Death is a Two-Stroke Penalty

by James Y. Bartlett

  But the hole was not finished. Simpson and Turnbull had tied, and a chip-off was needed to eliminate one player. The PGA official led the players behind one of the greenside bunkers and pointed down. The shot he had selected was tortuous. The pin was cut no more than eight paces from the edge of the bunker, with the green sloping sharply away down the hill. The shot demanded a high, soft lob that had to land almost on the far edge of the bunker to have any chance of stopping close to the hole. And the gaping maw of that bunker awaited the ball, and the hopes, of the player who tried to get too cozy.

  Simpson was the first to try, He placed his ball carefully on the grass, giving himself the best possible lie. Then, looking intently at his target, he waggled once and lofted the pitch into the air. “It’s spinning,” McBee yelled. Indeed, Simpson’s delicate shot landed softly in the fringe, bounced once toward the hole, spun nearly to a stop on the next bounce, and trickled softly to within two feet of the hole. The crowd erupted in cheers. It was a stunning golf shot.

  Bert Lewis ran over and slapped Simpson on the back. It looked like John Turnbull was dead. The odds of his making a shot that would finish inside Simpson’s ball were astronomical.

  Turnbull gave Simpson a high-five as well. He knew what a good shot his competitor had made. He grinned and shook his head as he placed his ball on a tuft of grass. “Knock it in, Johnny,” a fan yelled from the crowd.

  Turnbull stood up and turned towards the voice. “Heck,” he said, “That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?” Everyone laughed.

  He stood behind his ball for a moment, visualizing the shot he wanted to make. He still looked relaxed and confident. “Piece of cake, right Johnny?” McBee cracked, and the laughter helped relieve the tension building in the air.

  Turnbull stepped up to his ball and then, with a long, relaxed swing that looked to be almost in slow motion, he cut his wedge under the ball and it lifted into the air. The ball landed on the green with lots of backspin, checked slightly and then ran towards the hole.

  “Look at this!” McBee yelled just before the ball struck the center of the flagstick and dropped from view.

  Pandemonium reigned on and around the green. Grown men slapped each other on the back as they yelled and screamed. Tim Simpson fell down as if shot, rolled on his back and kicked his legs in the air in a mock tantrum. Barry McBee was speechless, for perhaps the first time in his life, and just stood there shaking his head in wonder. John Turnbull laughed aloud, dropped his club and gave himself a well-deserved round of applause.

  I looked around for Bert Lewis. He was stalking away toward the eighteenth green.

  “Say good-bye to ...Tim Simpson,” McBee yelled at last, and the fans gave him one final and noisy ovation.

  The last hole at Bohicket is a long and lovely par-five that winds along the beach. A large series of sand dunes cuts into the fairway where the drive is supposed to land, and the rolling, wave-like fairway hides the Scottish-style pot bunkers that increase in frequency closer to the green. The green itself is a sausage-shaped affair that slopes severely from the left and right inwards to the center, funneling towards a deep central bunker. On a calm day, the long hitting pros can usually reach the green in two shots, but the ocean breezes coming in off the water usually make such a feat harder. Today, as the afternoon progressed, the winds increased in velocity, and no one could even think of being heroic. The last hole today would play as an honest three-shot hole.

  The key thus became the approach to the green. After perfect drives and long-iron shots, both Turnbull and Lewis were left with about a hundred yards to the pin. Pitching wedge...a pro’s money club.

  Turnbull’s wedge was perhaps a tad heavy and came up short, some fifteen feet from the hole. The crowd that swelled along the ropes around the green groaned in shared disappointment. Bert Lewis struck his approach perfectly, and it flew high and straight, coming down over the top of the flagstick, checking up less than ten feet above the hole. That elicited a huge cheer, and Lewis waved his hand in acknowledgement.

  As the two golfers walked side by side to the green, the fans gave them both a loud round of applause. I saw Bert Lewis turn and say something to John, and Turnbull’s quick but decisive shake of his head in response. No. I ducked under the ropes and went over to stand with the group of officials beside the green.

  Turnbull was away, and his birdie putt looked good all the way. But it wavered just at the end, caught a corner of the hole and lipped out. A groan went up as John slapped his left thigh in frustration. He tapped in and came over to the group beside the green.

  “What did he say back there?” I whispered to him. “Double or nothing,” he said tightly.

  Bert Lewis now stalked his eight-footer, which would make him the shootout champion. Again, he studied the putt from all angles. It was downhill, but looked pretty straight. Turnbull and I exchanged glances. We both knew this kind of putt is bread and butter for a fire-hardened tour professional. We both expected the putt to drop.

  But it didn’t. Either Lewis misread the grain, or something snapped his brain synapses loose just as the putter head came through. The ball completely missed the hole and rolled some four and a half feet past on the slippery slope of the green. There was a collective gasp of breath from the fans. His next putt was no gimme.

  Barry McBee tried banter. “Whoa, nelly,” he cried as the ball zoomed past the hole. “Full flaps out, full flaps out! Well, nice drive there Bert. Looks like a three-wood coming back.”

  Lewis growled something softly to McBee, who blanched visibly and quickly slapped a hand over his microphone. He then scurried off to the side of the green and was silent.

  Bert Lewis studied his remaining putt with care. Just under five feet, uphill, mostly straight. Keep the aim inside the hole and stroke it smooth and steady.

  But smooth and steady were not two words that could describe

  Bert Lewis at that moment. He was probably thinking about the money he had just let slip away, Turnbull’s infernal luck on the last hole, or any number of other things.

  I sensed, rather than saw, John Turnbull turn away just as Bert Lewis struck his putt. He was already walking back to the clubhouse when that putt skimmed completely around the hole and dribble back down the slope. He wasn’t watching when Lewis gave out a strangled cry of anguish and broke his putter cleanly in two over his knee. It was a terrible thing to see, and John Turnbull didn’t want to stay and watch it. I didn’t blame him one bit.

  Chapter 8

  ONE OF THE SECRETS of being a successful sportswriter is knowing when to take advantage of the perks.

  On the golf tour, they are plentiful. During the tournament itself, the organizers are charged with providing ample food and drink for us working wretches of the press box. In the morning, that means heaped trays of pastries and cauldrons of steaming hot coffee. The better tournaments will have fresh fruit sections on ice. In the afternoon, the cold buffet is set out: sandwich meats, cole slaw, chips, perhaps an insouciant pasta salad. Better tournaments add cold shrimp and crab legs on cracked ice. Coolers are kept filled with drinks soft and hard. Most of us are able to pocket our corporate per diems for food and still not worry about gaining weight.

  They do not set out food for the press during the pro-ams, but we are usually invited to attend the evening banquets which conclude these festive days. Players are not required to attend the banquet part of the day, so tournament organizes encourage the press to show up and mingle with the well-imbibed amateurs. We rank as second-class thrills. Between bites at the buffet, we usually manage to get in a little mixing and mingling.

  Tonight, the hors d’oeuvres had a definite Low Country seafood theme. Deep-fried crab cakes, popcorn shrimp with a coconut-flecked batter, oysters on the half-shell. Plus, platters of spicy buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing, and ubiquitous wieners in a sweet-and-sour sauce and chicken livers wrapped in bacon. I stuffed my face while half listening to a dentist from Greenville sputter happily ab
out his pulled drives, missed two-footers, and a hellish greenside bunker that caught him on number seven. I tried to nod sympathetically in all the right places.

  As I worked my way down the buffet, I ran into Woody Johnson, who was smacking his lips after slurping down an oyster. They announced the sit-down dinner in the adjoining banquet hall. Woody and I looked at each other. “Overdone prime rib or Scotch?” Woody asked.

  “I’m full,” I answered and we headed for the bar.

  The developers of golf resorts have the ingratiating habit of spending large amounts of dollars making their bars cute. They hire foppish decorators named Wilfred who usually get carried away with the golf theme. Carpets are often some garish deviation of a Scottish tartan. The walls contain the same half- dozen tired prints of Olde Golfers on the Olde Links. Drink stirrers are little plastic golf clubs. Worst of all are the names they insist on giving these places: the Tam-o-Shanter lounge, the Wee Dram Room, the Niblick Bar, the Spoon and Baffle.

  The Bohicket Country Club’s bar was named the Out of Bounds, and the entrance was framed by two seven-foot tall white stakes. Cute, huh? Woody and I sighed as we entered. Inside, at least, the Out of Bounds was comfortably dark and smoky. The carpet might have been a tartan plaid, but it was too dark to tell for sure. Still, it felt like a real bar.

  Over in the corner, a nice-looking lady was tinkling the ivories. It was early, so most of the booths along the back wall were empty. Jean MacGarrity was sitting at the bar, idly stirring a martini with an olive pierced on a wooden pick. I pulled Woody over and we took two stools next to her.

  “Hello, Jean,” I said cheerily. “Seen any good golf lately?” She turned her head slowly to look at me. I could tell by the deliberate way her head rotated that this was not her first martini of the day. “Hacker, siddown, siddown,” she slurred. “Wanna drink?”

  I didn’t tell her I was already sitting. Woody called the bartender over and ordered two Scotches on the rocks.

  “Golf ?” Jean suddenly focused on my question. “Golf sucks,” she said emphatically. “You wanna know what the trouble with golf is? They’re so busy playing with their little white balls that they forget to grow their own. None of ‘em got any balls. Know what I mean?” She leaned over and almost fell off her stool, spilling a bit of martini on the polished bar.

  Woody made a growling sound in the back of his throat, picked up his drink and walked off to go listen to the piano lady.

  I took a sip of my cocktail and put the glass down carefully on the bar. “Jean,” I said, “Before I became one of America’s foremost golf journalists, I covered the police beat back in Boston. I wrote about murders and drug deals and prostitution rings and political corruption. My subject matter was the generally depraved state of the human condition. Every time you think you’ve seen the apparent world record in what one person can do to harm another, someone comes along and breaks it.”

  She was teetering a little on her stool. But she seemed to be listening.

  “But even in this great moral morass in which we find ourselves,” I continued, “We are given a chance of salvation. Grace, maybe. And that’s called free will, self-determination, gumption...whatever. We each have a choice to be happy, or to be miserable. Most of us seem to choose miserable, and I can’t figure out why, except that maybe being happy takes a bit more effort. And you can’t blame anyone else.”

  She was staring at her martini glass, half-empty or half-full. “He’s married, you know,” I said, quietly. “Very married.” “No shit,” she muttered, and drained her glass. She motioned at the bartender for another. He raised his eyebrows at me. I nodded my okay. Free will and all that. He went to make the drink.

  “Bobby Jones used to say that the game is all in the book before a ball is hit,” I told her, and I hoped to God she wouldn’t ask who Bobby Jones was. “We just go through life as if we were rehearsed, the plot written and decided a million years ago.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” she said blurrily. Apparently, her martini binge had affected her powers of reason and intellect. They would have put me flat on the floor.

  “Time for a reality check, darlin’” I said. “The job you’re after is filled. All that’s left is president of the fan club. Interested?” She reddened and turned to look at me. I didn’t like the angry, boozy flash in her eyes.

  “That son-of-a-bitch,” she growled. “Sanctimonious prick. Chicken-shit bastard. I could kill the motherfucker.”

  “C’mon, Jean,” I chided her gently. “You think you’re the first one ever lied to and left on a string? There’s a million stories in that city, babe.”

  “He didn’t lie to me, shithead,” she glared at me. “He told me we were just friends right from the get-go. I did everything but hang a sign around my neck saying “Will Screw for Nothing,” but nothin’ doin’ for ole Saint John.”

  I had to laugh. “Well, you should be thankful he’s got principles,” I said. She looked at me questioningly. “He sleeps around with you, he probably would sleep around on you, too.” She groaned and put her head down on her long slender arms crossed atop the bar. “Spike it, Jean,” I said. “Put him down under ‘F’ for ‘friend’ and forget it.”

  Her head still resting on her arms, she mumbled something. I didn’t quite catch it, but it sounded like “kill the motherfucker.”

  “Well go ahead and kill him then,” I said. “’Cause until he’s dead and buried in your head, you’re wasting your time.” I threw some bills down on the bar and left.

  It was still early evening, but suddenly I was tired. And my stomach hurt. I tried to convince myself it was from too many shrimp and crab cakes. Outside, the air had suddenly cooled in the evening darkness. An ocean breeze rustled the palmetto palms and the timeless smells of the marshes, a smell that carries both life and death, ordure and birth, wafted through the air. The ceaseless tides do their work, day after day, night after night. Cleansing and killing. Carrying both nutrients and predators. An endless cycle, mindless and yet somehow divine.

  In the distance, I could hear the pounding of the surf. It sounded angry tonight, not peaceful. The waves were landing on the beach with an unpleasant hollow thud slapping on the wet sand, the sound of a bill collector pounding on the door late at night, or the thud of a cop before he hollers “Open up...police!” I shivered in the night chill, but put it down to sensory overload.

  Hacker’s advice to the lovelorn, I thought. Perfect. Blind leading the blind. The emotionally wrecked guiding others through the shoals of life. Perfect.

  Back in my own dark and empty villa, I found the pastel-and- beach décor, designed to be of universal appeal, totally offensive.

  I turned out all the lights, turned on the TV and spent a couple of mindless hours sitting in the dark before I fell asleep.

  Chapter 9

  I DREAMED OF NOISY, thumping surf and awoke Wednesday morning with a start. Then it came again...the sound of someone frantically pounding on my front door. I rolled over and checked the clock: just barely past 6:00 A.M. The pounding began again. I started composing oaths, searching for just the right combination, as I threw on a pair of pants and stalked down the stairs.

  I threw open the front door and caught Becky Turnbull in mid-pound. She was not the confident, self-assured, well- manicured business executive at this time of the morning. Her blond hair was a tangled mess, her face streaked with melting mascara. Her shirt was misbuttoned, like a two-year-old’s first halting attempt at self dressing. She looked at me desperately, eyes wide and frightened.

  “Oh, God, Hacker, you’ve got to help,” she gasped, her bottom lip quivering. “Johnny didn’t come home last night. I was waiting up for him, but I fell asleep God knows when, and just woke up and he still isn’t home.”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her inside my villa. “Okay, kid, get a grip. Come in, take a deep breath, tell me where he went last night. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “Well, he left right after din
ner,” she said, struggling to get her emotions under control. “It must have been about six-thirty. He had a meeting of the Golfers for Christ, and then he said he had some business to take care of. But,” she looked at me fearfully, “He was kind of vague about that. He wouldn’t tell me who he was meeting with, or what it was about. Said not to worry.”

  “Okay, never mind about that for now,” I said. “Let’s first find out if he made that meeting of the God Squad. He probably let someone there know where he was going next. Don’t sweat it,” I tried to reassure her. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. Golfers never just disappear.” I wished I felt as confident about that as I sounded.

  I headed for the telephone when another knock at the door stopped me in my tracks. “See?” I said to Becky. “That’s probably him now.”

  I opened my door. Standing outside was a security guard from the resort wearing his fake brown policeman’s uniform, complete with fake but impressive gold badge that was embossed with a nice sunrise and the words resort security. Outside in the driveway, his big white SUV idled loudly.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said and touched the snappy black rim of his snappy black cap while his eyes tried to dart around me to see inside. “I was looking for Mrs. Turnbull. Her door here is open and there’s no one inside, and I thought...”

  Becky Turnbull came to the door and stood beside me. She had the look of a trapped wild animal that knows there is no place to run. “Yes?” she whispered.

  “Mrs. Turnbull, I’m afraid I have some bad news,” the resort cop said. “Your husband’s been in an accident.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she said, speaking in a ghostly whisper.

  “Yes ma’am, I’m afraid he is.”

  The security cop and I took care of Becky Turnbull first. We rousted out a couple of players’ wives to come stay with her, and a doctor who gave her a sedative. It wasn’t that she was wild and uncontrollable in her grief. In fact, just the opposite: she sat frozen and still, staring with unseeing eyes at the wall in front of her. When the doctor slipped the hypodermic into her arm, she blinked twice, started up, and let us lead her gently into her bedroom. She lay down quietly and closed her eyes. I started to leave when she suddenly sat up and caught at my arm.