Unplayable Lies: (The Only Golf Book You'll Ever Need) Read online

  We started when Rob dropped in and blinded us with his chest. Rob’s chest was covered in gold coins on gold chains dangling around his neck. They were clearly visible, as his pirate shirt was unbuttoned to the waist.

  The jewelry and shirt did not detract from his out-of-season tan, the obvious evidence of a face-lift, his Elvis pompadour, and his tight white slacks.

  “Rob, it’s the new you,” somebody said.

  “It goes better with my lifestyle,” Rob said. “You know how many movie people I hang with when I hit the Coast.”

  “You’re a sick man, Rob.”

  “Yo!” Rob said. “I’m invited to Pebble Beach … the Springs … Vegas four times a year. I know guys who’d kill for that.”

  “It doesn’t bother you to take a 26 with you? We know you’re a four.”

  “Man, everybody’s a thief out there. You ought to see what the guys from Goldman Sachs bring.”

  Rob said he did have one problem. He’d met this babe in Carmel. She was hot. Really hot. They’d gotten involved. But the last time he was with her she told him the thing she admired most in a man was honesty. Rob couldn’t decide whether to tell her about his wife and two kids.

  I said, “I don’t see how that’s a problem for you, Rob. It’s only a moral question.”

  “Hey, that’s right,” Rob said. “I’m cool.”

  Floyd recalled the time he was making business calls on customers and stopped by Rock Creek Muny on the other side of town. He thought he’d have a cup of coffee with Skeeter Morris, the head pro. Skeeter was an old buddy.

  Floyd and Skeeter were sitting in the pro shop when this guy came in. Skeeter introduced him to Floyd. His name was A.R. something.

  “I don’t know what it is, Skeeter,” A.R. said, displaying an awkward practice swing. He had the flying elbow and a choppy finish.

  He wore a rain hat, ragged jeans, a dingy golf shirt, and scuffed-up brown golf shoes.

  He said, “I haven’t broken 95 in six months. I can’t find a fairway with an Indian guide. I hit every iron crooked. I wish I could get back to my 12, Skeeter. I can’t come no closer to a 12 right now than I can to a pretty woman.”

  Skeeter said, “I’m tied up, but Floyd here is a good player. Maybe you can talk him into going nine with you … give you some pointers.”

  Floyd said it was a pretty day and he could put off making the rest of his calls. He got his clubs out of his car and met A.R. on the first tee.

  A.R. said, “You know, as much as I love this game, I seem to try harder if I’ve got a little something going. What say you give me three up, and we play nine for a hundred, press to get even on the last hole if you need to.”

  Floyd looked the guy over. He was taking peculiar practice swings with an old persimmon driver. The clubhead took up turf once or twice. Floyd gave him the three up.

  A.R. teed off first and striped it down the fairway with a much different swing. The drive went about 285.

  “I’ll be damned,” A.R. said. “How in the world did that thing find the fairway? Luck was my friend that time.”

  Addressing his approach shot with a five-iron, he said, “I never know what to expect with this club. Shank. Top. Scoop. Here goes nothin’.”

  The shot flew 165 yards, landed on the green, and settled in two feet from the flag.

  “Whoa!” he yelled. “Where’d that come from?”

  Floyd handed the guy a $100 bill, slid into his cart, and turned toward the clubhouse.

  A.R. said, “You givin’ up? Lot of holes left. You sure?”

  Floyd said, “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  Jim Ed joined us. He entered complaining.

  “I’m fed up,” he said. “I played my heart out last week in Houston. I ran the table on the greens for three rounds. My worst score was 68. I carried my partner the whole way. We finished 37 under. But guess what?”

  “You came in twentieth,” somebody said.

  “Not even close,” Jim Ed said. “It took 43 under to win … 39 under to get tenth. We didn’t even win a pie plate. I’m tired of watching some diddy-bump drop-case who can’t hit it out of this room walk off with all the hardware.”

  “What’s your handicap now?” Floyd asked.

  “They gave me a three there, but you know I’m scratch.”

  “There’s your problem. You need a California handicap.”

  “How would I do that?”

  Jim Ed was kind of naive.

  Floyd said, “It would take a while, but it would be worth it to you. I know how much you love golf and how much you like to compete.”

  Jim Ed was told to play twenty rounds at the club with different people, but throw in disasters. Hit balls in the water. Hook drives out of bounds. Four-putt three or four greens. Stub as many chip shots as possible, but make it look accidental. Mix up the disasters with the good holes. Follow up a birdie with a hard-luck 10. Turn in a bunch of 85s and 87s. The pro would attest to his scores. He could be an 18 in no time.

  Jim Ed looked excited.

  “I’ll do it!” he said. “I’ll get me an 18. Then, by God, we’ll see who can play this game and who can’t.”

  THE PERFECT CLUB

  SWAMP OR NO swamp?

  That was my first dilemma. I was starting to design the perfect golf club for a group of wealthy Texans. They wanted a true links, and I was naturally aware that a true links in the United States has to be built on land reclaimed from a real estate developer.

  There were other considerations.

  Bulkheads or no bulkheads?

  Waste areas or no waste areas?

  Quarry or no quarry?

  Greens that break toward the town houses, or greens that break toward Naomi’s Cove.

  Naomi was the wife of one of the wealthy Texans. She had always wanted her own cove. It would go with her private jet that can fly nonstop from anywhere in the world to Bergdorf Goodman in New York.

  To save time I consulted with an architect who claimed to know something about coves, town houses, and where the sun comes up and goes down.

  When I tired of hearing him talk about drainage and grass and prevalent winds, I made it simple for him.

  I said, “Just give me 7, 8, and 9 from Pebble, 12 and 13 from Augusta, the Road Hole from St. Andrews, and take the other 12 from Pine Valley, throw ’em up in the air, let ’em land where they want to.”

  With a project like this, some developers start with the golf course, some start with the hotel, some start with the casino. Or they go casino, hotel, golf course. It depends on the financing.

  The investors wanted a hotel that was as understated as possible if you blended Windsor Castle with the Taj Mahal. I said if we went with the Taj, we might run into plumbing problems.

  The hotel had to be sizable since the guests they hoped to attract would be bringing large groups for a week—their swing coaches, nurses, psychologists, lawyers, accountants, PR consultants, security, and food tasters.

  I needed land as well. Land, lots of land, under starry skies above. Certainly enough land for the other activities—polo, hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, horseback riding, croquet, wandering.

  Jogging will NOT be permitted within five miles of the property. Joggers sling sweat on innocent bystanders, and occasionally drop dead, which is inconvenient.

  The hotel menu will be simple and tasty. Breakfast available twenty-four hours a day. Other all-day treats would be barbecue ribs, beef brisket, Tex-Mex, chili and rice, catfish, cheeseburgers, meatloaf, chicken and dumplings. Maybe some butter beans. Chefs from the finest truck stops in America will be brought in.

  It goes without saying that the club will NOT host weddings, debutante parties, charity balls, Easter egg hunts, Fourth of July picnics, Halloween costume parties, Super Bowl parties, election night parties, New Year’s Eve celebrations, seminars, or banquets of any nature.

  Members and guests using cell phones anywhere but in their private rooms will risk physical tortu
re and banishment from the grounds.

  Employees, domestic or foreign, will be required to speak English at all times. Tipping the help is not required, but is encouraged. May the best man win.

  No tee times are necessary, the course will never be crowded, and the club and golf course will be open 365 days a year. None of this silly holiday business.

  There will be one other distinctive feature.

  Storm shutters and steel walls on every structure will be activated instantly in case of violent weather approaching. In addition, snipers will be posted on the roofs at various points, in case any organized group of rejuvenated moron hippies and their commie professors from the faculty lounges might show up to insist that this land is their land.

  It’s time we got back to a civilized society again.

  CELEBRITIES

  ONCE UPON A time the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am was the most glamorous winter event on the PGA Tour. Every name pro entered, and every amateur was somebody who could act, sing, dance, and play golf well enough not to kill a spectator. This, of course, was before Bing passed away and some wry wit changed the name of the tournament to—I think I have this right—the AT&T National Pro-CEO & Corporate Boondoggle.

  When Crosby Week came around every February, the Pebble Beach neighborhood, and every nook and cranny in smug yet picturesque downtown Carmel, would begin to be populated by a species known as Real Celebrities. These were people who happened to have accomplished something in sports or showbiz to justify such status.

  It was a sane and joyful time in the world. There wasn’t a Miley Cyrus or a Justin Bieber in it. Those were the days.

  I was assigned—and it was my privilege—to cover fourteen Crosby tournaments from the late sixties through the early eighties. It is pure gossip that I covered them from a chair at the bar in Club XIX in the Pebble Beach Lodge, where I’d be staying, having no threshold for inconvenience.

  You could have seen me out on number 8 and number 9 on Pebble from time to time to watch the suffering on those great par-4 holes. You could have seen me strolling around Cypress Point, to see what it was like to feel rich. I even went out to investigate Spyglass Hill to see why nearly every pro wanted it bulldozed.

  I was invited to play in the Crosby a few times. Dave Marr invited me to be his amateur partner. Ben Crenshaw invited me to play as his partner. Even Kathryn Crosby, Bing’s widow, invited me, and said she’d find me a pro. I always declined, having no fondness for five a.m. wake-up calls, freezing weather, blinding mist, and ice plant.

  Besides, I wanted to be in my bar chair in Club XIX every evening. Well, every evening except one. That would be the night I’d let myself get talked into going to dinner with friends in smug yet picturesque downtown Carmel.

  Someone would have made a reservation six months ahead in a small, hidden restaurant on a dark Carmel side street, chic but cramped, where the waitress would be dressed like a member of the Trapp family, and your fresh filet of Pacific red snapper would be served on a bed of tiny gold bracelets and emerald necklaces, or so the check would indicate.

  There would occasionally be the opportunity to go to exclusive old Cypress Point for lunch. One year my wife and I and another couple were taken by the attractive young wife of a member. But because she was wearing a designer pantsuit, we were denied admittance to the dining room. No pants allowed.

  It didn’t seem to matter to the maître d’ that there was hardly anyone else in the dining room or, more important, that the lovely young wife happened to own Palm Beach, Florida.

  “Give me a moment,” she said to the maître d’.

  She disappeared briefly, went to her car, then returned with her pants off and her raincoat tied around her waist.

  “Will this do?” she said acidly to the maître d’.

  “That will do nicely, madam,” he said.

  Then we had lunch.

  An evening later, a group of us were dining at a place in Monterey. In the dinner party was my pal Don Cherry, the singer-golfer, who was playing in the Crosby. He listened to us talk about how good the food was at Cypress Point for a few moments, and said, “What’s so good about a sandwich and an apple?”

  I laughed out loud, realizing that the Crosby competitors in those days weren’t allowed in the Cypress Point clubhouse when they played there in the rotation—they were given box lunches.

  Back in the lodge, the bar chair was actually a stool with a backrest. Tom Oliver, the lodge manager then, did threaten at one point to put my name on a bronze plate on the backrest of the chair. This was because I was usually in there from seven till closing. I should explain that my chair was in the near corner on your right as you came down the stairs and entered what most people called the casual restaurant and I called tournament headquarters.

  The longtime bartender, Chris Ursino, now late of this world, could handle everybody’s refreshment needs while providing intellectual conversation with each serving.

  It’s where I would relax with my Winstons and young scotches and chat with friends and acquaintances who would stay for one cocktail, or several. I speak of pals like Dave Marr, Jack Whitaker, and baseball’s greatest catcher, Johnny Bench, who knew more Kristofferson lyrics than I did. If I was in need of a movie star fix, I could always count on saying hello to George C. Scott—“Good to see you again, General”—and spending a fair amount of time in the presence of Jack Lemmon and James Garner.

  It was a pleasure to discuss golf with Jack Lemmon.

  “I did it today,” he said one evening at the bar, swinging an imaginary club. “On number 7 at Pebble? Man, I caught it flush on the clubface. Gave it a really good whack. Like this—bam! I’m telling you, it felt good.”

  “Did you hit it close?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But it almost got airborne.”

  A heartwarming Crosby story goes back to the days when ABC televised the event. It involves two good buddies, the late Mac Hemion and the late Andy Sidaris, directors and producers under Roone Arledge’s guidance.

  Sidaris called Mac one morning to wake him up, to tell him what time everybody was expected to be on the tower at 18 for rehearsal, and Andy did a good job of imitating Bing Crosby’s voice.

  “Good mornin’, Malcolm,” Sidaris said. “The Old Groaner here. What time shall I discard the persimmon and croon a tune on the Good Ship Tower today?”

  “Bite me, Andy,” Mac said, hanging up and pulling the blanket over his head.

  Presently, the phone rang again. Mac simply picked it up and slammed it back down.

  A moment later the phone rang a third time. Mac picked it up and listened long enough to realize it was, in fact, the Old Groaner himself. Der Bingle.

  “Jesus, Bing, it was you,” Mac said. “Sorry.”

  “No problem, Malcolm,” Crosby said. “Might I venture the guess you had a nice long visit with the juniper berry last evening?”

  THE MERCHANDISE SHOW

  THE ANNUAL MERCHANDISE show is always worth the trouble of fighting the crowds; you can load up on free stuff—golf balls, shirts, visors, ball markers, posters. I was in the drawing for the super range finder, the one that also shows TV channels, movies, and golf instruction, but I didn’t win. I was lucky in another way, though. I got the last posters that were left of Blubber Oates and Frecklebelly Edwards, two of my favorite Tour players.

  Every exhibit had new things to promote.

  My first stop was at the golf cart booth. The cart was bright yellow. It was a four-seater with the steering wheel wrapped in a sable cover. It was equipped with air-conditioning and central heating with push-button windows and plush leather seats. The computer and TV were on the dash, and there was a microwave oven and foldout service bar in back.

  A beautiful young model in a bikini was sitting in the cart.

  I asked the exhibitor how much the cart was.

  He said, “With or without Malya?”

  “Who’s Malya?”

  “The young lady in the cart.”
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  “She goes with the cart?”

  “That would be up to you.”

  “How much is the cart by itself?”

  “Right at twelve thousand, five hundred.”

  “How much with Malya?”

  “Wait a second,” the exhibitor said. He went to speak to Malya.

  He returned and said, “A million four, but that’s only for the first six months.”

  I said, “I’m not sure the missus would like having Malya underfoot. Is there something going on in the world of golf I don’t know about?”

  He said, “We’re losing players, pal. Every year. The game’s become too stodgy for the new generation. We’re trying to keep the recreational golfers we have in this country, and attract new ones.”

  Malya smiled at me and tossed her hair.

  The exhibitor said, “There’s one other feature to this cart you may like. It goes up to seventy miles an hour.”

  “Why would I want to go seventy miles an hour in a golf cart?”

  He said, “Let’s say you’ve hooked your tee shot in the rough. You want to get to your ball before the others in your foursome, right? Give yourself a little better lie? All you do is use your right foot. You’re there.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, and moved on.

  A voice on the PA system announced that Stat Man Shields would be starting his lecture on his new golf scoring system on Aisle 6. I wandered over.

  Stat Man Shields didn’t seem to mind that there were only four of us in his audience. This included the six-month-old baby in a backpack on a man in shorts, T-shirt, and flipflops who was practicing his putting stroke with a purchase he’d made earlier.

  Stat Man Shields was saying, “This is the same system I’ve used to prove that Felix Serafin was a better golfer than Sam Snead … that Al Watrous had a better scoring average in the Open than Bobby Jones, and so on and so forth. You can’t simply go by the score a golfer shoots if you want to know how well he’s playing the game. There’s more involved. One example. Does a putt that goes in from off the froghair count as much as a putt of the same length on the green? No. You subtract a half point. Another example. Does a drive in the first cut deserve the same two points as a drive of comparable distance in the fairway? No. Subtract one-fourth of a point if it’s a par-5 hole, one half point if it’s a par-4. Hitting the green on a par-3 is worth one point. Missing the green is no penalty unless you’re in the water. When you add up all the points at the end of the day, and measure the total against the odds of thirty-six one-hundredths over fifty-five one-hundredths, you will have a good idea of what kind of round you shot. Questions?”