If the kid’s fudging his handicap, he’s not alone. The Golf Digest survey included a disclaimer saying that while some of the handicap indexes came from the USGA, others were provided by the musicians, their pals or publicists.
Snoop Dogg claims to be an 18, and who without a concealed-weapons permit would dare challenge him on that? On the other hand, when does Céline Dion (an alleged 16.8) have time for golf? She does, what—twenty-nine shows a week in Vegas?
You can definitely sniff PR weasels behind the scenes, over-promoting their clients. Yet even if Timberlake is an honest 10- or even a 12-handicap, that’s still stunningly good golf for someone who sings falsetto and shaves with a cereal boxtop.
Golf Digest, which is keen on lists, also publishes an annual handicap sheet for the top two hundred CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies. As a group the CEOs are better golfers than musicians, which isn’t surprising. Corporate big shots spend a lot more time on the course. Fifty-seven percent of those polled in 2006 said they play at least thirty rounds every year, which would be hard to do if one was touring with a globe-trotting boy band.
Three out of four CEOs said they’ve shelled out as much as $300 for a green fee, while 45 percent said they belonged to four or more private country clubs. (It wasn’t noted how many of those memberships were purchased for them by unsuspecting shareholders.)
Few CEOs in this country are young studs, but many of them golf like they are. In 2006 the number one scorer was fifty-two-year-old Jim Crane, head of a global freight company called EGL, Inc. His handicap index was 0.8, for which any twenty-five-year-old amateur (and even some pros) would kill.
In fact, of the top dozen CEO players, all but two were guys in their fifties who, except for their mountainous stock options and superb skills on a golf course, were not so different from me.
A glass-half-full type would find it encouraging that so many men in the same age bracket are playing top-flight golf. Plainly, it’s not a physical impossibility.
But as a dedicated glass-half-empty person, my reflex reaction to the CEO list was dejection. My most dependable excuse for struggling so ineffectually to master the sport—age—had been demolished in print. The only straw left to clutch was the fact that most of those corporate single-digit handicappers hadn’t abandoned golf for three decades the way I’d done.
This sort of pointless, self-excoriating meditation should be avoided by the average player. No wonder that Steve Archer, the pro who was teaching me, told me to throw away all my golf magazines.
One of these days I just might.
Day 319
Haven’t touched the sticks in almost three weeks—the longest layoff since I started playing again. In the meantime, the Q-Link refund has shown up on the Amex bill, which can only mean (or so I tell myself) that its bad karma is vanquished and my golfing fortunes will improve.
Ha! I bungle and thrash my way to yet another ragged 97.
Back home, there’s celebrity pillhead news on the Internet:
Upon returning to Palm Beach from a golf vacation in the Dominican Republic, radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh was detained by U.S. Customs for possessing a stash of Viagra prescribed in someone else’s name.
Limbaugh, whose appetite for Vicodin had previously gotten him into a jam with Florida authorities, obviously moved to my fair state for the tax benefits, golf opportunities and friendly pharmacists. He has joined four country clubs here, so it’s probably easier for him to get a tee time than it is to get laid.
Still, I’d be curious to know what effect, if any, the Viagra is having on Big Rush’s USGA handicap, which is comparable to my own.
Day 321
For the first time since college, I walk eighteen holes dragging a golf bag. The heat index is 101, according to the weather station.
Last night the course got drenched with four inches of rain, so no carts are allowed. Several of the deeper sand traps are full of water, and I actually lose a ball in one of them, which is a first. I end up shooting 92—not sensational, but I’ll take it under such arduous Saharan conditions.
Day 322
Lupica calls to say he caught Lyme disease from a deer tick that bit him while he was playing golf.
“You have ticks in your fairways?” I ask.
“Not in the fairways, you asshole. In the rough.”
“I’m not sure I want to play a course that has ticks,” I say. “I’d rather deal with alligators.”
Afterwards I wonder if I should have sounded more sympathetic.
Day 323
I take a putting lesson from the eternally patient Archer. He suggests trying a reverse-overlap grip, which seems to work. I hole a long birdie on No. 5 and finish the front nine at 43.
On the back side I stumble as usual, shooting 49. However, I par the gonad-shriveling 18th for the first time ever, which lightens the suffering.
Day 325
A new low: With a group of old high school friends, I rack up an execrable 104 at Riomar Country Club, one of the oldest courses in Florida. Afterwards I throw my visor in a trash can, in order to purge the evil mojo.
Tomorrow we play Quail Valley, and I’m scared shitless.
Day 326
Discarding the hat helped, except on the greens. My score is 93, with five three-putts. For a change, I strike the ball well off the tee, which is to be expected since I’m leaving for St. Augustine tomorrow to be fitted for a new driver.
Launch Control to Major Dork
Back in 1998, the Professional Golfers’ Association asked the state of Florida for $50 million to help finance a project called the World Golf Village. Disguised as a sales-tax rebate, the giveaway was pro-rated at $2 million annually for twenty-five years.
Although the PGA was hardly hurting for dough, its request for government funding was quickly approved, the Florida Legislature being infamous for drunkenly throwing tax dollars at wealthy sports franchises. Between 1994 and 2001, $559 million in public money was earmarked to subsidize new pro baseball parks, football stadiums, basketball arenas, hockey palaces and even the headquarters for the International Game Fish Association (an impressive place, if you’re a fan of taxidermy).
Eventually Florida voters became pissed off about the tax handouts and the legislators got spooked, but by then the World Golf Village—basically a Disney World for golf fanatics—was already a done deal. Built on the outskirts of America’s oldest city, St. Augustine, the project has an IMAX theater, an eighteen-hole putting layout, a teaching academy, two championship courses, a perpetual hole-in-one contest (first prize: two tickets to the Masters) and the World Golf Hall of Fame. The sprawling property has become a major tourist draw, and is spawning high-end housing developments on all sides.
Among the myriad attractions inside the World Golf Village is a retail megastore called the PGA Tour Stop, showcasing every upscale line of clubs, putters, balls, shoes and apparel. On the second floor is where a player can be measured, timed and fitted for a new club, or for a whole set.
“You have to go,” Leibo told me. “I can’t wait to see you on the launch monitor.”
The launch monitor is a device of modern invention used by golf-club sellers to electronically analyze the swings of potential customers. In my case, I’d be tested on a driver, the most difficult club in the bag to hit. It’s also the most expensive club in the bag, because frustrated golfers—which is to say, all golfers—are eternally shopping for a new model.
I asked Leibo how the launch monitor works.
“You hit some balls into a net, and a machine measures your clubhead speed, the ball spin, the launch angle, everything. It’s unbelievable,” he said.
I told him that I’d reached an age at which I really didn’t want my launch angle measured.
“I’m going to call today and make an appointment,” he said brightly. “We’ll drive up there together.”
A few days before the trip, I started experiencing launch-performance anxiety.
“What if I can’t make a de
cent swing?” I said. “You know how badly I play when strangers are watching.”
Leibo told me to relax. “You’ll hit about sixty balls. There’s bound to be one or two good ones.”
For moral support, I phoned Lupica, who’d recently purchased a high-tech Ping driver after being assessed on a launch monitor.
“It’ll change your life,” he assured me.
Leibo and Al Simmens accompanied me to the World Golf Village for my Thursday afternoon club fitting. We arrived an hour early and purchased some golf shirts at the PGA Tour Stop.
Then I retrieved my Callaway Big Bertha from the car and we headed upstairs to the testing bay.
“Ask for Keith,” Leibo said. “I told them you’d need somebody with a sense of humor.”
While Keith was finishing with another customer, I practiced hitting a few balls. The net was so large that it was impossible to miss. It was also impossible to tell where the shots were going.
Keith came in and observed me for a few minutes before introducing himself. He placed one of the balls on a rubber tee in front of the launch monitor, a compact camera-like box mounted at a level slightly below my knees.
“Give it a try,” he said.
I hit several in a row, while Keith studied a color monitor that displayed a flurry of numbers and three-dimensional shapes after every shot. His expression was that of a cardiologist staring at a flatline EKG.
“You’re hitting it hard left,” he reported, “really hard left.”
“That’s weird. I usually have a big slice.”
“Well, that last one was twenty-seven yards left of center,” he said, “and some of the others were worse.”
I glanced at Al and Mike. They were sitting in patio chairs, enjoying every ugly minute.
“You did hook a few the last time we played,” Mike reminded me.
“That first grouping got a zero rating,” Keith said, which meant the shots were so wildly scattered that there was no statistical pattern. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a zero rating before,” Keith remarked, shaking his head.
And where, I wondered, was his famous sense of humor?
Gamely I hit a half a dozen more drives, but Keith remained pensive. He called in another pro to review the results.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Have you thought about taking up fly-fishing?” Keith asked.
“Or maybe bowling?” said the other guy.
They pretended to be kidding. A second color monitor displayed the computer-imagined path of each of my drives on a simulated fairway—the white lines wriggled hither and yon in a chaotic tangle, as if someone had detonated a plate of linguini. A few of the shots flew so low to the ground that they had no measurable launch angle at all.
“That’s awful,” I said, and not even my friends disagreed.
A third club fitter arrived to join the huddle around the tracking equipment, and by now it felt like I was observing my own autopsy. The consensus in the testing room was that my hands were rolling over before impact, turning the face of the golf club inward before it struck the ball.
So I checked my grip, realigned my stance, slowed my downswing and gradually started launching the ball—thwack, thwack, thwack—to a well-frayed spot in the net.
Watching the display screen, Keith perked up. “Your angle of attack is good,” he reported. “So’s your ball speed and your spin rate.”
“What’s his clubhead speed?” Big Al asked.
Keith said it was 98 mph, which is great for a fastball but only slightly above average for an amateur golf drive. Keith sent one of the other pros to get a couple of drivers with different shafts.
“Yours is too stiff,” he explained.
“That’s not what his wife says,” Leibo volunteered from his patio chair.
The other clubs didn’t swing any easier than mine, but the data from the launch monitor indicated that I was striking one of them higher and straighter. To prove it, Keith took me out to the range, and forty minutes later I was the proud owner of a new $399 Callaway Fusion with a regular flex shaft.
The club was only six cubic centimeters larger than my Big Bertha 454, and had barely a half-degree more slant to the face. Nonetheless, I was irrationally hopeful that the new purchase would cure my chronic problems on the tee.
Unfortunately, the shop was out of Callaway Fusion drivers with the specifications I needed. Keith said he’d ship a new one in two weeks.
On the long, winding road out of the World Golf Village, I realized that I hadn’t screwed up the nerve to ask what my launch angle was, or what it was supposed to be.
Knowing, I suspect, would not have sent my confidence soaring on gilded wings.
Day 330
The day after subjecting myself to the launch-monitor experience, we tackle the Palencia, a scenic but tricky course north of St. Augustine. I score atrociously, yet I drive the ball fairly well with the Big Bertha—so well that I’m having regrets about ordering that new driver.
Day 332
I’m flabbergasted to learn that players at my handicap level aren’t permitted to take a score higher than a 7 on any hole, according to the rules of the United States Golf Association. That means I shot an adjusted gross of 100 the other day, not 103.
For some reason I don’t feel like turning cartwheels.
Day 336
Back at Quail Valley, I smack a once-in-a-millennium 4-iron to within thirty feet on the treacherous 18th hole…and smoothly three-putt for a bogey.
Later, on a whim, I pick up the phone to track down David Feherty, the brilliantly twisted golf analyst for CBS. We’ve never met or even spoken, but I’ve heard through mutual friends that he’s read some of my novels. I locate him on the road, between tournaments, and he listens with great patience but evident concern to the story of my golfing relapse.
“The only real mistake you can make is caring,” he says. “Don’t worry, though, I’ll get you de-toxed and then you won’t give a shit.”
“I feel like quitting again every time I play,” I admit, “then I hit one good shot, and all I want to do is go out and play again.”
“Yeah,” Feherty says sympathetically, “it’s like a drug.”
Day 338
I haven’t broken 90 in three months, and it might never happen again. I seem stuck on the desolate plateau of mediocrity that has claimed so many golfers.
My USGA handicap index is now 15.6 and rising faster than Floyd Landis’s sperm count.
Day 339
I hit six greens on the front nine, birdie No. 7 after a shockingly efficient lob wedge, and still make the turn at 42, thanks to several feeble three-putts. True to form, I crumble on the back nine and slump off the course with a 92.
One sunny note: I was even on the par-5s.
Gulag California
While vacationing with my family near Laguna, I ventured to a daunting seaside links course called Monarch Beach. The hotel concierge had assured me that I could play a late round alone; otherwise I’d never have left my room. The idea of golfing with strangers on a strange course was mortifying.
I paid the green fees, rented some clubs and hit a few balls into a net. Then I checked in with the starter, who cheerfully announced that I’d be paired with another player. I broke into a sickly sweat, but it was impossible to back out of the game—the guy was standing right beside me, putting on his glove.
He was a stocky, amiable fellow in his forties whom we will call Mel, some sort of account executive from Tennessee. I smiled gamely, but on the inside my gut was torquing. I was not ready for this.
When the starter turned and waved in another direction, I tasted bile. “We’re gonna put you guys with two other singles,” he said to Mel and me. “You don’t mind, do you? Have a great round!”
Whereupon we were introduced to Craig and Don. Craig was tall and athletic-looking, also in sales. He sported cantaloupe-colored bell bottoms, which I could only assume had snuck back into style.
Don
was no less fit, though more reserved and less festively attired. He and I shared a cart, which was equipped with detailed GPS mapping of the entire course. The overhead screen displayed precise yardage from the cart location to all major hazards, as well as the greens. I’d never golfed with the assistance of orbiting satellites, but Don seemed familiar with the technology.
The starter screaked a yellow Sharpie across our scorecard, highlighting the many holes upon which we weren’t allowed to drive off the cart path. I gave the wheel to Don and crept off to call my wife, in the craven hope that one of the kids had sprained an arm or possibly split a lip while surfing—nothing dire, just serious enough to give me a plausible excuse for bolting.
Fenia didn’t answer her cell, so I whispered an urgent message: “I’m trapped, honey! They stuck me with three other guys and I can’t weasel out of it!”
Back at the starter’s box, I noticed with alarm that my new companions were drifting toward “the tips”—the black, or championship, tees.
According to the scorecard, Monarch Beach measures 6,601 yards from the black tees and has a Slope Rating of 138, which is cowing to a golfer of my stunted abilities. On the other hand, my home course was 6,540 from the blues, so, I reasoned, how much tougher could it be?
After inquiring about my handicap, Mel said, not in a transparently condescending tone, “You probably want to play from the whites.”
I’d like to believe he was sincerely trying to spare me some embarrassment, but the machismo gene clicked on. “That’s okay,” I said, “I’ll just hit from wherever you guys are hitting.”
There was nothing to lose. Apparently I’d already been pegged as the duffer in the group, and nobody was betting any money on the round.
Still, teeing up in front of three younger, vastly more experienced golfers was a bowel-wringing experience. It didn’t help that I was the only one wearing sneakers and playing with rented sticks.
Then something strange and unexpected happened: Mel yanked his first drive into a hill near the out-of-bounds markers, while I pounded mine straight down the middle of the fairway. My new companions seemed as surprised as I was, and implicit in the tone of their congratulations—and my acknowledgment—was the certainty that my shot was merely a happy fluke.