The Downhill Lie
Consequently, we usually opted for terrestrial activities. In those days, rural Broward County had no malls or video arcades, so my friends and I spent most of our free hours exploring the Everglades, fishing for bass or catching snakes.
On Saturdays, Dad either headed downtown to his law office, or worked on legal briefs at home. Sundays were for golf, period. My father would disappear early, leaving Mom alone with the kids all day. Over time she developed an understandable resentment toward Dad’s golf, believing (not unreasonably) that he ought to hang out with his family at least one day of the week.
Like many boys, my main motivation for taking up golf was to have more time with my father. A second and less noble reason was to weasel out of going to church.
Dad was a laconic agnostic while my mother was, and still is, a devout Roman Catholic. Early in their marriage he’d agreed to let her raise us in the faith, which meant we had to attend catechism classes on Saturdays and Mass (in dreary, droning Latin) on Sundays—the entire weekend basically shot, from my point of view.
Escape beckoned in the form of Dad’s golf excursions. I had noticed that his regular tee time coincided fortuitously with the mid-morning Mass at St. Gregory’s. If Dad took me along to the club, I reasoned, then I’d have an excuse to skip church.
It seemed like a no-brainer. Golf couldn’t be that hard to learn, I thought to myself.
Oh Lord, was I wrong.
My inability to master the game stung more sharply because of the friction that my new hobby was causing at home. Mom was perturbed because I was dodging Mass, and she felt that my father was abetting the enterprise. My little brother was too young to fret over such things, but I’m sure my two sisters were envious because I got to spend Sundays with Dad.
As frustrating as those outings often were, I don’t regret a moment spent golfing with him. I do regret my conduct, swearing and fuming and blowing up over bad shots. Had I known that Dad would be gone from our lives so soon, I wouldn’t have spoiled those days by acting like such a jerk.
Although he wanted me to love the game as much as he did, we weren’t wired the same way. I was impatient, hotheaded and self-critical—the worst possible disposition for a golfer. Usually I’d pick up my ball before the round was done, and Dad would let me drive the cart the rest of the way. At that point all the pressure was off, and I have wonderful memories of sitting at the wheel, watching my father swing a driver with a sweet, fluid rhythm at which I could only marvel.
Looking back on those weekends, I can’t help but feel sorry for my mother, locked out of such an important part of her husband’s world. She was a golf widow long before it became a cliché. Considering the arguments that took place in our house on Sunday mornings, Mom would seem an unlikely fan of the game.
Yet she is. When I broke the news that I’d started playing golf again, she said it was a great idea. During my next visit, she gave me some black-and-white photographs of Dad that were taken by one of his aunts in the summer of 1942, when he was sixteen.
In the pictures he’s tanned and lean, his hair blond from the sun. One snapshot shows him blasting out of a bunker; in another, he’s pitching to a green. There’s also a backlit photo of him holding the pose after hitting a fairway iron—hands high, hips fully rotated, belt buckle square to the target.
My father had one of the loveliest golf swings I’ve ever seen. Mom says the same thing. Although I’ll never be able to play as well as he did, the photographs are a sentimental inspiration. They’re tacked to the corkboard in my office.
Day 375
At the Sandridge Golf Club, the muni where I’d taken my first midlife golf lessons, I am walking down a hill to retrieve my ball from a pond on the 12th hole of a layout named, for self-evident reasons, The Lakes.
From over my shoulder I hear a disconcerting squeak that sounds like nothing so much as chassis springs. I spin around just in time to see my golf cart roll into the water with a concussive splash.
Frantically I wade in as it slides toward murky and uninviting depths. I clamp both hands on the bumper and dig my heels into the muck and, astoundingly, the cart glugs to a halt. Gingerly I scramble aboard, struggling to lock the same fickle brake pedal that I’d thought I had secured only moments earlier.
No luck. The port side of the Club Car is listing precipitously. I flip the gear lever into Reverse and mash down the accelerator, which is now submerged.
Bubbles rise.
Wheels spin.
My heart sinks.
Moving to the rear of the cart, I hastily unstrap my Callaways and hurl the bag up on shore. Then, moronically, I brace my legs and try to drag the vehicle backwards. It doesn’t budge an inch, but my right knee makes a noise like peach pits in a nutcracker.
Defeated, I retreat to dry land, dig my cell phone out of the golf bag and call John at the pro shop. I describe the situation and, after a thoughtful silence, he promises to send help.
In disgust I kick off my spikes and empty out the water, silt and hydrilla weed. Luckily the course is empty, and not a soul witnesses this abject tableau.
Soon, two golf carts speed to the scene—the ranger and the starter. Although they seem sympathetic, neither of them leaps out to assist in what is clearly going to be a challenging salvage operation.
“See if you can back it up,” the ranger suggests.
I wade back out to the cart and, hanging like a stagecoach bandit on the sideboard, I manage to locate the gas pedal with my left foot.
More bubbles.
The ranger and the starter can be overheard discussing the possibility of my being electrocuted. “Better watch it,” one of them calls out helpfully. “You might get a shock.”
Quickly I return to shore, whereupon the ranger says, “Oh, could you go get the key? Just in case some kids come by and haul it out—we don’t want anybody stealing it.”
“Sure,” I say, and slosh as casually as a gator poacher back into the flesh-sucking ooze.
Afterwards, the starter kindly offers up his golf cart so that I may finish my leisurely round. “This one is so slow,” he says, “you can’t get in any trouble.”
Like I was drag-racing when I dunked the other one.
“My shoes are wrecked, so I’ll have to play barefoot,” I tell the ranger. “Don’t report me.”
He smiles patiently.
The accident severely disrupts my focus, and I run off a string of sloppy, unmemorable bogeys. One errant shot lands in heavy palmetto scrub, the favored habitat of diamondback rattlesnakes, so I’m forced to lace on my slimed, sodden golf shoes before pursuing the lost ball.
By bleak fortune, the 17th fairway parallels the opposite shore of the pond in which I’d shipwrecked the golf cart. Squishing up to the tee box, I’m greeted by the sight of a Jeep Cherokee (undoubtedly a V8) with a cable strung tautly from its rear rumper to my half-submerged chariot. The leaking cart being hauled from the brackish soup looks like a scene from CSI: Miami. All that’s missing is David Caruso, squinting icily at the perpetrator: Me.
It’s an unnerving interlude, but I rally—smacking a rescue club 190 yards down the throat of the fairway, then knocking a pitching wedge up on the island green, twenty feet from the pin.
Lining up a possible birdie, I hear the approach of another golf cart. It’s John, my friend from the pro shop, delivering a damage report. I retell the whole story, apologizing profusely.
“The same thing happened when I set the brake near the 11th hole,” I say, “but that time there wasn’t any water around.”
“The mechanics think they can get the cart running again,” John says, “if they can hose all the mud out. If they can’t…”
I nod gravely. “Just send me the bill.”
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” he adds consolingly. “I mean, it doesn’t happen a lot—but it has happened before.”
“But not often.”
“No. Not very often,” John says.
He waves and motors a
way. My birdie attempt rolls three feet past the hole.
I can’t sink a putt, but I can sink a damn golf cart.
Day 376
“You are such a putz.”
It’s Leibo, calling for the highlights of the golf-cart episode. “Did you do this on purpose?” he demands.
I tell the whole embarrassing story.
He says, “I’m totally impressed that you continued playing. Most people would have quit.”
“In all the years you’ve been golfing, haven’t you ever sunk a cart?”
“Not once,” he replies. “Not close. Not ever.”
Lupica beeps in on call-waiting.
“Tell me it was a victimless crime,” he says.
“I was alone in the cart. Nobody died.” I grind through another recap.
“Wait a minute—you went back into the water after it happened?” Lupica is incredulous. “You weren’t worried about the alligators and snakes?”
“I had to get my clubs.”
“You know what this means? You’re a golfer now!” he declares. “You didn’t even think about the gators—you went in to save your clubs! This is a huge rite of passage.”
I ask him the same question I asked Leibo: “Haven’t you ever sunk a cart before?”
“I’ve played golf since 1960,” Lupica replies. “Nobody I know has ever drowned a golf cart.”
“It wasn’t completely underwater,” I point out.
“Could you see the roof?”
“Absolutely. What do you think I was hanging on to?”
“That’s the cover of your book!” he crows. “I can see it now.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, this is epic,” he says.
“Can they eighty-six you from a public course?” I ask.
Lupica isn’t sure.
Later I speak with my Mom, who wants to chat about Tiger’s remarkable final round in the PGA. Then she asks, “So, how’s your golf going?”
“Not so good. I sank a cart yesterday.”
“Sank a cart?
“Yep.”
“How’d you manage to do that?”
As soon as I begin the story, I hear muffled laughter on the other end.
“At least you took off your shoes, right?”
“No, Mom, I didn’t have time.”
More laughing.
“How deep was the lake? Did the cart go all the way under?” she asks.
“No, I grabbed the back bumper and held on.”
Momentarily, my mother collects herself. “So this was quite a little adventure you had.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
Rodent Golf
I have a history with vermin.
For years I kept red rat snakes, so named because of a specific culinary preference. The hundreds of rats that I fed to my pets were domestically bred, but they were rats nonetheless; basically the same tenacious flea-friendly critter that in the Middle Ages decimated Europe with the bubonic plague.
Several months into my golfing comeback, a rat chewed to shreds the auxiliary wiring harness in the underchassis of my Chevy Suburban, causing the air conditioner to more or less flame out. The gluttonous destruction was achieved on nighttime forays during the summer, while the vehicle was parked in the driveway of a house that my family and I were renting.
The cost of the rat noshing: $2,196.92.
Astonishingly, my insurance company agreed to pay for most of the damages. I was informed that rodents in Florida regard automotive wiring as a delicacy, and claims such as mine were not rare.
Nonetheless, the inconvenience was aggravating. I’d been driving my SUV back and forth to the golf course several times a week, clueless to the nocturnal sabotage. Never once had I spied a rat lurking near the Suburban, or anywhere in the yard.
Anticipating a repeat attack—and diminished sympathy from the insurance company—I was eager to locate the culprit before he commenced snacking on my replacement wiring.
The summer vacation ended without further incident. Then, on the day the kids went back to school, I finished breakfast and went outside to a shed where our appliance boxes were stored. I found the box I needed, opened it—and immediately spotted a funky-looking nest made of shredded packing material, from which protruded a long, twitchy black tail.
Hastily I shut the box and dashed into the house in search of a weapon. There were two choices, both of which I’d purchased because of commercials on the Golf Channel. The first was the Medicus dual-hinge driver, endorsed by Mark O’Meara; the second was the Momentus Swing Trainer, endorsed by Fred Funk.
I’d been practicing sporadically with both devices, though my golf had not improved perceptibly. The Medicus is about the same length as a regulation driver, but the clubhead is rigged to waggle on a hinge if you make a mistake at any one of six compass points in your swing. It’s an effective training aid, but to do battle with a wild rat I needed a bludgeon that wasn’t going to flop impotently at the critical moment of impact.
So I grabbed the Momentus, basically a foreshortened 6-iron that’s weighted heavily to build muscle strength. It has a molded grip for the hands, a sturdy steel shaft, and it tips the scale at a formidable 40 ounces—a full half-pound heavier than Barry Bonds’s baseball bat.
What happened next wasn’t pretty, but save your postage stamps. A rat is nothing but a rat, okay? They’re dirty, destructive, disease-carrying pests; as a species, the opposite of endangered. When the icecaps melt and the oceans rise, I promise you that billions of rats will be nesting safely in the treetops, warm and dry, making more rats.
Truthfully, there’s no humane way to get rid of the bastards. The traps you buy at hardware stores painfully snap their bones. Poison causes their stomachs to explode. Cats just gnaw off their heads and then toy with their writhing corpses.
As a universal rule, rats are not euthanized; rats are exterminated. It’s been that way since the beginning of man.
I had to make a split-second decision, and I have no regrets.
The Momentus golf trainer turned out to be ideal for mortal combat with feral rodents in close quarters. Three of the razor-toothed intruders were hiding in that cardboard box, and I waxed two of them. Admittedly, mine wasn’t a textbook swing plane—more Lizzie Borden than Sam Snead—but I kept my head down, held my left arm straight and followed through to the target, which (unlike a golf ball) was hopping and thrashing and snapping at the clubhead.
Afterwards, while I was hosing the blood and fur off the hosel, it occurred to me that Fred Funk probably never envisioned the Momentus being deployed for such a mission. I considered dropping him a short note, with a sunny blurb for future infomercials:
“Forty ounces of rat-smashing power! I highly recommend the Momentus swing trainer for anyone trying to groove their golf swing, or battle a stubborn vermin infestation.”
One lucky stiff escaped the hail of blows on that August morning, leaping clear of the mangled box and making a charge at my wife, who shrieked and slammed the porch door. Before I could give chase, the rat disappeared into the shrubbery.
If it’s the same one that gnawed the wiring out of my Chevy, I hope we meet again. I’ll be waiting, chico, me and my leetle friend.
Day 377
Sheepishly I call Sandridge for an update on the wet cart. To my relief, John reports that the mechanics have cleaned out the muck and gotten the engine running.
“Did they check that brake?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t quite right,” he says. “I think they changed the pads.”
Vindication? Or is he just being polite?
“What do I owe you?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he replies. “Just don’t put another one in the lake, okay?”
The Tiger Beat
For me, the only thing more nerve-wracking than golfing with strangers is boarding airplanes with strangers. Or boarding alone, for that matter. Or with 250 nuns, each of them saying a Rosary.
I’m not and never will
be a carefree flier, but when duty calls I’ll grit my teeth, inhale a Xanax and step up to the plate.
David Feherty had asked me to tag along with him inside the ropes at the Bridgestone Invitational, which is held at the legendary Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. The purpose of the trip was to observe up close the level of divine skill at which professional golf is executed—an experience guaranteed to validate my own futility about the game.
According to MapQuest, the driving distance from my home in Florida to the front gates of Firestone was 1,072 miles, too far for a weekend road trip. So, on a Friday afternoon, the second day of the tournament, I courageously headed to the airport and medicated myself as prescribed.
The skies in the Midwest were stormy, so the flight was gut-heaving and miserable despite the sedation. I lurched off the plane and beheld downtown Akron, beckoning like Paris in a drizzle; no traveler has ever been so relieved to set foot in the former tire-and-rubber capital of the Western World.
At the golf course everyone was buzzing about a 9-iron that Tiger Woods had hit from the woods along the 18th fairway. The ball had traveled 212 yards, aided by a cartoon-like bounce off a cart path, and ended up briefly on the roof of the clubhouse though technically not out of bounds. Apparently at Firestone you can hook one all the way to Toledo and still escape a penalty stroke.
A conclave of PGA officials met while a lengthy search ensued. (A cook who was standing on the loading dock had innocently picked up Tiger’s ball.) Eventually Woods got a free drop, chipped creatively to the green and nearly holed the putt for a par. The proceedings took thirty-two minutes, a soul-grinding eternity even for the most avid fans. Tiger finished the round with a 64, and as usual he was leading the tournament.
While Feherty taped the CBS highlights show, I chatted with another popular commentator, Gary McCord, who still competes on the Champions Tour. When I told him about my attempted comeback, he suggested that I take on a “real challenge” and try to qualify for a seniors amateur tournament. I informed him that things weren’t going nearly that well.