“Simon, glad I caught you. Great to see you at Thanksgiving. And wonderful to meet Jane Anne. She’s amazing.”
“You like her?”
“How could I not? I have a favor to ask. I completely understand if you can’t do it because of your schedule, exams, practice, or whatever. But if you could, it would mean a lot to me. Next Wednesday, I’m flying to Tucson for Senior Q-School to see if I can get through one more time. It’s a resort course and I know it well. The tour stops there every year and I’ve played it at least twenty times, including practice rounds. So I’m not looking for local knowledge. What I could use is someone to keep me company and keep my head on straight, so I would really appreciate it if you would consider caddying for me. As I said, I completely understand if you can’t. I know you have a lot on your plate with exams coming up and practice and workouts and now you have this amazing new girlfriend, but if you could spare a long weekend—”
“Hey, Dad. Stop it. Please. I would love to caddy for you. Nothing I’d rather do. Just give me the details and I’ll be there.…Hey, Dad, you there…?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
9
NO EVENT INSPIRES THE same dread and panic and flop sweat as Q-School, and the senior version is that much worse because it truly is the last train to Clarksville; and sad as it is, many of these golfers have actually been looking forward to getting older and turning fifty just so they can give pro golf one last try. Although someone has to win the tournament, no one arrives in Tucson with dreams of holding up the trophy Sunday afternoon. In fact, winning is the furthest thing from their minds. The only goal is survival, to “get through.”
Instead of anticipation or excitement, there’s the fear of failure, and it’s so palpable it permeates the Omni resort like the smell of mildew after a flood. It makes the corridors feel tighter and longer and the elevators more claustrophobic.
Simon, whom I just picked up at the Tucson airport, can feel it too, and as he walks through the silent lobby in his gray hoodie, cargo shorts, and sneakers, he flashes a tight smile and says, “I can see why you wanted some company. Everyone is walking on eggshells.”
We stay in the room only long enough to drop off Simon’s backpack and pull a couple of Coronas from the minibar. Then we take the elevator down to the lobby and slip back outside. To the right is the driving range, and we walk across it to a small elevated area on the far side reserved for the teaching pros, where I happen to know there’s a rarely used bench. “Every time I come here,” I say, “I make a little pilgrimage to this spot.”
The December sun is in free fall, taking with it the afternoon heat, and for the next few minutes we nurse our beers and watch the sky turn orange and purple like a deep bruise. Q-School is a bitch, but the tension of the event and the attendant bad vibes are overshadowed by the profound pleasure of having Simon beside me.
Outside of golf, I’ve never had much talent for living in real time. It’s not till after the fact that I realize the significance of what has just transpired, or what someone was trying to express, and what it might have meant to them or me, but this evening, there’s no lag or filter between me and my appreciation.
“Do you remember four years ago when I called home to let everyone know I’d gotten through Q-School?”
“Of course,” says Simon.
“I spoke to your mom for a second and she passed me on to you. I was so grateful that you were home because you’re the only one who could appreciate what it meant.”
“In a house full of brainiacs, we’re the only jocks.”
“It’s true. We’re the only ones dumb enough to understand.”
“I remember which way I was facing when you told me you had made it and the view from the kitchen window. And I remember about a week later after you got home when you put the money clip on the table for everyone to look at and touch like show-and-tell. That clip was magic. It was like a World Series ring or a heavyweight championship belt.”
Fifteen feet from where we’re sitting, the grass stops. Until your eyes hit the Santa Rita Mountains, there’s nothing but sand and rock, gravel and scrub. The flatness of the vista, interrupted by the occasional cactus, exaggerates the scale of the sky, and the stark line between green and brown reveals the true harshness of the environment and how quickly all this would vanish and the desert return once they turned off the sprinklers.
“So tell me, how did you meet Jane Anne?”
“Last year, on the second day of school, I smiled at her as she walked into the library.”
“Eye contact is everything. I really hope they don’t make it illegal. The whole world is in a person’s eyes.…I’m sorry, please continue.”
“Over the next few weeks I kept spotting her—by that point I was on the lookout pretty much twenty-four seven—but now the situation was getting critical. You can only smile at a girl so many times. By the third or maybe fourth time, the smiles just start canceling themselves out, until you both realize that’s all you’re ever going to do.”
How does Simon even know this and when did he learn it? It makes me realize how much about him I don’t know and never will.
“It’s the statue of limitations,” I say.
“Dad, I think you mean statute.”
“Exactly. I’m a statue of limitations.…Go on.”
“The next time I see her, it’s now or never, so I chase after her and ask if she’d like to get a cup of coffee.”
“Wow. That makes an eight-footer look like a tap-in.”
“She said no. Not only that, she looked at me like I was insane or a stalker.”
“That’s even more impressive. Anyone can ask someone out who’s going to say yes. You approached someone unapproachable. You stormed the barricades. You weren’t put off by a little negative feedback.”
“Actually, I was. I felt so bad I went back to the dorm and got under the covers and went to sleep for about three hours. The whole rest of the year, I kept looking for her, but only so I could avoid running into her. This year, first week of school, she comes up to me in the library and asks if the offer to get coffee is still good.”
“A year later?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s that statue of limitations again rearing its ugly head. You were rewarded for being brave. It just took twelve months.”
“I said no way. I told her I didn’t even drink coffee anymore.”
“Bullshit. You drank coffee at Thanksgiving.”
“You’re right. It is bullshit. I said yes. Not only that, that it was a lifetime offer.”
By now the sun has dropped behind the ridge and the last glow of the day barely reaches our bench. Simon taps my arm and nods into the dusk until I spot, some fifty feet away, a coyote slinking across the desert floor, and behind her, three pups struggling to keep up. Although we don’t say a word or even move, the mother must sense that her cubs are being scrutinized because she stops in her tracks, turns, and stares at us. Hard. Then she looks back at the pups and continues on her way. Before they blend into the dusk, the mother stops and stares at us again. Then she throws her head back and howls into the sky. Her howl is so high and drawn out and lonesome it makes the hair on my arms stand up.
“That’s the best description of Q-School I’ve ever heard,” I say.
10
HOW TO FULLY CONVEY the four-day freak-out that is Senior Q-School? To give you an idea, Earl Fielder, my best friend out here, survived four tours in Vietnam and said the tournament half reminded him of those bad old days. It had the same sunlit spooky vibe and eerie silence, he said, along with the feeling that something bad was always just about to happen, if not to you then to the guy next to you. And the golfers’ superstitions and nervous tics, which got more pronounced as the rounds progressed, reminded him of the way the grunts in his platoon clutched their good-luck charms and tucked pictures of loved ones inside their helmets and prayed to somehow make it home.
Tucson National is a gorgeous track with spa
rkling green fairways set off by classic TV Western terrain. Tourists from all over the country happily drop $180 to play a round, but for the 144 golfers fighting for those last eight spots, there’s nothing lovely about it. All we see are the perils lurking on every hole and the bogeys and doubles lying in ambush, and as hard as it is to stay clear of the bunkers and cacti and man-made ponds, it’s harder to avoid the hazards in our heads.
There are no stars teeing it up at Senior Q-School. Legends like Tom Watson, Lanny Wadkins, and Tom Kite are automatically exempt, and except for a sprinkling of journeymen who didn’t do enough on the regular tour to rate a free pass, the field is made up mostly of assistant pros and teachers and mini-tour players who for three decades scraped a living at the margins of the game. Despite scant reward, they have ignored wives and reality and hung on to their dreams, even if by any objective measure they ought to have abandoned them twenty years ago. The lack of stars is one reason there are virtually no galleries, little applause, and few witnesses. The other is that the stakes are so high and the odds so long, it makes people uncomfortable to watch.
Which makes me all the more grateful to have Simon on the bag and hear my clubs rattling on his broad back. Despite his comforting presence, I’m tight as a drum, much more than on my maiden voyage to Q-School, because this time around, I know better. My pals weren’t blowing smoke. I am a much better golfer than four years ago. I’m also not the same naïve whippersnapper I was at fifty, and from the first tee, I’m fighting myself on every swing and am lucky to get through the front nine two over par.
Because the consequences of a miscue can be career-ending, the pace of play is slower than the lines at the DMV. Every putt is read and reread, every club choice agonized over. When we reach the par 3 tenth and find two groups waiting on the tee, Simon pulls me off to the side and puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Dad, you’ve got to lighten up. Four years ago, after twenty-five years in an office, you came out here, got your card, and won two tournaments, including the biggest one of them all, the U.S. Senior Open. Your name is on the same trophy as some of the greatest golfers who’ve ever played. No matter what happens this weekend, you’ve got nothing left to prove to me or Sarah or Elizabeth or Noah or anyone else.”
I disagree with that last part. Until they sit you down and take away your credit cards and car keys, you’ve always got plenty to prove to yourself and everyone else. But he’s got a point and the perspective helps. Thanks to Simon’s timely interjection, I go 4 under on the back nine and shoot a 70, good enough to put me inside the magic circle in sixth place. Time will tell if I can keep it up, but it’s a start.
11
REMEMBER THAT OLD PUBLIC-SERVICE announcement that showed a big black frying pan on a stovetop and said, “This is drugs,” then dropped an egg in the pan and said, “This is your brain on drugs”? Well, I’d love to see what they’d come up with to illustrate a brain under the influence of Senior Q-School. Maybe they’d take a fork and scramble it or leave it in there for six hours—the average length of a Q-School round—until it was so burnt and blackened you couldn’t get it off with a jackhammer. Or maybe the actor’s hand would shake so badly, he couldn’t break the shell. In any case, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Pressure messes with a golfer’s mind in all kinds of inventive ways, but mostly it makes you think too much. Under stress, the mind tends to get way too involved and chatty, and, like Jack Nicholson’s character in Chinatown, stick its nose where it doesn’t belong. Friday morning, my nerves are still holding up pretty well, maybe because from twenty-five to fifty, I spent my time cranking out headlines and slogans instead of grinding over six-footers. On the front side, I birdie both par 5s and one more on the back, and my 69 inches me one spot up the leaderboard into fifth.
But Saturday afternoon, as we get a little closer to the finish line, the collar tightens and those unwanted voices get darker and cheekier. When they become impossible to ignore, I try to stand up to them and let them know they’re wasting their breath. Before every dicey shot, I tip my hat in their direction like an invisible gallery. I hear you, I see you. I can even smell you. But I’m not going to let you mess with me. And I’m not going to do anything differently no matter what you dredge up.
For six hours, I’m not just playing the golf course, I’m negotiating and debating with the mob inside my head. Despite the distraction, I somehow maneuver my way around Tucson National one more time, dodge the bulk of the trouble, and avoid the dreaded big number. This time, the best I can manage is even par 72, but because my fellow competitors are contending with similar visitors and voices or worse, it’s good enough to climb into fourth and ensconce me a little deeper inside the magic circle.
Still, I know it could all be lost in one bad swing.
12
BY THE TIME WE make it back to our room, Simon and I are burnt to a crisp. And after three nights of room service, we could both use a change of scenery and a different menu.
“I say we get the hell out of here.”
“Agreed,” says Simon.
“You in the mood for barbecue?”
“Always.”
“Then I know a place.”
On the road, whenever possible, I stay clear of the big trendy restaurant-bars. My issue isn’t the food, although it’s usually mediocre and overpriced; it’s the god-awful din. The decibel level is so high that by the time I fork over my $40 and stumble out, I feel eroded by noise and can barely remember who I am. In search of peace and quiet as well as sustenance, I seek out smaller, humbler spots owned by individuals rather than corporations or food groups. Often they’re ethnic—Thai, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern—and staffed by tight-knit optimistic families of immigrants, but my favorite in Tucson is a distinctly American BBQ joint called Sandy’s.
At Sandy’s food is served cafeteria style. They lay a piece of wax paper on your tray and drop the sliced meat directly on top. Between us, we order a full slab of center-cut ribs; brisket, marbled rather than lean; and double sides of cucumber salad, mac and cheese, corn bread, and a couple of Yuenglings. Then we carry our trays to a screened-in porch that looks out on a dead-end street, where it’s quiet enough to hear the nightlife in the trees.
There are few pleasures more dependable than watching your kid eat, and for a while, I sit back and watch Simon tuck in. At least until I can’t resist the urge to interrupt and try to get him to tell me how much he likes it and approves of his old man’s taste. “Yeah, it’s great,” he concedes without looking up.
“You need the calories. You’re the one humping the bag.”
“True.”
As Simon turns his focus to the brisket and sides, I gesture to the corner of the porch. “You see that big guy? That’s Howard Twitty, a helluva golfer and a great athlete, and he’s leading the tournament. The only reason he is back at Q-School is because his feet let him down. He’s had surgeries on both and for years could only practice in sandals. His nickname is the Twitty Bird.”
“That’s funny,” says Simon, but he’s not very convincing. “There’s something I need to tell you. I was going to wait till after the tournament, but I think you can handle it now.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Maybe a little. But it’s not like Jane Anne missed her period.”
“Good. Because I don’t think Elizabeth could handle the competition.”
“I’ve decided to turn pro.”
“Really?”
“Yup. MLS teams have been scouting our games all year, and according to my coach, several are interested. Tryouts are in June, and after the season, I’m going to sign with an agent and try to get a contract. Does that sound insane?”
“Simon, you’re twenty-one and one of the top college goalies in the country, if not the best. I think it would be insane not to try to do exactly what you want with your life.”
The vehemence of my response takes us both aback. Then makes us laugh.
“Dad, I really appreciate th
at.”
“To insanity,” I say, raising my beer.
“To insanity,” echoes Simon, raising his own. “And there’s something else.…”
“You got to be kidding. That’s not enough for one tray of BBQ?”
“Not quite. I want you to know that I wouldn’t be doing this if you hadn’t pulled it off first. Maybe I would have tried to become a coach, but not a player. It wouldn’t have seemed possible to me, not for a McKinley from the burbs. Now I want to prove that you weren’t a fluke. That I can do it too. So this is your fault, Dad, like it or not.”
I know I said that one of the things I appreciate about Sandy’s is the acoustics, but now it seems too quiet. Even the cicadas have stopped chirping. For so long, I’ve felt like the household slacker. Not only because I’ve contributed less income than Sarah but also because I derived such little pride from what I did. I guess the last four years haven’t entirely undone the previous twenty-five, because the idea that anything I might do could affect Simon or Noah in the same way that Sarah’s career inspired Elizabeth still seems unthinkable, and it takes a beat or two to register how much that means to me.
“I like it, Simon.…”
“Dad, you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to start blubbering out here in front of the Twitty Bird, are you?”
“Hopefully not.”
13
SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY. I used to kind of like that U2 song. Now it makes me wince. Since we’re tied for fourth, we’re in the second-to-last group and not scheduled to go off till 12:53. That gives us a lot of time to kill and too much time to think. I start by administering the best and closest shave I’ve had in years and savoring every bite of my scrambled eggs as if it’s haute cuisine. When we get to the range I try not to hit more balls than usual but extend the time between them, stopping to sniff the air and shoot the breeze between every couple of shots. To my relief I’m hitting it solid and my Big Bertha is really carrying in the warm midday air.
Miracle at St. Andrews Page 3
