How Not to Break 40 on Nine Holes of Golf

   I used to play golf as a preteen with my father on Saturday mornings. I would carry around a rag-tag motley crew of golf clubs and bag. He would give me a brand-new ball each Saturday and a bunch of pristine, pure white tees. My pockets were full of these sharp tees. We only played the back nine on Saturdays, and my dad would play a full eighteen on Sundays. I’ve long since moved on, but I miss those days. We rose before the crack of dawn, I was about ten years old maybe when it started, and I would always be awake already as I heard him coming quietly down the hall. This is one of the quintessential memories I have of my father, who passed away five years ago: the quiet, the precision, the hour of the day. He would wake me, so to speak, by flicking the light switch, which annoyed me, but it had the virtue of being silent. I endured it without comment so as to move things along. Wordlessly we dressed (my dad had instructed me the night before to lay out my clothes) and got into the car, to eat breakfast at the little golf course restaurant. Dark and still the streets, and I envied those yet sleeping, like Aeneas envying those already dead at the foot of the walls of Troy.

  I had a big appetite, and would sometimes order both french toast and regular toast at the same time– I could really put it away. I was mystified once by others in the group who thought that an unusual combination. My dad just said, “It’s all right.” I ate it all. There was a time, though, that I was sure the milk I had gotten was sour, and I complained quietly but bitterly, so that the waitress eventually came over. My dad vetoed my complaint, sniffing the milk and calmly stating that it was O.K. He was right. I think the stress of being a kid in a man’s rough milieu made me unsteady, and I took it out on the milk. I feel badly now about the waitress, who of course didn’t need all that.

  Now, my dad was an expert on the rules and etiquette of golf. No violations allowed. No son of his would disgrace the tradition. He was an outstanding player, and I watched his game with an awe-struck sensibility. We also had fun using the ancient names of the golf clubs, at my behest, such as mashie, niblick, and spoon, instead of the usual names like five-iron, nine-iron, and three-wood. It was our private language.

  As I got older, I got better. I became capable of getting a par now and then on an individual hole here and there. Usually, my nine hole score would be in the fifties, but then 45′s became routine, and then at times on an especially auspicious Saturday, I would threaten to break 40 (and of course fall just short of success). Breaking 40 on a regulation nine holes for the first time is a major milestone for any golfer. You feel then that the distance between you and the professionals is possibly finite (but of course it isn’t finite). That was significant indeed for me, a junior historian of the game: I had read up, fascinated, about the old school boys.

  One of these Saturday mornings, it was starting to happen. I must have been in high school by then: I don’t think I could’ve broken 40 before that age, since I was very lazy about practicing. Anyway, on the eighteenth tee (which would have been our ninth hole that morning), I was just four-over-par after eight holes. Par for the back nine was 35. Four-over-par equals 39. All I needed then was a par on eighteen and I had my first 39. I hit a good drive and approach shot on this four-par hole, and had to complete only a two-putt and it was over. After the first putt, a cautious lag, I had left myself about a two-footer for the par. The ball sat there larger-than-life. I was lying 3 for the hole, 38 for the nine. Everyone else was already in, only my ball remained on the green.

  I don’t know if the other two players in the foursome were aware of the high drama, but my dad was acutely aware of it. He knew what a first 39 was like. He kept the scorecard of course, and was definitely up-to-speed that I was lying 38, with a two-foot putt for a world-historic 39. But there is such a thing in recreational golf known as the “gimme.” Concerning a very short putt, one player says to another, “That’s a gimme, pick it up.” Just assume it’s in, tally it, move on. So, that Saturday morning I was hoping for a gimme. I wasn’t going to split hairs about the 39. I was nervous about the putt– ironically, there was a certain vulnerability my performance had exposed me to: having to close it out.

  But no one was saying anything. They were all strangely silent for once. Talkative men having become mute, all eyes on me. Somehow they were cognizant of the situation: but I was superstitious in sports, I wouldn’t have been talking about it. No one offered me a gimme, and they didn’t even lift a finger to help. So, in the event, I just boldly walked over and picked the ball up, proud of my 39. My dad was suddenly so enraged that he almost started to stalk me. “Put that back,” he said in an ominous tone of voice: “Putt that out.” I was startled by his vehemence– what’s the big deal?! People give themselves gimmes all the time, right?

  But I had no choice but to put the ball back and line-up the putt. I was a little unnerved and scared by his intensity: this was a level of significance I had never experienced before. You could have heard a pin drop, and of course I don’t mean the flag pin. I had made things infinitely worse obviously by taking a gimme unbidden, and at such a time. The whole world was aware of the morality play unfolding, it appeared. I felt self-conscious. I had committed an egregious and cardinal sin against golf: claiming as true a performance that was fictitious. The ghostly voices of the origins of the game demanded restitution, lest the game degenerate into a farce of sly cheating, into a race to the bottom. Ben Hogan, Harry Vardon, Bobby Jones himself stood numinously around the back of the green watching me, protecting golf from me.

  I stood nervously over the putt. It was a straight putt, I just had to hit it with confidence. Don’t falter, and it’ll go in. It wasn’t that hard a putt. But I was so scared I wasn’t sure I could function. I took my backstroke carefully, and then my follow-through…the ball rolled gently…bouncing and weaving towards the hole…and then…it rolled pathetically aside at the last instant– whoops! I had really missed it: 40.

  As we were walking up the slope from 18 to the clubhouse level, my dad turned to me and said, not unkindly, “It hurts doesn’t it?”  Well, it sure did then, but not now: I had it coming.

T.D. 

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