The Downhill Lie
If nothing else but for mojo maintenance, I ought to have at least one Titleist club in my Titleist carry bag.
Day 556
It’s too chilly for practice, so I stay home and thumb through golf books, another rookie mistake.
On page 117 of Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons is an illustration indicating the “correct location of calluses” on a golfer’s left palm. Hogan’s diagram shows eight calluses, but my hand has only seven—and the one on my ring finger appears to be slightly off the mark.
To a stickler like Hogan such details were important. Most golfers would never think of counting, much less mapping, their calluses.
I call Al Simmens to tell him I’ve only got seven.
“That’s it,” he says with a laugh. “Your game is done.”
Big Al has never added up his calluses, and he expresses a high degree of skepticism about the inquiry. By way of advice, he says, “Number one: Stop reading these books.”
I track down Leibo, who was deranged enough to play a tournament in today’s arctic blast. He reports having only one callus on his left hand.
“Hogan says you’re supposed to have eight,” I tell him.
Leibo sighs. “I hate golf and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
I locate Lupica by cell phone in Boston.
“Did Hogan wear a golf glove?” I ask.
“No! Why do you think I don’t wear one?” Lupica says. “He was my hero.”
I confide to having only seven of the eight requisite calluses.
“The Missing Callus,” he muses. “It could be a Da Vinci Code sort of mystery.”
“But I wear a glove, so why do I have any calluses at all?”
“Maybe you’re squeezing the club too tight. Hey, you know what else? Hogan had an extra cleat on one of his golf shoes!”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t remember which shoe. He ordered them specially from London, I think.”
That figures.
Day 558
After making a nice par, I hear high praise from Delroy: “Walk tall, pro.”
Then I fall steadily to pieces over the remaining holes. With only seventeen days until the tournament, my game continues a hellbound descent. The more hours I spend practicing, the worse I seem to get, a demoralizing correlation that flies in the face of universal golf wisdom.
The orthopedist can’t see me for three weeks, which kills my last-ditch scheme of scoring a medical excuse to bail out of the Member-Guest.
Day 560
There are more enjoyable ways to pull a groin muscle than by schlepping one’s own golf bag, but this is what I deserve for slicing so many shots into impassable locations.
After eight holes I gimp back to the clubhouse, then head home in hopes of spousal sympathy. My wife regards my injury with the clinical detachment of a combat nurse, and to my dismay prescribes only rest.
Day 561
I have a semi-encouraging conversation with a fellow named Jack Chapman, who gave up golf for twenty-five years and later returned to the sport with some success. The difference between Jack and myself is that he was a scratch player when he mothballed his clubs, while at the time of my retirement I was mauling par. Stellar genetics are another factor: Jack’s father, Dick Chapman, was an extraordinary amateur golfer who won the 1940 U.S. Amateur Championship, the 1951 British Amateur and during his long career played in nineteen Masters tournaments, tying Charlie Coe for the amateur record.
Jack and I are watching the Accenture Match Play Championship on television. Uncharacteristically, Tiger Woods is wildly pushing his tee shots into lakes, cactus patches and other hazards. Except for their extreme distance, his drives look creepily like my own.
At one point Tiger is down four holes to Nick O’Hern, but magnificently battles back to square the match. Then, on the first playoff hole, he misses a four-foot birdie putt—an unexpected sight that Jack and I can hardly absorb. Tiger drops the match and snaps his winning streak of seven consecutive PGA tournaments, raising the possibility that he might, after all, be mortal.
Day 562
Emergency lesson with Steve Archer.
The mission: To confront a virulent new case of the sh_ _ _ _, The Swing Disorder That Must Not Be Mentioned By Name.
We play nine holes, and although I par the last three in a row, the sh_ _ _ manifests itself often enough that Steve is visibly alarmed. By late afternoon he’s got me chipping short wedge shots using only my right hand. “You need to do a lot of this,” he says. “I mean a lot.”
In addition to the sh_ _ _ _ and some weak lag putting, the third most distressing thing we witness on the course is a mangy seagull stripping a fish from the talons of a bald eagle—our majestic national bird, being mugged by the avian equivalent of a garbage rat.
Rotten-bad mojo.
I feel lucky to make it back to the clubhouse.
Day 564
A farce at Lago Mar, beginning on the first hole where I dunk two balls. The sh_ _ _ _ have set in so stubbornly that Big Al refuses to watch me hit any irons, fearing that through some funky osmosis he, too, will be infected.
The round is notable for the most ridiculous bogey that I’ve ever made; that possibly anyone in the history of golf has ever made. It occurs on the par-513th, where I:
(1) Hook my drive to the soggy bank of a drainage canal;
(2) Sh_ _ _ an 8-iron back across the fairway and over two small hills;
(3) Sh_ _ _ a 6-iron into another fairway, where the ball comes to rest beneath a tree;
(4) Bump a low 9-iron into a grassy mound, which redirects the ball toward a wooden footbridge upon which it bounces not once but twice before landing improbably on the green;
(5) Where I come within a half-turn of sinking the downhill thirty-footer for par.
At one point during the carnage, Leibo shows up to check on my progress. He has spent the morning undergoing a nuclear stress test, which he would have failed if he’d been wired up while watching me flail with a wedge. It’s been an inauspicious debut for the new 56 degree Vokey.
After only a few holes, Leibo excuses himself, saying he has an important meeting with his tax accountant. This might be true, or it might be a polite fiction. In any case, he’s not there to observe my clutch finish, three-putting the 16th, 17th and 18th holes.
The tournament is eleven days away, and my game’s in the proverbial shitter. I call my book editor, and recount the day in gruesome detail.
“Hmmmm. It sounds like things are getting ugly,” Peter says, with a hint of hopefulness.
No Such Luck
Boat captains in the Florida Keys won’t let you bring a yellow banana aboard because it brings bad luck. This is a known fact.
Believing is everything, and I believe mojo is real. If I get skunked on two consecutive days during a fishing tournament, my hat goes into the nearest garbage can. If that doesn’t bring back some positive karma, I’ll switch brands of candy bars, forsaking my regular Skors for a Milky Way (always bring two, sometimes three; never just one). And if that doesn’t work, I’ll substitute a baked ham sandwich—or, if extreme measures are necessary, roast beef—for my customary turkey sub.
This behavior is every bit as twitchy as it sounds, yet it produces results. What you eat, what you wear, even what you put on your head are all proven factors in a day’s sporting fortunes. Example: I own four particular T-shirts that consistently bring good luck on the water. Frayed and faded, they’re juiced with such heavy mojo that I’ll use them until they tatter to lint. Conversely, if I suffer an exceptionally bad day of fishing in a brand-new shirt, it will be consigned to the rag bin.
Upon returning to golf I was pleased to learn that many players are as superstitious as fishermen. PGA pros often carry sentimental items for luck—Jim Furyk keeps his golf shoes in a tote bag from the University of Arizona, his alma mater; Lorena Ochoa marks her ball with a coin engraved with her favorite prayer from the Old Testament. Some pros use only balls bea
ring a certain numeral, while others avoid specific numbers as unlucky; David Toms, for instance, refuses to hit a No. 2 ball off the first tee.
Even Tiger Woods has his rituals—he uses head covers knitted by his mother, and he always wears red on Sundays. Tiger could easily afford to discard his shirt after a crummy round, or even after a crummy shot, but most amateurs can’t.
No matter how poorly I’ve scored, I still haven’t tossed any $80 Cutter and Bucks in the Dumpster at the end of a day. During rocky stretches I’ve switched hats, tees, ball markers, gloves, bandannas, spikes and even sunglasses, but high-end wardrobe I cannot bring myself to jettison. Unlike my fishing clothes, golf duds aren’t cheap. Another factor is marital harmony—because many of my shirts were presents from my wife, I’m reluctant to start throwing them away on an impulse for fear of being branded as ungrateful and possibly nuts.
As the weekend of the Member-Guest drew closer, I hurried to tidy up my karmic mess. I sorted through my stash of designated water balls, purging the most scrofulous. I consigned to a closet several hats that had let me down during the finishing holes of potentially respectable rounds.
Finally, I removed from my golf bag a medallion featuring the creepy visage of a hairy, bloated Irish troll. A gift from Leibo, the tag came from Whistling Straits, a sadistically demanding course in Kohler, Wisconsin. Leibo had half-jokingly warned that the souvenir (which resembled a leprechaun who’d been dipping into Barry Bonds’s private vitamin jar) might possibly be an agent of bad mojo—and, in fact, my game had been sputtering ever since he’d given it to me. I unclipped the medallion and stowed it safely out of sight.
As for good-luck charms, I owned none. It had been so long since my last semi-decent round of golf that the accoutrements from that day had lost their magic, or were lost themselves. The quarter that I’d used to mark my putts was either in a soda machine or Quinn’s piggy bank, while the Titleists that had performed so ably now slept with the carp at Quail Valley, or lay plugged deep in snake-infested flora.
Hope arrived one February afternoon when, on the way to the Keys, I stopped to visit my mother. As we were chatting in the kitchen, I noticed a small plastic bag on the table. The bag was old and brittle-looking, bearing the logo of a local jewelry shop.
“What’s this?” I asked her.
“Dad’s watch. I was wondering if you wanted it.”
In the bag was a handsome but simple wristwatch that I recognized right away. It has a gold-and-steel band, and the back is etched with my father’s initials, K.O.H.
The watch is visible in a framed photograph of Dad standing beside a large blue marlin that he caught in the Bahamas. It’s the same watch he was wearing on the night he’d collapsed and died at home. Mom had kept it all these years.
Once someone broke into the house and stole most of the family jewelry, which wasn’t much but included some irreplaceable heirlooms. Although the thief found Dad’s wristwatch, he didn’t take it. When my mother got home she spotted it on top of the dresser, where the intruder had left it.
We all wondered why he’d swiped everything but the watch, which was worth about $1,500. Police detectives told Mom that professional burglars avoid items that are engraved, because they’re hard to fence. The explanation sounded plausible, although I was aware of many cases in which the crooks were not so cautious.
For whatever reason, my father’s watch had survived the ransacking.
“I thought it might be nice for you to have,” Mom said, “though I know you like the one you’ve got.” She leaned closer to check out mine, an old stainless Submariner with a faded black face.
“This is the one Dad gave me for Christmas,” I reminded her, “just before he died.”
She seemed surprised, and touched. “And you’re still wearing it after all this time?”
“Yup.”
She smiled and squeezed my hand, which always gets to me.
“I’d like to have this one, too,” I said, “if you’re sure.”
“Lately I’ve been going through all his things—”
“I’ll keep it, Mom. Maybe someday I can give it to Scottie or Quinn.”
“It still works,” she said.
I slipped off my watch and put on my father’s, which was a bit loose on my left wrist. A jeweler could make it snug by removing a link or two from the band.
“Looks good on you,” said Mom.
“I’ll wear it,” I promised, and placed the watch back in the plastic bag. I was thinking about the upcoming tournament—if anything might bring me good luck on a golf course, it would be carrying something personal that had belonged to my Dad.
And if that didn’t work, so what? Wearing the watch would make me think of him, which couldn’t be bad.
After dinner I said goodbye to Mom and drove down to Islamorada. The next two days were filled with some of the best tarpon fishing I’d experienced in a long time. Upon returning to Vero Beach I immediately took Dad’s watch to a shop and got the band adjusted.
After thirty-one years it was strange to see a different time-piece on my arm, but it had the weight of major mojo. I locked it in a safe until the day of the tournament.
Day 566
Leibo calls up singing, “Shanks for the Memories.”
It’s no joking matter, as he will see for himself during the tournament.
“All I need from you is two pars every nine holes,” he says. “Two pars, okay? You can sh_ _ _ it all day long and I don’t care as long as you give me two pars.”
“That’s more pressure,” I mutter.
“You fucker! I’m trying to take the pressure off!”
“I know, Mike. I know.”
Day 568
By e-mail the USGA delivers word that my handicap index now stands at 16.1, which converts to 19 strokes at Quail Valley—a new high, just in time for the tournament.
I’ve been told that some golfers are secretly pleased if their handicaps spike before a major competition; that a few actually conspire to that goal, submitting higher-than-typical scores with the aim of sandbagging their team into an easier flight.
Silly me. I’ve been trying to play better, not worse.
Every day at practice, I feel like a drowning man. Then I come home and see the snapshots of my father that are pinned to the corkboard. I pay special attention to the photo in which Dad is splashing cleanly out of a bunker, a skill that I’ve recently mislaid. In another picture, he’s beginning a downswing with what appears to be a 9-iron, and displaying a textbook rotation of the shoulders. With a form like that, there’s no way to sh_ _ _ a golf ball.
No way.
Day 570
The whole clan goes to the range, where the mighty Quinn dominates with his driver, and his commentary.
“Did you see that shot, Dad?”
Then: “Hey, did you see that one?”
Then: “Dad, look at this! Look at this!”
Then: “I love golf. It is the greatest sport.”
Quinn’s ebullience draws the notice of several older players. Some look amused and some look suspicious, as if I’ve overdosed the kid on Flintstones vitamins.
We relocate to the practice green. Fenia doesn’t have a putter, so I slyly fetch the exiled Rossa from my locker. They bond instantly.
I feel like Oprah.
Day 572
Another dubious achievement: I hit twelve of fourteen fairways, yet post just one measly par. This requires creative ineptitude with the irons.
On No. 11 I clobber a freakishly long drive, 298 yards as paced off from the nearest sprinkler head. From there I strike what looks like a perfectly adequate sand wedge. The ball lands softly in the center of the green and proceeds to roll…and roll…and then roll some more. It comes to rest off the putting surface in a sidehill cut of fringe, from where I make bogey.
Even my lone par is a fluke—a forty-foot lag on No. 6.
Seventy-two hours until the tournament, and I’m flopping like a gigged frog.
 
; Day 573
One last lesson before match play, and the results are inconclusive.
Steve Archer says the accursed sh_ _ _ _ are the result of sliding rather than pivoting away from the ball. He theorizes that I’m doing this because the pain in my right knee makes it uncomfortable to rotate the hips.
Unfortunately, there’s no time to get an artificial joint implanted. Tomorrow is the official practice round.
Strokes of Fate
The practice day of the 2007 Men’s Invitational Member-Guest began with a Mind Drive capsule and flashing blue lights: A cop pulled me over, in front of the gates of the country club.
He clocked me at 59 mph, and it would have been faster if I hadn’t been stuck behind an eighteen-wheeler. The officer was very decent about it, letting me off with a warning.
“Have a good day of golfing,” he said, which is not usually how my traffic stops are resolved. It seemed to be a good sign.
Sure enough, Leibo dropped a fifteen-foot birdie on the first hole. I thought we were off and running, but we were just plain off.
On No. 4 I topped my drive down to the ladies’ tee box, banged a 3-wood up near the green, then chunked an easy pitch. Our partners, whom we will (to protect the innocent) call Tom and Tim, were solid players—long off the tee, steady with their irons, and very quiet. Leibo said we were lucky they weren’t in our flight. “We’d be getting smoked,” he whispered.
My putting was unimpressive, yet on the front nine I delivered my promised two pars, including a swell up-and-down on No. 6. On the back side I parred two more holes, and it should have been three.
On No. 14, a downwind par-5, Delroy urged me to go for the green with my second shot: “No holdin’ back, mon.” With his range finder he shot the distance to the pin at 208 yards. I creamed the 22 degree rescue club, but the ball caught a front-side bunker on the fly. There I got a chance to display my unspeakably hapless sand game, and ended up with a sad bogey.
On No. 16, the elevated two-hundred-yard par-3, I banged a 5-iron about twenty-five feet past the cup, then three-putted for another wasted opportunity. Leibo did the same—one of six exasperating three-putts for him. Usually a wizard with the blade, he seemed vexed by Quail Valley’s slick greens. “It’s like putting on the top of my head,” he muttered, tapping his shiny dome.