Unplayable Lies: (The Only Golf Book You'll Ever Need)

by Dan Jenkins

  I’ll be bringing this up before the board.

  Other improvements for the golf course, which I heartily endorsed in my campaign, will be the following:

  Removal of the Greg Norman Flower Bed to the right of number 9 fairway, and also the Greg Norman Fence on number 1.

  Filling in the Craig Wood Gulch on number 10.

  Bringing the Arnold Palmer Tee at number 15 back onto the golf course from Mrs. Weaver’s lawn across the road.

  Chopping down the Gary Player Oak that hangs over the green on number 14 and disturbs the flight of everybody’s second shot.

  Widening the Lawson Little Shrubs on the tee box at number 6 that tend to interfere with so many drives before they get in the air.

  Draining the Jug McSpaden Pond to the left of number 18 and replacing it with a structure for luxury boxes. Frankly, there’s not one person in this club who knows who Jug McSpaden was, including me.

  As for the food in the Triple Bogey Dining Room and the Lateral Hazard Lounge, you can say good-bye to the ordinary BLTs, Reubens, and hamburgers. I’ve hired the city’s most beloved chef, Neal Thrush, to dish up my personal favorites of his—the squirrel nachos, the rodent sausage, the porcupine burritos, and the Friday Night Special of fried red-lipped batfish on a bed of stewed pineapples and armadillo chunks.

  For those of you who liked and were happy with Chef Ernie, I am pleased to report that he has found work at the Pancake Heaven located where Loop 820 West has a head-on with I-35 South.

  Naturally I will be addressing one other matter of concern for us all. It is what we should do about the children of our young married members, the little urchins you see running loose constantly, kicking over chairs, tripping waiters, poking people in the ribs, yelling on a golfer’s backswing, and peeing on the entrance hall carpet. I have some ideas that involve nets and tie-down roping.

  Our future is ahead of us.

  Your President,

  Donny Dale Foster

  MEMBER GUESTS

  MY WHOLE LIFE I’ve searched for the perfect member-guest partner, but always in vain. After the tournament starts I find myself trying to control a killer sigh because I’m stomping around in the rough trying to help my partner find his golf ball. This inevitably happens on a difficult hole where we badly need a par, but I’m in my pocket, and my partner suddenly introduces a swing that comes in three pieces—hula hoop, wood chop, heart attack.

  Small wonder that in a lifetime of playing my heart out in member-guests I’m 0-for-Steuben. I can only dream of a partner who doesn’t tell golf jokes, doesn’t bully clubhouse waiters, doesn’t hit on the cart girl, wears long pants, and brings a 16 he can play to without falling down.

  The types of partners I’ve dealt with:

  The Shorts and Anklets Guy

  “Do you have to dress like this?” I say. “Who started this trend, a soccer team?”

  “It’s hot. I like to stay cool.”

  “Could you at least wear white socks?”

  “I would look like a basketball player. Stop staring at me.”

  “I’m trying to envision Ben Hogan in shorts and anklets.”

  The New Set of Clubs Collector

  He has a handy alibi. The clubs are doing it, not him.

  “I usually play better than this,” he says, “but I never do.”

  “That’s actually funny.”

  “It’s these new clubs. This hook is killing me.”

  “Your slice is killing me more than your hook.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve never sliced this bad either.”

  “Well, I can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  “Alternate shots.”

  The Long-Putter Wizard

  It’s a tradition in my family to hate the long putter, and hating it almost as much as we hate tripe on a plate. There are many things the long putter is better suited for. Fishing. Pole vaulting. Measuring.

  I say to my partner, “I don’t care much for the long putter myself. It’s unsightly. Especially the broomstick.”

  “Man, I couldn’t putt without it.”

  “It seems to wobble in the wind.”

  “Yes, but it helps me on the two-footers.”

  “We never have a two-footer.”

  The Rules Official

  He was put on earth to track down rules criminals. He instantly reports someone to the FBI who accidentally has more than fourteen clubs in the bag. He cautions the CIA to be on the lookout for the terrorist who gains an inch or two when marking his ball.

  He said to me, “Look at that jerk who has us two down. He just moved out of a lateral hazard. That’s a clear violation of 34-6, paragraph 16a, section 27.”

  “Was that you last week who called in the illegal drop on Tiger Woods when you were watching TV?”

  “Yes. It was my moral obligation.”

  “They didn’t penalize him, though.”

  “No, they didn’t. He claimed an allergy did it. Watch what you’re doing!”

  “I’m addressing my ball.”

  “You’re standing in the middle of a 13-2, section 3b!”

  “God help us.”

  The Equipment Victim

  He’s never met an oversize composite-flex-plutonium-ceramic-fusion-wide sole-uranium driver he didn’t want to take to dinner and a movie.

  “Here it is, my man,” he says. “You have to know the satellite coordinates before you swing this baby.”

  “That’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s the key to the vault.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Cowboy Stadium.”

  The Course Dropper

  He’s done it all. Been everywhere more than once. He’s played the Beach, the Point, the Foot, the Nole, the Hills, the Oak, the Wicker, and the Riv.

  He’s canned the loop at the Old. He’s tested the Maid, the Shinny, and the Nash out in the Hamps.

  He arrives saying, “Played the Big Track last week. Lot of Poa.”

  The Big Track could mean anything from Augusta National to Pine Valley.

  The Val, I mean.

  The Instruction Book Slave

  Far be it from me to disagree with the curved left arrow pointing from my left shoe up to my right shoulder. Or the dotted line showing my clubhead leaving my shaft and flying toward Des Moines, Iowa. But this particular partner understands everything about it.

  “Look at your feet,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “You’re out of position. Turn your left toe to 11:58 and keep the right foot on five after twelve.”

  “What time is my grip, would you say?”

  “It’s a little left of two fifteen.”

  “I have a confession to make.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not a good enough golfer to read golf instruction.”

  FEUDS

  A SERIOUS FEUD, TO my way of thinking, would be “nukeler combat toe to toe with the Rooskies,” to quote Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.

  In the golfing world, however, feuds exist only in newspapers. Within the hearing of a reporter, a player can accuse another player of being a low-rent cheater after he wins a tournament by replacing his golf ball from the ankle-high rough into a decent lie without penalty, this despite the fact that there’s no visible evidence that a pack of werewolves had been chewing on the ball. In retaliation, the low-rent cheater can respond in the newspapers by saying the accuser is known to mark his own golf ball on the greens with a manhole cover.

  The feud will be fun for readers for a day or two before it blows away like a high slice in a Scottish gale.

  To my knowledge, there has never been a feud among touring pros that involved severe fisticuffs—a man’s grip could be injured, his career ended. I have only heard secondhand of an incident where an angry player shoved another player into a wall of lockers and threatened to break various limbs, but he was quickly restrained by other pros.

  The
incident occurred when the angry player accused the other guy of having an affair with his wife. The accused responded by saying, “I thought about it, but the line was too long.”

  I’m happy to report that in my dealings with touring pros, I’ve never taken any clavicle shots even though I’ve made some of them hot with the written word.

  Johnny Miller didn’t much like it after he shot that 63 at Oakmont to win the U.S. Open and I mentioned that the course had been softened by rain and he hadn’t played “the real” Oakmont. I admit it was derelict of me not to have added that, after all, everybody played the same golf course, and it shouldn’t detract from his victory.

  One time while Miller was winning tournaments right and left, I wrote, “What fun is it to be Johnny Miller if the highlight of your social life is watching your kids turn over glasses of milk in a Marriott?”

  He didn’t mention it when we won a World Cup pro-am together in Marbella, Spain.

  Johnny Miller was a tremendous player, and I’m on record as saying in print that he is by far the best golf commentator on TV, and has been for twenty years. We’re friendly today when we bump into each other. I take it as an indicator that he no longer wants to bind me up in a straitjacket if there’s a typewriter or a computer nearby.

  Curtis Strange had issues with me, which was unfortúnate, because I pulled for him. I liked his golf game and his competitive spirit. I did tease him in print for losing a Masters under the circumstances by going for 15 when he shouldn’t have, and for laying up at 15 when he should have gone for it.

  I also teased him for skipping British Opens when he was exempt and at the top of his game. When the USA was losing one of those Ryder Cups along the way, I wrote, “The clincher for Europe came down to a contest between Seve Ballesteros and Curtis Strange. Perfect. Here was a match between a European who wins majors and an American who skips majors.”

  Strange let his displeasure with me be known through a mutual friend. But years have passed and he must have decided that the things I’d written about him were true, because we had friendly drinks together at the bar in our hotel during the 2012 U.S. Open in San Francisco.

  In the 1970 PGA at Southern Hills, my good friend and fellow typist Bob Drum and I spent the week rooting shamelessly for Arnold Palmer, who was playing superbly tee to green and contending for the only major title that had been escaping him. Palmer would have been the best story, and we root for good stories.

  Unfortunately, the relatively unknown and more or less invisible Dave Stockton was in a “putting coma,” sinking 20- and 30-foot putts for pars and bogeys all the way, and he wound up winning that PGA by two strokes over Palmer and Bob Murphy.

  I couldn’t resist writing a story that was more about Arnold regrettably losing than it was about Stockton winning. The tournament in boiling-hot Tulsa turned out to be the last time Palmer had a serious shot at the PGA.

  Stockton wasn’t happy with my story. Two weeks later at a tournament in New Jersey, he ran into Drum and said, “Is Jenkins here? I need to have some words with him.”

  Drum reported my absence, and said, “Whom shall I say is asking?”

  I might have had a feud with Greg Norman, who was such an easy target—his meltdowns and bad luck in majors became the stuff of legend—but he was evidently too rich to care what came out of my typewriter.

  When Greg went to the 72nd hole at the ’86 Masters and hit a half-shank, push-fade, semislice four-iron to make a bogey and ensure that Jack Nicklaus won his storybook eighteenth major, I wrote, “Oh, well, Greg Norman has always looked like the guy you send out to kill James Bond, not Jack Nicklaus.”

  When he suffered the horrible luck of having Bob Tway hole out a bunker shot on the last hole to steal the ’86 PGA from him at Inverness, I mentioned in print that he might have avoided the tragedy if he hadn’t followed up his earlier rounds of 65, 68, and 69 with a 76.

  His worst tragedy of all occurred in the ’96 Masters. This was where he soared to a final-round 78 and blew a six-stroke lead, which allowed Nick Faldo to overtake him. When Faldo gave Greg a consoling hug on the last green, I reported that the sporting gesture might actually have been a Heimlich maneuver.

  After one of his meltdowns, Norman was quoted as saying, “I still have confidence in myself. I could be a brain surgeon if I wanted to work at it.”

  To that news, I couldn’t help writing, “Maybe so, but he wouldn’t operate on this cowboy on Sundays.”

  Through all this I’m delighted to report that he never mailed a letter bomb to my home, or sent Guido to chat with me. That’s what I call a true sportsman and real gentleman.

  There was a moment when George Archer and his wife wanted to drive a stake through my heart. It was after George won the ’69 Masters and I’d written that he still wouldn’t have any charisma if he rode in a golf cart with Jill St. John. I received a letter from his wife saying, “I’ll have you know my husband has more charisma than Joe Namath and Gary Cooper combined.”

  I thought that over and wrote her a response, but I’m happy to say I never mailed it. My note had said, “I’m inclined to agree with you about George, inasmuch as Joe Namath has a bum knee and Gary Cooper is dead.”

  A MOVIE GAME YOU CAN’T REFUSE

  THIS COMBINES A certain knowledge of golf with a love of movies. Why would I write such a piece? I want to round up the usual suspects. So here’s looking at you, kid.

  Front Nine

  No. 1. Do you really think you can sign Tiger Woods? How would you do that, Hughes?

  “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  No. 2. Sorry, gentlemen, but I’m afraid you’re not allowed in the clubhouse. You don’t have the proper badges.

  “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”

  No. 3. Look, I shot a 77. I’ve got nothing to say to you writers. I’m not going to the pressroom, so leave me alone.

  “What you’ve got, you used to have.”

  No. 4. Charlie’s been your caddie for years. I can’t believe you’re not taking him to the Hawaiian Open.

  “Charlie don’t surf.”

  No. 5. I hate it over here. I hate the course. I hate the food. I hate the hotel.

  “You’ve come to Nottingham once too often.”

  No. 6. You came to Pinehurst No. 2 for the water hazards? There are no water hazards on Pinehurst No. 2.

  “I was misinformed.”

  No. 7. I’ve got Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, and Adam Scott lined up for an exhibition in Joplin. What do you think?

  “Take ’em to Missouri, Matt.”

  No. 8. You and me are Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf. How bad do you want to beat these guys, Jack?

  “I don’t want to wipe out everyone, Tom. Just my enemies.”

  No. 9. These South Korean girls are winning everything.

  “Be advised. We got zips in the wire. For the record, it’s my call. Put everything you’ve got on my pos … It’s a lovely war … Bravo Six out.”

  Back Nine

  No. 10. Rhett, I’m so happy. I made two pars today.

  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

  No. 11. When did you think you had the Triple Crown wrapped up, Ben?

  “Why don’t you bore a hole in your head and let the sap run out?”

  No. 12. I’ve won the Lancôme. Why won’t you give me the trophy?

  “If I live to be a hundred, I shall never understand how a young man could come to Paris without evening clothes.”

  No. 13. You’ve been a big winner on the Tour for ten years now. It might help save our tournament if you’ll come back this spring.

  “I stick my neck out for nobody. I’m the only cause I’m interested in.”

  No. 14. Hi, Greg. Gosh, you look thin since I saw you at the Masters.

  “At our last meeting, I died. It alters the appearance.”

  No. 15. You don’t like our new mixed grill. What’s wrong with it?

  “Of all the gin joints in all
the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

  No. 16. That fellow Aoki is amazing. He almost won the Open.

  “May August moon bring gentle sleep. Sayonara.”

  No. 17. Who was somebody named Cary Middlecoff anyway?

  “He used to be a big shot.”

  No. 18. You call yourself Big Bertha. You don’t look so big to me.

  “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

  The Films and Who Said the Lines, in Case You Haven’t Already Guessed

  No. 1. The Godfather (Al Pacino)

  No. 2. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Alfonso Bedoya)

  No. 3. The Barefoot Contessa (Elizabeth Sellars)

  No. 4. Apocalypse Now (Robert Duvall)

  No. 5. The Adventures of Robin Hood (Basil Rathbone)

  No. 6. Casablanca (Humphrey Bogart)

  No. 7. Red River (John Wayne)

  No. 8. The Godfather: Part II (Al Pacino)

  No. 9. Platoon (Dale Dye)

  No. 10. Gone with the Wind (Clark Gable)

  No. 11. Animal Crackers (Groucho Marx)

  No. 12. The Razor’s Edge (Clifton Webb)

  No. 13. Casablanca (Bogart)

  No. 14. The Chalk Garden (Deborah Kerr)

  No. 15. Casablanca (Bogart)

  No. 16. Sayonara (Marlon Brando)

  No. 17. The Roaring Twenties (Gladys George)

  No. 18. Sunset Boulevard (Gloria Swanson)

  THEY DID IT FOR THE ALAMO

  THE STUNNING VICTORY by the USA in the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline remains the greatest comeback in the history of golf, or apparel.

  For the inside scoop on how the Americans prepared for the incredible win, it happens that I had bugged the team’s private dining room on that crucial Saturday night as they talked of rallying themselves from eight points down after two days of losing four-balls and foursomes—and there were only twelve singles matches left.

  On this tape you hear the words of everyone who had a part in the riveting comeback.

  Dining sounds in background. Forks hitting plates, glasses tinkling.