The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novel

by Dan Jenkins

  To tell you the truth, I still don’t know exactly how to tell anybody how to get to the Doral Country Club Resort & Spa in Miami, even though I’ve played in the tournament ten times.

  I know it’s way west of anywhere you’d want to be—downtown, the ocean, Key Biscayne, Coral Gables, South Beach, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach, Joe’s Stone Crab, Bal Harbour, the airport.

  The first two or three years I played in the Doral I actually thought it was named for a cigarette or a flower you put on a wreath. Of course I eventually found out the name came from humans. It came from Al Kaskel, who built the resort, and his wife, Doris. I guess Al Kaskel could have called it Aldor, but putting his wife’s name first obviously made it sound better, and may have even prevented an argument at home.

  There are five 18-hole courses at Doral, but the tournament’s always played on the “Blue Monster,” which was the first course built and the one designed to be a championship test.

  When Al Kaskel had the idea for the resort forty years ago, a resort in the middle of nowhere, Dick Wilson was the trendiest architect around and was hired to do the course. Wilson had made his name designing Meadow Brook and Deepdale on Long Island, Laurel Valley in Pennsylvania, and several other Florida layouts, plus he was in the redo business. He’d carved out changes on such respected courses as Seminole, Colonial, and Inverness, although I can’t imagine why anybody thought they needed it.

  For my money, Wilson basically ruined Colonial at home by enlarging and flattening all the greens and cutting back trees. I’ve always wished I could have played Colonial when it was as tight and tricky as it was during Hogan’s prime.

  Doral’s “Blue Monster” is flat and long, all eighteen holes rambling through and over and around a bunch of man-made lakes. Dick Wilson must have pushed his foot down six or eight times. Year in and year out, it’s a 275 to 279 golf course, although Greg Norman caught it in a calm one year and stitched a 265 on it.

  I went to Doral feeling okay about my game, less okay about my life. I stayed at the resort. It’s not the most convenient place to stay if you want to go see exotic Miami, but as a wise man once said, that’s what limos are for.

  Buddy Stark and Jerry Grimes and I bagged the Tuesday night bridge game and hired a limo with an English-speaking driver—a rare thing in any city on the East Coast—and went off to fondle Miami’s delights. There were free Buicks at our disposal, courtesy of the Tour, but we’d never have found our way back to Doral.

  First stop was Joe’s to get on the outside of some stone crabs. After that, all we did was pay rent on an outside table at the News Café in South Beach and sit there the rest of the night and watch it all go by.

  And it did. A steady parade of fashion models, crack dealers, whore ladies, limpwrists holding hands, tugboat lesbos holding hands, bodybuilders, revolutionaries, Jennifer Lopez look-alikes, pickpockets, and now and again your Art and his lovely wife, Deco.

  Due to a gesture on the part of Jerry Grimes, we were joined at our table by Brandi and Amber, two no-slack dirty legs in string bikini tops and cutoff jeans. The cutoff jeans were cut off right up to home plate. They passed for cute, but they’d have been cuter if it hadn’t been for the tattoos on their upper arms and thighs and cheeks. The tattoos were of insects and flowers and, I think, guns. Buddy called them tootats.

  He said to them, “I bet those tootats were a source of pleasure and pride for your mom and dad, huh?”

  “My parents suck,” Brandi said.

  “Mine suck more,” said Amber.

  Jerry offered to buy them several beverages of their choice. Brandi, the taller one, said they were hungry. We watched them mop up cheeseburgers and fries while we drank some of that Cuban coffee that makes you want to run to Billings, Montana, and back.

  Buddy Stark asked them what they were reading these days.

  Amber said, “What do you mean?”

  Jerry said, “We have a limo and we’re staying at the Doral. They have lots of food at Doral.”

  Brandi said, “Cool.”

  I said, “Jerry?” He looked at me.

  “I have a question,” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “How you gonna get back down that hill?”

  I wasn’t trying to sound like Paul Newman in Hombre, but the line is a keeper. Suitable for any number of occasions, and this was one.

  Jerry got the drift and we politely blew them off.

  After Brandi and Amber were gone, I said to Jerry, “I didn’t think you’d want to wake up broke and dead tomorrow.”

  “With no towels either,” Buddy Stark said.

  AS SOON as the tournament started it looked like I couldn’t wait to stagger, stumble, and falter. I never broke 70, even scared up a 75 in the third round, and my 290 total left me in a tie for 74th place, which only paid me a chiseling $5,700.

  My putter kept working, but I couldn’t get to the greens fast enough. I made the discovery that Doral has more bunkers around the greens than I remembered. I kept shooting at pins and kept missing. I saved a number of pars out of the bunkers, but pars were cheap. Kmart pars, Mitch said.

  I was following through nicely on the sand shots, taking wide shallow divots like you’re supposed to. Swinging through the shot and finishing high so my body was facing the target on the follow-through.

  Mitch complimented me on my bunker play.

  “We hit us some good photo ops,” he said.

  Knut Thorssun, cheater, enjoyed one of those weeks where God turned his head and allowed an asshole to win a golf tournament. Always makes you wonder what school God went to. Knut posted a 273 and took it by five shots over Ernie Els and Rickey Padgett.

  Knut commuted to the tournament. He choppered over to Doral every day from his mansion in Palm Beach. One of his toys. A six-seat Eagle Bat Luxury Osprey, or whatever it’s called. Air-conditioned, stereo, TV, Dell computer, snacks on board. Some guy flies it for him.

  One day Knut brought the unruly little shits with him, Sven, 8, and Matti, 10, along with their nanny. The nanny, Renata, is 28, a blonde from Germany who has big tits and all the other moving parts. I’d often wondered what Knut’s wife, Cynthia, thought of Renata.

  Buddy Stark, who’d been there, certainly thought highly of Renata. He liked to say she was a very generous, fun-loving, good-natured person, given enough deodorant.

  One thing the unruly little shits like to do at a tournament is get a putter and a ball from their daddy and hit line drives on the putting green. Telling them not to do this—they might injure someone—had never seemed to work. We’ve all learned to keep a sharp eye out and give them plenty of room.

  The day they came to Doral, in a moment when Renata was having a warm chat with Buddy Stark, they stopped hitting line drives long enough to come over to where I was, on a remote corner of the putting green. Matti wanted to tell me a joke.

  He said, “Has my dad told you the blonde’s nursery rhyme?”

  “The blonde’s nursery rhyme?” I said. “What do you know about blondes?”

  “Have you heard it?” Matti said.

  “This is a joke your dad told you?”

  “Have you?” he whined.

  “No,” I said, eager to get it over with, “I have not heard the blonde’s nursery rhyme. What is it?”

  “Hump me, dump me,” he blurted out.

  When they stopped giggling, I said, “Isn’t that a little advanced for you guys?”

  “Fuck, shit, piss!” Sven hollered, and they ran off to throw flying tackles on Renata.

  Guess not, I thought.

  THE HONDA tournament started out more than thirty years ago as Jackie Gleason’s Inverrary Classic. It’s always been played somewhere around Fort Lauderdale, which must be a city of 700 million people if you judge it by the traffic jams and condos you find there.

  This time it was held at a new course called TPC at Egret Landing. It’s one of those “stadium golf” designs the players are supposed to be proud of because the Tour
builds them.

  But Egret Landing is more of an embarrassment, is what it is. The architect was Barney Rivers, a club pro whose only qualification for the job was that he’s married to our commissioner’s sister. Barney is from Houston, so naturally he was more familiar with humidity than he was with how hard the wind blows on Florida property near the ocean. Nevertheless, Barney Rivers ripped off Pete Dye’s TPC Stadium design and even tried to outdo it. The fairways are too narrow, the greens are too small, and waste areas are everywhere, gobbling up your tee shot on every hole. It’s a carnival ride when the wind’s strong.

  The course has been called everything imaginable by our own people. The best description I’ve heard came from Buddy Stark. He called it “a surefire cure for constipation.”

  I should have stayed in my Fort Lauderdale motel that week, not even played. I could have had more fun hanging around the gift shop and counting the sales of denture grip. I shot 72–74 and missed the cut by a shot.

  There’s only one thing worse than missing the 36-hole cut, and that’s missing it by one fucking shot. You blow one lousy six-footer somewhere, and it costs you a paycheck. All you can do the last two days is hit practice balls. You could leave town, go to the next stop, but you’ve already paid for the motel room so you might as well hang around and work on your game.

  Buddy Stark and I agreed that the Honda Classic and the TPC at Egret Landing both got what they deserved. A lurker won the tournament. I honestly don’t remember his name.

  The highlight of my week may have been the message Cheryl left on my phone in the Lauderdale motel Saturday evening. I pushed the message button and heard her voice saying:

  “It hasn’t been easy to follow your progress. I was afraid you might have been ill or injured. I couldn’t find your name in the paper. Then I realized I should have been looking for it under Other Scores or Failed to Qualify. Hope you’re enjoying all the Nonnies in Florida.”

  Click.

  This was good, I told myself. She was obviously thinking about me or she wouldn’t have called.

  16

  WHEN YOU CONSIDER THAT ARNOLD Palmer owns the Bay Hill Club in Orlando, lives nearby, and presides over the Bay Hill Invitational, you’d think the golf course—out of respect for Arnold, if nothing else—wouldn’t have let so many dogs win his tournament.

  I can use the word dogs and get away with it because I’m one of the dogs. I won the Bay Hill four years ago. Rope-a- doped my old hook right into Victory Lane. Clipped Nick Price by two strokes.

  The dogs have been plentiful around Bay Hill. If you look back at the past champions, you discover a lot more dogs than guys you find on Wheaties boxes or doing TV commercials.

  A dog is a guy who may have won on the regular Tour, even more than once, but he’s never won a major, your Masters, your U.S. Open, your British Open, or your PGA. Until he wins a major, he don’t move up.

  Dogs are a step above lurkers, but they’re still dogs.

  It’s a mystery deal because Arnold and his partner, Ed Seay, completely remodeled Bay Hill after Arnold bought the property. They turned Dick Wilson’s original design, which was weak, into a stiff championship test. The course is now almost 7,200 yards long, has a bundle of doglegs, and presents you with a lot of nervous shots to greens that are protected on one or two sides by water.

  Buddy Stark’s explanation for Bay Hill producing so many goofy winners over the years is that Walt Disney World is nearby—what else would you expect?

  MY LIVEWIRE agent, Smokey Barwood, of Dotted Line, Inc., headquarters in New York City, New York State, came down to Orlando to see me over the weekend.

  He wanted to “go over some projects” he could line up for me, see if any of them appealed to me in “the jing department.”

  I think he actually wanted to see if I’d been hit by a truck, seeing as how I’d missed my second cut in a row at Bay Hill. Shot me a couple of defensive linemen, 74 and 75, and went Dixie by four strokes.

  There wasn’t even any suspense to it. I turned the sixth hole into a commode and flushed it.

  The sixth is a par five, 543 yards. It curves all the way around the big lake on the left. Clubface your tee ball out there near 300, you can go at it on your second, if you don’t mind risking a shot into the water, which is on your left and behind the green. I’d put a drive out there pretty good, and Mitch estimated there was 254 left to the green, a little wind helping in case I wanted to go for it.

  Tiger can get there with a two-iron, but I required a four-wood. As it turned out, I needed Tiger’s swing. I pull-thinned the shot into the lake. Dredging up a triple bogey, it was the kind of undernourished shot that invites a comic to ask, “Does your husband play golf, too?”

  But Mitch didn’t say that. All he said was “Well, we got this one over in a hurry.”

  Smokey Barwood is a thin little guy in a three-piece suit and thick glasses. He wears his hair Wall Street–wethead style. He looks like one of those smarts on cable TV who tries to tell everybody how it is in politics and the financial world.

  My agent thought he was doing me a favor by taking me to dinner in the “gourmet” restaurant at his hotel, which was dangerously close to that whole Disney World deal.

  Nash, our waiter, brought me a little one-bite salad with a circle of lime green bath gel squirted around it. I wished for a camera, but drank my Junior and laughed at it instead.

  The salad was followed by my entree, a little raw hen sitting on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes.

  I said, “Nash, old buddy, take this sparrow back to the chef and ask him to cook it—and you can lose the sweet potatoes, too.”

  Nash said, “I’m afraid Gar won’t serve it any other way.”

  “Gar?” I said. “Gar is the chef?”

  “Yes. He’s quite accomplished. He came to us from the Culinary Institute of Upper New York State.”

  Handing the plate to Nash, I said, “Tell Gar I’ll pay a hundred dollars to watch the blood roll down his chin after he takes a bite of this.”

  Nash looked off, hand on his hip. When he gathered himself up, he said, “May I bring you something else, sir?”

  “You can bring me a phone.”

  “A telephone?”

  “Yeah, so I can call Domino’s and get something to eat.”

  You can’t miss a cut and go to a “gourmet” restaurant all in the same day without being testy. That’s what I say.

  I made do with Juniors, coffee, and bread while my livewire agent ate his raw pork medallions on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes and went over the business opportunities I could take or leave.

  First he wanted to know if Irving Klar was real.

  “Irving?” I said.

  “He says Irving is his pen name. He called me. He’s called me more than once, actually.”

  I said, “He’s a young sportswriter who got hold of my pants leg in California and I can’t shake him loose. He’s harmless.”

  Smokey said, “Modesty is not his finest trait.”

  “You noticed that?”

  “He says he’s going to be the ‘mechanic’ on your book. I didn’t know you were writing a book.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “It’s not the worst idea to come across my desk lately. An inside look at the Tour . . . scrape the underbelly . . . not a tell-all, but a tell-some . . . it would have to be gritty.”

  “Irv Klar may be writing a book, but I’m not.”

  Smokey floated the latest business opportunities past me.

  No, I didn’t want to take a group of auto parts salesmen for a round of golf on Lake Buena Vista Country Club at Disney World. It wasn’t worth twenty-five grand. I said I’d been to Disney World once—I’d rather spend a day with Knut Thorssun’s kids.

  No, I didn’t want to do a freebie next week that would be good for my “image,” a pro-celebrity tournament in Clearwater for the benefit of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

  I said, “Half the guys I know who joined the
Fellowship of Christian Athletes are no longer in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. They made three bogeys in a row one day and said fuck this shit, I resign.”

  No, I didn’t want to do a two-day outing with Japanese bankers in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on the Monday and Tuesday before the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in New York. It would leave me only one day of practice for the Open, and besides that, they were Japs.

  No, I didn’t want to play an exhibition in Mexico City. Mexico had tried to kill me twice. Mexico had scorpions bigger than squirrels, and they were territorial.

  No, I didn’t want to go to Düsseldorf in June to play in the German Open for expenses and a $25,000 appearance fee.

  “Why in the world not?” Smokey asked.

  “It’s in Germany,” I said.

  I added that if I ever did enter a European Tour event, I’d take Curtis Strange’s advice. Never win it. Always finish second. That way you get a big check and don’t have to go back to defend.

  I said yes to the QE2.

  I was going to the British Open at St. Andrews anyhow. Sail over, fly home. I’d have a big cabin next to the captain’s, I could take along the lady of my choice, or select one onboard. Smokey said it was five days, six nights on the ship after you sailed from New York. He swore it was usually smooth in the summer. Give one lesson to geezers on an outdoor deck, do a couple of Q-and-As, swoop fifty large, Buenos noches, coaches.

  I didn’t ask if I could have my own private lifeboat in case we did an iceberg thing.

  Driving me back to the Bay Hill Club where I was staying, my agent brought up a touchy subject. The Ryder Cup.

  17

  THE RYDER CUP WAS A TOUCHY subject because in all my sixteen years out here, being a consistent money winner, nabbing the occasional W, staying exempt in the top 125, not molesting children and not dealing drugs in school yards, I was still 0-for-Ryder Cup.

  The way I’m sure guys used to lust after Sophia Loren in the days when she gave true meaning to the low-cut peasant blouse—some say she won the first wet T-shirt contest—that was me lusting after a place on our Ryder Cup team.