Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia (19 page)

‘Eight oh six,' said Charandeep.

‘Shit. Pretty early. What about you, Tom?' said Jamie. ‘What time did you say you were off tomorrow?'

‘Oh, I'm off right now, I think. I'll probably head straight back to Norfolk.'

‘No, I mean your tee time.'

‘I don't think I know what you're talking about.'

‘Your
time.
In The Open Qualifying. Tomorrow. What is it?'

OK. I admit it. As golfing schedule cock-ups go, it was fairly sizeable. Who knows what would have happened
if
Jamie hadn't said anything? Perhaps I would have driven the 120 miles home and then that night, in bed, whilst going through my Open paraphernalia and savouring my day at Hollinwell, caught sight of the date on the start sheet and noted my mistake, then prepared myself for an early-morning drive back across country. Or perhaps I would have remained oblivious. The qualifying event would have come and gone, the scores would have been posted, and, six days later, in accordance with my diary, I would have arrived at Hollinwell and enthusiastically made my way over to the first tee, only to be told by a couple more of those Bagpussy blazer-badge men that I was six days late and that if I didn't get off the premises within five seconds flat they would shoot me and mount my ashen features in the trophy room.

There had been a time, once, when I'd been a great one for planning out my tournament schedule. Since then, I'd got caught up in the mess of adult existence, and realised the immutable truth that life isn't ever going to be ordered, no matter how much order you impose on it, and with this in mind, there isn't much point in trying. My approach to important dates these days tended to be more freeform, and worked like this: I wrote them down in the margin of a newspaper or some junk mail, then, a few hours later, threw them into the recycling. Nonetheless, like I said, I'd really made an effort to plan out what I presumed was the week before my Open campaign, and I'd been sure –
sure
– that the tournament was being held on 10 July. It was only after being put right by Jamie that I began to ask myself questions like, ‘Well, perhaps it would be more logical to have the qualifying event the day after its practice day, wouldn't
it
?' and ‘If Local Qualifying was on the tenth, and Local Qualifying was only for people who got through Regional Qualifying, it would be a bit difficult to hold Regional Qualifying on the tenth too, wouldn't it?'

My first task, after picking myself up off the tarmac outside Hollinwell's front entrance and taking a few deep breaths, was to phone my parents and tell them there had been a change of plan. Would it be OK if I stayed over at their place tonight? It would. Might I be able to use their washing machine? I might. Next, I called Edie. Could she manage without the car tomorrow? She could. Finally, I spoke to one of my editors. Could I have a twenty-four-hour extension for the television review I was due to submit tomorrow afternoon? No problem. Within ten minutes, I was feeling distinctly rosier. I thought back to that unforced afternoon last summer, when I'd had my hole-in-one. I hadn't been expecting to play golf that day either, had I? Perhaps the unanticipated nature of tomorrow would work in my favour.

I'd got to the top of Hollinwell's long, winding drive when I remembered the final piece to the puzzle: Pete Boffinger. Pete, the son of Cripsley Edge's tireless ex-junior organiser Bob Boffinger, had offered to caddy for me in the competition, and now almost certainly wouldn't be able to. I could hardly expect him to drop everything and take a day off work at less than twenty-four-hours' notice, could I? I pulled over into a layby, and dialled his number, fearing the worst.

‘Yes,' he said, after I'd explained my mistake, ‘I know it's tomorrow. You're teeing off at 1.18. I know I'm not a proper caddie, but I'm not
completely
useless.'

* * *

The most important day of my golfing life dawned in a way that most summer-loving Brits would describe as ‘a bit muggy and overcast' but wind-fearing golfers like me call ‘perfect'. I hadn't slept well, owing to my mum and dad's clanky boiler, the
Pet Sematary
yowling of their senile cat Daisy and a greatest hits montage of golf-based nightmares
³
playing behind my eyes, but the weather calmed my fluttery innards. Having ridden out some parental fussing,
⁴
I left for the course in good time.

Upon arriving at Hollinwell, however, it became clear that there was going to be another unforeseen bump in my road to Hoylake.

The first thing I noticed was that the fairways were empty. The second was that there was a gathering of a couple of hundred people outside the clubhouse. All of these people seemed either to be muttering grimly into their mobile phones or engaged in terse, one-sentence-per-minute conversations with one another, whilst frowning in the direction of the sky. I did not have to use any master eavesdropping skills to grasp the situation.

‘They're saying at least a two-hour delay …'

‘It's been two hours already, yoof …'

‘I heard them saying the last groups won't get in ‘fore it gets dark …'

‘I don't know what I'm doing chuffin' standing here. I may as well get my van and go and shoot some more of them rabbits …'

‘If you look, it is brightening up a bit …'

There was once a time when golfing authorities took a gung-ho attitude towards the threat of lightning at tournaments. Despite being equipped with bags full of what were essentially conductor rods, players would be expected to soldier on as the air crackled and fizzed overhead. Just occasionally, a couple of them would get hit and almost die,
⁵
but that was seen as another of the fundamental dangers of a round of golf: a bit like an extra-punitive bunker that had electricity instead of sand (and actually didn't resemble a bunker at all). Greater
communications
with the Met Office and the advent of the Health-and-Safety Age, however, have changed all that. It is not uncommon now, particularly on the PGA Tour, to see play suspended and players pulled off the course at the first gentle tummy rumble in the sky. For me, today might have represented perfect golfing weather; to the R&A, it probably represented several lawsuits waiting to happen.

Having signed in at the tournament office, I wandered around for a while, trying to spot Jamie. His early tee time meant he would have been one of those whose rounds had been interrupted. Noting that the driving range had, like the course, been temporarily closed, I made a brief foray into the clubhouse to try to get a sandwich – I soon thought better of it. Judging by the queue, any food order would require a long wait, and I worried that when the wait was over, the culinary options might not stretch much further than the mysterious black gelatinous substance I'd seen in the Men's Bar last evening, stuck to something that, in a previous life, might have been bread.

It was now just past midday. Judging by the estimations being made about the delay in the area of the competion office, my 1.18 p.m. tee time was now going to be a three p.m.-ish tee time, so I had ample time to kill. Remembering one of Jamie's bits of advice from yesterday – ‘At a big event like this it's best not to arrive at the course until about an hour or so before you tee off, so you don't have time to think about it too much' – I decided it couldn't hurt to go for a drive.

It struck me as curious that, although I'd lived a matter of minutes away from Hollinwell for a whole decade of
my
life, try as I might, I couldn't remember ever eating at any restaurant or café in the area. As I steered in the direction of Nottingham, I realised that there was a very good reason for this, and that was that in north Nottinghamshire people don't sell food. Driving through town after town, forlornly looking for an outlet that might offer something pre-cooked and halfway edible, I began to see the logic to the arrangement: this was the heart of what remained of Sherwood Forest – a landscape not lacking in wildlife. Perhaps north Notts types simply preferred to forage, primeval-style, for their light snacks.

By the time I'd driven through Annesley and Hucknall and Bullwell – places that one could be forgiven for presuming couldn't possibly be as desultory as their names make them sound, right up to the moment of visiting them – I'd weighed up the options and decided I might as well head all the way into the city itself. I couldn't fail to find sustenance there.

Had there been a camera on me – and, this being Nottingham, UK capital of CCTV, no doubt there were several – the following two hours could have been edited into a useful How Not to Prepare for a Golf Tournament instructional video. It would begin, perhaps, with an introduction by Renton Laidlaw in his
Best Shots of the Masters
style, featuring a short lecture about the traditions of The Open. Then we would see footage of me going about my business, with Renton explaining just why each of my actions was not becoming of a sportsman, and bold red letters and exclamation marks stamped upon the screen to emphasise each of my cardinal sins. There would be the bit where I went to

Starbucks to get a Caramel Macchiato and said, ‘No, actually, make that a medium, not a small … no, a large – did I say medium? I meant large …' (CAFFEINE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO NERVES!). There would be the moment when I decided to just quickly pop into HMV, to see if they had a Creedence Clearwater Revival album that I could listen to in the car (UNSETTLING HIPPIE NOISE TERROR!). We'd then see a shot of me realising the time and making a run for it back to the car park (NEEDLESS INCREASE IN BLOOD PRESSURE!). Perhaps finally we'd see me in the car, driving along the B600, looking hot and flustered, trying to overtake a tractor (STRESS RISING!).

When I arrived back at the course, play had long since restarted. If Jamie's philosophy was to be believed, I was now beginning my practice routine at the ideal time: almost precisely an hour before I was due to tee off. My caddie, however, was already by the first tee, waiting for me. We shook hands. Pete gave me a ‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren't we?' look, and began to meticulously rearrange the pockets of my bag: separating the tees from the balls, separating the local rules sheet from a week-old banana skin, and adding various supplies of his own – a couple of energy drinks, a bath towel with which to keep my grips tacky. I knew I could rely on Pete, a former scratch player and a sturdy, calming presence. Whether he could rely on me, however, had already been cast into some doubt.

‘Did you know I turned down Dave Musgrove so you could work with me today?' I asked him.

He looked at me like a man who had heard this kind of bull too many times before – mainly from me.

‘OK, I'm lying. But I did ask him.'

‘What did he say?' asked Pete.

‘He said, “I bet it would be fun.” But when I asked him again he just looked a bit nervous then suddenly saw someone he knew on the other side of the driving range.'

‘Is that your London Golf Show glove on the floor over there?' said Pete.

My first few shots on the range glanced softly off the clubface, aided by my new ‘light hands at address' approach. There was just one notable howler, but it was the kind you don't easily forget: a four-iron where the clubhead hit the ground a full six inches too early, sending the ball a grand total of seventy yards. Fortunately, neither of the pros flanking me – a round-faced teenager with a grimacing way about him and a backswing that reminded me of the spring device on a pinball machine, and a stocky forty-something with a home-player strut who kept making pronouncements on the day's outcome – seemed to notice. I moved on to the less potentially destructive environs of the putting green, and then to the tee. Here, I watched the group ahead of mine laser long-iron shots into a fairway that seemed even narrower than yesterday, met my playing partners, John Ronson and Mick Hempstock (who turned out to be the round-faced teenager from the range), declared my ball to them, memorised the dots on it, got a quick briefing on local rules from the starter, memorised the dots on my ball again, and did some breathing exercises.

A few minutes later, something happened that had
never
happened to me on a golf course before: I went temporarily blind.

The transition in ocular perception didn't occur until I was over the ball, probably about thirty seconds after the starter had announced my name into his microphone. I remember taking my practice swing with my rescue club (another new concept for me: a supposedly more forgiving version of a two-iron). I remember looking up at the fairway, then realising that all I'd done was look up at the fairway, and not really picked anywhere to aim. I remember brushing an insect away, and I remember seeing the first six inches of my swing and thinking that a golf ball had never looked smaller. And then the ball disappeared. And by ‘disappeared', I don't mean ‘vanished into the blue yonder' I mean it disappeared before I could hit it. All I could see was grey.

Attacked by such an affliction, many people may have stopped what they were doing, walked away, rubbed their eyes … called for a member of the medical profession. I, on the other hand, chose to complete my swing. It only took, at most, an eighth of the second to do this. Nevertheless, possibly aided by being shut off from the seeing world, I was able to formulate a surprising lengthy and articulate internal dialogue with myself. The dialogue went something like this:

Me One: You are playing in The Open?

Me Two: I am playing in The Open!

Me One: It's a bit scarier than the Europro Tour Qualifying School, isn't it?

Me Two: What do you mean, ‘a bit?

Me One: Do you realise that you haven't practised your chipping once in the last twenty-one days?

Me Two: I realise this.

Me One: Do you realise that it would, in theory, be a lot easier to miss this ball than to hit it?