomax Tour.
Day 513