The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist

by Dan Jenkins

  Here’s a string of the greatest seven holes in all of golf—the tenth through the sixteenth, which includes Amen Corner and offers a total of five water holes—but Mackenzie saw them as a start rather than a finish.

  Another thing. In Mackenzie’s book, Golf Architecture, he lists the rules for designing the ideal golf course, and one of the rules says, “There should be no hill climbing.” So what does he do at Augusta National? The first, eighth, ninth, and eighteenth holes are all uphill.

  A wiseguy might even suggest that if Dr. Alister Mackenzie was so smart, how come he didn’t know how to spell Alistair?

  A BIG moment for me that week was running into my agent, Smokey Barwood, and Irv Klar, the sportswriter, on the golf course.

  It was Wednesday morning. Mitch was complaining about the fit of his official caddy coveralls, white with my name in green on the back. The coveralls were too large. “I reckon they don’t have no alterations department around here, do they?” he said. I was playing my last practice round with Buddy Stark. I found Smokey and Irv—they were together—waiting for me on the seventh tee.

  Smokey was eating a pimento cheese sandwich and Irv was eating an egg salad sandwich, but I wasn’t scoring.

  They’d only been able to acquire practice-round tickets, which had cost Smokey a painful amount of whip-out from a scalper working out of the flea market across the street from Magnolia Drive, the club’s main entrance. The flea market grows bigger every year. It offers rip-off Masters souvenirs and fake Tiger Woods autographs on phony Augusta National flags and other items. Smokey and Irv’s tickets were good for Wednesday only. Smokey’s agency, Dotted Line, Inc., didn’t have the stroke that IMG does. All week IMG scatters its agents around the course like dogwood, and puts more of its agents on the veranda than the veranda has tables and umbrellas and members in their green jackets. Irv wasn’t able to acquire a press credential, even though he’d applied on the letterhead of his LA County newspaper, the Daily Planet or whatever it was.

  “According to them, I’m shit,” Irv said. “Don’t step in me.”

  I said, “But it won’t be a problem next year, will it? You’ll be with Sports Illustrated, won’t you?”

  “Fuckin’ A,” he said.

  They walked along outside the ropes as I played the last three holes of the front nine, which was all I intended to play on Wednesday.

  I glanced at them and saw Irv Klar gawking at the soaring pines and steep hills. I imagined he was thinking what everybody else thinks the first time they see the course. Like how big it is. Bigger than any course you’ve ever seen. And how steep the hills are. You can’t appreciate it when you’re watching TV. You have to see it in person to understand that there’s not a level lie on the whole course.

  They walked with me up to the ropes and security guards surrounding the clubhouse veranda, which was as far as they could go. Hundreds of people stand outside these ropes every day, staring at the privileged folk who can enter and lounge about—contestants, contestants’ wives, working press, club members, longtime clubhouse credential holders. People stand outside the ropes and watch the privileged folk eat, drink, chat, mill around.

  Staring at the clubhouse, Irving said, “What’s upstairs where that balcony is?”

  “Grill room and bar,” I said. “Place to eat breakfast and lunch and drink—and the past champions’ locker room.”

  “What’s over there on the left?”

  “Players’ locker room, where I’m headed.”

  “What’s on the right?”

  “The Trophy Room. Basically a dining room.”

  “All these people inside the ropes legitimate?”

  “They obviously have the proper credentials. If they don’t, they get apprehended and sent to live in Newark, New Jersey.”

  Irv said, “They ought to put up a sign on that big tree in there.”

  “What kind of sign?” I asked.

  “One that says ‘You’re Scum and We’re Not.’ ”

  Smokey Barwood said he had what he called good news. “Bobby Joe. I think we have a publisher for your book,” he said. “Sleeping Giant Press. It’s a small house in New York, but on the way up.”

  “I’m not writing a book,” I said.

  “I’m writing it,” Irv said. “You talk, I type.”

  Smokey said, “Five figures now, but six-figure advance if you win a major.”

  I said, “If I ever win a major, I’ll be smart enough to type my own book. Tell me winning a major makes you smarter than Stanford.”

  We were interrupted by a middle-aged woman in shorts, golf shoes, and a floppy hat. She accused me of being a golfer. I confessed. She asked me to autograph two pairings sheets for her. I gladly did. She wondered if I would go in the locker room and ask Knut Thorssun to autograph a pairing sheet for her. I said I was in a business meeting right now—and Knut Thorssun wouldn’t do it anyhow.

  “He won’t do it?” she said.

  “No ma’am,” I said. “Knut only autographs for money.”

  “How much?”

  “The last I heard, he was up to seven hundred and fifty dollars . . . well on his way to a thousand.”

  “Well, spit up on him!” she said.

  “I couldn’t put it better myself,” I said as she walked away.

  Smokey continued. “The editor at Sleeping Giant is a bright young man. Lars-Flynn Bostick. He recently took up the game. I would describe him as very keen and quite earnest.”

  “Keen and earnest,” I said.

  Smokey handed me some folded pages of paper, white, 8x10, typewritten. “Just go over them when you have time. We’ll talk about it on the phone next week.”

  Irv added, “It’s the opening chapter of your book. Just a first draft. But I think I captured your voice pretty well.”

  “I’m not writing a book,” I said.

  “Maybe you are,” said Irv.

  I stuck the pages in my hip pocket.

  Smokey said, “I rather like what Irving’s done. I have another job for him in the meantime. He’s going to do a golf instructional with Salu Kinda. It should do well in the Far East.”

  “Salu Kinda is a client?” I said, surprised to hear it.

  “As of two weeks ago,” Smokey said. “He was unhappy with All-Star Sports in Dallas. Something about their arithmetic. Knut recommended him to IMG, but IMG wouldn’t take him on, so he called me.”

  I looked at Irv. “What do you know about golf instruction? You don’t even play the game.”

  Irv said, “Hey, man, I’m a pro. You’re a golf pro, I’m a journalism pro. I’ve got a copy of Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. No sweat.”

  22

  MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS, IRV Klar has to be hung by his thumbs. Here’s why:

  Tees and Sympathy

  By Bobby Joe Grooves

  with Irving Klar

  Ah yew bet, I’m jes’ a ol’ boy from Texas who likes to golf his ball for a livin’ on the PGA Tour. Yep, that’s where you can find me—in a covey of birdies or in a nest of your female pubics.

  Yeah, I like the ladies. I want to set that straight real quick. Too

  many people think golfers are limpos because we dress fancy instead of like roofers and dry-wallers.

  Whur at ol’ boy gonna geedat? That’s a question they used to ask about me before I was even old enough to jack off or go shit in a lake. But when I picked up my first set of golf utensils I knew I wanted to be some kind of Ben Hogan or Bobby Jones, only not as short or dead.

  Speaking of pubics . . .

  I didn’t read the rest, and it was a good thing Irv left town that night because after I read that embarrassing shit I would have tracked him down and put an overlapping grip on his throat.

  His uninvited book effort upset me so much, I couldn’t sleep good the whole week of the Masters. There’s no question that what he wrote was the main reason I didn’t score better.

  True enough, I tied for eleventh place, but I never broke 70 in any roun
d, I never came close to climbing on the leaderboard, what we call the high rent district, and I came away with no Ryder Cup points. Xerox.

  Sure, I’m happy with the $125,000 I swooped, and there was no telling how much the amount might have made my ex-wives whoop.

  But all I did in Augusta was moan and stew and fret. I showed Irv’s first page to Buddy Stark in the locker room one day, and after trying fight off a grin the only thing he said was:

  “Utensils?”

  I showed the first page to Mitch on the practice range after I’d struggled to my first-round 74.

  “What lake you shit in?” he said. “I know you shit on Amen Corner today.”

  I did butcher the twelveth and thirteenth The wind held up my seven-iron to the twelveth and it landed in Rae’s Creek. El Splasho.

  I went to the drop area and just as fast as I could I chunked the sand wedge into the front bunker. I was lucky to get away with a double. And I followed up that comedy act with a three-jack at the thirteenth after I reached the green in two. Perfect.

  I chunked four wedge shots the first three rounds. Mitch finally figured out what I was doing. You have to make solid contact with the ball on your pitch shots, which I’d more or less forgotten.

  I wasn’t letting my wrists cock on the takeaway. What you want to do on your pitches is play the ball in the middle of your stance and put your weight a little forward and keep your hands slightly ahead of the ball, which prevents any urge you may have to scoop it.

  You want to hit the ball, then the turf, and let the loft of the club get you up in the air. No big thing to do—unless you’ve got Tees and Sympathy on your mind.

  While I was scraping it around eight shots out of first and three shots out of Ryder Cup points, Ernie Els caught a hot putter and let it drag him to that two-stroke win over Tiger. Tiger accepted the loss graciously. Broad smile and pat on the back for Ernie.

  It’s easier to be a gracious loser when you’re Tiger Woods. Man walking around with a six-pack of majors in each hand.

  IT’S POSSIBLE to eat dinner free all week in Augusta if you want to take advantage of the mess of invitations you receive.

  Everybody entertains, including some of the top players, who rent private homes for the week instead of staying in hotels and motels like most of the field, including me.

  A lot of the parties are quite lavish. Ice sculpture involved.

  The USGA has a party, the PGA of America has a party, the Golf Writers Association has a party, television has a party, golf magazines have parties, golf equipment people have parties, golf apparel people have parties, European tourist boards and golf societies have parties, and rich guys you’d rather have a head wound than be bored by rent the biggest houses and have parties.

  The parties are all catered. You can find every adult beverage and dine on all the country ham, redeye gravy, fried chicken, sliced steak, cheese grits, black-eyed peas, and biscuits you can force down your neck. Same spread everywhere. Maybe some shrimp thrown in.

  I stayed at the Magnolia Inn as usual. It’s not far from the course, but over in an older part of town near Augusta College, which was a Confederate arsenal during the Civil War.

  The inn is on Walton Way, a main boulevard, and from the looks of some of the huge old pre–Scarlett O’Hara mansions that still line the boulevard, not to mention others that are even bigger on the side streets, you might guess that the neighborhood was once a good place for Confederate generals to retire to.

  I kept to my room most of the week, but I did venture out socially one evening, Saturday night. I went with Buddy Stark over to Knut Thorssun’s party at the huge old pre–Scarlett O’Hara mansion he’d rented for the week.

  It wasn’t far from the Magnolia Inn. I drove there with Buddy but figured I could crawl home if I had to, after I’d eaten, or after some corporate all-star had bored a hole in me, telling me all about his own golf game, or after Matti and Sven, the unruly little shits, had terrorized me long enough.

  The mansion was tall, wide, and white with columns and enormous trees and grounds and statues and fountains and flowerbeds, but it wasn’t any larger than the mansions across the street from it or on both sides.

  Juvenile Delinquent, one of the valet parkers, took Buddy’s car and we went inside.

  Nobody was in the living room but two housekeepers. They were down on their hands and knees with cleanser and brushes, trying to clean up the puddles of black ink that Matti and Sven had poured on the white carpet.

  We moved into the library, where a workman was trying to scrape splotches of red paint off a white door.

  “Kids do that?” I asked.

  The workman said, “If they was mine, they’d be drowned by now.”

  I was reminded that for obvious reasons Knut has to rent a different private mansion every year for Masters Week.

  The buffet spread was in the large kitchen, and a few people I’d never seen before in my whole life were picking around at the food. They wore bright colors.

  Sitting in a chair over in a corner of the kitchen with her own bottle of white wine and smoking cigarettes was Knut’s wife, Cynthia. She waved a hello at us. Her pretty face was slightly flushed, the look of a woman who’d already gotten half-boxed.

  “Food’s there, guys,” she said. “Bars are outside. Please introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to know anybody,” I said.

  “I don’t blame you,” Cynthia said.

  “Where are the boys?” I asked. “I noticed coming in they’ve been having their idea of fun.”

  “Aren’t they wonderful?” Cynthia said. “They could be outside right now puncturing tires, who knows? Yesterday morning I caught them upstairs in the master bedroom breaking open the wall safe and trying to steal the owner’s jewelry. Incredible. I’m a good person. I really am. But I’ve given birth to two children and they’re both throwaways.”

  She sipped her wine, dragged on a cigarette.

  I said, “I don’t understand why Knut doesn’t do something about those kids.”

  “I know one reason,” Cynthia said. “He’s too busy fucking Renata.”

  “Him too?” Buddy Stark said.

  Cynthia laughed. “Or maybe it’s Celia this week,” she said. “Could be Linda . . . possibly Melissa . . .”

  I dodged that subject and said, “It sounds to me like old Matti and Sven are ripe for a military academy.”

  “I’m working on it,” she said. “Knut keeps saying they’re just boys, they’ll grow out of it, but he’s never the fuck around—what does he know?”

  “Where is the host?” Buddy wanted to know.

  Cynthia said, “I’d say he’s either outside sucking up to a rich asshole or on his cellphone talking to one of his bimbos.”

  I didn’t want to embarrass Cynthia by asking her about the story now circulating around the tour. Ask if it was true. That she caught Knut daytime screwing a chick on the deck of their 120-foot boat when it was docked at their Palm Beach home. During the Doral, the story went. Cynthia had taken five other golf wives home for lunch, the ladies wanted to see the new boat. Cynthia went down to the dock first to make sure the rooms were clean, got halfway down the dock, and bingo—there was Knut getting it on in the bright sunshine with Miss I. M. Port.

  You didn’t have to wonder how a tale like that could be circulating around the Tour. Cynthia had shared it with another golf wife, and that was like telling NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox News.

  “Well,” I muttered as Cynthia poured herself more wine, “I guess we’ll go grab a beer.”

  Buddy said, “Is the money worth it, Cynthia?”

  “You bet your ass it is,” she said. “But I won’t be around much longer. I’m gonna be outta here. . . . So Buddy . . . when I’m a wealthy divorcée and the kids are in lockup, you gonna give me a call?”

  “James Taylor,” Buddy smiled.

  Cynthia said, “I’ve got a friend?”

  Buddy said, “W
inter, spring, summer, or fall.”

  When we were outside having a beer at one of the bars, and were finished looking around at the brightly colored conversation groups, I said to Buddy, “You’re not really gonna take a shot at Cynthia, are you?”

  Could be his retirement run, he said. Cynthia still had her looks and she was going to be richer than bent greens after she took Knut to the cleaners. Be a win-win deal.

  I said, “Tell me a rich wife is hard-earned money.”

  Buddy said, “Dollar a word, they say. But it can’t be any harder than playing golf.”

  We never paid our respects to Knut. He looked too busy to interrupt, standing by himself in a corner of the lawn, a drink in his hand, talking on his cellphone.

  23

  CERTAIN SPORTSWRITERS LIKE to complain that the Tour between majors is a trip to Downtown Glaze City. I can see how it can be—unless you’re winning so much money you’re telling jokes to total strangers.

  You get a taste of the big time at the Masters—the enormous crowds, the swarms of press—but you don’t get another taste until the U.S. Open two months later. After that, you go back to Triple A for a while. Then comes the British Open in July—huge—then it’s back to the minors again until the PGA in August. Less huge, but big.

  Everything in between, the sports-

  writers contend, is some kind of MCI-Compaq-FedEx-MasterCard-Verizon-NEC-Kemper-Buick Classic. I’ve thought it myself. Wake me when the sponsors in their blazers stop thanking all the volunteers, and the lady courtesy car drivers in their designer outfits have stopped going down on Knut Thorssun.

  But don’t get me wrong. I admire to win any kind of tournament, even if the trophy looks like a glass basketball and you can’t find the results in the sports section of the paper till you look on Page 9-C.