The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist

  I said, “Grab this, man. I don’t grab the bag for Jack Nicklaus!”

  He’d started in the door of the hotel but turned around.

  “I am sorry, pal, I did not mean to insult you,” he said.

  “Of course not, pal,” I said. “You were just saying, hey, you no-major, somewhere-down-the-money-list crudball, pick up my bag and be happy you know me.”

  He said, “I do not think in such a way of you, Bobby Joe. You are an excellent player. You have very many fine attributes. You are a good driver and are quite adequate with the long irons. . . . Still, it is in my honest opinion, now that the subject has come up, that you need to work harder on your short game, particularly around the greens.”

  I could only stare at him.

  “I have been meaning to say this to you,” he said. “When you putt from off the edge of the green, you are not accelerating your putter at impact. You should use a firmer stroke. You must try to make your follow-through as long as your backswing. Do you understand?”

  “This is great,” I said. “A golf lesson. I’m standing on the sidewalk in New York City getting a fucking golf lesson from a fucking Swede. Maybe a Turk or a Serb’ll come by in a minute and gimme a swing tip. Do they play golf in Turkey? Serbs play?”

  “I am only trying to help you,” he said, and went inside.

  He didn’t hear me say to a lady entering the hotel, “Let Thor eat.”

  IT WAS the bridge game that did it for me.

  There are six of us who like to play on Tuesday nights on the road. I’m the game’s secretary. This means I find out which four are playing ahead of time. It will usually be me, Buddy Stark, Jerry Grimes, and somebody else. Buddy and Jerry are my two best friends out here. They’re easy to tell apart. Buddy is tall, a neat dresser, reads books. Jerry is short and stocky, reads USA Today.

  In the bridge game we cut for partners. It’s the honor system. I don’t believe any two guys have ever developed signals. One of us will have a suite so there’ll be a room to play in. We deal the first hand at seven, the last hand at midnight. It’s a long-established nickel-a-point game. Enough to hold your interest, but not enough to strap a serious hurt on you.

  I arrange for the food. Everybody chips in to pay for it. I see that the cuisine varies. Maybe I’ll pick up Kentucky Fried, or maybe I’ll go to Wendy’s, which has the best fast-food cheeseburgers, or maybe I’ll go to Sonic for country fried steak sandwiches and shakes. I have a crucial rule for going to the drive-through window. Never get behind a woman in a minivan. She’s there to order food for the whole little league team.

  Most guys wanted me to go to Kentucky Fried when Knut was still in the game—they liked to watch him eat.

  He’d hold the cards in one hand, lift a piece of chicken out of the barrel with his other hand—didn’t matter what piece, big or small—and you’d see him sort of run it across his mouth like a harmonica. You’d hear a sound that would remind you of a woodpecker, or more like a woodpecker with a muffler, and about five seconds later you wouldn’t see anything left but a slick bone, which he’d flip into a wastebasket.

  Buddy Stark once said, “Knut eating fried chicken would be at the top of the charts if a rapper did it.”

  Knut was my partner on this night at The Players Championship in Ponte Vedra. We were in a suite at the Sawgrass Marriott. Buddy and Jerry had been getting all the hair all night—the face cards—and we were losing pretty good, but suddenly I was dealt a scorpion.

  It’s the best hand I’ve ever picked up, or ever will. I was holding the the ace, king, queen, jack, ten of spades, and four other spades—nine in all—and the ace-king of hearts, the ace-king of diamonds, and a void in clubs. That’s a lay-down seven spades. A grand slam.

  In case you’re a bridge know-nothing, my hand was like picking up a royal straight flush in poker. Or better still, it was like holing out a three-wood for a double eagle in golf. My hand said nobody could take a trick but me if the bid was spades. I could trump a club lead, if somebody led a club, because I was void in clubs. That’s how it works in bridge.

  I played it cool and opened the bidding at two spades. I knew I’d wind up at seven spades, bid and made, but if I bid it up gradually there’d be a good chance Buddy or Jerry would double. None of us are master players and we were all likely to double a seven bid just on the chance that whoever was playing it would screw it up. A double meant heap big more points—more money—if you made the bid. Which was to take all thirteen tricks.

  Buddy passed and Knut bid three hearts. Well, I didn’t need his help in hearts. I didn’t need anything. I had more hair in my hand than the sixties. So I bid seven spades, close out, telling my partner I had a lock.

  But I didn’t get to lay it down and tell jokes. That’s because my old podnoo’s arrogance kicked in. He bid seven no-trump over my spades.

  This meant he would play the hand, not me, and he would play it in no trump, which, for you bridge know-nothings, means that the card led is the suit to be played for that trick. I was stunned. But I thought, oh, okay, Knut must have the ace of clubs, so it’s a lay-down seven no-trump. He has the ace of clubs and I’ve got everything else with my scorpion. Seven no-trump, bid and made, would score even more points than seven spades.

  Buddy routinely doubled, so I naturally redoubled, knowing we were going to take every trick, kick some serious ass.

  What then happened was, Buddy Stark, with an evil grin, led the ace of clubs. If the bid had been in spades, I could have trumped it with a low spade, taken the trick. But we were in no trump, thanks to Knut. When you’re in no trump, the highest card in whatever suit is led takes the trick. And in no trump, if everyone else is out of clubs, for example, you can lead a lowly, homeless, forlorn deuce of clubs and take the trick.

  I was shot in the heart. We were down one. I glared at Knut. He was staring at the ace of clubs like he didn’t know there was one in the deck. Then Buddy played the king of clubs. I was shot in the heart again. We were down two.

  “Are you kidding me!” I shouted at Knut, who was now looking at the king of clubs as if he wondered where that came from.

  Now Buddy led a small club to Jerry, who took yet another trick with the queen.

  “Jee-zus . . . fucking . . . Christ!” I yelled at Knut.

  Bim, bam, blooey. Having no stoppers in high clubs, we were down three before we hit a lick, and it was going to cost us a wing of the Taj Mahal, and all because the Swedish asshole took me out of spades, outbid his own partner—he knew best.

  And me with a once-in-a-lifetime hand.

  “Hmm,” said Knut. That’s all. While he looked bewildered that those clubs have killed us.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Knut,” I now said, standing up. “It’s my fault. I should have just opened seven spades and laid it down . . . you ignorant . . . arrogant . . . no ace of clubs . . . Swedish . . . smorgasbord . . . subtitled . . . shit for brains . . . seven no-trump motherfucker!”

  It’s all part of Tour lore now. I did turn the table over and I did break out a Marriott window with a chair.

  I think any bridge player would understand my actions completely.

  3

  I’VE BEEN OUT HERE SIXTEEN years. I grab me a W every year or so. I swoop close to a million a year in official money now. But I’m pleased to report that my head’s never swoll up so much that I refer to myself in third person. Saying shit to interviewers like “Knut Thorssun knows the kind of golf Knut Thorssun is capable of playing.”

  I’m embarrassed for athletes who talk like that. Sounds like they’re not talking about themselves but some stud on the cover of Golf Digest or Sports Illustrated. It’s a cringe deal around my house.

  Not that it can’t be funny sometimes. Like the night I came out of this tourna-

  ment party in Atlanta and found Rickey Padgett, one of our top money winners, looking pissed and mumbling, “Rickey don’t like it when Rickey can’t find Rickey’s limo.”

  I’m proud to say I’m a
native Texan. I’m even prouder that I come from Fort Worth, the city that gave you Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson—not that I’ve ever been drunk enough to compare myself with those immortals.

  When I was a kid trying to learn the game I was disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to play some of the courses Hogan and Nelson did. Public courses like Worth Hills, Katy Lake, and Oakhurst. They were gone by then. Worth Hills, the first 18-hole muny in town, became part of the TCU campus. Katy Lake, a 9-hole layout with sand greens, where Hogan used to win long-driving contests, has long since been part of a shopping plaza on Seminary Drive off I-35. And Oakhurst, a course where Hogan worked as a young assistant pro, has long since been nothing but a playground by the same name down below the cliffs of the Riverside neighborhood.

  Those courses were all designed by a man named John Bredemus. He was once a well-known track and field athlete. He ran and threw things against Jim Thorpe. Bredemus did courses all over Texas and he was the original designer of Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, the course that was host to the 1941 United States Open Championship, an event which helped make my hometown famous for something besides the cattle drives and gunfights of the old Chisholm Trail days.

  A chain-smoking fellow named Craig Wood won that National Open, hitting shots with a cigarette in his lips and wearing a corset for his bad back. He’s the only man who ever started a U.S. Open double bogey, bogey on the first two holes, then went on to win it.

  Every time I’m home and drive past Worth Hills, Katy Lake, and Oakhurst, I can’t help but think about Bantam Ben and Lord Byron being out there honing their wedges as youngsters.

  Those places are historical landmarks, is what I say. There ought to be plaques. You know, like the kind you see on an old three-story house where some rich guy lived when he was president of a biscuit company.

  Glen Garden is still around. That’s the country club over on the southeast side of town where Hogan and Nelson caddied as kids and played that match for the caddie championship. This was while they were going to different high schools. Hogan went to my old school, R. L. Paschal, fight for the purple, which was called Central High in his day, and Nelson went to Poly, a school on the east side of town that was better known in my day for turning out street fighters with shaved heads whose idea of a conversation was “Hit him, Aubrey!”

  The straight lore on Ben and Byron’s caddie match is this: Hogan was one up at the end of nine and thought he’d won, but some members said, naw, you boys play eighteen holes. So they went nine more and Nelson was one up at the end of that—he was the champion. First prize was a two-iron and second prize was a five-iron, but Byron already had a two-iron, and Ben didn’t, and Ben already had a five-iron, and Byron didn’t, so they swapped prizes.

  I won two hunks of silver at Glen Garden in my amateur youth. It’s where I dusted Puny Reece, who weighed 250, to win the Cowtown Invitational, and where a year later I won the Men’s City when I dusted Greasy Waddell, who worked at a Texaco on University Drive.

  Greasy Waddell is the man who told me how to get out of jury duty one day. By chance the two of us were standing in line at the courthouse, waiting for the mean-looking women in charge to tell us when we had to serve, which would be a pain in the ass, or excuse us for now, which would be a win. There in line, Greasy said, “I’m gonna beat this deal.”

  “You are?” I said. “How you plan to do that?”

  He said, “It says here on this form that you have to be of good moral character and I don’t meet that.”

  “You don’t meet that?” I chuckled.

  Greasy said, “Why hell no. Like I’m gonna tell this lady, my whole married life I’ve always had a girlfriend on the side.”

  I stood there and watched him say that to the lady in charge, and I’m a sumbitch if she didn’t let him off, after she stopped laughing.

  I’m saving that up to use if I ever get called again.

  As far as Glen Garden goes, I can speak to the fact that it’s the goofiest layout in all of golf captivity. Glen Garden plays to a par of 37-34–71, and you can bust me if there’s a funnier back nine anywhere. It goes 4-4-5-5-3-3-4-3-3. That’s back-to-back par fives once and back-to-back par threes twice. There are other courses that have back-to-back par threes once—Cypress Point may be the best known—but back-to-back par threes twice? That’s just plain silly, although I never gave it any thought when I was a kid trying to make pars on the sumbitches.

  Glen Garden was designed in 1912 by Tom Bendelow, one of the early pioneers of golf architecture. He was a fellow from Scotland who came to America at the turn of the century and decided America needed more golf courses, even though he wasn’t a real estate developer.

  All this history comes in handy for me, of course, when I’m on the road and dining alone in a Courtyard Marriott.

  GROWING UP, I don’t know how I ever became interested in any kind of history, other than the part my granddad played in World War II. He flew thirty B-17 missions over Germany. He was a granddad I never knew, but I still heard about him every time my own dad didn’t like something some foreign country was doing on TV. He’d say, “Send G. T. Grooves back over there—he’ll straighten them scogies out.”

  I should have been interested in coat hangers and pot plants. George and Louise Grooves, my folks, owned and operated Purple Cleaners and later they owned and operated Horned Frog Florists.

  Both establishments were on Bluebonnet Circle in the general area of the TCU campus. My dad was a slow-death TCU football fan and his names for the establishments won out over Louise’s names, Bluebonnet Cleaners and God Loves Flowers. The stores were close to the little one-story cream brick house on Worth Hills Drive where I was raised.

  George Grooves never wanted to own a business where he couldn’t be the deliveryman. He liked to leave the place so he could stop somewhere and hit golf balls, or even sneak in a few holes while out on delivery. He kept his golf clubs in his blue ’68 El Camino. My mama drove the green ’65 Plymouth four-door, ran the businesses, and prayed for him.

  That Plymouth was the car I inherited when I entered Paschal High. Even though a lot of other students drove Corvettes and Mustangs, I have fond memories of the Plymouth, particularly those evenings in the backseat with Susan Evelyn Blanton, cheerleader and junior favorite. She didn’t invent the high school blowjob, but she made all-district in it.

  The dry cleaning business fell on hard times when customers found other cleaners in the neighborhood that didn’t burn holes in shirts and coats as often. My folks finally closed it down and opened up the florist shop in a location only three doors away. This put the florist shop even closer to the Oui Lounge, a TCU frat hangout where my dad could slip off for a beer.

  George was a tall, heavyset fellow, sort of a grump. Louise was a considerate, ladylike woman who wore glasses but came without a sense of humor. Her only enjoyment was going to Bible study at the Travis Avenue Baptist Church, and going to weekly meetings of the South Side Business & Professional Women. The B&PW was a group of ladies who were either divorced or widowed, or wanted to be divorced or widowed. Louise liked to remind me that life wasn’t funny—life was hard, save all your receipts, and “Please close those drapes, I have another migraine.”

  The florist business did okay during holidays, but at normal times my dad complained that not enough white people died every week. White people funerals meant flowers.

  At the breakfast table one morning I remember him turning to the obituaries in the Light & Shopper and saying, “Here we go again—four pepperbellies and three stove lids. . . . That’s it for today.”

  Louise said, “Mexicans and colored people buy flowers, too.”

  George said, “Not like they buy dope.”

  I was helping my dad deliver flowers by the time I was in McLean Junior High. That’s when he started me playing golf. He said I had a “natural swing.” He wouldn’t let me work at the shop in the summers—he wanted me to work at golf. He’d drop me off at a public course
and say, “Hit it hard, compete hard, don’t get outbet.”

  He must have figured I’d learn enough that someday I’d be able to buy my folks the condo inside the gates at Mira Vista Country Club where they now live amid the rows of ungodly mansions, which causes Louise to gaze at them and say, “My Lord, the upkeep.”

  My dad’s seventy-five years old now and plays golf by his own rules—hit till you’re happy off No. 1, roll it over everywhere, mulligan every three holes, free throw every six holes, use one ladies tee on each nine.

  “Recreational golf ain’t meant to be agony,” he says.

  4

  A LITTLE KNOWN FACT ABOUT the PGA Tour is that several of your big names out here would rather spend a week in a cage with squealing lunatics than play in the Bob Hope Desert Classic.

  That’s why they skip it every year. They like Palm Springs as a place. We all do. Great winter climate. But most of our “stars” hate the tournament. When you get right down to it, the only people who really like the tournament are the amateur slugs who clutter it up.

  You play five rounds on four different courses—Indian Wells, Bermuda Dunes, Tamarisk, PGA West. You’re scattered across the desert like Apaches looking for wagon trains to fuck with.

  The first four days you’re paired with three amateurs who come from all over. They’re either big-shot assholes or they have a letter that says they get to act like big-shot assholes all week.

  Only good thing is, the seventy pros who make the 72-hole cut get to play the last 18 among themselves, like a regular tournament.

  Incidentally, I don’t like the format either, and I don’t like desert golf, but I play there for one reason. All those big names who don’t enter open up good money spots.

  And let me make myself clear about desert golf. I don’t just not like it. I despise it. The courses are all the same. Fairways meandering through phony mounds and airlifted boulders, papier mâché mountains in the distance, slow greens, fake waterfalls, decorator palm groves, Brooke Shields lagoons, reptile exhibits, and how much cactus can you do?