Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  “I should have, that’s right. But the wizards ruled it a lost ball. Your only option on a lost ball is to go back.”

  “It wasn’t a lost ball. I saw it go in the creek! Everybody did!”

  “I mentioned that to them—in a matter of words.”

  “A lost ball? That’s nonsense.”

  “That wasn’t the whole ball game. I had some birdie chances coming in. I just didn’t make anything.”

  “I can’t believe some of the putts Alfie made. Scotty played a guy like that in the semifinals of the Amateur at Oakmont. It was a miracle he ever beat him.”

  “It’s over, babe,” I said, managing a smile. “And, hey . . . I’m not a loser. No man’s a loser when he can walk off the last green and find you waiting for him.”

  “You’re going to make me cry,” she said, hugging me tighter.

  I said, “You Know, I started thinking back there on the last hole. All I’ve done my whole life is play golf, work at golf, study golf, listen to golf, read about golf. I’ve worked to build a game I can rely on, make a living with. Find a ‘repeating swing,’ as Hogan called it. I’ve experimented with all the equipment—graphite, metal, titanium. I’ve found what works best for me, for my body, my swing. This year I come up with some solid chances to win a big one. After all the years and all the hard work out here, my game’s ready to win a major. But what happens? I get a lousy ruling at Augusta . . . I get a lousy ruling at Pinehurst . . . and I get another one here. Each time I let it beat me. I really let it beat me. So I’m thinking my hard-headed ass has finally learned something. Golf’s not about equipment . . . technique . . . distance . . . practice . . . saving shots . . . the putting stroke . . . any of that. Once you Know how to hold the damn club, golf is only about one thing. How you handle bad breaks.”

  PART FOUR

  ANOTHER ROMANTIC COMEDY

  45

  We got ourselves back to America by way of London, where I’d promised to take Gwen for a week after the British Open and the bundle I won at Carnoustie for losing a golf tournament almost covered it.

  Just joking. London wasn’t that expensive. It wasn’t any more expensive than it had been the previous year, but of course I didn’t have juice with my breakfast every morning.

  We stayed at Dukes, a cozy little hotel in a sneaky courtyard off St. James’s Street, which connects Piccadilly at one end to Pall Mall at the other. The people who Know Dukes are loyal, and the people who discover Dukes become loyal.

  Sometimes, if you’re a dummy like me, it takes years to discover you can walk almost anywhere you want to go in London. Often you can get there quicker if you walk than you can in a taxi. There are so many one-way streets and no-turn restrictions in London, it’s somewhat amazing that anyone can go anywhere in a car.

  For example, you can leave your hotel and grab a taxi and tell the driver where you want to go but find yourself crossing bridges, going around monuments, circling cathedrals, and passing Harrods three times before you reach your destination. Then you eventually find out that the destination was only three blocks from your hotel.

  What I mostly did in London was eat, sleep, read papers, and talk to myself when I watched cricket on TV, usually saying, “Well, somebody’s gonna have to explain that shit to me.”

  I did take strolls with Gwen. Through parks and around statues. We explored various pubs for lunch, hitting the Grenadier in Belgravia more than once. We awarded Best Pub.

  The London I was fondest of was the one where it was no problem finding roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for dinner.

  Not any more. Every joint where Gwen insisted we dine—thanks to her lethal restaurant guide—I would ask for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the zipper-grabber we’d have for a waiter would burst out laughing, then bring me an entrée that wasn’t dead yet.

  Gwen dragged me to the theater twice. One singing, one talking.

  In the singer, the all-male cast danced around ladders and stools and sang songs about geraniums and apples.

  In the talker, men and women walked back and forth and sat on furniture and discussed life and fucking.

  I accompanied Gwen to fly her plastic proudly at all of the mandatory shopping arenas—Fortnum and Mason, Harvey Nichols, the Burlington Arcade, Jermyn Street, Sloane Street, Beauchamp Place, New Bond Street, Knightsbridge.

  I warned her about trying to shop in Harrods during the summer sales in what had become a hot July. For some reason hot in London seems twice as hot as it is anywhere else. Years ago I’d done it and sworn I’d never go into Harrods again when it was even warm and the summer sales were on. See the food court once, I said. But Gwen ignored me.

  So I sat by the window in a tea room on Knightsbridge directly across from Harrods and put the clock on her. She staggered out in a little over twenty minutes, limped across the street, plopped down in a chair at my table, dabbed at her glistening forehead with a Kleenex, and said: “Dear God, I almost couldn’t get out of there!”

  Gwen stayed over four days in Fort Worth on her way back to California. One thing she wanted to do was check out office space to rent or lease that would be suitable for International Sports Talent. This was in case she got around to making the decision on whether or not to take the job with her ex-husband’s company.

  I suggested she rent, lease, or buy something within a block of Railhead barbecue. My idea didn’t carry much weight.

  Gwen wasn’t sure how much space she’d need. Three or four rooms to start. Office for herself, and space for a secretary–girl Friday, a receptionist, and possibly a computer nerd. She Knew from experience with her Kid that pro golfers, if not all professional athletes, were helpless when it comes to anything other than what they do in the games they play.

  Helpless about travel, lodging, homes, insurance, savings, investments, taxes, expenses, doctors, repairs. All the things normal people deal with are a big mystery as well as an irritable interruption to professional athletes.

  “I can vouch for that,” I said.

  “Otherwise, agents wouldn’t exist,” she said.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, “I don’t believe Smokey Barwood is aware that it’s easier to fly Air Somalia than Delta now.”

  She said, “Perhaps I haven’t mentioned it. If I take this job, we’ll buy Smokey Barwood.”

  “He may well be for sale.”

  Gwen restricted her browsing to the downtown area. It would make the trip to D-FW about thirty minutes—except on those days when the tailgating pickups might decide to have an airport freeway scrimmage with the books-on-tape people and the cell phone people.

  There were two possibilities she liked. One was in the twelve-story Fort Worth Club building in the heart of downtown. The other was a floor in one of the two striking black modern Bass towers that rise more than thirty floors over Sundance Square. Oneski and Twoski, as they were Known to Grady Don Maples, the architecture critic.

  The first media wizard to nab me after I was back in town was Skip Rucker, the local golf writer for the Light & Shopper. I took him to lunch at Joe T.’s so I could watch him get on the outside of eight cheese enchiladas and three jumbo margaritas.

  The paper hadn’t sent him to the British Open, and he was still mad about it. The reason the paper hadn’t sent him was because the British Open had been played in the middle of July, which meant that the Dallas Cowboys would be off to training camp almost any minute, and God Knows, Skip said, that was the most important thing in the world to the ignorant slugs who edited the paper.

  He said, “A hurricane could wipe out Florida, but it wouldn’t be the lead story in our paper if a Dallas Cowboy suffered a hangnail.”

  Skip wrote the same feature story about me that he’d been writing for the past four years. Hometown guy is still one of the game’s top players and money winners. This time he was able to add the part about my two runner-up finishes in the majors.

  I wasn’t thrilled with the headline somebody put on the piece: “Bobby Joe
Does No. 2 Twice.”

  It sounded like I was the one who ate the eight enchiladas.

  That girl golf writer from the Houston Chronicle, Ellen Wheeler, was the media wizard who called to tell me about Anne Marie Sprinkle’s press release, and ask for a reaction.

  This was how I found out that the chairwoman of the National Assembly of Women Commandos was threatening to commit suicide on the golf course at Oakland Hills during the PGA Championship unless the club changed its membership policy.

  “What’s Anne Marie’s complaint?” I asked. “Ben Hogan wasn’t a woman when he won the Open there?”

  “That’s good,” Ellen Wheeler said. “That’s in.”

  “What is her complaint? Surely she Knows it’s not an all-male club.”

  “The club has too many married women.”

  “I’m assuming that’s a joke.”

  “It is. She says the club has too many white Christian members.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m afraid that’s not a joke. She says it’s criminal how many white Christians the club has in it. That’s her protest.”

  “Does she Know Oakland Hills Country Club is in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan—not Sumatra?”

  “She doesn’t even Know she’s a fool. She says every woman in this country owes her career to the things she’s done for women. She said I owe my career to what she’s done for women. Me.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “I called her about the press release. I said while she was being so concerned about my career, I wish she’d given some thought to Sports Illustrated or the New York Times hiring me.”

  “Did she say what round of the PGA she’ll Kill herself in?”

  “No. Does this news crank you up for the tournament?”

  “It does, but I could prepare better if I Knew whether she was going to Kill herself on the front nine or the back nine.”

  Like Skip Rucker, Ellen Wheeler hadn’t been sent to cover the British Open. The reason was, the Houston Texans of the AFC South were poised to go to training camp, and all hands at the paper were needed.

  “It’s over a month till their first game,” Ellen Wheeler said, “and we’re still running five stories a day on the Texans. I wrote one today. They made it the lead. It’s about a defensive bacK’s favorite lunch meat.”

  “The NFL never sleeps,” I said.

  46

  My folks invited us over for dinner while Gwen was still in town. Louise fixed smothered porK chops, scalloped potatoes, fresh corn buttered and scraped off the cob, asparagus casserole, a mixed green salad, and cornbread that by all means didn’t have sugar in it—life was too short.

  For dessert she served strawberry shortcaKe with the strawberries mashed up to maKe them juicy and poured over the homemade butter caKe with a glob of whipped cream on top. My dad said to my mother, “You did good,” and he said to us, “This is how my mama fixed it, and how her mama fixed it, and it’s the only by-god way to fix it.”

  The other time we’d gone to dinner at their townhouse, I’d wanted my dad to show Gwen his den upstairs but the elevator I’d had put in for them was temporarily out of order, and since his battle cry in his retired years was, “Stairs go first,” his hip didn’t want to make the effort.

  But now, since the elevator was working, he took her on the tour.

  Gwen immediately gaped at the bicycle hanging down from the ceiling, one of George Grooves’s prized possessions. He unhooked the bike from the contraption that held it, and applied the kick stand to station it upright on the floor. The bicycle was more than sixty years old but it gleamed like new, although it didn’t resemble any bike you’d see today.

  The frame was a sturdy bright green. A white sheepsKin cover was over the seat. It had white sidewall balloon tires, chrome fenders, and a chrome chain guard. Front-wheel brakes on the handlebars. There were white rubber handlegrips with hotdog leather streamers coming out of the ends. Yellow and red reflector lights front and back, and a white rubber mud flap on the rear fender.

  “This here is a Cromer’s Ace with all the trimmings,” my dad said. “It was my junior high school transportation. It would get me from 3105 College Avenue to E. M. Daggett Junior High, and anywhere else I wanted to go. His mother, Alma Louise Patterson, the woman downstairs, would sit right here side-saddle on this front bar, and get pumped to the Parkway Theater on Saturdays—that’s when movies was worth going to—or to the Griddle for a hamburger, or to Whitley’s Drugstore to see if the new Photoplay magazine had come in yet. I’m sure there’s antique bicycle collectors who’d like to have this, but it ain’t for sale.”

  The room was full of objects that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. Sets of his old golf clubs that had once stormed the public layouts. MacGregor MT irons, Wilson Foremaster woods. Old and new putters standing in corners—the Cash-in, the Bullseye, the Armour Iron Master. Old letter sweaters and jacKets from Paschal High and TCU. Autographed footballs and basKetballs. Some of the golf trophies I’d won in my youth. StacKs of old Life magazines, old football magazines. The heavy old brass-trimmed cash register from the dry-cleaning business. Framed photos on the walls of my folks on vacation in Destin, Florida; Ruidoso, New Mexico; Yellowstone National ParK; and on their Alaska cruise.

  Gwen picKed up an old steel army helmet off a table.

  She grinned. “This what you wore when you Killed gooKs?”

  Draped on the back of a chair at a table was a ragged olive drab jacket. On the shoulder sleeve was the blue-and-white diagonal-striped patch of the 3rd Infantry Division.

  George Grooves said, “When I went to Korea I was supposed to be in supply or transportation—some such thing—but I wound up in a combat unit with an M1 in my hands. I’m proud to say I served under General James Van Fleet. He was a tough sumbitch, a field commander under Patton in World War Two. He’d have Killed ever’ gooK in North Korea if our politicians had let him. Paved the place over and put 7-Elevens on every corner—and right now today you wouldn’t see the goose-steppin’ Commie bastards on CNN.”

  Gwen said, “Eisenhower must be your favorite president, huh?”

  “Harry Truman.”

  “Really?” She looKed surprised.

  “He dropped the Big Mamoo on Tojo’s ass.”

  “There is that. You do Know Truman was a Democrat?”

  “I do. But that’s when Democrats was statesmen instead of ham-headed socialists and saboteurs.”

  “Interesting you don’t picK Eisenhower.”

  “I liKed Ike. But when he was in the office, my experience was that the banKs wouldn’t loan a man money unless he was rich to begin with.”

  “What did you think of Kennedy?”

  “Cuber.”

  “ ‘Cuber’? That’s it?”

  “Cuber and Marilyn Monroe.”

  “What about LBJ?”

  “Biggest crooK that never got caught.”

  “He was a Texan!”

  “That was an unfortunate accident.”

  “Nixon?”

  “Small-time crooK. Deserved to get caught.”

  “Ford.”

  “Pardoned the small-time crooK.”

  “Carter.”

  “Hostages . . . no Olympics . . . blamed America’s problems on the two-martini lunch. He was a joKe.”

  “Reagan.”

  “He outspent the Commies, sent ’em limpin’ to the dugout, brought down the Wall.”

  “Bush.”

  “Most decent man ever sat in the office . . . spent a lifetime serving his country. Could have Killed more ragheads, is all.”

  “Dare I mention Clinton?”

  “I’m under doctor’s orders not to discuss him.”

  “Little Bush.”

  “Went after the terrorist cruds, restored pride in the military, captured the Big Raghead.”

  “Feel good about the future, do you?”

  “The future belongs to you, little lady. I’ve had mine. But my people will do what they can
to see you don’t wind up with that pretty face of yours hid behind a veil.”

  In general, I scored it another successful evening with my folks.

  47

  here’s a scene I never grow tired of watching on the old-movie channel. It’s the moment in every romantic comedy where two smart dames in a supper club lob wisecracks at each other over this nattily dressed guy with a pompadour who carries a cigarette case and doesn’t worK for a living even though it’s the depth of the Depression.

  When I was a younger movie nut, as opposed to the mature movie nut I am now, I used to thinK it would be fun to be that guy. Have Irene Dunne go to bat for you against the wealthy snob lady in the silly hat. Nothing to do but select your natty attire every day and go sit around somewhere and smoKe cigarettes.

  But I came to conclude that it might not have been that much fun after I listened more closely to my folks talking about how central air conditioning wasn’t too plentiful back then, or even that reliable.

  The thought crept into my mind again the day I finally arranged for my two favorite ladies to meet. I took Gwen and Alleene Simmons to lunch at Colonial Country Club. Gwen and Alleene were both Irene Dunne to me. There wasn’t a Gail what’s-her-name in the room. Gail Patrick, that’s it.

  Besides that, no man in Fort Worth would ever carry a cigarette case. Not unless he was a zipper-grabber who liked to eat dinner at the Grey-hound bus station.

  We lunched in the Cork Room at a smoking table where you can look out on the golf course. I nodded at people I Knew at other tables—wives in exercise togs, tennis togs, men in business suits, men dressed for golf.

  A member dropped by the table to tell me I’d made him proud at the British Open. He said he couldn’t understand how that lightweight Englishman ever won shit. Happy Pangburn. Whatever his name is.

  When’s the PGA, he asked?

  Two weeks, I said.

  Would I be there?

  What a question. It was the year’s last major. But maybe it went with the time of year. August. Hot and dreary. Football season arriving. Pennant races heating up. The PGA Championship ranks fourth in prestige compared to the other majors, which is unfortunate. The PGA at least is the championship of something—the Professional Golfers’ Association of America. Just as our Open is the championship of the U.S. Golf Association. Just as the British Open is the championship of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which is the governing body of golf everywhere but in the USA. Most people don’t realize it but the year’s other major, the Masters, isn’t the championship of anything. The Masters has simply carved out a place for itself as a Grand Slam event through the beauty of the Augusta National course on TV and what Bobby Jones has meant to the history of the game.