The Amateurs

by John Niven

  ‘The creature was in the house.’

  Gary gave in. His eyes surged to the bottom.117.

  He had shot 117.

  Calmly he walked away from his playing partners into the middle of the car park, his putter cradled under his arm. Less calmly he hoisted the putter above his head, gripping it with both hands like a sabre. Very uncalmly indeed he began repeatedly smashing the metal head of the club down into the asphalt while really, really uncalmly screaming ‘BASTARD! BASTARD! BASTARD!’, each expletive timed to explode with a fresh crack of the putter off the hot concrete.

  The fine and noble tradition of golf club destruction dates back centuries and extends to even the upper reaches of the game. The legendary 1950s Texan tour pro and three times Masters runner-up Dirk Munter Jr once became so enraged with his driver during a practice round that he dropped the club on the tee box and ran to the boot of his car, returning a few moments later with a pump-action shotgun which he proceeded to empty repeatedly into the honeyed persimmon head of the driver, reducing it to smoking matchwood. Finally, all energy and cartridges spent, Munter leaned over the blackened corpse of metal and wood and whispered, ‘Who’s sorry now, motherfucker?’

  Or the burly Irish Ryder Cup regular Kevin McKerrick who, upon ferociously pulling a five-wood into thick rough at the seventeenth hole of the 2003 US Open, effectively taking himself out of the competition, simply bent the offending club into a U shape and wordlessly handed it to an open-mouthed spectator before continuing on his way as though nothing untoward had happened.

  Even Calvin Linklater, the world number one, a golfing machine, the Terminator, a man so eerily cool he is said to be able to suck down boiling water and urinate a thick plume of crushed ice, was once seen stamping up and down on a disobedient lob wedge while quietly chanting the mantra ‘I am a spastic, I am a spastic, I am a spastic’.

  Like many a golfer before him, Gary had learned the ways of club destruction from his father, a man whose talent at the dark art was still talked of in hushed tones around the clubhouse. It was Gary’s father who had caused the Ardgirvan power cut of 1976. At the tenth, having already fallen foul of the Gyppo Rule, he had feathered his recovery shot out of bounds, terminally wrecking his scorecard. His playing partners had watched in awe as he launched the offending five-iron over a hundred feet into the air, where it connected with the overhead power lines, the head of the club and part of the shaft forming a freakish and perfect connection between two separate cables. Then the stunning blue-white flash-crackle, the frazzled club landing at his feet and all over town kettles switching off, lights going out and television screens fading to black.

  Gary could clearly recall the moment he took his own first step into this larger universe. Indeed he only had to run his tongue over his teeth for the event to come rushing back. The summer of 1985, ‘Baybee, I’m your ma-han!’ drifting on the warm breeze from a passing car radio and the ten-year-old Gary, putting off the twelfth green and back into the bunker he had just taken six shots to get out of. In the grip of pain and anguish that were beyond his capacity to understand he placed the shaft of the putter–his new putter, mallet-headed just like his dad’s, bought for him by his dad only weeks before–in his mouth and bit down with all his might. After a few seconds of intense effort there was a horrible crunch as his upper right-hand incisor splintered and then warm blood was pouring down his face and intense pain was kicking in. Enraged at what the putter had done to him, Gary brought the club hard down into the turf at his feet. There must have been a rock beneath the surface, because a second later, he was just holding a shaft, the head of the club remaining in the earth.

  Then the long walk to the clubhouse, crying all the way. He found his father ensconced with his cronies, warm with the Grouse that was famous and still glowing from the scratch 75 he had shot that morning. Father looked at son–at the tears, at the blood that had dried on his chin and flecked on his blue Adidas polo shirt, at the shaft he held in one hand and the putter head he held in the other–and understood in a moment what had happened. He burst into throaty laughter, hugged the broken boy to him, and exclaimed theatrically, ‘THAT’S MA BOY!’ There had been no censure, no anger at the destruction of the new club, only the understanding that his child now knew the pain, that he was now one of us. There had only been–Gary now realised, decades later–love.

  He had read that there were tribes, in the Amazon or somewhere, who lived a remote and idyllic existence so cut off from realities like war and aggression that they would tattoo and pierce their offspring to make the children understand that pain and torment existed in the universe. Perhaps, far from the rainforests, far from the half-mile-high trees standing silent since before the birth of Christ, perhaps right here, amid the bypasses and all-night petrol stations of towns like Ardgirvan, golf was performing the same function.

  But this was no comfort to Gary now as–with a final ‘BASTARD!’–he brought the club down onto the concrete for the eighth or ninth time, the head of the putter incredibly still attached to the shaft but now reduced to a white-hot nub of metal.

  It was Auld Tam who laid a gentle hand on Gary’s arm. ‘Come on, son. That’s enough now. Ye’ll break yer bloody wrists.’

  13

  GIVEN GARY’S GOLF ROUTINE, SATURDAY MORNINGS had become a regular time for Pauline and Masterson. Usually he’d book a hotel room although sometimes, like today, they met at the warehouse–sex in the office, or, once or twice, out in the middle of the huge warehouse itself, in a pile of offcuts, the new carpet smell sweet and plastic and strong all around them, reminding Pauline of when she and Gary had first moved into the house. Masterson had started to look forward to Saturday mornings like the last day of school. (Leanne thought he was out visiting the showrooms.)

  However, this Saturday morning was developing differently from how he had hoped. He looked at Pauline again, sitting on the sofa in his office, still fully clothed and legs primly crossed. Her skirt was short and he could see a good length of brown thigh.

  ‘Eh?’ Masterson repeated.

  ‘I’m sorry, Findlay. I just can’t let myself get into this any deeper…’

  He tried to think of something to say, something persuasive and romantic but at the same time not too pleading. Something suave, something assured and reassuring.

  ‘Come tae fuck, hen,’ he said.

  ‘Look, I…oh God, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.’ Pauline sat forward and exhaled. ‘It was fine when it was just, you know, sex. But the longer we go on seeing each other the harder it gets for me not to be able to see you all the time. So–’

  ‘Aye,’ Masterson said, getting up and coming round the desk towards her, sitting down beside her. Christ, he already had a semi. ‘But we’ve got something good going on here, doll. Ah’ve no felt like this since…fuck knows when.’

  Pauline took his hand and stroked it. ‘Me too,’ she smiled sadly. ‘But, we’re both married. Let’s be honest, where’s this going to go?’ He could see taut cleavage straining beneath thin cotton. Semi? There was a fucking four-bedroom detached wi ample parking going up down there.

  ‘It’s probably best if we don’t speak for a while,’ Pauline said. Her hand brushed against the crotch of his trousers. Jesus. ‘Oh,’ she said, putting her hand to her mouth childishly. Masterson swallowed thickly. ‘OK,’ Pauline said, sliding down from the sofa onto her knees on the scratchy, carpet-tiled floor. ‘I suppose I owe you a going-away present…’

  Masterson closed his eyes and savoured the cool relief of the air. Pauline watched his face, his jaw tightening, his apple bobbing, and thought to herself, No risk, no reward, as she opened her mouth.

  Bert Thompson whistled his way through the locker room carrying his toilet bag and towel. His whistle–‘Spread a Little Happiness’–echoed off the stone walls and around the empty room. It was nearly lunchtime and everyone was either out on the course, or finished and in the bar, or off home. The younger lads all spent more time with their families,
the young lassies today just didn’t tolerate the old-school behaviour: straight to the course after work on a Friday night, a quick round and then propping the bar up till midnight? Then straight out again for the Medal on Saturday morning and rolling home half-cut at five for your dinner? Dream on, as his granddaughter liked to say.

  Bert whistled the whistle of a man with an 81 under his belt–not bad for an old boy, at seventy-seven he could still come close to shooting his age on a good day–and a dark pint of heavy waiting for him in the clubhouse. He plopped his toilet bag and towel up on the window ledge and pulled his polo shirt over his head. Quick hoor’s bath. Pits and pus. He was reaching for the hot tap when he heard it–a sucking intake of breath, then a whimper. His hand stopped on the tap and he listened for a moment. Nothing, just the sound of cold water trickling down the porcelain face of the long urinal. And then, as he reached for the tap again, another muffled sound, this time like someone trying not to sneeze, the sound of tremendous force being checked. Bert wandered cautiously around from the washbasin and through the archway, into the adjoining room, where he faced a row of three toilet cubicles and two shower stalls at the end.

  ‘Hello?’ Bert said.

  Again the sucking intake of breath, the sense of something being stoppered up, and silence. Bert walked softly towards the one closed cubicle door. ‘Everything all right in there?’

  A sniffle. Then a whispered ‘Aye.’

  ‘Who’s in there?’ Bert asked.

  There was a long pause, then the metal clack of the bolt going back and the door swung open. Bert’s first thought was, Who’s died?

  Because Gary was a wreck: his face slick with tears, the front of his pale blue golf shirt too. His eyes were red puffy slits. He looked like one of Bert’s grandchildren when they fell and hurt themselves, the floodgates uncloseable once they were opened.

  ‘Gary son,’ Bert said, an edge in his voice, genuinely afraid now, ‘whit’s happened? It’s no yer mother, is–’

  He placed a hand on Gary’s shoulder. That did it. Something in the simple warmth of the human touch sent Gary over the edge and he convulsed again into racking sobs.

  ‘Wh-why c-can’t I do it, Bert?’

  ‘Do what, son?’

  ‘I ca-can’t…d-d-do…’ He could hardly get it out.

  And Bert realised.

  There was only one thing outside bereavement that could reduce a grown man to this state.

  ‘Here.’ Bert passed Gary a small pewter hip flask. Gary took a sip, gagging on the whisky, and the two men sat in silence on the wooden bench that overlooked the fifth green and the sixth tee.

  It really had turned into an incredible afternoon; a cloudless sky, blue as tropical water, the slightest breeze wavering through the leaves of the silver birch trees which guarded the big gorge to the right of the sixth tee and ruffling the tattered yellow flag on the fifth green. Bert sipped the whisky and they watched the players moving along the distant fairways, dots of red, white and yellow in an emerald sea.

  ‘Sorry, Bert,’ Gary said finally, just remembering to say ‘Bert’ and not ‘Mr Thompson’. He had known Bert since he was a baby. He had golfed with Gary’s dad.

  ‘Och, wheesht, son,’ Bert said pleasantly, screwing the cap back on the little flask. ‘By Christ, yer no the first man that’s been in that state over a round o’ gowf. And damn sure ye’ll no be the last.’

  ‘I don’t seem to get any better. I practise, I read everything I can, I understand in my head what you need to do. All the shots, I know what I should be doing, I just can’t…’

  Bert had been a golfer for nearly seventy years. He had heard all this before: high-handicap players weeping with rage and despair over what was essentially the gulf, the chasm, between thought and expression. It was a commonplace problem in art and–make no mistake–Bert Thompson considered golf to be art. What some people found in museums or galleries, or in the pages of books, Bert found in the arc of a good drive.

  ‘Do you know what the golf swing is, son?’ he said.

  Gary looked at him.

  ‘It’s muscle memory. You’re talking about hundreds of individual movements all taking place within a couple of seconds. This–’ he tapped Gary’s forehead–‘doesn’t have time to think about any of that. It just triggers the sequence and hopefully, like an engine if it’s firing properly, everything falls into place.’

  ‘But I keep shanking it, Bert.’

  Bert stopped just short of crossing himself and thought for a moment before he continued.

  ‘Well, ye know, son, some o’ the greatest players ever born have shanked a ball. Ah remember, the summer o’ ’62, doon the road. Big Arnie.’ Bert looked off into the distance, down over the golf course, over the gyppo camp and out towards Ardeer and the sea, the present dissolving and falling away as he performed the very ordinary miracle of time travel: in half a second there were Austins and Ford Zephyrs in the car park behind him rather than Mondeos and Cavaliers, there were no mobile phones chirruping, John F. Kennedy was in the White House, the Beatles had yet to release a single, and Bert was walking these same fairways with men long dead.

  Bert was talking about Arnold Palmer, at the Open in Troon in 1962, when the great man bested one of the hardest links courses in the world. The Open was coming back to Troon this summer. Just six miles away. The greatest championship in the game. Gary had already booked the time off work.

  ‘Me and your father,’ Bert carried on, ‘we went over for the whole thing. Hot. Course was dry and running fast. We followed Arnie for four days. By Christ, whit that man could do tae a gowf ball. Hitting the driver aff the fairway like it was a seven-iron. Anyway, it’s the third day and we’re pressed right up the ropes at the eleventh, the long par five that runs along beside the railway. Massive crowd. Like your boy Linklater gets nowadays…’ As Gary listened he was there with them too–the Irish Sea sparkling, the sun on his face, the cream-and-burgundy trains running by on their way to Glasgow, and his father alive, young and healthy in this story about golf. ‘Arnie’s playing his second shot, three-iron it was.’

  Bert Thompson had regularly forgotten his wife’s birthday over the years. He could not tell you any of his children’s home phone numbers. There were men around the town who he had known his whole life whose surnames he could not remember. But he could tell you shot by shot how Arnold Palmer put together a 67 at Royal Troon on a summer Saturday nearly half a century ago.

  ‘He gets the ball well back in his stance, trying tae punch it low, like, brings the club doon and–by Christ–does he no shank it!’

  ‘Palmer?’

  ‘Shanks it? He nearly puts it oan the railway line!’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Well, first he hauds the club up and looks at it as if it had just called him a prick, pardon my French, son. Then he stamps his divot back in and, just as he goes tae walk off, your father leans over the rope and says tae him, sympathetically like, “It happens to the best of us, Mr Palmer.”’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Palmer looks up at yer dad, looks him right in the eye, and he says, “Fuck off.”’

  They both took this in for a moment, Bert shaking his head in silent wonder. ‘Arnold Palmer. Telling your dad tae fuck off. It was one of the proudest moments of yer faither’s life.’

  Bert took another swallow of whisky, the sun glinting off the silver flask. ‘The point is, anybody can get the shanks. It’s all up here. This–’ again he tapped Gary’s forehead–‘is the most important muscle in golf. Ah mean, you don’t have what anybody would call a beautiful golf swing,’ (this was the understatement of the millennium) ‘but that doesn’t matter. Look at the American fella, Drew…’

  ‘Keel.’

  ‘Drew Keel. Look at his swing. Steep? The boy looks like he’s trying to chop one of his own feet aff wi’ an axe. But he’s winning tournaments. He’s making the money. It doesn’t matter how ugly it is if you can do it the same way every time.’
>
  ‘Aye, ah know all that, Bert, ah just–’

  ‘Look, tell ye what, the course is quiet now. Come on and we’ll go over tae the second fairway wi’ a bag of balls and we’ll see if we can crack this shanking carry-on.’

  ‘Really? Thanks, Bert. I know I’m a hopeless case but–’

  ‘Och, wheesht. God loves a trier, son. Get your clubs.’

  Bert watched Gary walk back towards the locker room, then he turned at the sound of a car door slamming to his left. Billy Douglas was hurrying round to his boot. ‘Afternoon, Billy,’ Bert said. ‘Running a bit late, are ye?’

  ‘Aye, Bert,’ Billy said. ‘Ma sixtieth last night. Cannae take the drink like ah used tae.’

  ‘Ah know whit ye mean, pal. Have a good game.’

  ‘Aye, cheers, Bert. Ah’ll see ye later.’

  Bert leaned back on the bench and looked down over the golf course–players splayed and crucified, clubs dangling in one hand, necks craning after doomed balls. The finishing positions of the amateurs–physical apologies for the outrages they were performing in the name of golf.

  Lee’s mobile rang. Sammy. Again. Lee jabbed the button and uttered a brusque ‘Ho?’, trying for a tone of voice that suggested he was a very busy man. He was, in fact, rolling a joint and watching the Shopping Channel.

  ‘They’ve cancelled,’ Sammy said.

  ‘Whit?’

  ‘Alan and wee Flakey. Said they couldnae wait any longer.’

  ‘Hey, you tell those pricks a deal’s a fucking d—’

  ‘Fuck sake, Lee! Ah telt ye the other week! They’re no gonnae sit ab—’

  ‘AH’LL FUCKING GO UP THERE AND CUT THEIR FUCKING THROATS!’

  As he often did when he was completely in the wrong, Lee went for the attack-as-defence approach. Sammy let him shout and scream. ‘Aye, Lee, fair enough. You go and dae aw that. It disnae change anything. They’ve got sorted fae somebody else.’