Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia (21 page)

It was going to come right down to the wire.

The clubhouse at Hollinwell stands no more than twenty feet from the eighteenth green. In its main lounge, spectators can bag a choice view of the final stages of a tournament through a giant floor-to-ceiling window. Late in the evening on an important day like this, the window was packed with faces, many of them drooping from an intractable day on an intractable golf course and, quite understandably, in need of the kind of boost that only true
Schadenfreude
can offer. From my bunker, it would take only a slightly too-clean strike to clang into the reinforced glass. Who knew what kind of havoc a violently mishit shot could wreak? Any ball that hit the clubhouse would be deemed out of bounds, dictating that I would have to return to the bunker and add two strokes to my score. That would still give me four more shots to beat a hundred, but by that point the pressure would have doubled, and every eye in the vicinity would be on me.

If there was a dilemma here – a brief rearing of my
rebellious
, smash-happy juvenile golf head – it was only momentary. There was more at stake than my and Hollinwell's shared history. If I was, finally, going to show the place what I was made of, it was not going to be in the form of vandalism; it was going to be by not making a fool of myself (or at least not more of a fool than I could possibly help).

The important thing, when executing a bunker shot of delicate length, is to take plenty of sand before making contact with the ball. I cursed the rule that prohibits players touching the sand before taking their swing: it would have been nice to have had a couple of firm, excavating practice swings in the sandtrap itself. Instead, I took a couple of swishes in the scrubby, dusty grass to the rear of the bunker, being sure to bury my clubhead deep into the turf. I then walked to the flag to inspect the slope of the green and, on my way back, as an afterthought, took one more pickaxey swish.

A giant divot flopped out of the perfectly cultivated fringe, a matter of millimetres from the putting surface itself.

I did not have to take a peek at the window to know that I had now put myself firmly in its focus.

‘I'm not surprised they didn't give you membership if you do things like that!' joked John, from the opposite side of the green.

I was still chuckling slightly when I got over the ball. In my fatigue-ridden state, I wondered if it might help. All day, I had felt as if a maggot had wormed its way into my brain and was whispering evil thoughts into my ear as I swung. Maybe, I thought, I can laugh it away. But no: as I took my backswing, it was there again.
‘Clubhouse!'
said the maggot. It did not need to say anything more – I knew what it was trying to do. I felt sand (not enough) then ball (too much) and attempted to look up, but the flying grains impaired my vision. When the grains settled, I saw my ball just off the back of the green, twenty-five feet from the hole, and fifteen feet short of the out-of-bounds posts.

Two wobbly putts later, I was in safely at twenty-three over par: the worst score, by three shots, of all sixteen heats of the 2006 Regional Open Qualifying.

Oddly, I discovered that I did not want to leave.

Possibly it was the memory of junior tournaments I'd played in in this part of the country – tournaments where, no matter how badly you'd scored, there was always a reason to stick around, whether that reason was attending the prizegiving, inventing your own golfing assault course out back near the greenkeeper's sheds, or comparing notes on the day's woes. Whatever the case, I felt that there was something about a day like this that needed to be savoured. Mick and John, however, made it clear that a post-round drink was not on the agenda. A look at the scoreboard told me that Jamie would be long gone (his 77 would not be good enough for qualification). Pete would be at home with a glass of wine by now, his kids tucked up in bed. In fact, from what I could see, everybody apart from the four groups still remaining out on the course seemed to be leaving or on the verge of doing so.

What was
wrong
with me? I couldn't stand clubhouses usually – their prying eyes, their second-rate food, their restricted dress codes. Moreover, I had just carded the
worst
round of my adult life. What possible reason could there be to stick around? Surely I didn't feel as if I'd just … achieved something?

I did have one person to speak to before I left, and that was the scorer. Entering the tournament office, I found my path blocked by two men in dark-blue blazers. Neither looked like Bagpuss, but one did have something lionish about him.

‘Can I help you?' he asked.

‘I just wanted to hand my card in,' I said.

This information didn't quite seem to compute, but, slowly, he and his friend moved aside, allowing me an eight-inch gap in which to squeeze through the doorway.

A minute later I emerged from the office and took one last look up the eighteenth hole, hoping that, one day, I'd get to play it again. As I did so, a man standing a couple of feet away from me – a Hollinwell member, a spectator, or possibly a tournament organiser – asked a visor-wearing, tired-eyed pro what he had scored. Having received the answer – ‘Aah, nothing good' – he began to commiserate by relating the story of another player who had been level par, only to take an eight on a par four.

‘Oh well,' I said, turning towards him. ‘At least he didn't have a ten.'

He twitched his cheek a fraction in my direction, as if believing a mosquito had flicked his face, then realising it wasn't a mosquito after all, but something much less significant. He then resumed speaking to the visor-wearing pro.

I couldn't help thinking back to that model golfer that James Day and others had told me about earlier in the
year
: the one who goes round in 68, then goes into the clubhouse and has the restraint to report his good fortune in only the most essential terms. I'd worried about how I could become that man, about whether I even knew him. It seemed so irrelevant now, laughable. It was all very well learning that when you were at the top of the pro golf world, nobody wanted to hear you crow. But no one had prepared me for the even harsher reality that when you're at the bottom of it, and sinking fast, nobody can hear you scream.

1
A name that still strikes terror into the heart of my dad when he recalls his career as a supply teacher. Typical local news headline: ‘Third Bus Driver Quits as Local Thugs Continue to Pelt Routemaster with Stones.'

2
This was in 2002, the year before the veteran Roe went on to lead The Open, only to be disqualified for filling in and signing the wrong card (the one belonging to his playing partner, Jesper Parnevik) in the third round – the incident for which he is best known. Karma telling him to be a bit less cocky? Or just a desperately unfortunate incident? Ifs hard to say. Whatever the case, those ‘Shit! I've got Mark Roe's card!' jokes were good in Monthly Medals across the country for at least a fortnight afterwards, and for that, perhaps, we should be thankful.

3
Now expanded into deluxe form to include not just The One Where the Ball Keeps Falling off the Tee-Peg but also The One Where No Matter Where I am on the Course There is Always a Hedge Impeding my Backswing and The One Where I am Holing Out to go to Seven Under Par and Have to Leave the Course After Realising I have Forgotten to Sit my GCSEs.

4
My parents had always seen the moment when I decided to give up my pro ambitions as the moment when I came to my senses and rejoined my original, intended path in life. Now I'd started all that silly ‘sticks and balls' business again, they were perplexed. Nonetheless, they tried their best to be supportive, asking such infuriating but ultimately well-meaning questions as ‘Are you sure you're OK with just one glove?' and ‘Would you like to take some of last nights chowder to eat on the greens when you're not teeing off?' My dad had even expressed an interest in driving to Hollinwell and watching my round, but I made noncommittal noises about the idea – partly because I knew he'd probably forgotten how little, on the whole, he enjoyed the company of golfers, and partly because of a potentially prophetic vision from another one of those nightmares. In the nightmare, every time I'd gone to play a shot, my dad had been blocking my path to the flag, sitting on a weird umbrella-seat contraption he used to take to tournaments when I was a kid, and talking to me about novelty calypso songs from the i950s (I had no reason to suspect that he still owned the umbrella-seat, but I'd already been asked for my opinion on at least four novelty calypso songs this morning, so I felt it was best not to tempt fate).

5
Lee Trevino and Jerry Heard at the 1975 Western Open, for example.

6
Well, OK, maybe ‘Godsend' is going too far, but at least as important as those blokes who stand there at European Tour events and hold ‘Quiet Please!' signs up when play is in progress.

7
I find that getting on my hands and knees and looking unusually interested in stray pinecones helps. Another surefire winner is Frowning in a Way that Suggests You Have Just Received Some Bad News About a Beloved Yet Slightly Stubborn and Fast-Living Relative.

8
At another, more jolly time I might have fantasised about my post-round grilling about this (‘Asked how you make ten on one hole, Cox replied, “You miss the putt for a nine!”'). Now, I just fantasised about whimpering in a cupboard.

THE SITUATION, AS
I saw it, was very simple: the trophy was in my hands – it was just a matter of keeping my fingers from getting too sweaty to hold onto it. If I could just plonk my approach shot anywhere on the putting surface here on the par-five seventeenth, and then avoid the treacherous out-of-bounds on the eighteenth, it would probably be good enough. Two pars would clinch it. Maybe even par – bogey. Nothing fancy. Given my lowly standing on the order of merit, this was not the time for heroics.

I checked my yardage book again, took a squint at the flag, and threw a pinch of loose grass into the air: 156 to the hole. About eight yards of wind against. A medium-firm seven-iron. ‘A mere bagatelle,' as Peter Alliss might say.

It had been a hot day, and a hotter battle – the kind of enthralling back-and-forth tussle that comes along once every eight or nine tournaments. There had been ugly moments (Jim Furyk's unprecedented five-putt on the fifth), infuriating moments (the bit where a crowd
member
came out of the clubhouse and told Furyk, Fred Couples and Sergio Garcia to tuck our shirts in because ‘all the men on the veranda are talking about it'), raucous moments (Sergio Garcia's frustrated shout of ‘Cock-knockers!' after slicing his tee shot on the tenth) and inspired moments (the bit where Fred Couples said he was going to ‘try a new swing out' and promptly birdied the thirteenth), but the overall result was that now, in the closing stages, the Melanoma Cup was mine to lose.

As I drew the club back, I heard the maggot in my head whisper something about the stream in front of the green. Nonetheless, the ball took off and made its way over the hazard to the front fringe: a shaky sort of strike, but serviceable.

‘Shot!' said Sergio Garcia. ‘I was wondering … Do you think we're a bit old for giving ourselves pretend pro names?'

‘I don't know. Maybe. But being Fred sort of makes me feel more confident,' I said. ‘And I thought you liked being Sergio.'

‘No, no, I do,' said Simon. ‘But I think there might be something psychologically damaging about it. There's too much history of messing it up to carry around. It always seems to make me lose my bottle on the last few holes.'

A half-intelligible voice piped up from the trees to the right of the fairway. We looked in its direction and requested that it repeat itself.

‘I said, I don't see why I always have to be Jim Furyk!' shouted Scott.

‘Think of it as a service to Jim Furyk,' I said. ‘If you're not going to be him, who else is?'

‘Apart from Jim Furyk himself,' said Simon. ‘And he doesn't have much choice in the matter either.'

‘I think I've lost that one,' said Scott, who had now emerged from the trees, and was rooting around in his bag. ‘OK if I drop another ball down here? I can't be bothered going back.'

‘Go for it,' I said.

‘So,' said Simon. ‘What's the plan now, Coxy? Are you going to call it quits?'

It was a good question, and one to which I'd given much thought in the fortnight since shooting the worst score recorded in any stage of the 2006 Open Championship. There were endless reasons for me to admit defeat in my pro mission, not all of them relating to the increasingly destructive state of my game. I had yet to earn a penny, failed to find sponsorship, not succeeded in getting invites to nearly as many tournaments as I'd hoped, my manager had ‘taken a break' from working with me,
¹
and I'd developed some worrying lower-back pain.

As I'd learned from speaking to Charandeep Thethy at Hollinwell, it was not unusual for a struggling full-time pro to play only seven tournaments in a year, but I'd only played three – well, five, if you included the Cabbage Patch Masters and the Melanoma Cup – and entered two more, and I couldn't believe how much even
that
had eaten into my savings. I hadn't ventured abroad, I'd eaten basic meals and tried not to splash out on travel or unnecessary accommodation, yet when you added that to my equipment and range balls and entry fees, my expenses for my pro venture already totalled almost £5000. When I took that away from what I wasn't earning by putting my writing career on the back burner, I had a situation that could not go on indefinitely. A month earlier, Edie and I had put our house on the market. While our reasons were not predominantly related to the damage my golf career had done to our fiscal resources, it would be a lie to say it hadn't been a sizeable factor. That habit I had of stopping in front of the mirrors in the front room to check the plane of my swing? It was still just about funny. I had a feeling, though, that in a couple of mortgage payments' time it might not be.