I bogeyed that first hole, but so did they. As we waited on the next tee, Craig asked Don what his handicap was.
“Zero,” Don replied.
“Wow.”
“I used to be a teaching pro,” he added. “I’ve still got my PGA card.”
Perfect, I thought. I’m partnered with a professional. Without further ado, I stood up and launched a screamer hard left. The ball struck a tree—possibly numerous trees—before caroming out of the shadows near the cart path. The other guys spanked perfect drives.
That’s how the afternoon went, good holes and bad holes, the usual roller coaster. Nonetheless, I managed to hang in there with Craig and Mel; Don, as expected, was kicking our asses. Every now and then I’d ask for a tip—how to carve a wedge off a downhill lie, for instance—and he’d respond politely but not expansively. Clearly his teaching days were over.
Play was brutally slow because the course was jammed. The cart restrictions rendered the GPS range finder practically useless, since everyone had to schlep on foot across the fairways to reach their balls. On these treks, Craig, Mel and Don each brought a veritable bouquet of irons, so as to be prepared for any distance and any possible lie.
Not having so many shots in my bag, I usually grabbed one club. Sometimes I guessed right and sometimes I guessed wrong. Often it was the proper choice, struck poorly.
On the sixth hole, by sheer dumb luck, I knocked a 9-iron about eight feet from the pin and sank the putt for a birdie. I proceeded to double-bogey the seventh, par the eighth, then mutilate the par-5 ninth to finish the front at 46.
All things considered, I felt all right. I hadn’t scored nearly as wretchedly as I was capable of. Still, it was a relief to hear Don say that he wouldn’t be able to play the back nine because he had a long drive back to Palm Springs. Briskly I chimed in with an alibi of my own—an adoring family, waiting back at the hotel.
Mel and Craig waved so long and headed for the 10th tee. I shook Don’s hand and wished him a safe journey. Then I scurried into the bar for a Coke.
It had taken two hours and thirty-five minutes to play those nine holes—a death trek for a golfer debilitated by social reticence and acute swing-thought anxieties. Yet somehow I’d endured—hitting from the tips, no less—without the aid of sedatives or booze. No tirades, seizures, casualties or collateral damage.
The first round of the British Open had been played earlier that day at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, and the group in the bar was still buzzing about a spectacular shot that Tiger Woods had made on the 14th hole.
That night I caught the replay on ESPN—a blind 4-iron, 209 yards straight into the cup. I recalled the hilarious 4-iron that I’d hit on the ninth at Monarch Beach that afternoon—arcing high into a Pacific headwind before stalling like a decrepit warbler, then plummeting into a pond.
For the remainder of our vacation I avoided the golf course as if it were a toxic dump, although I awoke early every morning to catch the live Open coverage from Liverpool. When Woods broke down on the 18th green after winning the tournament, I got choked up, too. His grieving for his late father made me think of mine.
Tiger and I have nothing in common except that neither of us would have picked up a golf club if it weren’t for our dads. Tough old Earl Woods surely would have been beaming at the sight of his supernaturally talented son collecting an eleventh major championship at the tender age of thirty years.
I can’t be certain what Odel Hiaasen would think of me, his eldest offspring, slashing and cussing my way around a golf course again at age fifty-three. I suspect he’d be pleased that I was trying.
Day 351
A sleek new King Cobra Speed driver arrives, courtesy of Feherty, who has a commercial deal with the Cobra line. I rush out to the range and instantly start launching balls at a trajectory that resembles a space shuttle blastoff. The new club has a loft of 10.5 degrees, which is plainly ill-suited for my swing.
Later, UPS delivers a box from the Callaway company—the Fusion driver for which I’d been “fitted” at the World Golf Hall of Fame. Giddy with anticipation I’m not.
Day 353
Nine dismal holes with the Fusion.
It’s weighted for a fade, which would be helpful if I was still snap-hooking the ball as I did that day on the launch monitor. Unfortunately, my slice has returned in a breathtaking way, exaggerated to farcical effect by the expensive new driver.
I receive an e-mail from Lupica: “I’m trying to shorten my swing.”
“Yeah,” I write back, “and I’m trying to shorten my memory.”
Day 356
The new Golf Digest features a full-page advertisement for “Mind Drive,” an herbal capsule that supposedly clears the brain and dramatically improves one’s golfing abilities.
From the promotional material: “Mind Drive helps keep you calm and focused so you can concentrate on your game, eliminate distractions, increase consistency and lower your score.”
The ad doesn’t reveal the ingredients in this wondrous product, but rousing endorsements are offered by Ryan Palmer, D. A. Points and Vaughn Taylor, three young PGA touring pros. The most well-known blurber is Phil Mickelson’s one-time swing coach, Rick Smith, who’s quoted as saying: “Mind Drive ensures you get into the Zone, taking your game to the next level and achieving consistency.”
Oddly, Mickelson himself doesn’t chime in on behalf of Mind Drive, nor does his name appear in advertisements for the miracle capsules. It’s hard to believe that Smith wouldn’t have told his star pupil about this exciting breakthrough, especially after Mickelson’s heartbreaking collapse on the final hole of the 2006 U.S. Open. Maybe Phil has a different coach for homeopathic consultations.
I dial the 800 number for Mind Drive and order sixty capsules for forty bucks. The guy on the other end offers to sign me up for the lifetime home-delivery program, but I tell him that I’ll wait to see if the stuff really puts me in “the Zone.”
The Q-Link fiasco is still fresh in my mind.
Days 358–360 / Bridgehampton, New York
Mike Lupica has invited me to the Noyac Golf Club, where he’s a member. The slope from the whites is a challenging 138. The course is very pretty, the slender fairways bordered densely with old oaks, and not a tract house in sight.
Among these woods is where Lupica was assaulted by the Lyme-carrying tick, but that’s the least of my worries. I’m off to a terrible start, swinging like a lumberjack, which is appropriate since I spend most of the morning in the trees.
At one point we encounter the course superintendent, whom Lupica engages in a lively dialogue about the length of the rough, which Mike feels is unduly punitive. I don’t hear the entire exchange, but it ends with the superintendent threatening to fire off a letter of complaint to the club big shots about Lupica’s smartass attitude. Mike doesn’t seem especially worried.
The back nine begins more promisingly, with me nearly sinking a fifty-foot blast from a sidehill bunker. Then comes the customary Hiaasen choke. Blessedly, Lupica and son Alex seem to have quit keeping score. I three-putt so many greens that I disgustedly bag the Scotty Cameron and borrow Mike’s putter, with positive results.
Of the three drivers in my bag (out of pity, Lupica has waived the fourteen-club rule) the most useless in my hands proves to be the Fusion for which I was fitted at the World Golf Hall of Fame. I can’t hit the thing worth a damn. However, young Alex Lupica borrows it and knocks the ball a mile, straight and true. He is also sixteen years old, an age at which all things are possible.
The next afternoon, Lupica loans me a freaky blue Ping putter, which works pretty well for nine holes. When we’re done, Lupica insists that I drive one ball off the 10th tee with his beloved G5. To our mutual astonishment, I crush it 272 yards, according to the markers on the fairway sprinklers. Now I’m completely confused. Should I add a Ping driver to my growing collection?
Late the following afternoon, we head out for one last masochistic nine at Noyac. This time we??
?re joined by Mike’s eldest son, Chris, who has the ideal outlook for golf—it’s all comedy, so why take it seriously? I scrape out a 44, which isn’t bad.
Afterwards, in the pro shop, we watch Tiger Woods sink a birdie to win the Buick Open with his fourth straight 66. Of all people, Rudy Giuliani walks in the door and snaps at his playing partner, who’s glued to the television.
The former New York mayor is a new member at Noyac, and will soon be running for president of the United States. The arduous campaign is not likely to improve his handicap index, currently hovering around 18.
Outside, in the parking lot, we spy Giuliani’s jet-black Escalade, the driver catching some Zs while his boss tackles the back nine. Before zipping my clubs into the travel bag, I present the fade-weighted Fusion to Alex Lupica. His dad hands me the blue Ping putter, and we call it even.
Later, in the shower, I check myself for ticks.
Day 363
Back in the familiar confines of Quail Valley, I par five out of the first six holes. Then I pull my usual crash-and-burn on the back nine, carding big fat 7s on No. 10, No. 17 and No. 18.
I finish with a lackluster 91, the toll including four dispiriting three-putts. The blue Ping let me down, or perhaps it’s the other way around.
Still no sign of the Mind Drive pills in the mail, but Feherty has generously express-shipped another Speed Cobra driver, this one lofted at 9.0 degrees.
At this point I’d be willing to try a slingshot.
Day 364
Ominously, clouds of turkey buzzards have appeared at Quail Valley and the air is ripe with death. Because of the extreme summer heat, some of the jumbo carp and tilapia have floated up dead in the lakes, attracting hungry vultures from as far away as downtown Orlando. It’s a good day to aim clear of the water.
I shoot 46–44 with eight pars (including the tough 17th), two triples and three doubles. I’d been cruising toward breaking 90 when I was once again slaughtered by No. 18—four-putting the cruelly tiered green for another closing 7.
Overall, though, it wasn’t a horrific day. Except for that last hole, the Ping putter performed honorably. I also drove the 9.0 Cobra fairly well, so I make a note to call Feherty and thank him.
Day 365
Steve Archer says I’m tilting left on my setup, which can cause, among other disasters, a hard pull. At the end of the lesson he also suggests that I test-drive a Nike SasQuatch 10.5, which looks like a deformed eggplant. I swing it once and smash the ball out of sight, which is scary.
Should I stick with the new Cobra or not? If only I had some Mind Drive pills to help me decide.
Later, on an impulse, I pick up the phone and order a device called the Momentus Swing Trainer that’s being advertised on the Golf Channel. According to Fred Funk, it will forever groove my swing.
We shall see.
The Anniversary Stomp
Exactly one year after I purchased those secondhand Nicklaus clubs, my transformation was disturbing.
I owned two pairs of golf shoes and a half-dozen vivid shirts in which I wouldn’t have been caught dead twelve months ago. I had four drivers of varying lofts, weight distributions and shaft flexibility, and I couldn’t hit any of them the same way twice. I was trying out a flashy new putter that I was concealing from my wife, and I found myself conversing about gap wedges and fairway hybrids with persons I barely knew. At nights I lay awake reliving the day’s round, shot by shot, in self-lacerating detail.
A case could be made that I was hooked. Whether or not my game had actually improved was debatable, because I played in schizoid streaks that drew dumbfounded exclamations from even my most diplomatic friends. Nonetheless, after twelve months I was, at least on paper, where I’d hoped to be.
The USGA defines “a male bogey golfer” as “a player who has a Course Handicap of approximately 20 on a course of standard difficulty. He can hit tee shots an average of 200 yards and reach a 370-yard hole in two shots at sea level.”
By those magnanimous criteria, I qualified. My Course Handicap stood at 18 on a layout of higher-than-average difficulty. My tee shots, when they found the fairway, traveled 245 yards to 275 yards depending on the wind and turf conditions. Unless waylaid by water or waste bunkers, I could easily reach (and often overshoot) a 370-yard hole in two strokes. In sum, I had reached a level of play at which I’d assured my friends and loved ones that I would be content.
Yet I wasn’t. Every golfer is susceptible to the notion that he or she is scoring far beneath their potential, and many go to their graves clinging to this fantasy. The cruel truth is that most of us bog down in a stratum commensurate with our talent, mental fortitude and fitness.
Men of a certain age choose not to believe they’ve peaked, and I wasn’t alone in this delusion. The mass-advertisers who aim at golfers know well their target demographic—and it ain’t Orlando Bloom or Jake Gyllenhaal. Before I started playing golf again, I’d never even heard of Flomax; I thought a “weak stream” was a trout creek in autumn.
But flip open any golf magazine or turn on the Golf Channel, and you’re peppered with medical remedies for enlarged prostates, high cholesterol, arthritis pain and erectile dysfunction. Obviously, millions of guys like me are out there, laboring valiantly to piss, make love and whack a small white ball as well as we did when we were young. That four-hour hard-on about which we’re forewarned in the Cialis commercials is daunting to contemplate, but personally I’d be thrilled to keep my putter working for that long.
And I mean my putter.
As the mortal clock ticks down, the window of opportunity in which it’s physically possible to post a memorable golf score grows narrower. I’m reminded of this in the dead of night when awakened by the twinge in my bad knee or the irksome throb in my right hip, which I fear will someday require surgical attention. Many people play the game until they’re quite old and they have a blast, but par inevitably becomes a stranger. The trick, as David Feherty says, is learning not to care.
But care I do. The most insidious thing about golf is the one or two fine moments that it bequeaths every round. On my one-year anniversary I stumbled to a dreary 96, thanks to a feud with the new Cobra driver. A neutral scanning of that uninspiring scorecard would show nothing whatsoever to celebrate.
Yet instead of fuming about the five shots that I’d stupidly knocked into the water, I kept replaying in my mind’s eye the impossible sidehill wedge that I’d nearly holed from the rough on No. 8—unquestionably a freak event, yet I chose to appraise it as an omen of future glory.
That’s the secret of the sport’s infernal seduction. It surrenders just enough good shots to let you talk yourself out of quitting.
Day 367
Leibo says my borrowed SasQuatch driver looks like a bicycle helmet on a stick. He advises me to make up with my Big Bertha. I do as he says, and rip the next five drives straight as an arrow.
“Know what your problem is?” Leibo muses. “You’re a psycho. Your head explodes out here.”
As for my huge and complicated blue putter, he says it resembles a psychedelic spatula. For further humiliation, he calls Al Simmens on a cell phone and describes the big Ping in detail.
Big Al asks: “Does it scale fish, too?”
Despite the insults, I’m sticking with the beast for now.
Day 371
The Medicus swing-training driver, the Mind Drive capsules and my USGA membership card all arrive today, which is either High-Octane Golf Mojo or a meaningless coincidence.
Day 372
Before surrendering my meditative wavelengths to Mind Drive, I scan the ingredients listed on the box: Vitamins B1, B6, B12, folic acid mixed with “decaffeinated green tea extract” and a list of substances that I don’t recognize. My wife urges me to Google the one called L-phenylalanine, but there’s no time. I gulp two capsules and head for the golf course.
Playing the back nine first, I open with an encouraging par-5 on No. 10, a hole that usually is bedeviling. Before long, though
, I lurch into an awful string of triples and doubles. I recall Mind Drive’s claim to “enhance muscle memory” so that you can repeat the same golf swing, and it occurs to me that this might not be the ideal prescription for someone with a flawed swing.
On the second nine I start out par-birdie-par. After five holes I’m even, and beginning to believe that the Mind Drive potion might indeed be magical. Then play stacks up, and a congenial older gentleman asks to join me. I’m stunned to hear myself say yes, because I know damn well what’s about to happen.
And it does: I three-putt the next two holes, dump two balls in the water on No. 8, and finish off the round with a spectacular, out-of-bounds 5-iron that lands no fewer than 80 degrees left of my intended target.
Even herbal medicine is no match for the Big Choke.
Day 373
After gulping down two more Mind Drive capsules, I go online to research L-phenylalanine. Medical Web sites say it’s a protein amino acid that is widely believed to be a natural antidepressant.
Perfect for golf!
But there’s lightning and thunder outside, so I stay home to watch the third round of the PGA Championship. At one point, ten players, including Tiger Woods, are tied for the lead.
The phone rings—my mother calling to make sure I’ve got the television on. “I’ve never seen such great golf!” she exclaims.
Mom is seventy-nine, and she hasn’t swung a club since PE in college. However, she has become a major Tiger fan, and keeps up with the big tournaments. She’s especially excited that the PGA is being played at the Medinah Country Club, in her hometown of Chicago.
It’s pretty adorable, and also ironic. If anybody has a reason not to be enamored of golfers, it’s my mother.
Blue Sundays
Dad was a workaholic and our family seldom went on trips, even for weekends. Although we lived in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, I can’t remember my father ever joining us at the beach. He loved offshore fishing but the rest of us got seasick in rough weather, which is of course the best time to troll for marlin and sailfish.