The Feathery (6 page)

Scott started picking Matt’s brain about the tour: "What’s this stuff I hear about guys playing in the zone? I’ve probably been there when I’m playing great but don’t recognize the feeling. The television commentators make it sound like some kind of mystical state."

"It’s media hype. Like in any sport…it’s keeping your head in the game and your ass behind you. In other words…maintaining focus and alignment just like Sandy told us."

"Yeah, he made it sound less mysterious."

Scott took his eyes off the road for a moment and looked over at Matt. "I don’t have a lot of bucks, Matt, to survive on tour unless I make some cuts."

"Let’s not think about cuts right now. Let’s concentrate on Monterey and Q-School."
"Okay, but what’s the real cost of us staying there? I’ve heard a lot of numbers."
Matt paused for a moment before answering. "Between twenty-five hundred and three-thousand a week for travel, motels, entry fees, food and incidentals. Plus, you’re going to need to buy a different outfit for every day of play, including sweaters and rain gear. A clothing company won’t endorse you until you’re among the top fifty players or so."

"More bucks than I thought. Lot of motivation to make cuts and be around on Saturday."
"Any sponsors?" Matt asked.
"Only one. Some of the members at El Camino volunteered, but I didn’t want any one else."
"Who’ve you got?"
"Sandy," Scott answered.
"Old Sandy McNair has the bucks. I’ll never forget him paying for my braces." Matt beamed his perfect smile at Scott. "See?"

Scott laughed. "Can’t call you Bucky Pearl anymore," Scott said. "By the way, Sandy is almost broke. He lost heavy on some bad investments. Even so, he insisted on giving me the regional entry fees so I could get to Q-School."
"Didn’t know that about Sandy. How about you getting a loan from your mom?"
"Forget it. We hardly speak and there’s no way she’ll subsidize my golf ‘fling,’ as she calls it."
Matt looked over at him with concern. "Okay, let’s do Q-School and face the money problem when and if we have to."

Q
-School was the yearly examination prescribed by golf officialdom, the Professional Golfers Association (PGA), to graduate deserving new members into the highest competitive level of golf, the PGA Tour. It also gave those tour members who’d flunked the criterion to stay on tour a chance to get back. The initial Q-School agenda included classroom participation. It was later canceled by popular demand, but the "school" title remained.

After two practice rounds, the real part of "Hell Week" started for Scott at Spyglass Hill. It was the first of six days in the tension-packed Scott at Spyglass Hill. It was the first of six days in the tension-packed foot putt could cause failure to qualify. It was a grueling six rounds, consisting of 108 holes that were a test of golf skills like no other, and the odds for survival were not favorable. Just 140 players from the thousands worldwide had passed the regionals and made it on to Q-School. And only those players who scored within the top 30, including those that tied that number, would qualify to join the PGA Tour. The others would receive the ‘minor league’ Nationwide Tour status or a conditional status on the same tour.

On the practice range, Scott started working up through all thirteen clubs in his bag, beginning with the wedge.

Matt handed him his lob wedge. "This one was paid for by Sandy?"

Scott laughed and said, "It’s the legal one."
Scott stroked a few putts on the practice green until he was called to the tee. He shook hands with the official starter and was introduced to the other players of his threesome. One member of his group was a returning PGA Tour veteran. Bob Bray’s game had degraded beyond 125th on the tour’s list of money earned. He’d lost his PGA card, or his license to play a tournament without getting an exemption from a tournament sponsor. Matt knew Bray and set up a practice round between him and Scott. During the match Bob shared a few tips on tour play with Scott.

Scott was nervous during the introductions. Last-minute whispers transpired between he and Matt. The thought of being on the first tee, starting the first round of golf to begin what’s known by the players as "Hell Week" was getting to him. Scott felt the nerve filaments making his arms and legs shake, and the butterflies buzzing around in his stomach seemed large as hummingbirds.
The first at Spyglass was a 595-yard-par-5 hole. A 14-mph wind was in the players’ faces, and none would try reaching the green in two. Bray was first to tee off. The five-foot-eight Tom Watson lookalike completed his pre-shot routine, stepped up to his address position and hit a drive 278 yards down the middle of the fairway. Bray caught Scott’s eye with a wink, and a smile of relief as he picked up his tee. His facial cast seemed to carry the hope this first shot was an omen to follow him in the week ahead…a chance to regain his livelihood.
It was Scott’s turn. Those in the gallery watched as the PGA Tour candidate took his driver from Matt and placed his ball on the tee. They saw a handsome six-foot-three golfer with most of his long blond hair gathered by a visor, and the rest left free to move in the wind. His shoulders were broad, stomach flat and hips narrow.

When Scott was introduced he sent a smile toward the crowd’s polite applause. Then his face changed to a grim expression of serious purpose as his eyes focused on a spot far out on the fairway. His pre-shot routine brought him behind the ball with the driver in his right hand. He set-up in his stance. When he looked down at the ball his nervousness of before subsided. He gripped the club with his left hand turned inward so he could see three knuckles there and wiggled the driver a few times. His eyes narrowed in on a tree in the distance standing straight and tall, well beyond his intended target. Matt’s yardage book dictated that the ball must carry 270 yards and catch a down slope to the left before rolling 15 yards to an ideal position for the second shot.
Scott placed his driver head behind the ball, took a deep breath, and made his back swing. At the top of it, his club hesitated for a second. The driver started down in a smooth accelerating motion that peaked to a speed of 118 miles per hour when it made contact with the ball. His swing was still in the process of follow-through when he heard the
oohs
and
ahs
of the gallery followed by their applause. The ball landed 20 yards beyond the place Matt had designated.
A three-iron and the
legal
lob wedge got him on the green where he sunk a six-footer for a birdie to start "Hell Week"

Scott played the first five holes of the Spyglass course at three under par and finished the first day two under. After checking the leader board he knew he was still in the hunt.

Scott’s next four rounds went well enough to place him within the players that were still in contention for a tour card. But on the sixth and last round he encountered bad weather at Poppy Hills. The Monterey Peninsula was hit by a storm that came in from the Pacific to buffet the Linksland. It brought with it a deluge of horizontal rain driven by gusts as strong as thirty miles per hour. It was rare weather for a San Diego native to experience, but not enough cause, without accompanying thunder and lightning, for the officials to suspend play.

The storm could’ve washed Scott out of Q-School if not for Matt’s experience with these same conditions when at British Open venues in England and Scotland. Matt had checked the forecast earlier and made his golf bag ready for it. Out on the course he continually wiped down the grips, handing Scott a dry glove on every other tee and kept an umbrella over his player between shots and putts. Scott finished with a 76.

They walked toward the locker room "What do you think about our chances, Matt?"
"Well, no one has made par for the round yet." Just then a gust of wind blew away a towel draped over his shoulder. After chasing it, Matt said, "the wind is getting worse. The guys out there now are going to play hell staying out of the 80s."
They left the cold, rain-swept course and drove back to town not knowing if today’s 76, placing Scott’s total for Q-School at five under par for the six rounds, would be enough to qualify.

Exhausted and chilled from over five hours of wet, battering gusts, they sought the warm welcome of the motel Jacuzzi. It would be another hour before all the players finished, and they’d know if their score was good enough to earn the right to play on the PGA Tour. They tried to relax in the soothing whirl despite growing more eager by the minute to know their fate.

After they left the Jacuzzi, showered and dressed, Matt fiddled nervously with his gold earring while he called the Poppy Hills locker room attendant on his cell phone. Claudio Spencer, Bob Bray’s caddie, had just finished and the attendant put him on.

"Hey, Claudio, how was it?"

"Hell, I haven’t been blown around like this since Scotland, Matt.

Everyone’s finished and my bag shot a seventy-eight."
"Did Bob Bray make it, Claudio?"
"Yeah, he squeaked into last place, tied at four under par for the six rounds."

Matt yelled, even though Scott’s ear was only six inches from the cell phone, "Scott, we’re in! Our five under made it! The El Camino kids will do the tour

together."

Scott’s grin was wide and, after a few seconds, he asked, "When, and where do we start?"
"It won’t begin for us until Hawaii at Kapalua, the second week of January."
"Not a bad place to begin for a surfing caddie, Matt."
"You’ll need some clothes, Scott. You can’t wear chinos and those faded old shirts on tour. Like I told you, it’s a different outfit for every day out there."
Scott frowned. "I didn’t figure on clothing expenses."
"I’ve got a friend in Carmel who owns a clothing store, and he’ll give me credit until we make a check," Matt offered. "You’re about the same build as Ernie Els and not in to the tight-fitting Adam Scott stuff. So we’ll go with the clothing line Els wears."
"I’m thinking, I’ll dress more like Duffy Waldorf, with tie-dyed shirts and pants."
"You’ve gotta be kidding, Scott."

Scott picked out eight shirts, eight pairs of slacks to match, and four sweaters at Farley’s on Main Street in Monterey. After they finished shopping, it was time to celebrate.

They began with a steak cooked over mesquite wood accompanied by a Napa Valley merlot. After the meal they roamed the music bars until settling in one. A jazz group’s mellow saxophones and muted trumpets were playing their arrangement of "Night Train" when two attractive women walked by and sat down at a table next to theirs.

Matt leaned toward Scott. "I’m going to ask them to join us." Scott nodded slowly. "Okay, ask them."
Both were law students from New York City in Monterey on vacation. It was a good departure from a week of intense golf to hear their slant on other things about New York City and the law.

They left the Jazz Lounge and found a place on the waterfront with live dance music. Scott was enjoying the company of Lizbeth Sweeney. She told him about her large Irish family and injected her sense of humor in the right places. At around midnight Lizbeth told him she had to leave, and explained why. She had to rise at five in the morning to make her flight to New York. Scott thought it best he got some sleep, so he offered to walk her to her hotel. Matt and his new friend stayed to dance the night away.

About halfway to Lizbeth’s hotel, the storm that’d plagued the Monterey Peninsula all day gave a parting blast in the form of a deluge. They ran the rest of the way but arrived in the hotel lobby dripping wet.

"Scott, look at you," she said. "You’re soaked. Come, I have plenty of dry towels in my room."

Later, Lizbeth came out of the bathroom wrapped in a white terrycloth robe, courtesy of the hotel. She was carrying an armful of fluffy white towels. Scott wiped most of the wet from his clothes and hair. A dry towel was left over.
"Your hair’s still wet…here, let me," he said.
Scott took the towel and started rubbing her head, noting that the raven mass of hair was even curlier wet than dry, and the color went well with an attractive face that was not impaired by a tiny cluster of freckles on each side of a slightly upturned nose. After a vigorous rub he said, "there, that’s got it."
Lizbeth looked up at him from her barefoot five-foot-seven height before their kiss. She had the largest brown eyes Scott has ever seen. His arms encircled her, and he could feel her firm body pressing hard against his own.

I
t was two in the morning when Scott returned to the motel. Matt was asleep in the other twin. He took a small piece of paper with Lizbeth’s phone number on it out of his pocket and placed it on the nightstand with his wallet and watch. When he did that, he noticed the red message light on the phone flashing. He called the front desk. One call was from the assistant pro at El Camino, Al Ingalls. Scott thought Al just wanted to congratulate him. He’d call Al in the morning