The Downhill Lie (3 page)

Lesson One

I
ndian River County has good public golf courses, including Sandridge, where I started hitting once or twice a week on the practice range. No two shots followed the same trajectory; every swing was high drama.

Before long, I screwed up the courage to schedule a lesson with the club pro, Bob Komarinetz, an outgoing fellow and also an avid fisherman. He watched me hit about a dozen balls, then politely inquired about my clubs. I handed him the TranZition driver, which he examined somewhat skeptically.

“It’s too short for you,” he said, “and too light.”

The shaft, he added, was whippy. “The clubhead turns at impact, because of the torque,” he explained. “That’s what’s causing your slice.”

“What about my hook?”

Komarinetz cleared his throat.

“And my shank?” I said.

“You should learn on clubs that fit you. These are okay for now, but if you change your mind I can loan you some others.”

I hit some more shots. Every once in a while, one of them would go straight.

“The guy who sold me the set said the original owner was the same height as I am,” I offered lamely.

Komarinetz looked doubtful. “The clubs would work fine for an older person,” he said, “someone with a much slower swing.”

“In other words, the last person who used these was probably in his what—seventies or eighties?”

Komarinetz saw that I was bummed about getting suckered at the golf store. Like any good teacher, he wanted to buoy my spirits.

“Let me see you hit a few 5-irons,” he suggested.

From then on it wasn’t easy to concentrate, knowing that my clubs were better fitted for Mickey Rooney.

Still, I swung away stubbornly and vowed to stick with my plan. As long as I was carrying secondhand sticks, I could quit the game all over again anytime I wanted, with no harm done. At worst, I’d be out $164 and a little bit of pride.

So I resolved to grind it out with my geriatric Golden Bears.

Day 30

I play nine holes, and I don’t hit a single drive that flies more than a few feet off the ground. It’s a good thing there are no gophers in Florida because I would’ve killed a bunch. By the end of the afternoon, I’m praying for double-bogeys.

And, of course, hating my clubs.

Day 41

So much for my grand plan; I’ve got no chance with these TranZitions. It’s like hitting with chopsticks.

Komarinetz loans me a set of adult-sized Callaways, and I shoot 48 on the front nine, including two pars. I blow up on a couple of holes but overall it’s not too awful.

The next step is to ditch the Golden Bears.

Sorry, Jack.

Loyalty is fine, but pain is pain.

Outside Agitators

B
efore recommitting to golf, I consulted with several friends, most of whom expressed surprise and a certain twisted glee. One was Mike Leibick, a marvelously sardonic character with whom I attended high school and college. Over the last thirty years Leibo has developed into an appallingly good golfer. Now a vice president of Bacardi, his travels take him to some of the most hallowed golf shrines in the country, from Pebble Peach to Pinehurst.

A naturally gregarious fellow, Leibo is equally at ease among strangers and friends. I am the polar opposite.

What had drawn me to bonefishing was the solitary and natural setting—poling the tropical shallows alone, or with a guide, in a small skiff. It’s a peaceful but focused state of isolation that I was hoping to replicate on the golf course.

“I just want to be able to sneak out after work and play nine holes all by myself,” I told Leibo. “You’ve gotta understand: There are only a few people in the world I can stand to be around.”

“You’ve got to get over that,” he said.

“Why? I go fishing alone all the time.”

“But golf is a
social
sport.”

“Hey, I’ll mind my own business. I won’t cause any trouble.”

“This oughta be good,” he said.

The first time I got up the nerve to play with Leibo, I parred the opening hole. He tried not to appear shocked.

“Just wait,” I told him, and promptly I triple-bogeyed the second.

“Ray-Ray golf,” Leibo explained with a grim nod.

“Which is?”

“One hole you play like Ray Floyd, and the next you play like Ray Charles.”

“That’s me!” I said. “I’m the poster child.”

Another person in whom I confided was Mike Lupica, the popular novelist and ace sports columnist for the New York
Daily News.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked when I told him I’d bought some secondhand clubs.

“I’ve got to do
something
or I’m gonna drive Fenia crazy,” I said.

Lupica started playing golf at the same young age as I did, but he didn’t pause to take thirty years off. Consequently, he now owns a single-digit handicap and hits the ball straight as a dream.

While he has been outwardly sympathetic to my tribulations on the golf course, he freely admits to having many laughs at my expense. It was Lupica, abetted by the great Pete Hamill, who suggested that I start keeping a golf diary. And it was Lupica who, whenever I threatened to quit the sport again, talked me down off the ledge.

Once I felt the need to apologize for a hail of self-flagellating e-mails.

“I’ll stop whining,” I promised.

“Are you insane?” Lupica shot back. “Whining is one of the rock-solid foundations of golf.”

That’s all I needed to hear.

Day 57

E-mail to Leibo: “What’s the record for the number of golf balls lost in nine holes? And why doesn’t someone invent a tee that you can slit your wrists with?”

Day 59

“Golf free the rest of your life!”

This is the sales pitch of a mammoth retirement development called The Villages, located south of Ocala in what was once the tranquil horse country of Florida. Commercials for The Villages run frequently during televised PGA events and also on the Golf Channel, which, disturbingly, I’ve begun watching late at night if Letterman is a rerun. The ads show “active” seniors dancing, playing softball and, most festively, marching the links.

Only briefly do I try to imagine what it would be like to spend my final days on earth among 100,000 aging but feisty golf fanatics. Where in Dante’s elaborate infrastructure of Hell would such a place fit?

The Villages is so enormous that it sprawls across three counties, and has its own development district. The favorite mode of transportation is the private golf cart, and a special driver-safety course is available for inexperienced newcomers. Among the diversions are two fitness centers, a wood shop, a polo field, an archery range, two libraries and thirty recreation complexes, most with heated swimming pools.

Golf, though, is the foremost attraction; golf, golf and more golf. The development offers a boggling choice of twenty-eight courses, eight of which are full-length championship tracts. The rest are short executive layouts and, not surprisingly, the only ones that residents may play free forever.

The Villages surely is the place to be if your dream is to drop dead in your FootJoys. The youngest age allowed is fifty-five, so in less than two years I’ll be eligible to move in and tee up with the other grandpas, if my wife dumps me in the interim. Should my relationship with golf turn sour, I could always take up ashtray carving, the long bow or possibly the breaststroke.

Or I could just hang myself and get it over with.

Day 60

Piled up a 103 at Sandridge, just dreadful. I’m breaking down and ordering those Callaways tomorrow.

As if it’ll make a difference.

Emotional Rescue

G
olf was supposed to be easier the second time around.

That’s what everybody told me. Because of the amazing new high-tech equipment, they said, your drives will launch higher and farther, your irons will fly straighter, your putts will roll truer.

It was a lovely world to hope for, but I remained wary. One thing I remembered too clearly from the old days: No matter what club was in my hands, a bad swing invariably produced a bad result.

The revolution in golf technology that occurred during my long sabbatical was driven by two corollary, and ultimately successful, missions. The first was to expand the popularity of the sport by convincing millions of nongolfers that, with properly tuned and fitted weapons, the game really wasn’t so difficult to conquer.

A second and equally lucrative target was those souls who already played the game but did so in a mode of perpetual discouragement, approximately 98 percent of the USGA membership. The industry correctly calculated that vast fortunes could be reaped if the average player could be persuaded that his or her score would be instantly improved by purchasing an expensive new set of sticks, a ritual ideally repeated every two or three years.

To shield the touchy egos of hackers, golf manufacturers perfected a lexicon of gentle euphemisms. “Forgiving” is now the favored buzzword used to promote clubs designed for the Neanderthal swing. “Tour models” are for good players, “game-improvement” selections are for weekend warriors, and the “
maximum
game-improvement” aisle is reserved for the congenitally hapless.

When researching which clubs would be best for a middle-aged recidivist nursing a banged-up knee, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of choices—and baffled by the specifications.

An advanced degree from MIT would have helped when I went shopping for a driver. The loft angles varied from 7.5 degrees to 15 degrees, and one particular Mizuno was available in twenty-nine different shafts. The innards of Ping’s G5 were supposedly computer-engineered with a process called “finite-element analysis,” a term that for all I know was stolen from an old
Star Trek
episode.

The promotional literature abounded with confusing references to “MOI,” or moment of inertia, which describes a clubhead’s tendency to twist when it strikes the ball. The greater the measured MOI, the more stable the clubface remains at impact, theoretically producing a straighter, longer shot.

Several brands of drivers allow players to experiment with the MOI by manually rearranging imbedded weights. The 460cc Cleveland Launcher touts a “beta-titanium insert” that is “robotically plasma-welded to expand the sweet spot.” Meanwhile TaylorMade heavily advertises a SuperQuad edition with “four movable weight screws” that may be adjusted to six different centers of gravity. Unfortunately, the $400 purchase price doesn’t include a Black & Decker drill kit.

The last thing I wanted was a driver that came with an instruction manual. I can’t assemble a toy train track without leaving blood on the floor, so I wasn’t about to tinker with high-priced golfing equipment. The only “moment of inertia” that affects me is the one that occurs every time I stand over the ball, frozen with trepidation.

Friends said that choosing that first set of modern clubs would be a midlife-altering experience, and they encouraged me to consult a professional fitter who could determine the head weights, shafts, lengths and lofts appropriate for my swing.

The problem was, I didn’t have one swing; I had many.

Every time I went to the practice range I was a different golfer—a male Sybil in spikes. (Speaking of which, FootJoy is now marketing a golf shoe with plastic knobs on the heels, for personalized adjusting in case your toes suddenly swell up in the middle of a round.)

Being inconsistently inconsistent, I was a club fitter’s nightmare. A driver, for example, was in my hands an instrument of infinite possibilities. Five consecutive swings might produce (and I’ve kept track): a monster slice, a snap hook, a push, a pull and a wormburner. There’s no single technological solution to such random dysfunction.

So I decided to go basic, ordering a full set of Callaway Big Berthas recommended by Bob Komarinetz at Sandridge. Having given me some lessons, he was familiar with my array of unpredictable though innovative swing flaws.

The Callaways were straight from the catalogue, the only modification being half-inch-longer shafts for the irons. The first time I used them wasn’t exactly an epiphany, since I had played with graphite loaners, but I hit enough decent shots to realize that I’d have no excuse for not improving.

In their appearance, feel and impact, the new lightweight clubs bore no comparison to what I remembered of my uncompromising old Hogans. The most startling difference was the length off the tee—I’d never knocked a golf ball that far when I was younger.

There’s a good reason why equipment companies hype distance more than any other feature; nothing inflates the vanity of a male hacker as much as bombing a huge drive. And no other facet of the sport has changed so radically since its beginnings.
Golf Magazine
recently asked a 6-handicapper to hit some Titleist Pro V1s with a new 460cc driver and a hickory-shafted model of the sort used a century ago. The average carry of the titanium driver was 220 yards, compared to 179 yards with the wooden club. When the test golfer switched to an old-style gutta-percha ball—a one-piece ball packed internally with dried gum—the modern driver outdistanced the antique even farther, 205 yards to 126 yards.

Most pros adore the new juiced balls and melon-shaped metalwoods, too. Today the average drive on the PGA tour goes 283 yards, compared to 255 yards back in 1968. While the hot new technology favors big hitters, the holes have become shorter for everyone. Consequently, many older courses have been redesigned to create more difficulties for the muscle-bound, and almost all the newer courses are longer and less hospitable to bombers.

As pleased as I was about the robust tee shots, I had no illusions that my game would be miraculously elevated. The extra length was meaningless—and sometimes catastrophic—if the ball was traveling on an errant line, which was a frequent problem.

Even hitting it straight didn’t guarantee more pars and birdies. A driver comes out of the bag only fourteen times per round, at the most. Lots of players can bang it plenty far but can’t score because they’re helpless with their irons, wedges and putter. That would be me.

My most productive experiment with twenty-first-century golf weaponry resulted from a round with Mike Leibick, soon after I’d started playing again. On the first hole, with his ball lying 170 yards from the stick, he unsheathed a club unlike anything I’d ever seen. Its shiny teardrop head resembled a dwarf fairway metal or possibly a pregnant putter, fixed on a stout graphite shaft.

“What is
that
?” I asked.

“A rescue club.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You definitely need to get yourself one of these,” Leibo said, and knocked the shot pin-high.

Also known as hybrids or utility clubs, they were first developed to replace long irons, which many average golfers find difficult to hit well consistently. Leibo, a very good player, told me that switching to hybrids had saved his fairway game.

“There’s a reason they’re called rescue clubs,” he said. “Anybody can hit one of these things. It’s impossible
not
to.”

My set of Callaways didn’t include a 3-iron, so—after asking around—I filled the gap with a two-toned 22 degree Cleveland Halo. As odd as it looked, the hybrid performed surprisingly well, and not just from the tight cut.

Because the heads of so-called utility models are smooth and roundish, they don’t grab or dig on mishits like a conventional blade can. That’s one reason that hybrids are much easier to launch from the rough, and even from fairway bunkers. Another nifty design feature is the exaggerated “face-to-back dimension,” which positions the center of gravity farther from the point of impact, generating a higher ball flight.

I was grateful to Leibo for introducing me to the wonders of rescue clubs, but he was dead wrong about one thing: It’s
not
impossible to hit them badly. Along with some very presentable shots, I’ve unleashed some memorable stinkers—corkscrews, pop flies, wounded jackrabbits; flight patterns that the best technicians at Cleveland Golf could never reproduce on a simulator.

This is another immutable truth about the sport: The equipment can’t save you from yourself. On a good day, a good golfer will shoot lights-out using any set of clubs. On a bad day, a bad golfer will butcher the easiest course in the county with $2,000 worth of plasma-welded hardware in his bag.

An old friend, Dan Goodgame, carries the same persimmon woods and bone-jarring Hogan blades that he was using more than thirty years ago, when we last teed off together—and he still plays well. Conversely, the golf club has not been invented that I can’t find a way to disgrace.

A hybrid might rescue a player from a bad lie, but there is no rescue from a bad swing. When you suck, you suck.

Day 98

I phone my wife to tell her that I birdied one of those nasty par
-3
s that always gives me fits. She congratulates me enthusiastically, but later confesses that she has no idea what a birdie is.

Day 102

From an e-mail to Leibo:

“I shot a 49 at Sandridge but I didn’t have any three-putts. How the fuck is that possible? Lost not one but two balls on a par-5, and got a 9 on the hole.”

Leibo responds: “I have a solution. Don’t play the par-5s.”

He might be serious.

Day 113

As a surprise, my wife buys me a 35-inch Scotty Cameron American Classic, a milled flange that looks like a work of modern art.

Even if the occasion calls for it, I’ll never have the heart to wrap this lovely putter around a pine tree.