The Golfer's Carol

by Robert Bailey

  I heard myself gasp at the sight and sound of the shot. Then I watched the ball take off on a dead line for the flag 346 yards away. The murmurs from the people around me turned into a rising quell of yells and then flat-out screams as the ball appeared to have a chance of reaching the green.

  “He did it!” a man next to me hollered. I glanced at him and saw that he was holding binoculars tight to his eyes. “It’s on the front of the green.”

  The man’s voice was drowned out by more cheers from the gallery as the news began to dawn on them all. When confirmation from the fans by the green had permeated back to the tee, the roar of excitement and joy from the army of patrons around me was stronger and louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life. Arnold Palmer had started the final round of the 1960 U.S. Open by driving the green on the par-four first hole. Through the shrill screams and applause, I heard voices of men, women, and children that seemed to come from every direction.

  “Unbelievable!”

  “Amazing!”

  “He did it!”

  “We love you, Arnold!”

  “Yes!”

  Arnold snatched his tee out of the ground and began to walk down the fairway. After a few feet, he hitched the back of his trousers, and I couldn’t help but smile. When I did, I realized that my mouth had been hanging wide open. I had just seen one of the greatest shots in golf history. No telling of the Arnold Palmer legend was complete without mentioning him driving the green on the first hole at Cherry Hills in the final round of the U.S. Open.

  And I had witnessed it.

  As I took a step backward, I realized I was still squeezing my arms tight to my chest. I let out a deep breath. “He birdies this hole, right?” I was talking to myself as much as I was to Johnnie. “He birdies six out of the first seven, doesn’t he?” I nodded to myself as the details came back to me. “Shoots his sixty-five, finishes at two eighty, and wins the tournament.”

  When I didn’t hear any response from Johnnie, I looked back for him, hoping that a return trip to the nineteenth hole might be in order. But he was gone. When my eyes returned to the tee box, it was gone too. The fairway in front of the tee was gone as well. As were all the people.

  Everything . . . was gone.

  29

  I saw nothing. Just utter blankness.

  No ground. No people. No vegetation. Complete nothingness.

  What is happening?

  I closed my eyes for a full three seconds. When I opened them, my head began to spin, and I reached back for something . . . anything to keep me from falling. My right hand clutched something soft and leathery. I looked at the material and tried to focus while I regained my balance.

  It was a seat. A black leather seat. There was another one next to it and then a small window. I leaned forward and gazed out of the plexiglass, and my breath caught in my throat.

  Blue skies. A few clouds. And, thousands of feet below, the outline of farmland. I’m in an airplane. I turned around and saw that the nothingness of a few seconds earlier had been replaced by the inside of a private jet. Turning toward the front of the plane, I saw a narrow opening that led to the cockpit. I took a tentative step forward and saw a pair of hands on the yoke. Feeling my heart pounding in my chest, I continued forward. When I reached the opening, I saw a silver-haired man wearing a pink golf shirt and gray slacks behind the controls. He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t have to.

  This was the Arnold Palmer with whom I was most familiar.

  “What do you think of my jet?” he asked, and I heard the good-natured midwestern twang that had appeared in countless Hertz and Pennzoil commercials.

  “It’s nice,” I managed. “Very impressive.”

  “Have a seat, Randy,” he said, gesturing to the empty co-pilot’s chair.

  I hesitated for a moment, but then eased into the other seat in the cockpit.

  “Did you know I was a pilot?”

  I nodded, trying to find my voice. I cleared my throat. “There is a funny story of you flying the European Ryder Cup team around in your plane during one of the matches in the sixties.”

  Arnold laughed. “That was a lot of fun. Some good fellas on that Euro team.”

  “Some folks thought the Cup was over at that point,” I said, trying to relax my nerves but not succeeding. I was sitting in the cockpit of Arnold Palmer’s jet and talking to the King himself. “Because those guys were in awe of you.”

  Arnold shook his head, but the smile remained. “Sportswriter gobbledygook. We just played better than they did. The reporters always look for that dramatic angle, but the bottom line is usually a lot simpler.”

  I cocked my head at him. “You were Arnold Palmer. You had won a bunch of major championships. You had endorsement deals and were doing commercials. You could fly a jet airplane.” I snorted. “You don’t think those fellas were a little awestruck by you?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He touched my forearm and then pointed at the yoke in front of me. “Take it.”

  “What?”

  “Put your hands on the copilot’s wheel.”

  “Why? I . . . I don’t know how to fly a plane.”

  “Just do it, all right?”

  I leaned forward and put my hands on the wheel. I glanced at Arnold, who had removed his own hands from the wheel in front of him.

  He winked at me. “Now I want you to turn your wheel a little to the right and watch what happens out in front of this glass.” He pointed toward the front windshield.

  I did as I was told and noticed the nose of the airplane shift ever so slightly to the right. I couldn’t help smiling as I gazed at the legend to my left. “I’m flying.”

  He punched my shoulder lightly. “You’re flying. Now straighten her back up.”

  I took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Then I turned the wheel back to the left.

  For the next ten minutes, Arnold Palmer, one of the greatest golfers to ever play the game and an icon in sport, gave me a lesson on how to fly an airplane. He explained the controls and what each of the different buttons did. He lectured on how to understand the coordinates and demonstrated how to maneuver the steering wheel to achieve what you wanted. When he finished his summation, I squinted at him. “How in the world did you find time to learn how to do this?”

  “It meant something to me, so I made time.”

  “Why?” I asked, hearing the incredulity in my tone. “Why would you ever need to fly a plane?”

  “I was scared of airplanes, Randy. Terrified of them. Afraid that I might die in a crash, and not all that crazy about heights. I learned how to fly so that I could conquer those fears.” He paused. “It was the best thing I ever did.”

  “Oh, come on. You drove the green on the first hole of the U.S. Open and shot sixty-five to win. You played golf with presidents and royalty. You were the King of golf, for God’s sake. How could learning to fly a plane be the best thing you ever did?”

  He smiled and gazed out the front windshield. “I wasn’t sure I could do it. I was afraid. But I pushed through my fear, believed in myself, trained and practiced hard with flight instructors, and”—he snapped his fingers—“I did it.” He looked at me. “There’s no greater feeling than overcoming a challenge that seems insurmountable.”

  I felt the same sense of being punched in the gut as I had on the tee box at Cherry Hills before watching Arnold hit his famous drive. Johnnie’s words then came back to me. Perhaps it’s not so much about pulling off the shot that counts, aye? Maybe it’s believing that he can.

  “You believed you could do it,” I finally said. “Just like hitting driver off the first tee at Cherry Hills in 1960. You believed you could drive the green, and you eventually did it.” I paused and looked at him. “You believed you could fly an airplane and overcome your fears, and you did it.”

  Arnold nodded, still g
azing out the windshield. “That’s true,” he said. “But that’s not all. Belief is very important, but it’s only one part of the equation. You still have to practice and train hard.” He finally turned his head to face me. “And then you have to do the most important thing.” He paused. “The hardest thing.”

  I felt goose bumps rise on my arms as the intensity of his gaze fell over me. “What’s that?”

  “You have to go for it.”

  I raised my eyebrows, but Arnold Palmer’s gaze remained trained on me as if he were sizing up a birdie putt. “You have to set your fears to the side and have the guts to go after what you want. Whether it’s driving the first green at Cherry Hills or learning to fly an airplane, you eventually have to tee it up and let her rip.”

  “What if you crash?” I asked, hearing the timidity in my own voice. “What if you crash and lose everything?” I licked my lips and they felt dry as sandpaper. “What if you duck-hook your driver into the woods and make a double bogey?”

  He punched my shoulder again, this time harder. The force behind the blow stung a little. “But what if you don’t, Randy? What if you win?” He paused and turned back to the front of the plane. “You’ll never overcome your fears and truly obtain victory unless you decide, once and for all, that you are going to pursue what you want with everything you have. That will mean taking a few risks, but that is a good thing. A life without risk is a life not lived.” He paused. “Isn’t it time you lived?”

  I felt my heartbeat racing, and my hands were clammy with sweat. The airplane seemed to be moving faster. “What if I lose?”

  “You may,” Arnold said. “You may lose a lot. I sure as heck did. But you’ll never ever win, unless you set aside the chains of doubt and fear . . . and go for it.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say and felt myself slinking down in the copilot’s chair.

  “Let me tell you something else, Randy.” Arnold’s voice was quieter now. “The more you’ve lost. The harder you’ve been knocked down.” He nodded to himself. “Those losses make the taste of victory that much sweeter.” He paused, and his tone grew even softer, just more than a whisper. “But you’ll never know, unless you pick yourself up off the ground and go after what you want.”

  30

  I’m not sure how long I sat in Arnold Palmer’s copilot seat. It was calm and peaceful up in the clouds thousands of feet above the ground. I gazed out the front windshield of that jet plane and images of my life began to flash in front of me. Playing Little League baseball and striking out the side to win the game. My dad, who coached the team, took us to Terry’s Pizza to celebrate afterward and gave me the game ball. It was one of the happiest moments of my childhood. Moving forward to high school and seeing Mary Alice Davis for the first time in the hallway by the gym. It was the first day of fall football practice, and the cheerleaders were also practicing. Mary Alice was taking a sip of water from the fountain and some had dribbled down her chin. She turned and looked right at me and was oblivious to the droplets of moisture that ran down her chin and neck. Not me. I caught every single detail. Her blond hair, the long legs sprouting from her cheerleader’s skirt, and the wondrous smile she gave me as she brushed past.

  Then I saw that same smile on our wedding day. Mary Alice at twenty-two in her wedding dress. I kissed her on the minister’s cue.

  As this memory faded, another less pleasant one took its place. I was gazing at a scoreboard with my hands stuffed in the pockets of my shorts. I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice in my ear. “You’ll make it next time, Randy. One measly stroke.”

  I knew that voice. It was Aubrey Wickenden, my teammate at Alabama. I had played number one on the team, and “Aubs,” as we had called him, was number two. Aubs had gotten his tour card during Q school and I hadn’t. My score had been better than his going into the final round, but he had closed with a sixty-eight and I had fired a seventy-four.

  Then the scoreboard faded, and I was sitting in the kitchen of my parents’ small home. My elbows were propped on the same table where my daughter, Davis, had eaten egg custard pie after Graham’s funeral.

  Now, I was at this table many years earlier, and Dad was breaking down why I should go to law school and forgo my dreams of the PGA Tour. “You’ve got a good woman, Randy. She’s already agreed to work to help put you through school. Not every wife would be so supportive. She’s pregnant, and you can’t shirk your responsibilities and play the mini tours for another year in the hopes that Q school next year will work out different. Your mom and I can help you these next three years, and you can work during school yourself to make ends meet. When you graduate, you’ll have something that I never had. You’ll have a degree that will allow you to practice a profession.” He had gazed down at his thick hands then. “Look at these, Randy.” When I didn’t look, he had grabbed my own hands and gripped them with his own, forcing me to meet his intense gaze. “Randy, all I’ve got is my ability to use my hands. I’m a bricklayer, and I’m only as good as my last day’s work.” I had protested, arguing that he was more than that. That he owned his own company. That he had a crew of men who worked under him and who respected him.

  But Dad had just chuckled and shaken his head. “They’d leave me in a half a second if I missed a day of work or if I didn’t work harder than all of them. If you get a law degree, you’ll have a job for the rest of your life. You’ll have security that I could only have dreamed of.”

  I had slammed my fist down on the table and stood, turning my back on the man and the words I did not want to hear. “Dad, I missed the tour by one stroke.”

  “Son, you have a pregnant wife and it’s time to stop chasing rainbows.” Then he had paused and delivered the line that had stuck with me forever. “There comes a point in every man’s life when he realizes that he’s not going to be Joe Namath.”

  The image faded and was replaced by Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa. My law school graduation. Dad shaking my hand on the gym floor with a proud look on his face, Mom kissing and then pinching my cheek, and Mary Alice holding two-year-old Davis in her arms. Had I been happy then? Proud? My three years of law school had been a blur of outlines and exams punctuated by summer clerkships in Birmingham and Huntsville and baby Davis’s milestones. I had made it through and gotten my degree. A few months later, I had passed the bar exam and there was a similar scene on the steps of the capital in Montgomery, where the new inductees to the Alabama State Bar had taken a photograph.

  Now, the images began picking up speed as if they were on fast forward. Funny how childhood and early-adult memories remained frozen in time and I could remember every detail, but my years of being a young attorney and father were a blur. The only pictures that were indelible were those of my children.

  Davis’s first steps in our small apartment in Tuscaloosa. Stumbling across the carpet with her arms held out, reaching for me and falling into my arms.

  Our first Christmas in the new house on Locust, when Davis had stayed up all night waiting for Santa, finally passing out under the tree only to wake up and find the one present she’d asked him for leaning against the fireplace. Her first set of golf clubs. A woman’s set with the shafts broken down so they’d fit her. The squeal that came out of her lungs when she opened her eyes that morning must have woken the neighbors.

  Graham’s birth at Huntsville Hospital. Holding my son for the first time and counting his fingers and toes, not realizing that I had tears in my eyes until my wife touched my face. Gazing at Mary Alice, whose face shone with radiance despite eight hours of labor. And then minutes later, introducing Davis, who was wearing a pink sweatshirt with Big Sister embroidered across the front, to her little brother.

  And Davis’s first golf tournament, the parent-child at Twickenham, where we’d finished second. The framed picture of us together, with Davis holding the tiny trophy and my arm around her, held a prominent place in our living room. Davis was ten yea
rs old, and her thick brown hair was tousled underneath a white visor. I could still remember our family’s celebration dinner afterward at Boots’ Steakhouse, where I shared the prime rib with my daughter, and she peppered me with questions about my time on the Alabama golf team and the mini tours and who I thought was better, Jack Nicklaus or Tom Watson. Mary Alice barely got a word in, but her face beamed with pride. We had all ordered blackberry cobbler for dessert, and Graham, who was three and finally out of a high chair, got ice cream all over his T-shirt and pants.

  Then the dark visions came. The pediatrician’s office when the blood tests showed that Graham’s white blood cell count was sky high. The awful nights when my son screamed and vomited from the pain and nausea of the radiation and chemo treatments. Last and worst of all, his death at the hospital.

  And the emptiness that had followed. The hollow numbness of having lost someone whom I gladly would have died for. How many times had I wished it were me six feet under the ground and not my beautiful boy.

  Tears began to stream down my face, and I brushed them away.

  The sky was now dark in front of me. I turned to my left, but Arnold Palmer was gone. I had the same sense of blankness.

  I took a deep breath and, remembering what I had done the last time, I closed my eyes and slowly counted to five. As I did, I thought about the last thing Arnold had said to me. The more you’ve lost. The harder you’ve been knocked down . . . Those losses make the taste of victory that much sweeter. . . . But you’ll never know, unless you pick yourself up off the ground and go after what you want.

  “What do I want?” I whispered, feeling a mixture of anxiety and adrenaline come over me as I slowly opened my eyes. I almost smiled as I took in the view that I had known best over the past decade.