Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  Knut and Vashtine finally appeared, coming out of separate wings of the soundstage. Knut was in black tie and tails, Vashtine in a flowing white virginal wedding gown. They met at the center of the stage, joined hands, and bowed to the crowd. They were greeted by whoops and applause.

  Vashtine tooK the mike and said she first wanted to thank her good friends, Stepping in Shit and Spit in the Food, for providing the entertainment for the occasion. “Vasn’t dey vunnerfull? Ein focKin tell you for sure!”

  The bride said she wanted to thanK her other celebrity friends for their presence today. Up there in the Met Life blimp right now, overhead, looking down on us, were RocKy Stunner and Spicey Gates, stars of the new CBS drama Yesterday’s Tomorrow. And soon, if not any moment now, she said, there would be a fly-by of a private jet in which a very close friend from the entertainment world, the talented rapper Snot Fishy Poot Stain, would interrupt his busy schedule to glance down on us and smile as the plane passed over.

  We caught Jerry Grimes looKing up.

  Vashtine’s own musicians slouched onto the stage, and she went about introducing them and giving a short thumbnail. I don’t believe anyone listened any closer than we did.

  Gwen said, “This wedding ranks high on the list of bad ideas.”

  “Worse than Vanilla Coca-Cola?” I said.

  “Maybe not that bad.”

  Suggestions were batted back and forth among us.

  The wedding didn’t come close to maKing our final list of bad ideas. In no particular order, the results were:

  Vanilla Coca-Cola

  Fish tacos

  Rap

  Synchronized swimming

  Foam-rubber pillows

  MinisKirts with white boots

  Long sideburns on guys

  The Bowl Championship Series

  Modern art

  Green pasta

  Designated hitter

  Low carb

  Talk radio

  Belly putter

  Globalization

  As Knut nodded in agreement, Vashtine announced to the crowd that they had spoKen to God and had learned they did not require the services of a minister to be married. God had told them they could maKe up their own vows, which they had done, by golly, to be sure.

  As best I recall, their ceremony went liKe this:

  Vashty: “Noots, my lovey dovey, you have winnen my heart, and Ein bam committink to you, mine bliffsul trothen.”

  Noots: “Vashty, I pledge to you the faithfulness of my sKin and fibers, and I say let us romp over the peaks and valleys of our bodies, golly darn.”

  Vashty: “To be sure, Cupid has smitten us head over heels, and I say to you, Noots, we vill go stompin’ through the berries and leaves and not mindin’ dat rainin vit storms of life—praise dem apostle focKers.”

  Noots: “It is so, my beloved Vashty, as you can see, I too am the passionate one, and it is for the dirt and flowers and trees of the world that I say to you I must drinK all the juices of your path, praise the Jesus guy.”

  Vashty: “My complete ladylove is what I dumpen on you, Noots. May you sleepin on mine doorsteppen forever. You have wipen away der sadness of my life, which vas empty as trees in SvensKa vinter.”

  It went on liKe that for a half hour, I’m guessing. Maybe longer. I Know it was still going on—we could hear it in the distance—as we drifted away with the rest of the crowd.

  50

  ll through the first round of the PGA when I was shooting the A speed limit, your basic 70, and parking myself on the scoreboard at even par, three off the lead, I occasionally thought about how Oakland Hills had suffered from acute schizophrenia—to haul out a word I wouldn’t try to spell by myself.

  Eight majors had been played there before this one. Six U.S. Opens and two PGAs. Dating bacK to 1924. Four of those winners made sense at the time. They were giants. I refer to Ralph Guldahl in ’37, Ben Hogan in ’51, Gene Littler in ’61, and Gary Player in ’72. But OaKland Hills had produced just as many off-brand winners. FluKes. I refer to Cyril Walker in ’24, David Graham in ’79, Andy North in ’85, and Steve Jones in ’96. Andy North did save the world from T. C. Chen, who wasn’t even well Known in Taiwan. You had to give Andy that.

  There was no logical explanation for the layout’s split personality. All I Knew was, I wouldn’t have been embarrassed to join the fluke parade.

  Ralph Guldahl deserved to be ranked with the giants. I explained why to Grady Don and Jerry.

  Guldahl was a tall, stoop-shouldered, slow-playing Texan from Dallas who swung at the ball with a caddie-dip. Kind of hurled his body at the ball. He claimed he didn’t Know what he was doing—“I just play golf.” But during a stretch of four years, from ’36 through ’39, he was the greatest player in the world. He climbed out of the box ahead of his fellow Texans and onetime high school rivals from Fort Worth. Couple of guys named Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan.

  Guldahl, whose hair was long and dark—he often combed it between shots—won three straight Western Opens from ’36 through ’38 (that’s when the Western was considered a major), two straight U.S. Opens, in ’37 and ’38, and the Masters in ’39 after finishing second the two previous years. Six majors in four years, is what it was.

  But Guldahl made the mistake of writing an instruction book, Groove Your Golf. Bobby Jones wrote the foreword for it. Guldahl then made the bigger mistaKe of studying the sequence photos in the book.

  Flipping those pages made him start to “think” about his swing. The result was, his game completely disappeared. And so did Ralph Guldahl at the age of only thirty—off the Tour, into the insurance business, and eventually into the obscurity of a club pro’s job in Tarzana, California.

  “What’s the moral?” Grady Don said. “Don’t read or write?”

  When I shot the speed limit again in Friday’s second round, thanks to an old Wilson 8802 putter that believed it was an Armour, my even-par 140 put me in fifth place, still two off the lead. But I was a presence.

  You couldn’t say the same for Knut Thorssun, the newlywed. The day after his wedding night, which was the first round, he shot a 79. Then Vashtine left town for a gig, and I observed Knut standing by the gallery rope on the putting green having an intimate chat with Pookie SteeKley, Claude’s adventurous wife. Knut then withdrew, pleading illness, and he and PooKie hadn’t been seen since.

  But bacK to me, the presence. The tricK was to try to be a presence late Sunday afternoon when there was little doubt in my mind that the last four holes at OaKland Hills would decide the PGA Championship.

  The last four holes at OaKland Hills were flat-out tough. They didn’t have a nicKname, like Amen Corner in Augusta, or Abalone Corner at Pebble Beach, but Grady Don tried to come up with one.

  He and Jerry Grimes barely made the cut at 148 and blamed 15 through 18 for maKing their lives hell. After the second round, Grady Don said, “I don’t want to brag, but I parred two of the ho bitches today.”

  My best guess was that Ho Bitches might not stick as a nicKname with the OaKland Hills members.

  The 15th is a tree-lined 400-yard par-4, dogleg left, with a bunKer in the awKward middle of the fairway, right at the bend of it. The green is well bunkered and shaped liKe an upside-down saucer. For two days, I’d Hogan’d up short of the fairway bunKer off the tee, and jumped on a six-iron to the green, and gotten away with it for two pars.

  The next hole is one of America’s finest. It’s a 406-yard par-4, sharp dogleg right, with a big pond you have to deal with on your tee ball as well as your approach. Drive it a little too far right and you’re in the rough behind two big willow trees or in the pond. On the second shot, you can be short of the green and in the water or a tad wide to the right and in the water. I’d been creeping the drive into the fairway and going with an eight-iron to the green, and so far I’d stayed dry.

  The 200-yard par-3 17th has six bunkers guarding the green, and two of them are so deep, you can’t see the flag if you’re standing in the bottom.
From the tee, you’re looking at a green sitting considerably higher up than where you are, and a long ridge divides the putting surface into two bowls. If you wind up in the wrong bowl, just take your three-putt bogey and move on. That’s what I did in the first two rounds.

  The 18th hole is an absolute Killer par-4, a long dogleg right. The Oakland Hills members still play it as a par-5.

  BacK in 1924, at the National Open, where the obscure Cyril Walker stole the trophy from Bobby Jones, the 18th played as a 465-yard par-5, hicKory being what it was. In the ’37 U.S. Open, where Ralph Guldahl nipped Sam Snead at the finish, the hole had been lengthened to a 537-yard par-5, the steel shaft being what it was. It became a narrow par-4 of 460 yards for Hogan’s Open, and it’s been a par-4 for the pros ever since, but it had now been lengthened to 497 yards, titanium and the two-piece ball being what they are.

  William Ben Hogan, not Benjamin—iceman, hawK, bantam, club designer, near-fatal-car-wreck survivor, oilman, Texas icon—went about experiencing a flood of emotions on the last four holes at OaKland Hills in the notorious ’51 U.S. Open.

  That Open was, by all accounts, the major that presented the competitors with the tightest fairways, deepest rough, and speediest greens ever conceived. Hogan got to Know the four holes intimately.

  He double-bogeyed the 18th in the first round when he drove in the rough then three-putted, and he double-bogeyed the 15th in the third round when he tried to skirt the fairway bunKer and wound up in the trees on the left. But he managed some revenge on both holes in the last round.

  In the last round he drove short of the bunKer in the fairway on 15, then slow-faded a three-iron in there five feet from the flag for a birdie. And on the last hole, he nailed a solid drive, positioning himself for the perfect six-iron and the twenty-foot birdie putt he coaxed into the cup for the newsreels.

  Hogan’s three-under 67 that afternoon is still regarded as the greatest last round in a major ever, and for two large reasons. One, he did it on a day when the average score of the field was 78, and two, he did it on the toughest track ever devised by man, ghoul, or Robert Trent Jones.

  The two pars I saved there on Thursday and Friday by getting up and down out of the front left bunKer weren’t liKely to be discussed at length in any of the history books.

  It had occurred to me that one of the reasons I might have been playing well at the ripe old age of forty-four in the last major of the year was because I hadn’t seen Jarvis Phillip W. Burchcroft around anywhere among the rules wizards.

  I was relaxing in the locKer room on Friday after my round with Grady Don, having a beer, when I found out why Mr. Rules wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  Dace FacKle, the executive director of the U.S. Golf Association, came wandering in and dropped the news on us.

  It so happened that Jarvis Phillip W. Burchcroft was in the hospital and badly in need of a liver transplant or he would be departing this life in a matter of weeKs, if not days.

  His wife, Dalilla, the refrigerator heiress, had rushed him to the Mayo Clinic in JacKsonville, Florida, where he was now waiting for a suitable liver to be donated.

  Dace FacKle was carrying a big greeting card, two feet by two feet. He was in the process of asKing as many contestants as he could round up to sign the card and offer words of encouragement if they wished. He would see that the card reached Jarvis.

  “Jarvis has meant a lot to the game,” he said.

  “He’s certainly meant a lot to my game,” I said.

  Well, I didn’t want Jarvis Phillip W. Burchcroft to die, for Christ saKe, no matter how much he’d screwed me. I signed the card.

  Grady Don wouldn’t sign it, however.

  “I don’t even Know the guy,” Grady Don said.

  Dace Fackle shrugged, started to move on.

  “He’s waiting for somebody to die so he can have the liver?” Grady Don said to Dace FacKle.

  “That is the situation, yes.”

  Grady Don said, “Tell him this is a hell of a coincidence. I’m waiting for a blacK guy to die so I can have his dicK.”

  51

  My swing Kept me on the practice range longer than I’d expected and this caused us to be a little late for the festivities Friday night, but Anne Marie Sprinkle was still at the microphone on the soundstage in the tented village when we arrived, and she was shouting, “My friends, I ask you this: How many Oriental transvestites are members of private clubs in America today where the corporate pigs play golf?”

  “None!” the crowd responded.

  “Correct! And how many repressed and dominated Muslims would you say are members of private country clubs in the United States of Corporate-Pig America?”

  “None!” the crowd hollered.

  Crowd might be too generous a word. I estimated there were maybe thirty people you’d consider to be part of Anne Marie Sprinkle’s group, and this included the two beat-up old drag queens, Sister Janelle and Sister Emajean. Even so, the protestors were greatly outnumbered by the police, the security staff, and the press.

  Sister Janelle and Sister Emajean’s names were printed in blue letters on their orange shirts. Their faces were painted blue and orange. They wore orange tights, blue capes, and black patent-leather boots, and they mingled among everyone, offering pieces of candy from a box of Godiva chocolates.

  We immediately ran into Ellen Wheeler, the Houston writer. After I introduced her to Gwen, she brought us up to speed.

  “She’s not going to commit suicide,” Ellen said. “She opened up with that announcement.”

  “Well, hecK, why are we here?” I said.

  Gwen elbowed me.

  Ellen Wheeler said Annie Marie SprinKle told the crowd she had given it careful thought and concluded that a Knife or a gun would have left too messy a photo-op. Even trying to drown herself in the pond on 16 might not have worKed. One of the despicable “white Christians” would probably have jumped in and saved her. It would have been futile. So she’d talKed it over at length with the voice of her inner self, and decided that she should continue fighting the war on behalf of oppressed minorities as a living person instead of a martyr.

  “So I swear to you now,” Anne Marie was saying—Pocahontas on one side of her and two Kodiak bears on the other—“when you see the poor immigrant laborer, the laborer who mows lawns for white evangelical Christians, and he’s looKing despondent because he’s denied the right to play a round of golf at Los Angeles Country Club . . . I’ll be there!”

  “Yes!” Crowd deal.

  “And when you see the illegal alien from Mozambique, who has only come here for a better life but can’t find work because he doesn’t speaK English—let me finish—when you see this humble person refused a chance to play a mere nine holes at Dallas Country Club, I’ll be there!”

  “All right!”

  “And when you see the Cuban drug dealer fresh out of prison, who was only incarcerated for trying to feed his family, a man who only wants to learn how to play the game that Tiger Woods plays, but white corporate-pig Christians refuse him the right to play a round of golf at the Seminole Club in Palm Beach, Florida, I’ll be there!”

  “Go, Anne Marie!”

  “And when you see the two disenfranchised lesbians humbled and in tears because they’ve been denied the right to enter the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, I’ll be there!”

  I squeezed on Gwen. “Is this off-message enough for you?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Tom Joad,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Henry Fonda.”

  “What—?”

  “It’s The Grapes of Golf.”

  “What are you talKing about?”

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, and we left.

  52

  s most people who dwell in the land of golfdom were aware, the crowd-pleasing stud-bubba cupcaKe after two rounds of the PGA was Scott Pritchard, he of the innocent good looKs and the tee ball that looKs like it’s brought to you by NASA.

&n
bsp; The awesome sight of Scott launching a drive has often urged Grady Don Maples to say, “Houston, there ain’t no problem.”

  Scott’s rounds of 70 and 68 had given him the lead by one stroke over Cheetah Farmer, Dunn Matson, and Stump Bowen, and by two over me and Madonna Els. Among other things, this meant that my gallery would be shy one female in the third round, and maybe for the rest of the PGA.

  I assured Gwen that I understood. She was free to follow, cheer, and kick her Kid’s ball out of the rough with her foot if no marshal was looking.

  “I have no intention of trying to hide my excitement,” she said.

  “I don’t expect you to,” I said. “Family comes first in time of war and majors. A mother’s worK is never done when it comes to golf.”

  “I should write those down,” she said, with lip.

  How to get her bacK to my gallery?

  Well, how about I strap a light-running Flagstaff, Arizona, on the joint? Don’t forget Winona . . . Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.

  TalKing about a Route 66. Double sizzicKs. The wheelchairs.

  I didn’t looK at anything but fairways and greens all day. One or two fringes. Must have been that secret I’d learned on the practice range the night before. Get comfortable and hit it. I was two under by the time I reached the Ho Bitches, and when I routine-parred the 15th, birdied the 16th and 17th, and drained a ten-footer to save par at the 18th, Mitch bent over, slapped his Knee, and started laughing.

  He said, “B.J., you done whip this place like a fishin’-pole lawyer from Texas whip a tall-building lawyer from New YorK City.”

  Ellen Wheeler grabbed me as I emerged from the scorer’s tent. She’d been inside the ropes with some other writers over the last three holes.

  “Quick,” she said breathlessly. “Something for me, all mine, before you go to the interview. Today’s round.”

  Smiling, I said, “Oh, I just went out there today to try to nurture myself and achieve harmony in this hectic world.”