Miracle on the 17th Green Read online

  But when we reached the tenth, a long, dangerous par 3 with water to the left, right, and behind the hole, there were already two threesomes backed up at the tee, which meant at least a fifteen-minute wait.

  Under the circumstances, extra time to think is the last thing you want, but while Fernandez stood off to the side, flagellating himself in Spanish, and the other golfers squeezed in some last-minute work on their putting and chipping strokes, Earl just sat down — as if on a park bench — and lit up a long dark cigar.

  “It’s like an insane asylum out here,” I said as I joined him.

  “Yeah,” said Fielder blowing out an aromatic stream, “after they cut back on the medication. It always pisses me off when people who don’t know what they’re talking about compare something to Vietnam, but in a weird way this really does remind me a little of Nam.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

  “It’s got the same spooky sunlit vibe, people tiptoeing on eggshells and squeezing their little good luck charms, hoping to God they won’t fuck up and will somehow get through this thing.”

  “Sounds like the advertising agency where I used to work,” I said. “Everyone walking around pretending they were invisible, hoping to survive another day. After twenty-three years they finally got me two weeks ago.”

  “Oh yeah, they ambushed your ass,” said Earl.

  “That’s right,” I said, “greased me right by the water cooler. So where do you stand in this thing?”

  “One under,” he said.

  “Even,” I said.

  “So we’re both still in the hunt.”

  Finally, the green opened up in front of us. Earl gingerly stubbed out his cigar, and after carefully wrapping it in tinfoil, returned it to his nylon club bag, which, like me, he was carrying himself.

  “Earl,” I said, “I’m going to find you Sunday when this thing is over. Buy you a beer.”

  “Looking forward to it, Travis.”

  Chapter 14

  I was definitely still on the road to Lourdes. No miracles yet, but keep your mind open. Believe me, something strange and wonderful was going down here.

  With Earl Fielder’s example helping to steady my nerves, I shot my second straight 69. That put me at six under for the tournament and in ninth place overall.

  I was so close to the Senior Tour, I could taste it, and figuring that playing safe wasn’t going to get it done — the course was just playing too easy — on Saturday I came out blazing. I was firing for every flag.

  On the front side, I put together my best run since my absentee Christmas dinner, going five under on the first eight holes. My swing felt solid, and I was seeing the line as if I were looking down the mahogany shaft of a pool cue.

  By the time I teed it up on nine, I had already cashed in about one hundred feet worth of putts, including a forty-footer for eagle and three twenty-foot birdies.

  The ninth hole at the Dunes is a tough par 4 with a blind tee shot over a rise, then a long second shot down to the green.

  After hitting a respectable drive, I saw that my name had gone up on the leader board for the first time all week, not to mention, of course, for the first time in my life.

  There I was, in third place, right behind Ed Sneed and Frank Conner. A big red McKinley. Followed by the denotation —II.

  As I walked to my ball, I couldn’t stop myself from savoring, if only for an illicit instant, the almost infinite satisfaction I would derive from informing friends and foes and doubters all, if I could somehow make it through to the tour.

  With a downhill lie and 210 yards to the front edge, I pulled a 4-iron and caught it thin, but luckily came up short of the greenside bunker. With the flag tucked up tight just beyond the trap, I didn’t have much green to work with, but if I could spin it close and sink a putt, I’d have a 31 for the front, and wouldn’t have to perform any heroics coming in.

  I took out my 60-degree wedge, and pictured a soft, lazy flop shot landing just on the front edge.

  Don’t get too cute with it, I told myself as I took a couple of long, loose practice swings, but as soon as I hit it, I knew that was exactly what I had done.

  I didn’t shank it or mishit it. I just hit it about two yards short, and it plopped as softly as an omelette into the far bank of the bunker, so softly that it didn’t roll to the bottom, but stayed right where it landed — under the goddamned lip.

  I couldn’t believe my stupidity or, more accurately, I couldn’t face it. I traveled in a nanosecond from an intimate little acceptance speech for three thousand, to stone-cold panic. Under the goddamned lip! Under the goddamned lip! UNDER THE GODDAMNED LIP!

  At this point two very distinct voices lobbied desperately for sway over my stressed-out brain. One voice preached disaster control and begged for restraint. “Chip it backwards, take your five or your six, and get out of here in one piece. You’re still young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

  The other voice was like a wounded beast, my own private Othello. It felt so betrayed and hurt by the last shot, so incredibly pissed off, it seemed bent on self-annihilation. It urged me to just wade in there up to my knees and gouge the ball out onto the green, like John Daly somehow did at 17 at the British Open.

  I listened to the voice that was louder, the wounded would-be John Daly.

  I marched down into the trap and aggressively worked my feet into the sand two feet below the ball.

  When I had my balance and a firm picture of my shot in mind, I steeply lifted my wedge, but just as I brought it crashing down behind the ball, the quieter spurned voice of reason spat out a perfectly timed one-word character sketch: “Asshole! “

  As a result, I neither blasted the ball out onto the green nor hit it backwards.

  In fact, I didn’t hit the ball at all, didn’t come anywhere near hitting it, the forward blade of my wedge diving into the sand at least four inches behind the ball. Just close enough to bury it under a fresh layer of sand.

  I felt as if I had just gotten out of my car in my driveway and discovered I had run over my dog.

  A red-hot flush rose from my toes to my head, and wounded childlike eyes searched the scene for some kind of last-second loophole that would allow me to take the shot over.

  Now I was lying four.

  In a daze, I weakly chipped to the bottom of the trap — five.

  And then to the very back of the green — six.

  I knocked my first putt ten feet past — seven, rolled my second two feet short — eight, and tapped in for nine.

  Nine! If an eight is a snowman, I had just shot an abominable snowman, but what I had really done was shot myself in the foot, shot myself right out of the tournament back to some even shittier job in some even shittier advertising agency. In one retarded spurt, I had pissed it all away, squandered my nest egg, taken all my birdies and my eagle and released them back into the sky.

  Everything I had worked for all week had been undone in five minutes.

  There was a coconut tree beside the green, and for a few scary seconds I seriously contemplated banging my head against the rough bent trunk until I was brain-dead.

  Instead I did something, for which, in my own life, there is absolutely no precedent.

  I forgave myself.

  I said, Travis, you are a decent guy who loves his wife and his kids and his dog, and like everyone else on the planet has a God-given, inalienable right to fuck up.

  It was as if the same two schizophrenic voices that did me in now put me back together. Or as if a third kinder, gentler voice had entered the conversation.

  It was as if I had knelt down in a confessional booth and said, “Father, I have sinned. I shot a nine when the absolute worst I should have had was a five, which led me not only to utter God’s name in vain but to consider the taking of my own life.” And the kindly old priest, with the infinite compassion of the omniscient being he represents, had looked at me with sweet moist eyes and said, “It’s a fucked-up world and game. Forget
about it.”

  And I did.

  I walked up to the tenth tee like a man who was happy to be six under for the tournament and happy to be alive. Then I went out and shot three under on the back side for my third straight 69.I had fallen back to sixteenth place, but I was still alive.

  Dreams die hard. And sometimes they dont have to die at all.

  Chapter 15

  At 6:05 the next morning, I was awakened by such a clamorous ringing I thought the Winnetka High School marching band was practicing under my bed. In fact, it was my four alarm clocks.

  Haunted by the story of a contending golfer who was disqualified after sleeping through his tee time on the final day of Q-School — arguably the most heartrending catastrophe in the history of sports — I had stopped at a drugstore after dinner and bought a second alarm clock.

  Then halfway back to the Ben Franklin I said, “Why fuck around?” and bought two more.

  It hardly mattered. When I got to the course, they were running an hour behind.

  At Q-School the play is always painfully slow, but on Sunday the action virtually grinds to a halt. Players agonize over every club selection and every puff of wind, every break and every cut of grain.

  In this overcooked atmosphere, watching someone card a bogey is like witnessing a violent mugging.

  A double bogey is like a homicide.

  Sunday isn’t just achingly slow, it’s also eerily quiet. There are no galleries, no applause, and no chatter among the players.

  Even the birds stop chirping.

  Despite the pressure, I can honestly say I had enjoyed my first three rounds. But Sunday was a death march.

  I figured it would take 68 to finish in the top eight, and from the first drive, I was on my game. I was swinging well and seeing the line as clear as ever. But the damn putts just weren’t dropping for me.

  On the front side, I saw a dead center twelve-footer knocked offline by a spike mark, watched an eight-footer do a 360-degree lipout, and another cling to the lip as impossibly as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint did on Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest. Sixty-eight was the number all right, but so far I wasn’t even close.

  The backside started the same way. One frustrating par after another. As I stepped up to the 15th tee, I was still only one under par, and running out of holes fast.

  I needed — well, a miracle. I needed to go three under on the last four holes. I needed 68.

  I got one of them right away on the short par-3 15th, when I hit a smooth 8-iron to fourteen feet and finally sunk a putt. Now, I absolutely needed birdie on 16, because 17, a 228-yard par 3 protected by trees on both sides, was an almost impossible birdie hole, a par 4 masquerading as a 3.

  Sixteen, on the other hand, was a short, sharp dogleg right. It required a 4-iron, then a wedge to an elevated green. I hit my tee shot fine, but pulled my wedge, leaving me a very quick downhill thirty-footer, with a huge left-to-right break. For a right-hander like me, those are the hardest putts to read, but this time the line was crystal clear. I just hoped I could force myself to hit it hard enough.

  In a silence so complete it recalled the void of nuclear disaster, I gave the ball a ping and watched it take off on-line.

  For the first fifteen feet it was in. Then with rising horror I realized I had hit it way too hard.

  I begged for it to at least catch part of the hole to slow it down.

  It didn’t.

  I was now looking at a twenty-two-footer coming back.

  I stood over the ball. I saw the line like the crease in a plebe’s trousers. I knocked it in for par.

  On to 17.

  As I said, 17 was the hardest hole on the course, a hole that requires a perfectly faded 3-wood just to get the ball on the green. For the second shot in a row, I hit a pull. To get my birdie now, I was going to have to chip it in from the base of a tree. The best I could do from there was five feet. Once again, I was lucky to crawl away with par.

  What, you thought you were going to hear about the miracle on 17, a third of the way through the book? Get serious.

  Chapter 16

  Now I really was almost out of holes.

  I had one left. And since 18 was a 560-yard par 5, I could still get to four under. I just needed an eagle.

  Eighteen at the Dunes is a gorgeous finishing hole, long and straight, with the tee shot playing slightly downhill and the approach slightly uphill to a green backed by a white plantation-style clubhouse.

  I hit my drive as well as I can — low and hard with a slight draw and it got all the way to the bottom of the hill almost 290 yards from the tee. But I still had another 270 left, this time uphill.

  I mulled it over, but there was really nothing to think about it. An 8-degree driver is a tough-ass fairway wood, even with a flat lie, but it was my only chance to get there.

  I took one long last look at the green, recalling how lovely and alluring it had seemed my first night in Tallahassee, and how I had walked over this very spot in the moonlight.

  You’re almost home, I thought to myself. Just give me one more solid swing … from the heels!

  When you’re trying to crush a fairway wood harder than you have any right to, there is a tendency to top it, and send a pathetic little dribbler about a hundred yards up the fairway. As I stood up to the ball, I told myself to squat down on that thing, and if anything catch it a little chubby. So as not to overswing ridiculously, I used a trick Ive occasionally resorted to in somewhat less-pressured situations. Even though the flag hung straight down in the breezeless afternoon, I imagined a hurricane howling at my back.

  All my little head games worked. Probably because I’m not that smart. I kept my balance and flushed it straight up the gut of the fairway, and after two low, hard bounces, my ball rolled onto the green. It was only the second time all week anyone had reached 18 in two.

  I had just struck, back to back, two of the best 1-woods in my life, and hit them as straight as they can fly, but there was nothing triumphant about my walk up 18.

  There wasn’t a single spectator following our group or waiting on the green, and after six hours of fighting for my life I had one of the nastiest headaches Ive ever hosted. I felt as if I were wearing a cap four sizes too small.

  Eighteen feet stood between me and the Senior Tour. Eighteen feet between my shitty old self and my glorious future. Eighteen lousy feet. Although I swore to myself I wouldn’t stoop this low, it now seems almost eloquent. So close and yet so far.

  Then again, as I looked over my putt, it looked closer than it did far. Considering where I was a month ago, eighteen feet looked pretty negotiable. Hell, it seemed like a gimme.

  I was staring at a flat run across the grain, the kind of putt you have to hit crisply to keep on-line, but once again the line was clear. Just give it a good ride, I told myself, just give it a good ride.

  Which I did …

  Which I did …

  Which I didn’t.

  I couldn’t believe it. I had stood up to the most important putt of my life and left it two inches short of the tin. I will never say “Nice putt, Alice” to anyone again, if I live to be a thousand. Thank God, Joe and Chuck and Ron werent there.

  I tapped in for what seemed like the eighteenth time that day. A goddamn birdie! Then I slowly walked into the scorers’ tent. I added and re-added my score, hoping that somehow I could get the arithmetic to spit out 68. But it kept coming up 69.

  Finally I signed the card, then staggered back to a wall behind the green to watch the leaders finish up. So close and yet so far is about right.

  Although I’d played pretty well, I felt neither satisfaction nor relief.

  I wanted to call Sarah or Elizabeth or Simon and Noah, but I didn’t have the strength. I was so tapped out, I almost fell asleep against the wall.

  I actually heard the last threesome tee off a quarter of a mile away.

  Ten minutes later none of them had appeared in the valley below the green. Strange.

  In another fi
ve minutes or so, an electric murmur had begun to spread around the clubhouse.

  I walked into the scorers’ tent and heard a marshal ask into his two-way radio: “What the hell is going on down there, Orville? It’s been twenty minutes.”

  A few seconds later, there was a crackle in the tiny speaker. It was followed by perhaps the sweetest piece of news I had ever heard: “We got three golfers O.B.”

  For those unafflicted by this game, to be O.B. is to be out of bounds. As in deep gumbo.

  On the final hole of the longest day, there had been the golfing equivalent of a three-car crackup on the last straightaway. All three players had hooked their drives onto Route 48 and out of bounds. By the time all the bodies had been cleared away and the paperwork filled out, 12 under par was good enough for eighth place.

  I was a member in full standing of the PGA Senior Tour.

  Chapter 17

  I showered and changed, and dreamily wandered back outside. By now it was close to six, and the sun was dropping fast behind the huge wooden scoreboard that had been erected beside the 18th green.

  It was that time in a Florida evening when the earth seems to catch its breath and sigh, and I felt as calm and quiet as the cool still air.

  What I really felt was different. That who I was at that moment was a significantly different person from the one who had got up that morning and driven to the golf course, distinctly different from even the person who was in eleventh place less than an hour before.

  I was more comfortable in my body. It was a place I wanted to be, a place I had been looking for for a long time, probably my whole life.

  Although I’d managed not to dwell on it, and had done everything I could to keep the knowledge from overwhelming most of my days, I suddenly realized how depressed and ashamed of myself I had been for so long. What I had thought were just the usual regrets and doubts was actually a gorilla of self-loathing, and now, just like that, that hairy-handed gent had loosened his grip and slipped off into the Florida brush.