Death from the Ladies Tee

by James Y. Bartlett

  “I’m heading for the front desk,” I said. “I’m going to get the billing put back in my name. Then, I’m going to spend the rest of my time here digging into the personal life of each and every player I meet. And I’m going to do a survey of off-course earnings. And when I file my story on Sunday, I’ll be sure to mention the size of the gate. Oh, did I mention? I’m a really crappy crowd-counter.”

  “You little fucker,” Julie Warren cried. She slammed down her wine glass and started toward me with sheer mayhem in her eyes. Big Wyn put out a hand and stopped her.

  “And then I’m going to do some digging on Big Wyn and the LPGA,” I said. “Hope your books are in order. I’d hate to find any financial shenanigans going on in the front office. Don’t think the girls would like that, do you Wyn?”

  She stared at me ominously. “Take your best shot, Hacker,” she said. “Better men than you have tried and failed.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to retort better than “so’s your old man,” so I just left.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Anger is a powerful human emotion. I reflected on that, but not for fifteen minutes or so. During that time, I was too busy seeing red. I don’t remember storming out of Big Wyn’s palace, riding the private elevator down, stomping through the lobby, pushing out the doors and wandering aimlessly out onto the golf course. I’m damn lucky I didn’t fall into one of the Doral’s lagoons and either drown or get eaten by an alligator.

  When I came back to my senses, I was holding the black plastic knob of a ball washer in my hand. And my hand was throbbing a little. I looked around, momentarily befuddled. I realized I was out on the course somewhere, but in the dark, I couldn’t tell which course, or where. I had just trashed the ball washer, snapping its top off. Off in the distance, a thousand yards away, the bright lights of the hotel created a halo of light in the humid, misty air of the Miami night.

  That’s when I started to muse on the subject of anger. Oh, everyone gets pissed now and then. A cutting remark from the wife, a smartass crack from the kid, an insolent response from an employee paid to know better. The blood pounds and the eyes narrow and sharp and ugly retorts jump unbidden to the lips.

  But anger, pure and deep…that’s another matter altogether. I wondered, standing out there in the dark on whatever tee, mosquitoes and other carnivorous pests zeroing in on my flesh, where the first Homo erectus had ever utilized the emotion as part of his survival instincts. They had hunted and killed the tiger and the mammoth out of instinct sharpened by several measures of raw fear, and driven by need and hunger. But there must have been times when the tiger had turned suddenly and dispatched the cave dweller’s best friend or father or son. When the shock of that event had instantly dispelled all sense of fear and rationality and common sense in the face of pure, blind rage. And in that overwhelming, senseless instant, the moment of pure and unadulterated rage, the snarling, fierce tiger had had no chance. No chance at all.

  The tigers are gone, but the emotion remains. In these days of supposedly enlightened civilization, when the eyes go blank and red, a Saturday-night special suddenly puts an end to that bitchy-once-too-often spouse, a butcher knife is suddenly plunged into a drunken, abusive chest, or a child’s arm bone is irrevocably snapped in two.

  I walked slowly back to the hotel, now feeling a bit foolish. No tiger had devoured my best friend. Nothing so drastic had really happened. My professionalism had been insulted. That was all. Yet that had triggered in me that awful passion, and I had stood on the edge of the fearful abyss, peered over the side at the awful demons cavorting below, and had, for a brief moment, wanted more than anything to plunge headlong over the edge and join with them in their loathsome games.

  I was in desperate need of sustenance and alcohol, a balm for the fevered soul. My feet followed the thump-thump-thump sound to the hotel’s disco, a round, mirrored room with flashing lights, a long, curved bar, lots of tables around the edge set off by padded railings, and a small, parquet dance floor in the center. It was not a jam-packed night, but there were plenty of people.

  I made my way to the bar and saw Honie Carlton standing in the midst of a small group of women. She was nursing a drink which looked blue in the strange lighting of the disco. As I neared, she looked up and saw me.

  “Hey, Hacker!” she cried out, waving me over. “You done already? How did it go?”

  “Great,” I muttered. “I made myself persona non grata before the first free drink.”

  “Aw, c’mon. It couldn’t have been that bad,” she chided, grinning at me. I handed her the knob from the ball washer and saw her eyes widen in amazement. I motioned to the bartender, ordered a double Scotch on the rocks, and told her the whole story. Halfway through, she began gnawing at a knuckle, her pretty eyes wide and round and serious.

  My drink arrived just as I finished my sordid tale. “Sorry,” I said. “Guess I kinda got ticked off.”

  She blew her breath out in a rush, looking at the broken knob in her hand. Irrefutable proof of the power of my anger. Then she grinned at me and shrugged. “Aw, fuck it, Hacker,” she said. “I may not have a job in the morning, but what the hell. That’s tomorrow’s problem. Cheers!”

  She held out her glass to clink. But I was mad again. “Goddam it,” I said. “If they try to do anything to you, I’ll slag her ass in every newspaper and magazine that knows how to spell the word ‘golf.’ That goddam, brass-balled bitch …”

  “Whoa, big fella,” Honie’s eyes were laughing. “I don’t know what they’ll do. I don’t think anyone’s talked back to Big Wyn for the last fifteen years. She might be upstairs having a heart attack this very second. Listen, they don’t know that you and I are old friends. And they really can’t fire me for bringing press people in – that’s my job for Pete’s sake. So forget it. C’mon, let’s dance.”

  She grabbed my wrist and dragged me out onto the dance floor. It was suddenly crowded. As the DJ segued one record seamlessly into the next, missing nary a bass-thumping beat, the lights went down and only a rhythmic pulsing spotlight, flashing in time to the music, backlit the churning bodies on the dance floor.

  Honie and I boogied. I’m no Fred Astaire, but I can keep from looking like a total dance doofus. Honie, on the other hand, had all the effortless moves of youth. She was rhythmic and fluid and sexy and carefree. Which is how it should be when you’re twenty-five and alive.

  The lights came up a bit when the next song started, and I could begin to see some of the other dancers surrounding us. As we whirled around, I began to recognize some of them as some of the LPGA’s players. The crowd parted momentarily and I caught a glimpse of the shimmering red dress belonging to Casey Carlyle across the floor. Her back was toward me and she was dancing elegantly, but with reserved, economical movements to the jungle beat of the music. At first, I couldn’t see her dance partner, only the fingertips of two hands grasping her around that lovely thin waist. Then, on cue, the couple moved slowly around and I saw Julie Warren staring at Casey with adoring eyes as they danced.

  I felt a lurch, deep down inside somewhere as I watched the two women dancing, oblivious to me to anyone else. I wondered about that lurch for a moment. Homophobia? Disgust? Titillation? Combination of all of the above? I wasn’t entirely sure. Like most reasonably evolved people, I knew that homosexuality exists and is an acceptable choice for consenting adults. I like to think that I am accepting and nonjudgemental. Some of my best friends, etc.

  Maybe it was the openness I wasn’t used to. Even those of us who profess to be open about alternative lifestyles probably prefer that they keep it to themselves, or out of public view. Perhaps a remnant of that old-fashioned idea was stirred by the sight of Julie and Casey dancing together with stars in their eyes. Or maybe it was a tiny residue of the macho that lives deep inside me, and probably most males. Casey was an attractive female person, I like attra
ctive female persons, but she prefers dancing with other female persons…thus, an inner lurch.

  As I thought these deep thoughts and continued dancing with Honie, my eyes eventually drifted back to Casey and Julie. They swing around, just a few feet from me, and I locked eyes with Casey Carlyle. She noticed me and a mean little smile played at the corners of her glossy rep lips. Her cool blue eyes held mine as with a sudden motion she pulled her stocky partner closer. The look she threw at me was clear: What you want, you can’t have.

  Was that it? The sexual challenge? I sighed. The battle of the sexes is ongoing and constant, but it’s a fight for which I can never muster enough enthusiasm. Life is too short and too precious to waste over arguing about lines drawn in the gendered dirt.

  I widened my area of vision to take in the entire dance floor, now a busy swirl. I noticed several other female couples, many of them including at least one young woman who earned her living playing tournament golf. I tried not to stare.

  Honie must have known what I was looking at, because she suddenly grabbed me again and pulled me back to the bar. Going up the three steps beyond the padded railing, I stepped back to let a former U.S. Women’s Open champ pass by on her way to the dance floor. She was grinning happily and holding the hand of a petite young girl with lots and lots of poufed-out strawberry blond hair.

  I reclaimed my Scotch and drank most of it down. I needed it. Honie stood next to me, watching the dancing, still moving with the beat, her eyes alive.

  “Wasn’t that –” I nodded at the dance floor.

  “Yup,” she said, swinging her hips.

  “And who is that she’s dancing with?” I wondered.

  “Her manager,” she told me, with an impish smile.

  “Ahhh,” I said, ordering another drink.

  “We’re a close-knit group,” Honie told me. “Lots of girls travel with their managers, business partners, caddies, teachers. Those who are married often bring their kids and husbands. The others have their significant others, or family members along.”

  “I didn’t know Casey and Julie Warren were related,” I said drily.

  “Actually, I don’t think they are,” she said. Her face was motionless.

  “I see.” I watched the gyrations going on with the pulsating light and relentless beat of the music. “How do you feel about that?”

  Honie shrugged. “Different strokes,” she said, lifting her glass of blue something to her lips. She turned to look at me. “Happiness is a commodity that’s in pretty short supply,” she said. “I think you should grab onto it wherever you can find it.”

  “Sounds almost like you’re a convert,” I said, and immediately regretted it. It sounded both prying and peevish, and not at all like me. Or what I think is me.

  Her eyes flared momentarily. Then she smiled. “I’ve got a boyfriend in Chicago,” she said. “Of course, in the few months I’ve been working here, I have been hit on a few times.”

  “Really?” I said. “Does that bother you?”

  She shrugged again. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she said. “After all, as a woman, I’ve been hit on ever since I reached the age of puberty.”

  “Well,” I said, “There are workplace rules, you know. Maybe you should report it to Big Wyn as sexual harassment. Collect a few million.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t Big Wyn who hit on me?” she asked, laughing.

  That kinda shut me up. We drank our drinks and watched the dancing, me and my older-than-her-years friend.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next morning, I ate breakfast unmolested in the hotel’s coffee shop. There was no sign of a fire-breathing Wyn nor any of her minions. No sign of Honie, fired or not. Just a few dozen tourists from the north, each of whom seemed to be engaged in reading the prices from the menu out loud. “Two-fifteen for a side order of bacon, Willard! Dat’s out-ray-gee-yus!”

  Later, I wandered out to the practice tee to watch the women pros warming up for the day’s practice round. While I don’t normally cover the women’s game, I had been to enough events, such as the mixed-team tournament in the fall, to know many of the players. And it had been at that event that the differences between the golfing sexes had been best illustrated for me.

  “It’s the muscle groups that make the biggest difference,” one of the male pros had explained to me, well out of earshot of the nearest female golfer. “Women simply don’t have the same kind of upper-body muscle mass that men do. In the golf swing, that means men can generate more clubhead speed. That means they can hit it further. Now these gals,” and he meant women professional golfers, “They get their butts into it, and they’ve learned how to generate as much clubhead speed as they can. And with good rhythm and timing, they can get the clubface onto the ball. All of which adds up to distance, but they just don’t have the same muscles, which is why the average male pro will always hit it longer than the average female pro.”

  He shook his head as we had watched some other women pros warming up on the range. “If you watch closely,” he continued, “You’ll see that the girls hit the ball on a lower trajectory, too. That’s because without the same kind of upper-body strength, they have to use more of a sweeping motion. Men combine clubhead speed with a downward, descending blow, which is what lets them get the ball high into the air. But your average woman pro is hitting the ball shorter and on a lower trajectory. That’s a damn deadly combination.”

  He went on to explain that while women professionals practice and play enough to overcome many of these physiological hindrances, the average woman player just has to deal with it. “Most holes, even the short par-fours, your weekend woman player is hitting driver and three-wood to just get somewhere near the green. Can you imagine playing golf, hitting three-woods into every green?” he asked.

  “I’d give the game up,” I had said.

  “You and me both, son,” the player had agreed. “Damn architects ought to give them more of a break, so they can play the same game as the men. But that would mean really shortening up many holes, and then the libbers start hollering ‘whaddya mean our course is only four thousand yards? The men’s course is seven thousand!’ Can’t win that one!” He’d shrugged and gone back to launching high hard ones from the practice tee.

  I kept his theories in mind as I had watched that weekend’s mixed-team event. And I had seen many examples that seemed to prove his point. I remembered one instance when the woman pro faced a shot up and over a tall tree in front of her. Once over the tree, she then had to carry the ball far enough to get over a greenside bunker. I knew a male pro would have had no trouble generating enough power and height to accomplish the task, but the woman pro eventually tried to hit a low screaming hook around the tree. The other option was denied her. She didn’t have the right muscles. Too bad.

  I wandered up and down the practice tee all morning, talking with some of the players, watching others swing. They were all working hard in the hot morning sun, doing the drudge work of professional golf. Honing swings, checking alignments, working on maintaining the angles, swinging in balance, developing a consistent tempo and rhythm. Those who had their swings working were cheerful and upbeat, whistling and joking as they worked. Those who were struggling were concentrating on their tasks, scowling at the ground, muttering after every swing. Some had dark circles of sweat coloring their shirts under their arms and between their breasts. This was hardly the kind of glamour most associate with the life of the touring golf professional.

  For the most part, the golfers worked alone, though some had swing gurus watching, and others consulted with their caddies. They worked methodically through their bags which stood behind them like silent sentinels. The women pros had huge staff bags, like the men, although the logos of their sponsors which adorned the bags ran more to dishwasher detergents, cosmetics and soft drinks, as opposed to the m
en’s investment firms, beer companies and automakers.

  I noted another difference between the sexes: head covers. The women’s bags showed that the prevailing taste in covers for their metal woods ran to pink, fuzzy things or cute, floppy-earned doggies. Your typical PGA pro would probably rather play naked than been seen with a cute, floppy-earned puppy-dog headcover.

  Some of the caddies had gathered near the water keg standing at the far end of the practice range, in the shade of a spindly liveoak tree. Most of the caddies were men, although there was a sprinkling of female loopers too. Whatever the sex, the caddies still had that deeply tanned and mostly scruffy look, the universal badge of those who carry golf bags for a living. They were doing what caddies usually do: exchanging information and tips on good restaurants, can’t-lose horses running at Hialeah, who had tickets to the rock concerts. Still, each kept an eye on their hard-working golfer, to see if they needed more practice balls, towels or water. Caddies are enthusiastic participants in the service economy. Or they aren’t caddies for very long.

  The only looper in the group that I knew fairly well was named “Bunny.” I had no idea why, nor did I know what name appeared on his driver’s license. But he had worked on the PGA Tour for years, for a variety of players. I approached him.

  “Hey, Bunny,” I said, walking up. “Who’s hot?”

  He nodded greetings, his smallish, deep-set eyes blinking at me.

  “Bunch a kids are shootin’ lights out,” he told me. “Especially the ones from Asia. Hard to keep ‘em straight. But for me, I’d put my cash down on the mick over there.”

  He nodded down the line at Patty Sheehan, one of the LPGA’s established stars, who was swinging a handful of irons from her practice spot about six players away. I thanked Bunny for the information and wandered down to watch.