The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novel Read online

  He didn’t used to make statements about anything, or even think about anything, aside from pussy. But this was before he took rich and famous. Now he confuses rich and famous with smart, which is a disease, I’ve observed, that infects numerous professional athletes and Hollywood actors.

  Here’s how totally Hall of Fame ignorant Knut is: he thinks No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10 at Pebble are the three worst holes on the course.

  “They should dig them up and start over,” he said. “Put the tees where the greens are . . . put the greens where the tees are.”

  That statement went beyond dumb. It climbed over idiotic, raced through stupid, and did a hook slide into the insane asylum.

  I didn’t say anything during the round while he bitched about the course, but our amateur slugs were impressed. They listened eagerly to everything he said, laughed when they thought they should, and shook their heads in agreement with this and that. Amateur slugs do this. They nod, giggle, agree with everything any “celebrity” says, no matter how ridiculous. That’s why they’re slugs.

  We’d finished the round and were on the putting green across from the Lodge before I said anything to Knut.

  I said, “You know, Knut, if I were you, I wouldn’t talk about what a bad course Pebble is to anybody who doesn’t know you’re a Swede.”

  He stared at me and blinked once or twice before he said, “You are meaning to be humorous?”

  “No, not completely,” I said. “People who know golf and know you’re a Swede, they’ll understand you just don’t know any better. But if they don’t know you’re a Swede, they’ll think you’re totally fucking stupid.”

  In a matter of words then, I’m afraid I launched into a lecture and let him in on the following:

  No. 8 at Pebble is without a doubt the greatest single par four in the world. Even Jack Nicklaus has said the two-hundred-yard second shot over the Pacific Ocean to the small green is the greatest second shot in golf—only Tiger Woods has ever brought the hole to its knees.

  And those three holes in a row—eight, nine, and ten—all of them built along the cliffs above Carmel Bay, make up one of the great stretches in golf.

  “Abalone Corner,” some golf scribe once named it.

  There aren’t even that many stretches to compare with this one at Pebble. You’ve got your Amen Corner at the Masters, which is the eleventh, twelveth, and thirteenth at Augusta National, and you’ve got the last three at Merion in Philadelphia, the quarry holes.

  Only a couple of others ever get mentioned when the subject comes up among non-idiots. One is those quarry holes at Black Diamond Ranch, where I resigned from ladies golf, and the other is the three-hole finish on TPC Stadium in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where we contest The Players Championship every spring.

  What’s even more interesting about Pebble, I informed Knut, is that it was designed by two California amateurs, Jack Neville and Douglas Grant. They never designed another golf course. And here was another little-known fact: when the place opened in 1918, it was known as the Del Monte Golf and Country Club.

  When I was done with all that, I said, “The only reason you don’t like Pebble is because it’s so tough. You can’t tear it up like Tiger did in the Open. You can’t score on it unless there’s no wind and the greens are soft.”

  He said, “That is being exactly the point, Bobby Joe. People want to see Thor make birdies.”

  “Damn, I don’t know why I keep forgetting that,” I said. “It’s always about you. Let me get out of the way and let Thor putt.”

  MY SUITE was among the smaller ones in the Pebble Beach Lodge. On the enchanting Monterey Peninsula. Postcard Overdose.

  The night before the tournament I partook of a room service dinner with a cozy fire going. Lentil soup and club sandwich, pot of coffee.

  I guessed there was more than one golf nut in the country who would have cut off his left Titleist to be where I was.

  Like most golf fans, I still call it the Crosby instead of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. I wish I’d been fortunate enough to compete in it when it was known as “the Clambake,” or the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am.

  My first Crosby was in 1988, a few years after Der Bingle, the Old Groaner, died—took up residence with the Heavenly Host Pro, as they say. The briefcases were running things by then. It’s still the glamour event on the Winter Tour, but it doesn’t seem as glamorous to me as the Crosby I used to watch on TV.

  A lot of the old movie stars and amateur regulars are no longer around. They’ve been replaced by briefcases, friends and neighbors of briefcases, and celebrities like Bumpy Weems, a popular comedian, who’s about as funny to me as a terrorist with a gun pointed at my head.

  Bumpy Weems is Rickey Padgett’s partner every year and he delights the gallery by rolling around in bunkers, throwing his driver down the fairway like a javelin, and howling like a wolf when he makes a putt.

  Sadly enough, we don’t play Cypress Point anymore. Now we play two rounds at Pebble, the last round and one earlier, and one round each at Spyglass Hill and Poppy Hills, a new course that took the place of Cypress Point in ’91.

  I started making it to the Crosby in time to play Cypress my first three years. Even though it’s not that difficult, Cypress might be the most wildly scenic course in America. Windbent. Weird trees and plantlife everywhere. Boulders. Mounds. And the ocean’s always close by.

  Golf on the Discovery Channel.

  Cypress Point is best known for its sixteenth hole. It’s one of the toughest par threes in the world. You have to hit from a ledge on 17-Mile Drive across the Pacific to a green that looks about the size of a pool table, and down below are the jagged rocks and crashing waves that Joan Fontaine in Suspicion was afraid she’d be tossed down on.

  The course is the artwork of Dr. Alister Mackenzie, the Englishman who gets a lot of votes as the best golf architect who ever lived or died. Among his other classic designs are Augusta National, Royal Melbourne, and Crystal Downs, a jewel located up in a part of Michigan you can’t get to without a chopper, a boat you paddle, and an Indian guide.

  Cypress Point is one of the most exclusive clubs in America and yet it was a part of the Crosby for more than forty years. It withdrew from being a host course because it’s a private club and its members didn’t feel like they ought to told what they can do and can’t do by any outside swinging dick.

  The Shoal Creek “racial incident” at the PGA in Birmingham, Alabama, in ’90 is what did it. After all that commotion, it was ordered by the PGA Tour and the USGA that no private club could host a tournament that sold tickets to the public unless its membership included your African-Americans for sure, and if possible even your Hebrew-Americans, your Yellow Peril-Americans, your A-rab-Americans, your Illegal Alien-Americans, and your Women-Americans.

  That was when Cypress Point said something on the order of “Where’s my hat?”

  MY AMATEUR slug in the Crosby was J. Rodney Hemorrhoids.

  Well, ought to be. Real name was Harrison. Chunky guy in his early fifties. I could swear he wore makeup. I know he wore a dark red rug.

  He was one of those guys whose voice got bigger off the golf course. Like now he was in charge of the world, not you.

  He quickly let me in on the fact that he had sold his bank in Atlanta to “the Nazis” for $140 million. I gathered this was why he could afford to own the mansion in Buckhead and the mansion in Highlands, North Carolina, “up there in the mountains,” and the mansion in Sea Island, Georgia, “down there on the coast,” and was a member of so many clubs I lost track of the names, except for Highlands Country Club. I remembered that one because Bobby Jones helped Donald Ross design it.

  J. Rodney said with a big laugh, “Anne Frank might have hid from them Nazis, but I didn’t. Man, I jumped right out there and hollered at ’em. Here I am! Over this way! Come get me!”

  That called for more of his own laughter.

  His thin and snooty wife and her thin and snooty sister, both b
runettes in their late thirties, were accompanying Rod. Nonnie the wife, Neenie the sister. They weren’t altogether bad-looking if you liked your non-smilers.

  J. Rodney had all the mallets. A big leather bag of Callaways with a few Tight Lies thrown in. But that’s where it stopped. When he swung you’d get your pop-ups, your thins, your stabs. Which he blamed on the equipment.

  “These darn new clubs,” he kept complaining, like I’d never heard that before.

  It was his first time in the Crosby and he was a bundle of nerves. Not because he drew me as his pro or anything, although he did believe he’d heard of me. He was afraid forty thousand people were going to be watching every move he made.

  “What if we get paired with Clint Eastwood?” he asked.

  “Then you really don’t have to worry, Rod,” I said. “You can pull down your pants and shit on the eighteenth fairway and the crowd will still be looking at Clint.”

  J. Rodney had the kind of swing that started off looking like he was trying to scoop something up and finished looking like a photograph of Mickey Mantle swinging for the fence. You know what I mean. Feet wide apart, one knee almost touching the dirt, the bat wrapped around his neck.

  I didn’t fool with him much during the practice round. I didn’t want to confuse him, make matters worse. But later in the day I took him over to the range and worked with him a while.

  I didn’t know whether I helped him or not, but I did get his attention after he hit a few balls and I studied his swing closely.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” I said.

  8

  THE CROSBY ANNUALLY OFFERS you a Luby’s Cafeteria of weather. Although it’s a little short on butter beans and cornbread, it gives you wind, cold, rain, mud, fog, and mist. Bring a rubber suit and two umbrellas.

  I was here in ’90 when the wind blew so hard they had to suspend play in the third round because your Titleist wouldn’t stay still long enough on the green for you to take the putter back. That year I was in third place at 140 after two rounds but the three-club wind on Saturday turned me into a tight end—old 84—and I even missed the 54-hole cut.

  This time we were given a full buffet of “Crosby weather.”

  We attracted another wind on Thursday at Pebble—not like ’90 but strong enough to jack with J. Rodney’s hairpiece—and it rained on Friday when we were at Poppy Hills, and on Saturday, the day we were at Spyglass Hill, that’s when the light snow fell on all three courses, which you know about if you were watching TV.

  The weather didn’t bother J. Rodney’s game—nothing could have. Our pro-am team missed the cut from Carmel to Salinas. On every hole he pledged the IPCB fraternity—Ice Plant Claims Ball.

  But through all the elements I kept it in my mind that the place owed me one. I think my mental attitude is what helped me tag Pebble for a 72 on Thursday, sculpt my 68 at Poppy on Friday, salvage a 74 at Spyglass on Saturday—one of the low rounds in the snow—and finish up with a light-running 70 in a stiff breeze at Pebble on Sunday.

  Totaled up, that gave me 284, a tie for fourth, and $165,00 to put in the kick. Not a bad week’s work for playing through J. Rodney, a cyclone, a rain forest, and Stalingrad.

  I was only five shots out of first. Two better than Knut Thorssun, I’m pleased to say. He started out hot on Sunday. Birdies on the first four holes. But he did a Clark Gable—gone with the wind—when he got to the real golf course, which starts at No. 5. That’s the only criticism of Pebble. The first four holes are inland and don’t look anything like the other fourteen. But this doesn’t keep it from being one of my favorite courses.

  I have to confess that I wasn’t as upset as everybody else about what happened to Bumpy Weems on Saturday. I wish I’d seen it live instead of on the replay is all.

  Bumpy was confronted with this pitch shot out of the rough to the right of No. 8 green, and while he was waiting his turn to play he started to entertain the gallery by doing calisthenics. He did push-ups, he did sit-ups, and then he did side-straddle hops. Real funny.

  It was when he was doing the side-straddle hops that he misjudged where he was and disappeared down the cliff. He tumbled all the way to the beach at the bottom. Down there with the rocks and seals and abalone.

  Got himself a broken arm, two cracked ribs, multiple scars, and a concussion. Only funny thing he ever did is what I say.

  Jerry Grimes played well enough to win it, but on Sunday he lost out by a stroke to Salu Kinda, one of our new foreign players from Borneo or maybe it’s Bali. Salu became the first foreigner ever to win the Crosby.

  He’s a tall, dark-skinned, nice-looking, well-spoken guy. Nobody’s real sure what his nationality is—I’m told he’s half this, half that—but he could pass for an officer in your local branch of the NAACP.

  We can always use new stars out here, but I suppose I was a little happier about Salu Kinda’s victory than Jerry Grimes was.

  Jerry said to me later, “Hell, I don’t mind him being low cannibal, but he don’t have to win the whole deal.”

  YOU COULD say I had my share of social life at the Crosby.

  One afternoon after we finished the round J. Rodney hired a long white limo and we went into Carmel. Me and him and Nonnie and Neenie. We strolled around town where I was privileged to watch Nonnie and Neenie buy suede and scoff at paintings of seals in the art galleries.

  J. Rodney insisted I join them for dinner three straight nights in the Lodge, his tickets. Twice in the main dining room and once downstairs in Club XIX, which is where you often find your celebrities.

  It was on Friday night that Neenie, a recent divorcee, picked up a handsome guy at the bar in Club XIX. She was sure he was a movie star she’d seen in something or other, and I didn’t have the heart to spoil her fun, or his, by telling her he was Rickey Padgett’s caddy.

  Nonnie wasn’t interested in celebrities. She mostly occupied her time before dinner, during dinner, and after dinner by sneering at the clothes the other ladies in the room were wearing.

  “You certainly know you’re in tasteless California,” she said.

  This was the night J. Rodney Harrison turned in early. Said his ass was wore out from the rain and the ice plant and the bunkers. He wanted to go to his room and put his feet up.

  “I’m not tired,” Nonnie announced. Snappish.

  Signing the check, J. Rodney said, “Hey, no problem. You and Bobby Joe finish off the rest of this Chateau $97.50.”

  He walked away, waving to other rich turds on the way out.

  I stood up and got as far as saying, “Actually, I’m a little . . .”

  But Nonnie rudely pulled me back down in my chair beside her and said with a glare, “You are a gentleman, aren’t you?”

  It was the first time in the whole three days that she had even acknowledged my presence as someone other than a day laborer her husband had hired to make pars and birdies for him.

  “Rod is a golf nut,” she said. “Pathetic, really.”

  I said it was getting to be an epidemic in many places.

  She hoisted her wine and gazed around the room, as if looking at fools on parade. Then she turned to me.

  “Married with children, I assume?”

  I said, “Nope. I’ve been married twice, but no kids. I am pretty much involved right now in Texas with a real estate agent. Her name’s Cheryl Haney. She works for Donald Hooper Realty in Fort Worth.”

  “Looks? Body? Got all that?”

  “She’s a great American,” I said. “It could be love.”

  A few minutes passed while Nonnie drank wine and I drank coffee.

  Finally she said, “Let’s go outside. I’m dying for a cigarette.”

  She filled up a glass of wine and took it with her. Outside, she handed me the glass to hold while she dug a long cigarette out of the pack in her purse and lit it and inhaled deeply and sighed in ecstasy.

  “California,” she said with disgust. “I’m sure it will soon be against the law to smoke outdoors in your own yard in th
is stupid state.”

  “That’s right, you’re from North Carolina,” I said. “Tobacco state.”

  “I rather think I’m from a sane state, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Which way is your room?”

  I said, “Which . . . what . . . ?”

  “You heard me,” she said.

  Next, while I was saying are you serious?, and I don’t think it’s a great idea, and what about J. Rodney?, and I’m sort of tired myself, Nonnie was moving up against me and putting her hand where I believe almost any man under the circumstances would have suddenly gotten untired.

  When we reached my room, I took off my sport coat and turned on the TV while she went straight to the john. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

  I was standing in the room, flipping around on the TV, looking for a movie, when she came out of the john with nothing on but her white bikini panties. She stood there, hands on her hips, no expression.

  I could only stare at her like an idiot. At a curvy body from the rack on down that I hadn’t expected her to have. A body that looked “quite useful,” as an Australian would describe it.

  Now she came walking slowly toward me. And took my hand and pulled me to the bed. Pull might be too strong a word.

  All I could think of to mutter was “Rocky Sullivan dies yellow.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said, easing onto the bed with her. “It was just something I thought of from an old movie.”

  “Why don’t we not talk for a while?” she whispered.

  I suppose you could say Nonnie was my Pebble Beach souvenir.

  I might mention that before she went back to her own room an hour or so later, she finally smiled.

  9

  MY NICKNAME ON THE TOUR IS Spin. Not many golf writers or radio and TV broadcasters know this, which is fine with me. My longtime caddy, Roy Mitchell, came up with it, and it stuck to me like latex sticks to a dirty leg at the mall.