The Franchise Babe: A Novel

by Dan Jenkins

  Right. Those people. The ones who made “the Dinah” famous in the first place.

  Along with them, predictably, came the Unsightly, the Demented, the Get-in-the-Holes, and the You-Da-Mans. The sophisticates who always come out of nowhere when there are TV cameras on the premises.

  As for the demonstrators outside the front gates, they hadn’t grown much in number by Saturday. Say a half dozen.

  Among the additions I believe I observed a Morticia Addams, an Alexander the Great, a Joan Baez, two more Che Guevaras, and what looked like three more Buffy Sainte-Maries.

  All of the instruction stuff must have worked. Ginger played jam-up, threw down a 71. Marian Hornbuckle, who was paired with Ginger, shot the same score. That 71 was nearly the best round of the day, but Sophie Gustafson came in with an even par 70, which moved her into a tie for first.

  At the end of the day the scoreboard showed an unusual number of accomplished players in contention going into Sunday. The top ten:

  1. Penny Cooper

  73–71–74—218

  T1. Sophie Gustafson

  74–74–70—218

  3. Paula Creamer

  73–74–72—219

  T3. Marian Hornbuckle

  74–74–71—219

  5. Ginger Clayton

  76–73–71—220

  T5. Jan Dunn

  72–75–73—220

  T5. Natalie Gulbis

  75–70–75—220

  8. Morgan Pressel

  72–77–72—221

  T8. Suzy Scott

  71–78–72—221

  T8. Hee Bee Kim

  78–71–72—221

  Before I joined Thurlene and Ginger in their cabana for a room service dinner, I received a long-distance call from Hoyt Newkirk in Ruidoso.

  He said, “Son, I got Jimmy Choo Choo and Eddie Wing Tips out here playin’ a little golf and they want me to give ’em some action on the girlie tournament you’re at. How’s that there Ginger playin’?”

  “She’s in contention,” I said.

  “Hell, that don’t tell me nothin’. I know she’s in contention. I ain’t brain dead even though I live in New Mexico. She’s two shots and four girlies behind, tied with two of them others, and one shot ahead of three more. Is she gonna win it, is what I’m asking.”

  “She thinks she is,” I said.

  “That’s all I need to know. Choo Choo and Wing Tips want to give me Ginger at twenty to one against the field,” Hoyt said. “I gotta go for it. Man’s got to make a bet every day, don’t you see? He might be walkin’ around lucky and not know it.”

  Not much was said at dinner. Ginger ate soup and salad and was quiet, although not in her mind. I knew she was already focusing on tomorrow’s round. The hardest thing for a golfer to do in competition is keep concentrating, stay in the present, not be bothered by outside influences, take the course one shot at a time, one hole at a time. But I didn’t say any of that to Ginger. She knew it, and I wasn’t in the guru business anyhow.

  Ginger retired to her own room after dinner to let a TV movie put her to sleep. Thurlene and I went to the hotel bar for a while. I had a beer and she had a white wine. We took our drinks to an outdoor terrace off the bar so she could smoke.

  I said, “You can be proud of that kid of yours…playing herself back into this championship the way she has. The leaderboard is something else. This is some kind of tournament. It’s certainly more fun for me than watching Tiger Woods play blindfolded and beat up on the slugs.”

  “It is a golf tournament,” Thurlene said. “I wish I could enjoy it.”

  Nothing was said for a moment, and for whatever reason I found myself laughing quietly about something. Thurlene looked at me with what you call your curiosity.

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s not important.”

  “It must have been. What?”

  I said, “Aw, I was just thinking how there are those in the world who might question my scrupulous journalistic objectivity these days.”

  “Because of what’s going on with us, I take it?”

  Forcing a smile, I said, “To be honest about it, yeah. Here I am bedding down the mother of a cover subject, giving her career advice, and rooting myself silly for her. You probably can’t find that in the Columbia Journalism Review handbook.”

  “No, I suppose not. What shall we do about it?”

  “I hope we don’t do anything,” I said. “Love trumps journalism every time. Anybody with sense knows that.”

  40

  In my day I’ve run into my share of professional disaster-dodgers. The people who tell you, “I was supposed to be on that plane,” or, “We had left the island only an hour before the tidal wave hit,” or “The molten lava came within fifty yards of our cabin.”

  I never expected to become a professional disaster-dodger myself, but Sunday morning changed that. Now it was possible for me to say to somebody in the future, “I could have been standing there when the statue toppled over.”

  The fact is, the statue didn’t topple over. It was pushed over by a turban, a caftan, a Charles Manson, and two Buffy Sainte-Maries. They had bought tickets to the tournament for the express purpose of doing it, and they had proudly surrendered to a TV news crew.

  Thurlene and I arrived a half hour after it happened. We found Claudia Bradley supervising the workers who had lifted the statue back up on its pedestal and were securing it with two-by-fours and wires attached to the clubhouse roof.

  The statue hadn’t been drastically damaged. Claudia was holding one of the statue’s arms in her hand, the arm that had reached out toward the sixth hole, “Darryl Zanuck.” It was hoped the arm could be glued back onto the body of Francois D’Aubigne Lagoutte.

  Claudia was a professional disaster-dodger herself.

  “I was standing right there,” she said, pointing. “But I saw it coming quicker than Ann Wendell and Francois did. Ann had the audacity to be out here acting like nothing happened yesterday. Nothing that involved her in the least. They were standing together. She was saying something to him, but Francois wasn’t listening. He was admiring himself.”

  It seemed to happen in slow motion, Claudia said.

  “It was like watching on TV when the statue of Saddam came down in Baghdad. I remember thinking that very thing. I was thinking, ‘God in Heaven…here comes Saddam. Saddam is coming down on top of me.’ But I jumped out of the way in the nick of time.”

  Ann Wendell and Francois weren’t so nimble. They were struck and pinned under the statue. Both were rushed to a hospital, Ann with a broken arm and broken leg, Francois with cracked ribs.

  Claudia said, “Ann was in a daze on the stretcher when she was carried to the ambulance. She kept mumbling cuss words…and saying things to somebody named Ed. She was saying something about a thermostat. I have no idea what she was talking about.”

  Thurlene said, “I do. I’ll tell you about it someday over cocktails and cigarettes.”

  When Francois was carted to the ambulance on a stretcher, according to Claudia, the Frenchman was mumbling that he might have to rethink his involvement with the sport of golf and the United States along with it.

  I said, “That should be welcome news to everybody, except Marsha Wilson.”

  Thurlene smiled. Claudia smiled.

  Claudia had raced out to the practice range in a golf cart to catch Debbie Wendell before her tee time, to tell her what had happened to her mother. Claudia offered to send her to the hospital in a courtesy car immediately, but Debbie said if her mother’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, she wouldn’t withdraw. Her mother would want her to play. She would visit her mother in the hospital after the round.

  Debbie asked, “Is it her right arm that’s broken?”

  Claudia nodded, wondering if it was the right hand Ann Wendell used when she’d punch her daughter around.

  Disguising a grin as best she could, Debbie said, “Gee, I hope it’s not too painful.”

  And
went back to hitting practice balls.

  The golf bitches were out in force Sunday. They made themselves known in the grandstands behind the ninth and eighteenth greens, rooting for their favorites.

  As the players came onto the greens, one group after another, it was impossible not to hear:

  “Squat on it, baby!”

  “Tongue it, sweetie!”

  “Line me up next, honey!”

  Thurlene was worried about Ginger being distracted in the pairing with Jan Dunn in the last round, Jan a big favorite with the hand-holding-shorts-tank-tops-hiking-boots-tattoo people.

  This being California, play started early in the day, so the Horse Dog would be concluded before the network news came on in the Eastern time zone. West Coast sports events are always a problem for TV and the daily print swine from the East and Midwest who have deadlines to meet.

  I was not on such a deadline. My piece on the franchise babe was a feature story, one that would have a “slow closing” and would be known around SM world as “rather a long takeout on this teenage whapper.”

  Pairings sheets were passed out freely to fans as they entered the grounds, and even a loon-dancing professor might figure out that the winner was likely to come out of the last five twosomes.

  Which were as follows:

  12:04

  Suzy Scott & Hee Bee Kim

  12:13

  Natalie Gulbis & Morgan Pressel

  12:22

  Ginger Clayton & Jan Dunn

  12:31

  Paula Creamer & Marian Hornbuckle

  12:40

  Penny Cooper & Sophie Gustafson

  Thurlene and I walked down to a spot behind the first green to watch those five groups come through.

  Behind the first green was where the SM photographer found me.

  He was a muscular, blond, blue-eyed guy about my age with six or eight cameras draped over him and around him.

  In a German accent, he said, “Your papers, please!”

  “Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!” I replied.

  We shook warmly.

  He was Manfred Gunther, one of our ace shooters. Once with Stern, once with Der Spiegel, and with SM the past five years. One of the shooters I didn’t mind socializing with. He rarely talked about lenses.

  I said, “I knew we had a photographer here somewhere. This is Ginger Clayton’s mother. You’ll want to shoot her too…looking concerned…but attractively.”

  Thurlene took out a mirror.

  Manfred Gunther said, “I came in last night from L.A. I was shooting Lakers. They weren’t too cooperative. But no athlete in team sports is cooperative today…unless you have drugs to share.”

  “I’ve heard the rumor,” I said.

  Manfred creeped around Thurlene, firing away with one of his cameras, shooting from different angles. She frowned at him, raised her eyebrows at him, laughed at him, and eventually pretended to gaze down the fairway for him, looking concerned.

  “Where’s the babe?” Manfred said. “I only have an hour to shoot her. Gary wants me in Dallas tonight for the Mavs and Spurs.”

  I said, “The babe is in the short navy blue shorts, wheels you’ll dream about, white shirt, white visor, blond ponytail. You can’t miss her unless you’re more interested in her caddie…which I know better than.”

  “Ya vol,” Manfred said, and ducked under the gallery ropes and walked over to join the pack of other shooters.

  All of the serious contenders parred the first two holes. Ginger greased the lip on birdie putts of twenty feet and fifteen feet on both greens, twice almost causing Thurlene to risk straining a muscle in her back as she tried to body-English the golf ball into the cup.

  Then everybody but Ginger parred the third hole, “Howard Hughes.” Ginger’s approach shot left her a twenty-five-foot birdie putt, but she three-putted for a bogey five, missing her second putt from three feet. She mouthed an obscenity at the face of her putter.

  The bogey put her three strokes behind the leaders, Penny Cooper and Sophie Gustafson, and two behind Jan Dunn and Marian Hornbuckle.

  “I can’t believe she three-putted from there,” Thurlene said with a heavy sigh. “It’s crazy.”

  I said, “Lot of holes left to play.”

  “Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “I feel better now.”

  41

  The charming yells for Jan Dunn, reminiscent as they were of high school cheerleader squads, came from her rabid support group—the beer-swilling-shorts-tank-tops-hiking-boots-tattoo people:

  “Jan, Jan…she’s our man…

  If she can’t do it, nobody can!”

  She was their man?

  The chant was heard on several occasions as Ginger and Jan walked from green and tee, or tee to green, throughout the front nine.

  Another of their faves:

  “Let’s go, Jan!

  You’re the babe!

  Win it for us, honey.

  We’ll get you laid!”

  Not exactly what cheerleaders had once yelled to encourage the Paschal Panthers or the Woodrow Wilson Wildcats.

  Ginger said afterward that when she and Jan were standing on a tee, waiting for the group ahead to move on, Jan repeatedly apologized for the behavior of “those people.” Jan swore she didn’t know any of them and she didn’t want to know any of them.

  Ginger confessed that they bothered her now and then but overall she was proud of herself for keeping her head on and shutting out everything but her own golf game.

  Thurlene, of course, wanted to pour Drano down their throats, or set fire to them, or both.

  The mom was all set to break out a Xanax only a moment before Ginger ran in a putt for a birdie at the seventh hole, “Yvonne de Carlo.” It pulled her back to even par on the round, tied with Jan Dunn and within one stroke of the leaders, who were now Penny Cooper and Marian Hornbuckle.

  Sophie Gustafson, the coleader after fifty-four holes, and Paula Creamer had gradually fallen out of contention with a string of three-putt bogeys.

  “My kid is going to win this golf tournament,” Thurlene said. “She believes it too. I can tell by the way she looks, the way she walks, the way she acts. I don’t know how she’s going to do it, but she is.”

  “You’re saying I can start typing?” I said.

  “You might wait a while longer.”

  Looking back on it, if you went strictly by the numbers, Ginger was in a four-way tie for the lead after nine holes.

  She and Jan Dunn shot even par 35s on the front nine while Penny Cooper turned in a two-over 37, and Marian Hornbuckle, who started one stroke in back of Penny, went out in 36.

  In real time, the four-way deadlock occurred over a period of thirty-five minutes.

  What added to the chaos of trying to watch and keep up with things was the way the combatants were spread out. Ginger and Jan were playing two holes ahead of Penny Cooper and one hole ahead of Marian Hornbuckle, who was one hole in front of Penny.

  All that’s part of the deal if you’re accustomed to watching golf tournaments.

  The tenth hole, “Fatty Arbuckle,” was a long par-four and was misnamed in my opinion. The fairway wasn’t that wide and the green wasn’t that big, or fat, I should say. But Ginger birdied it when she launched a big drive and rifled a five-iron onto the green and cozied a downhill putt into the cup from fifteen feet.

  That birdie, and the two pars that followed, gave Ginger a one-stroke lead on the field, but only momentarily. Penny Cooper birdied the ninth to pull back even with her.

  It was a three-way race at this point. Ginger Clayton one under on the round, Penny Cooper one over, and Jan Dunn even par, one shot back. Marian Hornbuckle had hooked a ride on the bogey train. She was now four over par and for all purposes out of it.

  There’s always a defining moment in a golf tournament—in any sports event, in fact—and I thought this one came at the thirteenth hole, the number one handicap hole on the course, a viciously long and crooked par-four. It was a 46
8-yard hole, dogleg right, palms lining both sides of the fairway, bunkers surrounding the green, narrow opening.

  The hole was aptly named “Box Office Poison.”

  Ginger had bogeyed it three straight days by hitting a poor drive into the palms and two poor second shots into bunkers.

  But this time she played it the way she played my laptop in New Mexico.

  Off the tee, she hit a rocket fade of 275 yards around the corner of the dogleg. Then from roughly 190 yards she clubfaced a low, screaming three-iron that was on the flag like a laser beam. The ball ran right through the opening and onto the putting surface and rolled up to within a foot of the flag in the back of the green.

  It was some golf shot, boy. Kick-in birdie at the toughest hole. It was like an eagle. It was like picking up two shots on everybody.

  The shot caused the biggest roar of the day from the crowd, and the second biggest squeal of the week from the mom. Thurlene couldn’t possibly have topped her ecstatic squeal at the sight of Tang Chen hitting it out of bounds on Friday.

  But we didn’t celebrate the defining moment very long.

  Ginger stepped up on the next tee with a wedge in her hands and bogeyed the fucking lollipop.

  The straightaway ninety-nine-yard par-three with no sand and no water. “Shirley Temple.” It should have been a simple pitch shot, another potential birdie, and no worse than a par.

  But she got cute and took it to the butcher shop. The pin was on the front and she tried a bump-and-run. The trouble was, her shot found a wet spot in the fairway some fifteen yards short of the green—and stuck.