The Amateurs

by John Niven

  60

  ‘GET BACK A BIT, PLEASE. GIVE THE BOY SOME AIR.’ Gary opened his eyes. Faces: Robertson, Pauline, Stevie, Lee, Lisa, April, a couple of old boys he didn’t recognise, and someone who looked very much like Calvin Linklater. Gary realised he was lying on the grass in the shade of a huge grandstand. He looked down and saw his shirt was covered in blood. ‘Oh, son. Oh God,’ someone was saying, ‘are ye OK?’

  He looked up. Cathy was kneeling beside him, her face slick with tears. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Aye, son, it’s me.’ She stroked his forehead, the way she had done countless times through childhood illnesses, her hand and her voice trembling. ‘Ah thought we’d lost ye there. How dae ye feel?’

  ‘I’m…’

  Apart from the thick, rusted taste of blood in his throat Gary felt like he had just awoken from the deepest, most refreshing sleep he had ever had. His head felt clear, like someone had drained off the boiling lemonade and replaced it with cool water. For the first time in a long time he also experienced the sensation of awakening without a painful erection digging into him. He sat up.

  He recognised the two old boys now–Morton and Daw-something. From the R&A. In that moment it all came back: the match. That was Calvin Linklater.

  ‘Mr Linklater. I’m so sorry about…’

  ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. You rest up there.’

  ‘There’s an ambulance on its way,’ Robertson said.

  ‘Ambulance? But what about the match?’

  ‘I think we’ll have to forfeit, pal,’ Stevie said.

  ‘Forfeit? No chance. Come on. Is there a clean shirt in the bag?’

  ‘I don’t know if we can allow that,’ Dawkins said.

  ‘What–you’re disqualifying me because I had a…nosebleed?’

  ‘I think it might have been a bit more than that,’ Robertson said.

  ‘We’re not disqualifying you,’ Morton said. ‘It’s just, medically, under the circumstances…’

  ‘The circumstances,’ Gary said, getting up now, ‘are that I am leading the Open by eight strokes with one hole left to play. Is that right?’ He felt fine, better than he’d felt in months.

  ‘Yes, but–’

  ‘So the only way you’re getting me off this golf course is if you carry me off in a bloody straitjacket.’

  Ranta was going mental.

  Not just regular mental.

  Absolutely triple-bonkers, pull-your-own-teeth-out-with-pliers mental.

  He’d tried to charge out of the tent and head back up to the seventeenth green to see what the fuck was going on. He couldn’t even get out of the bar because everyone was pouring in to try and find out what was happening from the TV. The coverage on the giant TV screen for the past ten minutes had just been shots of crowds and wildlife and that fucking auld fossil Rowland Daventry talking utter pish. A rumour was flying around that Gary was dead.

  But, if he was alive, and somehow able to continue, then the match would move onto the eighteenth. They might stand a chance of muscling their way onto the grandstand there.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Alec. ‘Ah’m gonnae try and get over tae the eighteenth. Just in case. You go and find that wee prick…’

  Ranta’s good mood had evaporated much quicker than it had built up.

  A huge cheer as Gary emerged from beneath the grandstand, blinking in the sunlight. He wore one of Linklater’s fresh, powder-blue shirts and waved to the crowd. ‘Can you believe this?’ he said to Stevie, as though he was noticing all the attention for the first time. He stopped by the ropes on the pathway connecting the seventeenth green to the eighteenth tee and shook many of the hundreds of outstretched hands that were thrust at him. He apologised to people for his outburst.

  ‘You’re the boy!’

  ‘Well done, pal!’

  ‘GARY! GARY! GARY!’

  ‘Aye, cheers, nae bother, thanks,’ Gary said.

  ‘Stevie,’ he whispered as they hurried off along the path, ‘have you noticed?’

  Stevie nodded.

  ‘I think,’ Gary said, ‘it’s gone. It’s all gone.’

  They grinned at each other.

  It was still his honour. He walked onto the eighteenth tee to cheers audible in Glasgow nearly thirty miles away. Eight strokes clear with one hole left to play.

  The first amateur to win the Open in seventy-nine years.

  The first Scotsman to win the Open in over a decade.

  The only Scottish amateur to have ever won the Open.

  History.

  Gary pulled out the driver. Four hundred and fifty-three yards to the green. Behind the green stood the red sandstone clubhouse and, somewhere within the clubhouse, at that very moment, the Claret Jug and the engraver, practising the words ‘Gary Irvine (Am)’.

  He took a couple of practice swings and settled the clubhead behind the ball. He took it back, slowly coiling up, and then pulled the trigger.

  ‘FORE!’ Stevie screamed the second the ball was struck.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Rowland Daventry.

  61

  RANTA WAS IN LUCK. THERE WAS A LONG QUEUE TO get onto the grandstand overlooking the eighteenth green, but the security guard manning the steps was, like many of the temporary staff on the course, an Ardgirvan boy. He swallowed as Ranta strolled up to the head of the queue.

  ‘Hey!’ a man shouted. ‘I’ve been waiting half an hour!’

  ‘VIP,’ the guard said solemnly, holding back the rope.

  Ranta took his front-row seat just in time to hear the gasp rippling its way down the fairway from the distant tee. He could just make out Gary, still cocked in his finishing position. ‘Where’s the ball gone?’ Ranta said to the man next to him, who was squinting through a pair of binoculars.

  ‘Oblivion,’ the man said.

  It was lucky no one was killed. The ball had rocketed diagonally right at a 45-degree angle, barely skimming over the heads of the gallery all along the right-hand side of the fairway, and disappearing into the thick, thick rough.

  ‘Umm,’ Gary said. He looked at the clubhead, as if some strange malfunction had occurred, but…he knew.

  Something felt different.

  ‘I think you’d best play a provisional, Mr Irvine,’ Dawkins advised. ‘It’s very thick over there.’

  ‘Aye, right enough,’ Gary said. ‘Sorry about that. Don’t know what happened there!’ Stevie handed him another ball. With the penalty strokes if his ball was lost he was now hitting his third shot.

  ‘Watch your heads over there!’ Gary joked to the crowd as he again assumed his stance.

  He swung a little gentler this time. KE-KLANG!

  Linklater winced.

  The new ball rattled off a wooden advertising hoarding at the side of the tee box and flew straight up in the air before plopping down in the rough, less than a hundred yards in front of them. Stevie felt his face beginning to burn.

  Gary would play the second ball. The first one has not been found to this day.

  Linklater nailed another perfect swing straight up the middle and they began the embarrassingly short walk towards Gary’s ball.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Lee said.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Pauline said. ‘Why is he doing that?’

  ‘It looks like he’s…he’s lost his swing,’ April said, whispering the word with all the reverence, fear and dread that it merited.

  ‘Calm down,’ Stevie said as they got to his second ball. ‘Breathe easy.’

  ‘I’m fine, Stevie. It’s just…whatever happened in here–’ Gary tapped his temple–‘I think it’s kind of sorted itself out now. So the swearing and everything’s gone but–’

  ‘So has the swing?’ Stevie said.

  The two friends stood there for a moment, the realisation dawning: an eighteen-handicap club golfer was going to have to play the final hole in the final round of the Open, against the best golfer in the world, in front of tens of thousands of on-course spectators and millions of TV viewers, with the sha
nks.

  Stevie put his hand on Gary’s shoulder and said solemnly: ‘I was a mongo who dreamt he was a professional golfer–’

  ‘But now the dream is over,’ Gary said, finishing the quote from The Fly, ‘and the mongo is here.’

  ‘It’s good tae have ye back. Now,’ Stevie nodded down at the ball, ‘we still have over three hundred yards to the green. You’ve already hit three and I’ll bet ye Linklater’s no going tae make worse than a par. So, the question is, can you, playing as Gary Irvine, eighteen-handicap golf spastic, make no worse than eleven on this hole?’

  They looked towards the green. It looked a long, long way away. Whereas before they had been travelling the third of a mile or so between tees and greens by supersonic jet, it now felt like they were about to make the trip by horse and cart.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ Gary said, grinning as he pulled the five-iron from the bag.

  Findlay Masterson woke up; his eyes still closed, his head pounding and his mouth feeling like it was made of baked cotton. Christ, some session, he thought. Then he began to remember–the golf course, Pauline, Ranta. Shit. He could smell oil. He opened his eyes. It was dark. He tried to stand up and found he couldn’t.

  He was chained to a radiator.

  ‘Why are they laughing?’ Pauline said, pointing to Gary and Stevie. ‘Did he want to hit the ball there? Was it, like, a tactic?’

  Jesus Christ, April thought.

  ‘Mind,’ Cathy said thoughtfully, gazing at her son, ‘he looks a bit back to his old self again.’

  ‘Whit, duffing it all over the place?’ Lee said sourly as Gary swung again. Thousands of heads snapped round, trying to see the ball dotted against the sky. After a second or two thousands of heads slowly swivelled back towards Gary, who was peering down into the rough at his feet. The ball had moved perhaps two inches, burying itself even deeper in the rough.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Daventry said.

  ‘Head up,’ Stevie said, offering one of the oldest, most pointless tips in golf.

  To the untrained eye Gary wasn’t really doing very much different. But, to the professional, his swing had suddenly, inexplicably, changed beyond recognition: his takeaway becoming shallower, the clubhead drifting dangerously into-out on the way back. Tiny changes, but success in golf is measured in millimetres.

  ‘Shit,’ Linklater whispered to Snakes, ‘what the hell’s going on over there?’ He had to fight the urge to run over and give Gary a quick lesson.

  ‘Right,’ Gary said. ‘Come on.’

  Incredibly, however, he felt no anger. He felt clear, calm and relaxed. A day at the beach. It really was a beautiful afternoon. He was fighting hard not to laugh.

  He swung again. Much better this time–the ball spurted forward at least three yards, coming to rest in a more open patch of light rough.

  The crowd gasped. People had their hands over their mouths. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ Daventry said. ‘What on earth is going on out there?’

  ‘Seems to be having a bit of a breakdown,’ Torrent suggested.

  Hardly pausing to aim, Gary took a casual swipe at the ball and–incredibly–actually connected quite well. It rocketed out of the spinach and flew low and straight for about a hundred yards. A few wags in the crowd burst into joking applause and cheers and Gary raised his arms in the air in mock triumph. He was on the fairway!

  In six shots.

  And still short of Linklater’s drive.

  April started to laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Pauline said.

  Ranta wasn’t laughing. He was twisting and crushing a plastic lager glass in his hands while he stared at the scoreboard. He pulled out his mobile and dialled the Beast’s number.

  ‘Frank? Fuck it. Do it.’

  He hung up.

  Gary’s next shot was a mega-shank of such colossal proportions that it caused Rowland Daventry to swear on-air for the first time in his broadcasting career–a hissed ‘Shit!’ as the ball ricocheted off the hosel of the club, heading diagonally right and low, bulleting into the crowd at gut level, where it hit a fat man in a yellow cagoule squarely in the stomach, sending him to his knees, doubled up and gasping for air.

  Gary and Stevie ran the short distance over there. Luckily the man was not seriously hurt–‘Plenty o’ padding here, son!’ he said, cheerfully patting his stomach–and the softening impact of his belly had dropped Gary’s ball in a decent lie on the edge of the fairway. Gary changed tactics, taking a six-iron and going down the grip to try a wristy punch shot with a shortened backswing. He succeeded in hitting a sort of a thinned duck hook that skittered across the fairway into the rough on the opposite side.

  He had now hit eight shots to Linklater’s one. He still had about 140 yards left to the green.

  In the crowd, Pauline was furious now. People were openly laughing. ‘What’s he doing?’ she said to everyone and no one. ‘Why doesn’t he just hit it properly?’

  April sighed. ‘He’s lost his swing.’

  Lee felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.

  Alec Campbell, smiling.

  Frank stepped out of the sunshine and into the cool dark of the lock-up. As soon as he entered Masterson started kicking around and making the usual noises–‘mmmff’ and ‘unnghhhh’ and ‘nnrrrr’ and stuff. He maybe sounded a little angrier than they normally did, Frank thought as he ripped the gag off.

  ‘Whit the fuck do ye think yer doing, ya cunt! Do ye know who ah fucking am? Yer boss is going tae fucking kill ye fur this!’

  ‘Aye, well, ah’m no so sure about that…’ Frank said. Masterson watched as he placed a black, plastic toolbox on the table and ran a hand over it.

  62

  SHUFFLING ALONG LIKE A CONDEMNED MAN, LEE followed Alec towards the eighteenth green, the grandstand towering over him like a scaffold. Just then a huge collective groan went up, followed by a gasp, followed by laughter, followed by cheering and applause. Lee and Alec hurried up, running by the TV screen positioned behind the hospitality bar. On the screen a shot of Gary, laughing and shaking his head, and Rowland Daventry’s voice saying, ‘Have you ever, in all your days, seen anything like that?’

  Gary’s approach shot–his ninth strike at the ball–had definitely been an improvement. Rather than shank it again, he’d simply hit a very, very bad slice. He and Stevie and the rest of the world watched the ball heading for the deep rough to the right of the green. They watched in amazement as it struck a little hillock, created that very morning by a burrowing rabbit, and ricocheted back at a crazy angle, coming to rest just on the edge of the putting surface.

  ‘Someone up there likes him,’ Daventry said.

  Linklater was safely on the green in two, with a birdie putt of about thirty-five feet. An outside shot. But he’d almost certainly make par.

  Assuming Linklater didn’t sink the birdie putt, Gary would have to get up and down in two shots from about sixty feet to win by one clear stroke.

  If he took three it would mean a play-off between the two of them.

  A very short play-off.

  Lee sat wedged between Ranta and Alec in the stand. Ranta had stopped speaking. He simply sat staring down at Gary as he walked around the green below them, a seven-iron in his hand as he lined up a chip-and-run. Ranta just had a single phrase running on a loop through his head now, the Ranta Mantra: cometaefuck, cometaefuck, cometaefuck, cometaefuck.

  ‘Fucking nine shots and no even oan the green,’ Alec laughed hollowly, shaking his head. ‘Fucking family o’ losers.’

  ‘He could get up and doon fae here,’ Lee said.

  ‘Aye, right,’ Alec snorted. ‘An ah–’

  ‘Hey, you two?’ Ranta said, not turning to look at them. ‘Shut yer fucking mooths.’

  Cometaefuck, cometaefuck, cometaefuck…

  Linklater had seen many opponents crumble down the final stretch when faced with his relentless, grinding staying power–but he’d never seen anything like this. The guy hadn’t crumbled so much as…explod
ed. Steady on, he thought, we might still have to make a putt to win this sucker.

  Gary rehearsed his backswing–a short punchy scoop, the kind of bump-and-run shot indigenous to this part of the world–over and over. For the first time this week he was aware of the thousands of spectators, of the TV cameras. His hands were shaking as he moved the club behind the ball. He held his breath–the whole of Ayrshire held its breath–and swung a little harder than he meant to, his head coming up too soon, jerking the blade of the club into the middle of the ball rather than under it. The horribly thinned chip flew across the green towards the hole, on line, but travelling much, much too fast. The crowd in the grandstands gasped in horror.

  Then came a hollow clank as the ball hit the flagstick and rocketed off, finishing six feet downhill from the hole. Had it not hit the flag it might well have been off the green.

  Ranta opened his eyes when he heard Alec saying, ‘Ya fluky bastard!’

  Gary marked his ball and Linklater stepped up; an uphill putt, breaking right-to-left, a little at first, then sharply towards the end.

  ‘Easy money, boss,’ Snakes whispered.

  It was in all the way–perfectly struck, breaking exactly as he’d visualised, slowing, slowing as it reached the hole…

  The crowd noises were a strange jumble of strangulated cheers and moans: the crowd schizophrenic, many of them huge Linklater fans, many wanting to cheer a huge putt dropping, but more of them still praying that Gary might be allowed the chance to win the thing.

  The ball slowing, slowing, inches from the cup now.

  Linklater on his knees, out of character, game face gone. ‘Come on, baby, come on, baby,’ Linklater whispered.

  His third Open title in a row: the first player to do so in over half a century, since the great Australian Peter Thomson won in ’54, ’55 and ’56.

  Slowing, slowing…