The Franchise Babe: A Novel

  “I see. So tell me, Senator. What should we do about the environment? Shall we nuke that too?”

  “We don’t have to worry about the environment.”

  “No? What exactly are your views on global warming?”

  “You mean aside from the fact that it’s bullshit?”

  She may not have looked amused. It was hard to say.

  Thurlene was dressed more tamely today. She wore a pair of white slacks that fit to my satisfaction. Her golf shirt was pale green with a little collar. Her hair was held by a wide white ribbon.

  I was walking with Thurlene down one side of the sixth fairway. On the other side were a dozen fans of Jan Dunn, Ginger’s playing partner for the day. Jan was a slender woman in her thirties. Tour vet.

  All of Jan Dunn’s fans were mature ladies as well. Some were in shorts and hiking boots.

  Pointing them out, I said, “Looks like the Other Team has us outnumbered. Do you prefer ‘Other Team’ or ‘the Dark Side’?”

  “In Jan’s case ‘friend’ will do. She’s a sweet person.”

  I said, “Hey, I won’t bring it up again. You think I want those women over there to beat the shit out of me?”

  She said, “Jan has never been anything but nice and helpful to Ginger. She’s befriended her, introduced her to other players, helped her learn the ropes, how to deal with the media, travel tips…”

  I said, “Well…I’d keep a sharp eye on it, if I were you. I daresay more than one cupcake’s been turned around out here.”

  Thurlene said, “If anybody tries to ‘turn Ginger around,’ as you put it, they’ll have to fight Trey Bishop.”

  Trey Bishop was Ginger’s regular caddie. Handsome young guy. Athletic-looking, somewhere in his late twenties.

  “It’s a romance thing, is it?” I said. “Ginger and Trey?”

  “Moms don’t know everything,” she said. “I do know they like each other. They go to movies and dinner and play video games together. It may be friendship only. She relies on him, trusts his judgment on the golf course.”

  “Most parents would say their ideal choice for a daughter’s boyfriend would not necessarily be a caddie.”

  She said Trey Bishop was a good golfer himself. He played college golf at Georgia. He tried to make it on the tour, but he couldn’t get through the Q-school. Failed six times. So he turned to caddying. “His first job was with Mimsy Buck,” she told me. “But Mimsy paid him a little over ten percent of her winnings. When Ginger came out she liked Trey, thought he’d be right for her. We offered him eighteen percent and he jumped at it.”

  “Sounds like Trey’s doing okay in the money department.”

  “He is indeed. He made two hundred thousand last year. He’s already made over forty thousand this year.”

  “Maybe I can get a bag,” I said.

  I made the joke only a few seconds before Ginger rolled in another birdie. Her sixth straight.

  I couldn’t help wondering if Topham Clewis Pemberton III was keeping up with the scores, and if so, what type of agony he was planning for Burch Webb, the famous architect who’d given him a sack of shit for a golf course.

  Thurlene lit a cigarette. Only her third during the round. The birdies had come so fast, she couldn’t keep up.

  She said, “This isn’t the first time Ginger made six straight birdies. She did it in the Molly Reynolds Cup at Lost Goose Country Club…when she was fourteen.”

  “Where is Lost Goose?” I said. “I don’t know it.”

  “It’s almost close to Atlanta, like everything else around Atlanta. She shot a sixty-three that day—from pretty far back. She did it again when she was sixteen, when she won the Girls Junior Nationals at Swarming Ivy in Philadelphia.”

  “I played Swarming Ivy once,” I said. “My ball kept winding up in somebody’s portfolio.”

  Conversation was put on hold over the next three holes as the mom sweated out Ginger’s struggling to make pars.

  The kid played too boldly and found trouble in the rough and bunkers and barely saved her round with the putter. When she holed a twenty-foot putt for par on the ninth green, she didn’t even complete the high five Trey offered her. She was too hot at herself. Steaming.

  I followed Thurlene to the tenth tee and we found a spot against the gallery ropes right at the tee markers. Mom gestured a happy thumbs-up at the daughter. Ginger came over to us, still looking pissed.

  “What a round, Gin!” said the mom. “Thirty! Six under!”

  Tight-lipped, Ginger said under her breath, “Damn, I wanted that twenty-nine. I was so lame on seven, eight, and nine. Shit…shit.”

  “You’re leading by three, Gin.”

  The kid said, “This tournament is so over, man. They can’t catch me the way I’m swingin’, way I’m rollin’ it.”

  The kid and Jan Dunn smacked their drives and walked off down the fairway.

  I said I’d let Mom handle the back nine. I wanted to track down two or three players and talk to them about Ginger.

  “I don’t want to seem pushy or anything,” I said, “but are we going to talk about Debbie Wendell trying to poison Ginger—if that’s what actually happened?”

  Thurlene said, “Oh, it happened. Believe it.”

  “Fine,” I said. “When do I get to hear about it?”

  “Are you free for dinner?”

  8

  The kid threw down a course-record sixty-four and was ushered into the pressroom to answer questions about her round and her life. Right. Like somebody eighteen years old, who’s never done anything but hit golf balls—who’s not allowed to have a car yet—could have lived a life.

  There were new faces in the pressroom. Three new girls. Two tall, one hefty. The tall ones were from Los Angeles and San Diego.

  The Whataburger queen worked for an obscure weekly. A guy from the Golf Channel I’d never seen before kept walking around, sizing up the place, holding his on-air duds on a hanger. Loud sport coat, striped shirt, dotted necktie. A half dozen Asian fellows were now present, all of them weighted down with cameras, lenses, tripods.

  Thurlene, looking a little moist, came in to hear Ginger’s interview. She stood by me in the back of the room. I never ask questions in group interviews. Most of those who do either are point-missers or like to hear their own voices.

  “What a round, huh?” the mom said. “She made four more birdies on the back…but she bogeyed twice. She got greedy. It cost her.

  She really wanted that sixty-two.”

  “How’d she bogey?”

  “Flew the greens. Pin hungry. Pitched badly coming back.”

  Allison of PR came up to us. She was in a black pantsuit and white shirt with a big collar. She was definitely looking more and more like one of those sexy blondes on Fox News.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can I fetch anyone something to drink?”

  “I would love a bottle of water,” Thurlene said.

  “What about you, Mr. Brannon?”

  “No thanks…and it’s Jack, if you don’t mind.”

  Allison dashed away and was back in a flash with the Evian.

  She said, “Anything you need in the hotel, Jack?”

  “No, I’m good,” I said.

  “You’ll let me know, though?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “We want you to enjoy your stay. First impressions matter a great deal to us. I live here as well as work here. So I’m always on call. Toppy and Connie like it that way. I live in one of the bungalows along the first fairway. You’ve seen them…on the right?”

  “Convenient,” I said.

  “Very much so. Holler now if I can do anything for you.”

  She gave my arm a squeeze as she left.

  Thurlene grinned at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “You just took a hit.”

  “I what?”

  “You got hit. I see blood.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on.”

  “You think
that skinny woman was hitting on me?”

  “She’s not that skinny…and I know a hit when I see one. I’ve been a hitter myself.”

  “You haven’t hit on me.”

  “I haven’t had to. You’ve been hitting on me.”

  “That’s what you think I’ve been doing?”

  “Please.”

  “All I’m doing is working on a story.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I am.”

  She elbowed me.

  “Be quiet,” she said. “I want to hear Gin.”

  Up behind a table and a microphone on a platform, Ginger had been going through her round, hole by hole, revealing the length of her birdie putts. She was sitting next to a snooty LPGA press rep whose job it was to conduct the interviews with the tournament leaders.

  The name of the LPGA press rep was Monique and she was remindful of the person at the door of a fashionable restaurant who relishes telling you it’ll be a forty-five-minute wait for a table even though the place is half empty.

  “What are your general thoughts about your round?” Monique was now asking Ginger into the microphone.

  “It rocked,” Ginger said.

  “Perhaps you could be more descriptive,” Monique said.

  Ginger said, “I was bomb squad with the tee ball. My irons were cooking. I had the harpoon going on the greens. But I did two flip-wads. I gunched the wedge twice. It cost me the bogeys at fifteen and sixteen. I was trying to throw down a sixty-two.”

  Monique looked at the audience.

  “Questions?” she said.

  Somebody asked Ginger to go through her bag. What equipment was she using?

  Ginger said she hadn’t signed any club contracts yet. Her bag was a mix. She was carrying a nine-degree Callaway Armageddon driver. An Adams Destroyer three-metal. Her hybrid was a twenty-one-degree S-flex Ping Tormenter. Her irons were the Callaway Monsters, four through nine. “But my seven is really a five and a half—like the men,” she said. Two Titleist wedges. A fifty and a fifty-six degree. And her Scotty Cameron was the putter she’d had since she was twelve.

  Somebody asked Ginger if she’d made six straight birdies before today. She said yeah, twice, as an amateur, at Lost Goose and Swarming Ivy. She described the events.

  Somebody asked her to talk about the experience of being in a golf academy in Florida.

  “I wasn’t there like most of the kids,” Ginger said. “It’s expensive. I was only enrolled in the summer when school was out in Dallas…from when I was twelve through, uh, sixteen. The academy was great. I had good teachers. I was around a lot of terrific athletes. Some have gone on to college. Some are out here now. Some are good friends. I almost went to college instead of going pro. I had full-ride offers from Duke, Texas, OU, Tulsa, Chapel Hill, Arizona State, TCU…”

  Somebody asked if she still lived in Dallas. She said part of the time but she and her mom had bought a condo in Palm Beach, Florida. Her mom was her manager, her “keeper”—and best friend—although her mom wouldn’t let her have a car yet.

  Somebody asked what her future schedule looked like. Ginger said she was playing in New Mexico next week and she’d come back to California for the Kraft Nabisco. Maybe a week off here and there later on.

  Somebody asked about her father.

  Monique said, “That’s a private matter. Next?”

  A voice said, “You have a four-stroke lead. Do you think you can hold up over a strong field like this for one more round?”

  “Sure,” Ginger said.

  The voice belonged to the AP guy. He looked tired, thirsty, hungry, overworked, underpaid.

  He said, “What posters are on your wall?”

  Ginger said, “Gee, let me think. Matt Damon’s up there…Leo…Brad Pie used to be…Kelly Clarkson—she’s from Texas.”

  “Who do you listen to? What rock groups? Rappers?”

  “I’m not into rap. I’m a Texas girl. I like the honky-tonk angels, the heartache chicks. LeAnn Rimes is great.”

  “What’s your game plan for tomorrow?” somebody asked.

  “My game plan?” Ginger rolled her eyes. “Like, I mean, go out and try to lay down another good one. Let ’em know how bad I want it.”

  The tall woman from L.A. said, “You were quoted in Golf World saying one of your goals is to be the number one player in the world. Did you really say that?”

  Ginger looked around. “Well…yeah, I said it. There are lots of great players out here. Lorena, Paula, Britt, Tricia, Morgan, Penny. They tease me about the quote. But I’m a competitor. I say things.”

  The tall woman said, “You’re eighteen, Ginger. You’ve only been on the tour a year. Isn’t that setting your sights a little high?”

  “What am I supposed to say?” Ginger grinned. “My goal is to be the number three player in the world?”

  Laughter filled the room.

  “She’s good,” I said to the mom. “She’s real good.”

  Ginger kept talking.

  “I have lots of goals. I want to win tournaments. I want to win majors. I want to make Solheim Cup teams. I want to play on winning Solheim Cup teams. And…someday I know I want to marry and have children.”

  The handlebar mustache from Palm Springs hollered out, “You want to make a swimsuit commercial?”

  Ginger shot back rapidly. “Want to be my agent?”

  More laughter.

  Monique, looking grim, spoke into the mike.

  “This interview is concluded.”

  9

  The thing I root for the hardest when I’m adventurously dining in a fancy restaurant is that my entrée doesn’t come out looking like the Eiffel Tower sitting on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes.

  I announced this to Thurlene after Count Dracula, the maître d’, seated us in Connie’s Corner, the “gourmet” room at the Villa. The room was stocked with antiques and Oriental rugs, and a little card at our table said we could thank Gavin & Brice of San Francisco for the decor.

  Ginger was invited, but she’d made other plans. She and Trey Bishop were going to eat in the coffee shop, the Sips and Dins, then go to the video game room in the hotel and kill droves of Al Qaeda.

  Our waiter looked like he’d been deeply touched by the life of Alexander Godunov. His name was Dorian. He recommended a white wine for Thurlene and brought a bottle to the table along with my martini.

  I’d been thinking for years that it was all over for garlic mashed potatoes. But evidently that news hadn’t reached the chef at Connie’s Corner yet. I also noticed on the huge leather-bound menu that tortilla soup was still alive and kicking.

  “I wonder if they have any unblackened fish or beef,” I said, more to myself than to Thurlene.

  She closed her menu. “I’ll have the mixed green salad, house dressing, and the chicken breast.”

  “You’re in luck,” I said. “They say it’s free-range chicken.”

  “I’m so relieved.”

  “I’m torn,” I said. “Should I go with the line-caught salmon or the Pacific Rim tilapia?”

  “That’s a tough one,” she said, and sipped her wine.

  I said, “Where did tilapia come from? We’ve been invaded by tilapia. I can remember when there were only four kinds of fish. Trout, Dover sole, catfish, and fried shrimp.”

  “Don’t forget canned tuna.”

  “Canned tuna’s not a fish,” I said. “Canned tuna is lunch meat.”

  We were on coffee. We’d finished our free-range chicken and line-caught salmon and neither of us wanted to order the restaurant’s highly praised, prize-winning dessert—tiramisu.

  I spent a while telling her about myself. How I’d arrived where I was at this stage of my development. How my track record in the marriage game wasn’t admirable. How I liked my work almost as much as I used to like smoking. Eventually I got around to saying it was time to talk about what I wanted to talk about.

  Thurlene said, “First, you have to understand that these young girls lead a s
heltered life. They start being sheltered as soon as they show any promise and want to work at the game…with the idea, you know, of earning a college scholarship or having a pro career. A parent starts off thinking it would be great if the daughter could get a scholarship. Especially if the parents are people with average incomes, which most of us are. I’ve watched dads see it as an excuse to quit their jobs and devote full-time to ‘managing’ the daughter. I was married to one.”

  “What kind of job did he quit?”

  “Pete was a salesman. But what he mainly did was gamble on the golf course. His specialty was losing. The last job he quit was calling on pro shops to sell them ugly golf shirts.”

  “Why did you marry him, if I may ask?”

  She shrugged. “I thought he looked like Nick Nolte in Under Fire. He thought so too, incidentally.”

  I laughed.

  She continued. “It didn’t matter to us so much when Pete quit his job. He had a better gig. Creative Sports Enterprises—CSE, your man Howie Daniels—put him on the payroll when Ginger was fourteen. Howie figured she’d get an LPGA waiver to turn pro at seventeen, which she did. Howie saw her as a hot property even at fourteen, and he thought this was a way to lock her in. CSE paid Pete seventy-five thousand a year as a ‘junior talent scout.’ He was supposed to file reports on players at the junior amateur tournaments we took Ginger to play in. It’s a scam, but the USGA says it’s legal. My problem started with Pete over that money. It was supposed to go into a savings account for Ginger, which was what we discussed. She was the one earning it. But most of the money wound up in Pete’s pocket and eventually in somebody else’s pocket on the golf course…I don’t want to talk about him anymore. Why did you hook up with those two all-stars you married?”

  I said, “Carolyn Reese was one of the first people I met when I went to SM in New York. She was a reporter at the magazine. She was cute, put together. I was naturally attracted to her because she liked to drink and smoke and cuss and laugh and hang out as much as I did. But as soon as we were married, she didn’t like to do any of that anymore. I hear this happens often. What Carolyn wanted was a home and security and a husband who didn’t travel. We were married two years. When I came back from the Masters in the spring of ’ninety-three, I discovered she’d farmed herself out to a stockbroker.”