Instead I found Simon, Noah, and Elizabeth waiting in the front yard, holding a sheet with painted letters reading “Home of Travis McKinley, BellSouth Classic Champion!!!”
Man, what a cool sight that was. And when I stepped out of the car, Noah jumped into my arms and wrapped himself so tightly around my neck, I could barely breathe. Even Simon and Elizabeth hugged me in a way they never had before.
But it wasn’t just the physical wave of affection. It was the way they looked at me. They were trying to make something so goddamn clear that even a fool like myself couldn’t misread it, or turn it inside out. They loved me. They missed me. They were proud of me.
I was proud of what I had accomplished, too, but lately Id been so desperate about Sarah, it had lost a lot of its meaning. But to them, this whole thing had been a pure kick and more. “Dad, I always told my friends you were this stud athlete,” said Simon, “but no one believed me. Now its not up to them whether they want to buy it or not.”
Even Elizabeth was gushing. “I swear to God,” she said, “youre the hero of the entire faculty of the Yale Medical School. Youd think youd won the Nobel Prize for medicine the way the head of the department treats me now. In fact, that would be a big step down in his eyes. Maybe its because they all play golf, and they suck, but all they do is ask about you.”
“You’re cool, Dad,” said Noah into my neck. He had still barely loosened his grip, and in two days would let me put him down for a total often minutes.
That day was one of the best of my life. It made me realize that no matter what happened, I wasnt going to lose them. It was also a revelation. I’d never understood how desperately kids want to feel proud of their father. It made me think my little run could have a bigger impact on them than me, by letting them know its all right to do what they want. They don’t have to resign themselves to some soul-destroying nine-to-five they hate. There are possibilities. I know theyve learned some of this from Sarah already, but they had to see it from me, too. It’s hard to explain.
I don’t know how aware they were of the troubles between Sarah and me. Elizabeth and Simon must have known about them. Maybe they all did, because the push for us to do some kind of family activity came as much from them as me.
That’s how we ended up going swimming at the gorge, one of those perfect anonymous little swimming holes at the end of a country road on the very outskirts of town, where I’d taken Elizabeth and Simon at least once every summer, and which had assumed a mythological status in the big bright dome of Noahs.
We got to the gorge at three on a perfect July afternoon, and for about two hours we had it completely to ourselves.
The water was chilly and quick, but the sun on our backs, as we sat on the half-submerged boulders strewn across the thirty-foot-wide stream, was strong enough to keep us from getting too cold.
Simon, wearing his beloved Oakley shades and the light bouncing off his earrings, crouched on a stone the farthest out.
A couple yards away perched Elizabeth, like some brainy Ivy League mermaid, her beautiful brown hair pulled straight down her narrow back.
Noah sat on my lap in his life preserver, on a wide stone ten feet from the shore. For one memorable stretch, we just smiled at one another, and no one said a word, the only sound water rushing over flat stones.
Chapter 27
“So hows that baby doing?” I asked Sarah. She had just arrived home from the hospital. I was waiting nervously in the kitchen.
“Which one?” asked Sarah, only meeting my gaze for a second. She dropped her things on a chair and poured herself a glass from the half-empty bottle of white wine in the refrigerator.
“The first baby born in Winnetka this year,” I said, “the New Years baby.”
“Oh, shes doing fine,” said Sarah. “Shes got this tiny pierced nose. Shes Indian.”
Noah had finally passed out at 10:00 P.M., Elizabeth and Simon at about 12:30, but Sarah didnt arrive home until almost two in the morning. Although it was possible some hospital emergency had kept her that late, it seemed more likely that she had stayed at work so long because she was dreading this conversation as much as I was.
At some point close to a year ago, Sarah had mostly stopped talking to me. In the beginning she insisted that nothing was the matter, then eventually conceded there was. And now in the past couple of months, she was talking about the possibility of a divorce. All without really telling me why.
Eventually, I had no choice but to conclude that the reason Sarah had no interest in talking was that, in her mind, it was already over.
“Why does this have to happen, Sarah?” I asked her now.
“I don’t know, Travis. I’ve asked myself the same question.”
“Well, when did it happen?”
“Travis …” She began to say something, then looked down at the counter and started to cry.
“I’ve changed,” I said. “I couldn’t change before, working at Burnett. I didn’t even understand why. All I knew was that it felt all wrong.”
“Oh come on, Travis.”
“Sarah, I know I’ve been a drag for a while. I know I let you down sometimes.”
“After we had Noah, and even that didn’t cheer you up, I figured we never meant that much to you all along.”
“Sarah, until that night I got through Qualifying School, I didn’t know myself how unhappy I was. But its not because I didn’t love you and the kids. I’m sure I seemed like this ungrateful wretch, but unfortunately having a great wife and wonderful children doesnt make you love yourself any more. It just makes you love them.”
“It’s too late,” she said. “I’m really sorry. Anyway, I’m not sure I would know what to do with this new Travis. Maybe I’m setting you free.”
“Sarah, I don’t want to be free. I want a ball and chain, and a pick-proof lock.”
“You’ve always had such a romantic notion of marriage, Travis,” said Sarah, half smiling through her tears.
“Sarah, you’re it for me,” I pleaded. “You always have been. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t watch you get old and wrinkled.”
“I’m already old and wrinkled.”
“Like hell you are,” I said. “I want to be able to look over at you and remind you how beautiful you are, knowing Ive been through the whole thing with you.”
“You don’t always get what you want, Travis.”
“Can’t we try something, Sarah?”
“It’s just too late, Travis,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t. I really do.”
And then Sarah went up to bed alone.
Chapter 28
Later that morning, my ninety-three-year-old grandfather — he had celebrated his birthday two weeks before by shooting a tidy 98 — stood in the middle of the 12th fairway of the Creekview Country Club and dropped three Titleists onto the rich, green sod.
There may be nothing much worse than a Chicago winter, but theres nothing much better than a Chicago July, and that morning was a fine example of the species, with the temperature in the low eighties and just enough breeze to keep the air on its toes.
So much had changed since Id been here before, and perhaps to remind me of that fact, Pop had walked me out to the very same spot we had visited on our last playing lesson. The fairway that had been hard and muddy back then was now covered with thick, luscious grass. The huge oak some forty yards away, which had served as a leafless obstacle, was now full and green and shimmering.
“Pop,” I said, “Sarah wants a divorce.”
“Well, Travis, what do you want?” he asked, as if I still had a choice in the matter.
“I want us to stay together.”
“You tell her that?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve done about all you can, then. How love gets doled out is one of the great mysteries of the planet, but one thing Ive learned is that you cant force someone to love you. Its a little bit like chasing birdies. Wanting them too much only makes it worse.”
“P
op, I’m feeling like a fraud out there on the tour,” I confessed.
“Travis, where does this come from, this picking at everything until you find the tin under the gold? Theres nothing fake about you, Travis. If anything, youre too goddamn real for your own good.”
“So what do you want me to hit, Pop?” I finally asked, looking down at the three balls hed dropped.
“I don’t want you to hit anything, Travis,” he said, his eyes sparkling with a light that remains utterly impervious to his years. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got nothing left to prove to me or Sarah or your father or anybody fucking else. All I want you to do is pick up those balls, and play with them at the Open next week, and I want you to enjoy yourself for Christs sake, because I’ll tell you one thing, I’m going to enjoy watching you. And by the way, Travis, there isn’t a goddamn thing wrong with your swing.”
“Pop, you haven’t even seen me hit a ball.”
“I don’t have to.” And with that, Pop turned and headed to the clubhouse. “The lessons over, Travis,” he said. “Lets go have a drink.”
Chapter 29
Three hours later, I was standing at the corner of Commonwealth and Baxter in Chicago, my hands trembling like an old rummy, and a ridiculous smile plastered across my face.
Although the evidence was overwhelming, I could still barely believe what I had just done.
As always, my visit with Pop had greatly improved my frame of mind, but as hard as hed tried, he had not come close to steering my mind away from Sarah. And on my way back to O’Hare to catch a flight to San Francisco for the U.S. Senior Open, I made a slight detour, and did something that under the circumstances might reasonably be interpreted as legally insane.
And yet for some reason, as I stood on the sidewalk in the lovely afternoon sunshine, elegant shoppers trotting briskly past me in their designer dresses and suits, I had no desire to undo it. In fact, what I had done was so over-the-top that it gave me a kind of peace of mind that comes from knowing youve done about all you can. After all, as both Pop and Sarah had pointed out, “not everything is up to me.”
So what exactly had I gone and done that left me feeling so out of my element on that Chicago street corner that I might as well have been naked?
Id like to tell you. I truly would. But I just can’t.
Its too embarrassing.
Part 3
Miracle on the 17th
Chapter 30
The full, otherworldly, music-of-the-spheres significance of being at Pebble Beach and playing in the U.S. Senior Open didn’t sink in until moments before the first round on Thursday.
That was when Earl slid up behind me on the mother of all practice greens, slapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Travis, lets go to work.”
Till then, I had been distractedly lagging forty-footers across the huge lightning-fast ellipse, as mesmerized as any tourist by the rugged coastal grandeur of the place, and the brilliant godlike Northern California light that gave every surface a metallic sheen.
Now, as we worked our way through the crowd, my legs forgot how to walk, and as I frantically tried to remaster the basic right-foot, left-foot concept, I thought of James Cagney being led on that long last walk from the Big House to the gas chamber in Angels with Dirty Faces.
Id only been more nervous on a golf course once. That was the afternoon, forty-two summers before, when after three years of beating balls, my grandfather finally decided I could play an actual round, and took me to Hubbard Heights, the more threadbare of Winnetkas two public courses.
At the Heights, the first tee is set up alongside a large Italian restaurant-bar that the blue-collar regulars have turned into their own country club, as exclusive in its own way as Augusta National, and that afternoon the large concrete terrace was filled with a rowdy crowd of plumbers and carpenters that suddenly quieted as I stepped up to my first real golf shot. I took a shallow breath and poured my cut-down driver straight as a die 140 yards up the rocky fairway, eliciting appreciative hoots and whistles from the peanut gallery, and a warm “I guess you’re ready” from my grandfather.
I guess I could have used Pops soothing influence once again, because on my first official drive at Pebble Beach, all I could muster was a weak push that left me in the first cut of rough, 185 yards from the green. But I was just as thrilled with it as with that first drive at Hubbard Heights.
My playing partners the first two days were Jim Colbert and South Africaner Simon Hobday. Colbert, who has never been out of the top five on the Senior Tour money list, is a granite-jawed, flat-topped, ex-football player, whose on-course demeanor falls somewhere between chilly and downright grumpy. Hobday, who wears a huge black Crocodile Dundee hat and a Yosemite Sam mustache, is warm and outgoing. But they both play Big Guy macho golf.
“Look at those two crackers strutting up the fairway,” said Earl, “they think their balls are made out of brass.” I know it’s not the fault of Colbert and Hobday that they happen to have been brought into this world big, beefy, and bouncy, but as someone who at six two has never weighed in at more than 151 pounds, I’ve always competed my hardest against wide-bodies. As Earl suggested, I went to work.
The Open is one of only four Senior events that have a halfway cut, so the pressure is on from the first hole. At the start of the week, my only goal was to play all four days. “Pars will do just fine,” Earl kept reminding me, and although I was all over the place with my driver and irons, I just kept grinding away.
All the hours I’d been putting into my short game were starting to pay off. I missed ten greens, but I got up and down on eight of them. Offsetting the two bogeys with one birdie gave me a one-over-par 73. That was one better than Colbert, one worse than Hobday, and right about the middle of the field.
The best news of the first day was my putting. I was seeing the line again, and it helped me sink a handful of nasty six-footers to save par.
After the round, I went to the range and tried to straighten out a tee-ball, whose unguided flights had taken me to some of the least scenic parts of Americas most scenic golf course.
“I can’t believe people are actually going to stand and watch me hit balls,” I told Earl as a large crowd began to form behind me.
“Don’t worry, Hogan, they’re not here for you,” Earl quickly informed me.
I looked over Earls shoulder and saw Herman, Lee Trevinos enor-mous caddy, setting up shop in the spot next door, and then Mex himself, his huge grin bursting his tanned, leathery face into long straight lines.
“How you hitting ‘em Travis?” Trevino asked.
“Not too bad, Mr. Trevino,” I said.
“Cut the crap, McKinley,” said Trevino with a cackle. “If hes so goddamn respectful,” Trevino asked the crowd, “whys he trying to take food out of my kids mouths?”
By now the sun was going down and the range was filling with warm, golden light. Although I was worried about why I could’nt hit the ball straight, and if I would still be seeing the line tomorrow, and if I’d ever be seeing Sarah again on a regular basis, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of well-being I had’nt felt since I was a kid.
To put it simply, I felt happy. Whole.
Hitting balls on my left was Hiroshi Ishi, a really fine Japanese player from a little fishing village outside Tokyo, who barely speaks a word of English. On my right was the legendary Trevino, a former driving-range hustler who has won seven majors and untold millions.
But on that beautiful late afternoon our vast differences seemed beside the point. We were all doing exactly what we wanted to do, exactly where we wanted to do it. We were professional golfers and immensely proud of it.
Chapter 31
The Senior damn Open at Pebble Beach.
Friday was a slightly tenser, more nerve-racking version of Thursday. Kind of like a bicycle tire with ten pounds more air in it. I hit a few more greens, sunk a couple more putts, and shot a one-under par 71. That got me through to the weekend, six strokes behind leader
Bob Eastwood. I was’nt tearing it up, or doing anything even remotely miraculous, but I had survived the cut.
It was on Saturday, another perfect California morning, that I made my move.
The strange happenings began on the par-43rd hole, when I got a little too jacked up on the tee and snap-hooked my drive into the deep, gnarly U.S. Open rough.
Three shaky shots later, I was looking over a circus sixty-footer with more breaks, dips, and rises between me and the hole than between me and Sarah, and as I stood over the ball, I was just hoping to somehow two-putt and escape with my mental health. Dialing in about sixteen feet of break, I sent the ball on its way, and after what seemed like about ten minutes the ball slid into the back of the hole, like a dog that had found its way home. “Now thats what I call a world-class five,” said Earl.
With the near disaster behind me, my round turned as if on a hinge. From that point on, I felt so incredibly serene and quiet inside, it was as if I were sleepwalking, or standing outside myself altogether. Either that or someone had spiked my Gatorade with Prozac.
I didnt make another bad swing all day. I did’nt have another negative thought. I was in every fairway, on every green, and hitting my irons so stiff I was looking over makable birdie putts on every hole.
With a clear white line once again showing the way, I rolled in nine of them, five on the front, four on the back, for an eight-under-par 64.
Jim Colbert passed me near the scorers table and did’nt say a word.
And so that evening as Earl and I sat quietly in my hotel room, me nursing a beer and trying to reread a two-month-old airline magazine, and Earl smoking one of his beloved Cubans and perusing the Wall Street Journal, I was the sole leader of the U.S. Senior Open.