Final Rounds

by James Dodson

  My own method of subverting the system, if it came to that, was a caddy I knew named Bruce who said he could make sure I got on the Old Course anytime I wanted. Bruce was one of St. Andrews’ most respected loopers and had carried the bags of lots of tour pros and famous folk. His office was a barstool at the Niblick Pub, beside the Old Course Hotel, and when Dad and I arrived there after watching George Bush tee off, I was sorry to learn that Bruce was still out on the course with a client. We ordered sandwiches, and I left a message for him to call me later at the Scores Hotel.

  We took our pints out to the Niblick’s little courtyard and stood beside the gray stone wall overlooking the knoll where I’d first come and stood and stared out at the Road Hole in the rain, twenty years ago. Dad sipped his beer and seemed pleased to be looking once again at this venerable, embattled turf. Then he turned to me and said, “Why is it so important for you to hook up with your friend Bruce?”

  I shrugged and explained to him that regardless of how we fared in the daily ballot, Bruce could probably make sure we got on the Old Course. He knew the right people and had proved helpful in the past.

  “Why would you want to do that?” my father said puzzledly, watching a group of golfers now approaching their balls around the green. One golfer’s ball was in the Road Hole bunker, and two more were well short of the putting surface. A fourth was apparently somewhere over the back near the pebble road that borders the green and makes the approach so lethal. No one, I noted, had found the putting surface in regulation.

  “That should be rather obvious. We didn’t come all this way not to play the Old Course, did we?”

  He thought for a moment. “Do you think it’s fair if we ignore the rules and get to play the Old Course while someone who follows them doesn’t?”

  “That’s not the issue, Dad. The issue is, half those people don’t really care about playing the Old Course. To them it’s just a trophy, something to boast about back home. They’ll remember more about the shop where they bought five cashmere sweaters with the Old Course logo than they’ll remember about the Old Course itself.”

  I felt like I was twelve years old, trying to explain that I’d only glanced at that week’s spelling list, which Donnie Alberson, a guy with a great future bagging groceries at Winn Dixie, had “somehow” gotten his hands on and passed around on the school bus.

  “So why do you want to play it? You’ve played it plenty of times.”

  We looked at each other. It was me who finally blinked; I looked away, shrugged again, and shook my head. I didn’t agree with him, but he had a point. I had played it many times. Why was it so all-important now? Of course, I knew why. We both did. But I didn’t want to have to say it, and I’m sure he didn’t want to have to hear it. At Muirfield, I’d feared my father was going to say he had to go home after St. Andrews.

  Now at St. Andrews, I was certain of it. It was possible, even likely, that any round on the Old Course would be our final round of golf together. It would be a fitting way to finish, but a finish is a finish, and that’s what I feared most.

  “If that’s how you want it,” I said. “We’ll put all our hopes on the ballot.”

  “That’s the only way I want it, and you would, too, if you’d just think about it.”

  We emptied our pint glasses and walked into the adjoining pro shop at the Old Course Hotel, where a friend of mine, Neil Paton, works as the head professional. Neil and I had once played a delightful round on the New Course (laid out by Old Tom Morris in 1895 and a track, some feel, that’s an even sterner test of character than the Old), during which he’d helped cure a wicked shanking problem of mine, and I wanted my father to meet him. Neil and I were about the same age and we both had young children.

  I liked to think of Neil as a genuine son of St. Andrews in the tradition of Young Tom Morris, who in 1868 succeeded his father, Old Tom (the Old Course’s most famous caretaker, a four-time Open champion) in capturing the British Open championship. Young Tom won the Open three more times and brought championship scoring to new levels of brilliance before learning, during a big money match against the Park brothers (Willie and Mungo, themselves both Open champions) at North Berwick in 1875, that his wife Margaret had given birth to their baby but lay gravely ill. Before Tommy could reach home, both Margaret and the baby were dead. Three months later, on Christmas Day, Young Tom Morris died, too. The popular legend holds that Young Tom died of a broken heart, though strong drink may have played a part. Young Tom was a teetotaler until his wife and child died.

  I told my father this tale as we waited in line to see if Neil Paton was anywhere about. Growing up in St. Andrews, Neil had been a good amateur player in his own right but preferred, as he once told me, to “have a wee bit more civilized kind of life” than chasing the game all over Europe, as the modern golf prodigy bent on a professional playing career must do. His shop was full of American and Japanese customers who seemed to be clearing the shelves of any item bearing the St. Andrews logo, keeping the cash register awhirl. When it was finally our turn, my father bought my mother a pin with the St. Andrews cross (a symbol later adopted by the Confederate States of America for use on their battle flag), and I purchased an Old Course ballcap for my son. I was disappointed to learn from the harried sales clerk that Neil was “off to Edinburgh” and probably wouldn’t be back for a few days.

  To kill more time, I suggested we take a stroll down to the Himalayas, the eccentric public putting course situated between the Old Course and the wide sand beach where filmmakers had shot the opening scenes of Chariots of Fire.

  “That’s such a sad story about Young Tom,” Dad said as we crossed the Old Course’s wide finishing hole via the little public walkway that bisects it. “I suppose the moral is, Don’t let golf take over your life.” He walked a few paces and added, “Speaking of which, how’s your own beautiful wife doing these days?”

  It was a gently loaded question. I knew he worried about my “modern marriage,” as he called it—the long hours and frequent travels and busy professional schedules Alison and I both kept, attempting to strike the proper balance between careers we loved and the full demands of parenthood. This was not an area of my life I was in any rush to open up for general floor discussion with my father, perhaps because his marriage was so unlike mine and I knew he had opinions about the dangers of the modern two-career marriage. I knew he didn’t think unions where the partners poured as much of themselves into their work as their family life—or each other—stood much hope of making it over the long haul.

  In some respects, my ten-year marriage to Alison seemed almost too perfect. She was beautiful, smart, funny, a great wife and mother. The ten years of our marriage had whizzed past, and I could count the number of serious arguments we’d had in a decade on just one hand. Friends often commented how strong our relationship seemed. They admired the way we talked everything through. They admired our individual and joint work ethics, our house, our children. Lately, though, something had grown a bit fuzzy between us. We were both to blame. Alison was working more hours than ever, and I was feeling neglected and resentful. It had been many years since our last family vacation. My resentment, on the other hand, made her feel unloved and stretched even thinner. Fissures had appeared in the rock. Wiser heads assured us this sort of thing was inevitable and that all good marriages endured difficult stretches. Give it time, they counseled, be patient, keep talking to each other. Rough weather makes good timber, as they say in Maine. Our marriage was simply too strong to fall apart, they said, and would eventually get back on course. All we knew was that we loved each other and adored our kids. We were still talking, and that gave me hope.

  But I didn’t want to dump this complicated stuff on my father. Not before I understood what it meant myself. Especially not now that his time was so limited.

  So I kept to safe generalities. “She’s fine. Working far too hard. But it seems to be what she wants right now.” I explained that she’d just been made associate vice pre
sident of the college where she worked and that executive recruiters seemed to phone the house almost as frequently as telemarketing operators.

  “I wish I could somehow slow you both down,” he said, slipping into Opti mode. “Ambition is a kind of siren song. Especially in a job like yours. The danger of great ambition is that you’ll work so hard, you may someday wake up and find that the things you really wanted were the things you had all along.”

  We walked along. As usual, he’d just put his finger on one of my biggest fears—the nagging worry that our thriving careers were gently wedging us apart. I said nothing.

  “Well, in any case,” he said, “give her a big kiss for me. As Young Tom Morris found out, you can never kiss your wife enough.”

  “I will,” I assured him.

  At the Himalayas, we ran into Fred Lockhart. Fred was putting with his small grandson Ewan. Fred was retired from the Royal Post and belonged to one of the lesser known golf clubs in town that decidedly wasn’t the Royal and Ancient. His opinions of the R&A, the ruling body of golf everywhere in the world except North America, were neither shy nor high. I introduced Fred to my father, and my father asked what he thought of the swank new clubhouse being built less than a thousand feet from where we stood. Workmen were busy attaching a green metal roof to the sprawling new structure, which was supposed to be ready for the next Open championship in July.

  “A blight in the Almighty’s eye,” Fred grumbled without hesitation. “Uglier than a carbuncle on a pig’s arse.”

  Dad smiled. I knew Fred was dead serious, though. A lot of locals felt that travel agents, members of the R&A, and others who had something to gain from commercial development were compromising the integrity of the Old Course and the character of St. Andrews itself by allowing golf’s birthplace to be transformed into a commercial shrine. The opposite view, not unreasonable in my opinion, was that as golf’s popularity continued to grow, the wisest approach was to try and accommodate as many visitors as possible while trying to maintain the qualities that make St. Andrews so special. To that end, a new golf course designed by Peter Thomson had been recently opened, in hopes it would help relieve the burden on the Old Course. The opening of the highly controversial clubhouse was long overdue in the minds of some visiting golfers who were forced to change into their spikes in the car park.

  Fred would have none of it.

  “It’s all a bloody whitewash, a power play by the Royal Ancients,” he said, intentionally twisting the name of the governing body whose famously photogenic clubhouse sits beside the Old Course. Many people think they own it—including some R&A members, as Fred will tell you.

  Fred saw conspiracies afoot all over the Old Grey Toon. According to him, the R&A had basically “infiltrated” the Links Trust and was now bent on nothing less than controlling the teetimes on all of the town’s golf courses but most particularly the Old Course—a profane and even parliamentary violation, in his view, of the ruling democratic spirit of St. Andrews. Protest committees had been formed, petitions sent around. Legal remedies were being considered. Meanwhile, construction of the clubhouse merely symbolized the gathering conflict.

  “It’s, going to get nasty,” Fred predicted, dourly tapping the ground with his putter. “There’s rumors Links Trust is planning to cut a secret deal with a big London travel outfit that would take control of the visitors’ teetimes,” he explained. “Mark my word, it’ll be a dark day in St. Andrews if tha’ comes to pass. First thing those buggers’ll do is double or even triple the fees and cut the time of the locals.” He shook his large head in disgust. “ ’Tis nothing less, I tell you, than a cultural abomination.”

  “I remember playing the course for two shillings and six,” Dad volunteered hopefully.

  “Aye,” Fred rumbled somberly. “Those were the days. Now we’re aboot greed and power, pure and simple.”

  I asked Fred who was winning their putting match.

  “Ewan,” Fred said, patting his grandson firmly on the back. “He’ll be playing for Scotland before we know it.” Ewan was about my son’s age. He gave a small grin at this news bulletin.

  We followed them onto the Himalayas, using a pair of old hickory-shafted putters rented at the admission shed for one pound fifty each, and played another thirty-six-hole match that I once again lost. Losing putting matches to my father next to the great golf courses of England and Scotland appeared to be my real dharma.

  On the way back to the Scores, we paused once again at the little white starter’s shed to see if the results of the ballot had been posted. A group of Japanese men whose shoes and bags looked as if they had just been purchased at Neil Paton’s shop were busy posing for photographs on the tee. The results were in. Our names weren’t on the list.

  —

  That evening, I took my dad to a place I knew in the hills just east of town for dinner. The restaurant had a lovely view of the town and the sea. Its beams were low, the fire blazing. The barman brought two expensive French brandies (Churchill’s favorite breakfast tipple) to the table and surprised us by suggesting we bring our golf clubs into the restaurant. When we asked why, he explained that a week before, thieves had sledge-hammered the window out of a van in the car park and looted six sets of clubs from the back of a Saab in less than thirty seconds. The latest strategy of the bandits, he said, was to follow golf pilgrims from one place to another, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. St. Andrews was a favorite spot because the streets were often crowded with tourists, creating headaches for police. The problem, he said, was epidemic, but the travel industry refused even to acknowledge it.

  “It’s a sorry world out there these days,” he said with a shake of his head.

  “It’s pretty certain you won’t get out alive,” Dad tried to cheer him.

  The barman looked to see if he was joking. Dad was joking, but the barman couldn’t tell. I wondered vaguely if he served on one of Fred Lockhart’s citizens committees. I pictured members of the R&A being led to the guillotine the way French peasants had led lace-shirted aristocrats to their makers.

  “That may be, sir,” the barman said with slight indignation, “but it’s not like it used to be round St. Andrews. Next thing, they’ll be knocking off the hotels, too. Then you laugh.”

  On this note he left us, disgustedly wringing a terry towel with his hands.

  “Poor fellow,” Dad said. “He looks as if he’s never laughed.”

  “Face like a well-made grave,” I agreed. “He should shoot his TV.”

  The barman’s prophecy prompted us to consider, not entirely seriously, how the world had changed since Dad’s last visit to St. Andrews.

  “The world has doubled twice in population, but polio and smallpox have been eliminated. That’s real progress,” Dad said.

  “South Carolina built three hundred golf courses, posted legal speed limits, and outlawed marrying your sister,” I volunteered. “That may be even greater progress.”

  “A glass of really good French brandy now goes for twenty bucks.”

  “How much was it in your day?”

  “I don’t know. Only Churchill could afford to drink the stuff.”

  “I’ve got one,” I said. “Anxiety now kills more people than wars.”

  “Is that true?” asked my father.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s doing the barman or his towel no good whatsoever tonight.”

  My father laughed and grew quiet, scanning the menu. We both settled on Angus steaks. He preferred his slightly rare, I preferred mine slightly burned. I pictured me receiving my steak about the time he was finishing dessert.

  “I’ll tell you another way things have changed since I was over here,” Dad said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Back when I was a soldier over here, I used to wonder what it would be like to be a father.” He was looking out the window at the roofs of the town. He turned his head to me and smiled. “Now I spend my days trying to remember.”

  O
ur dinners arrived, and the conversation shifted back to the war, to the months he spent running a small prisoner of war camp in the forest of Compiegne after the liberation of Paris. The camp was on the outskirts of the town where Joan of Arc’s military career came to an end in 1430, and German prisoners were used to sort and pack up weapons, uniforms, and other materials the German army had abandoned as it fled France in 1944.

  The camp, my father explained, had no barbed wire or even fences to speak of because the German soldiers were weary of war and receiving two hot meals a day. Out of the sixty or so prisoners in the camp, there was only one card-carrying Nazi, an unapologetic sergeant named Krauss.

  “Krauss was a problem. He was Bavarian, a bully, and a real belligerent son of a bitch. We had to watch him pretty closely. The captain who was really in charge of the camp was never around—he had a girlfriend over in Soissons, the next village—so I made most of the decisions. Krauss didn’t like me very much, and I didn’t like him. You probably know that Compiegne was where the Germans surrendered to end World War I. The first thing Hitler did when he occupied France was order the railcar where Germany had signed the Armistice in the forest of Compiegne to be dismantled.

  “You may not know, though, that the little rail station in Compiegne was used by the Nazis as the embarkation point for sending French Jews to concentration camps in Belgium and Germany. That’s why there were so many reprisal killings after the Liberation. The Free French wanted revenge on some of their own for collaborating with the Germans.”

  “How many people are we talking about?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. I heard it was well over fifty thousand people. Men, women, and children. Many of them came through Compiegne. A lot of them were gassed. People in the town told me the story. They were sickened by it—they’d been helpless to do anything, I guess. It was still fairly unknown what had happened. But once locals started coming around to the camp, the story got out pretty quick.”