“Well, Knut,” I grinned. “This is your lucky day.”
38
J. RODNEY HARRISON WAS THE proudest man in the rooftop restaurant of the Old Course Hotel. Knut Thorssun was at his table.
Rodney was so proud, I was mildly concerned that he might go down on Knut before Nonnie could get around to it. For a while that evening, the all-time jock-sniffing record was in serious jeopardy.
Nonnie and Rodney were already at the table when Knut and I came in. I wangled a seat for Knut next to Nonnie. I watched her size him up as I made introductions. She scanned his blond mane, broad shoulders in a solid blue golf shirt and snug white slacks, the slight bulge in evidence.
She did the scan as Rodney was pumping Knut’s hand and saying, “Goddamn, Knut Thorssun! I’ll be goddamn. . . . I’ll tell you what, stud . . . Knut the Brute. . . . Here he is, right here, sports fans. The United States Open golf champion! . . . Thor-more-nuclear! Shit-house mouse, I’ve got him tonight!”
Nonnie acted unimpressed with Knut and tremendously bored with golf chatter as the evening progressed, all of us having the grilled fillet of Dover sole. She smoked and drank as Rodney made Knut take him through many of the greatest rounds Knut ever played.
When Knut cleared his throat and leaned his elbows forward on the table for the third time, it was an ears-up for me. I dropped my napkin on the floor and leaned down to pick it up. This was in order to sneak a peek at what might be going on under the table.
As I suspected—and hoped—Nonnie’s nonsmoking hand was free to be on Knut’s thigh, dangerously close to the bulge. Also, the toe of her shoe was slowly moving up and down Knut’s calf.
My major thought was that Roy Mitchell deserved a bonus. We’d spun off Nonnie and now I’d have a clear head to take on the purple flowers and devilish moguls and other challenges of the Old Course.
I raised back up in time to hear Rodney say, “Goddamn, Knut, good buddy, anything you want or need when you come to Atlanta, you got it. Stay with us in Buckhead, too, by God! You can have your own wing of the house. Hell, if it ain’t already big enough, I’ll build on.”
Nonnie said, “I’m sure he would prefer a hotel, Rod.”
“What is this Buckhead you are saying?” Knut asked.
Rodney said, “Aw, it’s just a little old pissant neighborhood where Bobby Jones and Coca-Cola used to live.”
Nonnie faked a yawn, said for some reason she was tired tonight. Then Knut yawned, said the same thing. They both stood up. Rodney said he had some more drinking to do. I told Rodney I’d stay with him—he could tell me all about playing Elie today and Gleneagles yesterday.
That’s right. Threw myself on the fire. But it was a small price to pay, all things considered.
I NEVER saw Nonnie again the rest of the week. You’d think her charms wouldn’t have bothered a gash man like Knut, but I was sure she’d caused him to miss the cut at St. Andrews. She spurred him out of the chute, I’d wager, and rode him till he bucked himself into that pair of 81s.
I know one thing. Having Nonnie off my case had more than a little to do with me playing good enough to finish tenth and waltz out of town with a parcel of pounds that translated into $122,000. I was never a serious enough contender to be invited to the press tent, but I did grant some one-on-one interviews about the Ryder Cup coming up in September at Muirfield Village, the Jack Nicklaus course in Columbus, Ohio.
I took care not to talk big, knowing I was certainly the weakest link in the USA’s chain.
ST. ANDREWS needs wind to protect itself from low scores, and this time we got us a dose off the old Firth of Forth. Every round it was spinnakers-up going out on the front and a Trailer Park, Kansas, tornado coming home.
The wind turned the Road Hole into a par six. Made the little pot bunker on the left of the green look bigger than West Texas. Made the in-bounds road on the right look wider than a DFW runway. Made the green in between look about the size of a pizza—and you were going at the Mother Goose with a cold-jump two-iron.
The wind caused a lot of the big names to play like runover dogs. I was content to string together my 72s and 73s for 290, and I have nothing but admiration for the 282 that won it for Cheetah Farmer, giving the child star and his arrogant daddy their first professional major.
Only thing I wish is that Cheetah had been a little more gracious in his victory speech at the presentation ceremony.
There were twenty thousand fans listening to him when he said, “As many of you know, I played this zoo once before in the British Amateur three years ago. It didn’t do me no favors. One of your sheep-punks took me out in the second round. So I’m kind of happy today that I finally brought this rat track to its knees.”
Not exactly Ben Hogan at Oakland Hills.
The Scottish crowd missed most of Cheetah’s language, I’m pleased to report, as did the majority of the Royal & Ancient officials at the ceremony. I ventured the guess that the R&A chaps had already made their load in the clubhouse—where I’d once overheard an old Wing Commander say to an old Squadron Leader, “Quite right, a glass of port goes very well in the Big Room.”
ALL THE British Open highlights that I knew of were duly reported in phone calls back to the States. I waited until after midnight Sunday to make the calls in an effort to catch the loved ones and chums around dinnertime their time.
I tried Cheryl first but no answer. I left a message saying I’d call her between flights tomorrow.
The first human I reached was Buddy Stark at his house in the Lake Austin hills. He was out of breath and I quickly learned that Cynthia was with him.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “I guess y’all were busy in the kitchen making fudge.”
“Something like that,” Buddy said.
I asked if they’d watched the tournament. All four days, Buddy said. Knut Thorssun, marquee name, had been on camera a lot till he missed the cut, and it had been a treat to see Knut suffering so much physically. Buddy asked, How sick was Knut? TV viewers were informed that he’d been fighting the flu.
“Nonnie Harrison took him hostage, is what happened,” I said. “She turned up here. She could have ruined my week, not to mention my life. I tap-danced around it for two days, then Mitch came up with the idea to sic her on Knut, get her off my ass. I put Nonnie and Knut together at dinner on Wednesday night in the Old Course dining room. They were deeply in lust before I finished my shrimp cocktail.”
Buddy said, “Woodrow must at least have a touch of the flu. I’ve never known him to be slowed down by a mattress tussle.”
I said, “Nonnie don’t play zone. She’s man-for-man, full court press the whole game. Turn you into an emphysema case is what she can do.”
“You can testify to that, as I recall.”
“All part of growing up,” I said. “Incidentally, I’ve been meaning to ask you about Emily, the scholar. I gather you’ve dusted her, what with the Cynthia thing going on. Did you let her off easy?”
“Emily let me off before Cynthia cropped up. She came over one day to tell me she was in love with her English professor. I know the guy. He has a beard, hangs around the joints on the lake. For a shitkicker from Wichita Falls, he’s done a good job of mastering a British accent.”
“British accents do strange things to women,” I said. “I’ve often wished for one.”
“She says the best thing about him is, he has his own car.”
I said, “Did you watch Cheetah do it?”
“Golf always needs new heroes,” Buddy said. “It’s a good thing Cheetah and his daddy are great Americans and wonderful human beings.”
We talked about how tough the course played for a few minutes, then I got around to the real reason I called. Which was to pass on what I’d heard from Knut—that he was going to cough up the thirty million in the Tammy Wynette with Cynthia, but he didn’t want her to know it yet.
“I won’t tell her till we hang up,” Buddy said.
I said that seemed fair to me and I’
d let them go back to their fudge.
Next call I made was to Alleene Simmons. When she answered, I said, “I don’t know why I’m calling you, but I have, and here you are, and I’m already feeling guilty about it. Do you have an explanation?”
“You’re a leg man,” she said. “You’ve always been a leg man.”
“Not to mention spineless and weak-willed.”
“You did okay today,” Alleene said. “You were on TV twice, just briefly. Who was that Nigerian you were paired with?”
“I don’t even know American lurkers,” I said. “How am I supposed to know foreign lurkers?”
She said, “I played golf this morning. I watched it at Mira Vista. Cheryl was at the club having lunch with a couple. Clients. She was trying to sell them Versailles or the Kremlin, one of the two. My gosh, the houses they’re building out there. Cheryl and I had a nice visit.”
“You did?” Stunned deal.
“I like her,” Alleene said. “She’s nifty. You better throw a net over that lady pretty soon, Bobby, or you’re going to lose her. We talked about going to the Ryder Cup.”
“Together?” Stunned again.
“No, of course not.”
“Good,” I said, “because I was sort of thinking of taking Cheryl myself—and I don’t think they allow the players to bring two wives.”
“I’m going as a fan, Bobby. I want to see a Ryder Cup. I can take a long weekend off. You can handle a credential, right?”
“There’s no prize money at the Ryder Cup, you know.”
“I’ll ignore that remark.”
“Guess what I’ve done tonight?” I said. “I’ve figured out how much I’ve won this year, officially. It’s almost a million, seven hundred thousand. The exact figure is one million, six hundred thousand, four hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents. That would be Terri’s count.”
“That’s wonderful. It really is. It’s your best year by far.”
“I know, but . . . I’m thinking about these other things. Like, for instance, twenty-two guys won that much last year, and five guys won over three million. But you know what? As much money as this is—and it’s a ton to you and me and most people—it’s chicken feed compared to what a major league baseball player makes for scratching his nuts all summer.”
“Or what a rock star makes for turning into a vampire.”
“You know what else?” I said. “After I pay my agent his twenty percent, and pay Mitch his ten percent and bonuses, and pay the feds a third of it, and put what’s left in my untouchable retirement fund, I can’t buy a cheeseburger.”
Alleene said, “It’s disgusting. I honestly don’t know how people live on less than a million-seven a year.”
“I’m going to sleep now,” I said. “I leave early in the morning. Listen, do me a favor, pard. Since you and Cheryl have become pals now, and since you might be talking to each other again before I come home, I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention I called you tonight . . . that we had this little chat. It’ll be better for me all the way around. You’ll do this thing?”
“Who is this?” Alleene said. “Hello? . . . Hello?”
I laughed and we said good night.
I did have one more conversation before my head hit the pillow. I called Smokey Barwood in New York. He’d left three urgent messages for me. One message indicated he’d called at 3:15 in the afternoon, my time. I would have been on the golf course then. I wondered if Smokey had thought the hotel would send somebody out to the Principal’s Nose to page me in the final round of the British Open.
“Great, you finally got back to me,” Smokey said. “You don’t check your messages regularly? God, I wish I could do that. Well, never mind. I have you now and we have decisions to make.”
The most urgent decision was whether I wanted to sail back home on the QE2. It would involve killing a couple of days in London first and missing the International at Castle Pines in Colorado, but Salu Kinda had canceled and the cruise director needed another golf pro.
“I have a gun in their ribs,” Smokey said. “You can have the same suite you had coming over, plus they’ll pay fifty Grovers.”
“Fifty Grovers,” I said. “Is that more than five hundred Benjamins?”
“They’re desperate. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t mind missing the International. I’ve never understood the format anyhow. Pars are Xerox . . . birdies are two . . .”
“Pine Valley,” Smokey said.
“What about it?”
“After you come home, and before the PGA,” Smokey said. “Strictly because you’ve made the Ryder Cup team—and because you have such a good agent—I can get you a two-day gig at Pine Valley. Two rounds of golf and two dinners with dot.comers. You stay right there at the club. Sixty Grovers.”
“Done,” I said. “I love Pine Valley. Grover, too.”
“Okay,” Smokey said. “I’m booking you in the Stafford Hotel in London for three nights. You’ll have the same driver to take you to Southampton to board the ship. Oh! One more thing. What tournaments are you playing between the PGA and the Ryder Cup?”
“I’ve promised San Antonio,” I said. “Other than that . . .”
“Bobby Joe, you have to play Firestone,” the agent said. “Need I remind you it’s only forty players, no cut, and you make thirty Grovers just for showing up?”
“Pencil me in.”
“Have a good voyage.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll think about Grover all the way.”
39
MEN GOLFERS WITH PONYTAILS. Frankly, I didn’t know such things were allowed at Pine Valley—merely the greatest course in the world—but eighteen of them were there, and they were all mine.
These were my dot.comers, members of the stock option gang. Guys mostly from California in their late twenties and early thirties. Guys who’d said to the Wall Street crowd a decade ago, “You people just don’t get it, do you?” and had gone about raking in fifty million and up for themselves, and had built all the mansions and bought all the trophy wives and other toys, and had thought there was nothing to it, like it was God’s will.
But God and I had the last laugh at Pine Valley. When it came to trying to play golf, they didn’t get it.
First of all, they didn’t get Pine Valley. They’d only bought their way in there for an outing because they’d heard it was exclusive. Which meant I did a lot of explaining and gave a running history lecture during our two-day frat party.
We stayed together in two of the houses on the property, houses near the big white and green clubhouse but all of it tucked away in a New Jersey pine forest only thirty miles southeast of Philadelphia.
I called most of them Randy or Scotty, although I think there was a Skipper or two. Mainly, I looked for their golf balls—after they dumped them into the sprawling unraked waste areas and thick groves of trees and matted plantlife that make up most of the course. Pine Valley does have fairways and greens, but only the more accomplished or luckiest players can locate them.
The way I handled my Randys in the two-day outing was the way I’d learned from older pros who came before me. Might have been Dave Marr I heard it from first. In both rounds I played the first three holes with three of them. I waited on the fourth tee and played the next three holes with three more. And so on till I played the last three holes with the last threesome. That way, I played three holes of golf with everybody in the group. Or I should say I hunted for balls with everybody in the group. I laid some tips on them while we were out in the sand and weeds and scrub, but their awkward swings never showed much improvement. Most of them were as foreign to golf as I was to dot and com.
In the evenings we dined at Pine Valley on the club’s glorified snapper soup and a man’s menu of pork chops and steak and fish, no tulips or bath gel.
None of the group ever said anything the least bit interesting the whole two days I was around them. They could have made a whole city nod off with their wine t
alk.
Whether they were interested in me or not, I explained why Pine Valley was special and how it came about.
I talked about George Crump, the Philadelphia hotel man who’d had the brainstorm for it and purchased the land and desired to build the world’s most unique golf course. He’d died before it was finished and opened in 1921. I talked about how Pine Valley could never host a major. The grounds were too confining. The club did host the 1936 and 1985 Walker Cup matches, knowing that roughly only two thousand amateur fans would attend.
Harry Colt, the Englishman, still gets most of the credit for the overall design—for Hell’s Half Acre on No. 7, the Devil’s Asshole at No. 10, all that. No two holes were parallel, I pointed out, in case they hadn’t noticed, and it was the only golf course in the world where you could come close to remembering every single hole after you’d played it only once.
I told them you could make a strong argument that Harry Colt was the greatest golf architect the game had known. Pine Valley and Sunningdale alone might hand him the title. The Sunningdale outside London.
Harry Colt dated back to Vardon’s day, was a member of the R&A, a fine amateur player himself, taught Alister Mackenzie much of what he knew, designed courses in fifteen different countries, was the first architect to use a drawing board, and the first to recommend planting trees. Some of the layouts Colt had reworked, and therefore improved, read like a partial history of golf in Great Britain and Ireland—Muirfield, Hoylake, Royal Lytham & St. Annes, Royal St. Georges, or what you call your Sandwich, Royal Portmarnock, and Royal Portrush, to name a half dozen.
The combination of Pine Valley’s intimidations and my nightly conversation usually sent the Randys to bed early. But all of them seemed to leave the place happy. I know Grover did.
40
IT TOOK ME A BRACE OF SHOWERS for three days and a load of dry cleaning to recover from the month on the road.