Loopy (23 page)

The practice ground faced in the same direction as the first hole, so Loopy practiced what he imagined might be his second shot to the green. He experimented with several irons in an attempt to reduce the effect of the gale-force crosswind that blew hard from his left. He went back two clubs, to a five iron, as he drew a bead well to the left of the 150-yard marker. Gripping the club down the shaft, he seemed to get more control over the flight of the ball. By aiming so far to the left, he found he could, after some trial and error, hit a low shot that made use of the crosswind to finish close to its target. When he tried to hit what would have been his normal approach over this distance, a full eight iron, it was a disaster. The wind gathered up the golf ball like a seagull's feather, dumping it well short of the target and away to the right.

He was discovering for himself that a lower iron, hit with less than full power, was the only way to control the ball in these conditions. The more orthodox high, dropping shot, loaded with backspin, was golfing suicide in this wind. He could only have learned this from actually playing such a shot, for it was contrary to all his natural instincts. He would never have believed just how far he had to lay off to counteract the wind unless he had proved it to himself by trial and error. Part of his mind registered that among those other golfers warming up for their matches, there was no sign of Al Neumann. Perhaps, Loopy thought, the American did not consider it necessary to warm up before doing battle with a mere wild card. That made Loopy all the more determined to master the wind by making it his friend. He was so absorbed in hitting low approach shots with a variety of irons that Weeshy had been looking on for some time before Loopy noticed him.

The caddy merely grunted what might have been approval and, removing the driver from its canvas bag, passed it to Loopy with the warning “Do the very same with this and you'll be right as rain.”

After a few early miscalculations, Loopy soon got the feel of how much he had to allow for the wind with Weeshy's driver. Just as he was getting the hang of it, Weeshy marched him off to the far end of the practice ground and made him go through the same routine all over again from the opposite direction. The few minutes remaining before their starting time were spent on the practice green. Here the wind actually caused the ball to wobble as Loopy lined up the putts. Weeshy had a word of warning about that, too.

“Out there a ball can be blown across the green by the wind. Make sure you're not lining up a putt when that happens or it'll cost you a stroke. That means you'll lose the hole.”

“So how do I know when that's going to happen?”

“You don't. But I do. Don't put the putter anywhere near the ball, anyways, till I tell you. And widen your stance for all the shots from driver to putter. With your legs further apart you'll find you won't be blown around as much.”

It was time to head for the first tee. A sizable crowd was already gathered there to watch the defending champion's opening drive in his bid to retain the Atlantic Trophy. The tee was festooned with large banners advertising Allied Banks of Ireland. These flapped noisily in the wind and looked as if they might be ripped from their moorings at any moment by the howling gale blowing in from the sea. From what Loopy could see, most of the Americans who had been at Neumann's table had turned up to support their man. Not that any of them felt he would need much support, drawn as he was against some golfing nonentity from the back of beyond.

Indeed, the selection by Trabane of this untested youngster with a dubious background had met with criticism from within the confines of the Private Members Room. The consensus was that if Tim Porter could not represent Trabane, then it might have been better to do the decent thing and give The Atlantic a miss altogether until such time as he was fully recovered from whatever ailed him. It was a bit ridiculous, they sniffed, to feed someone Loopy's age to the tigers that prowled the fairways during this most prestigious of tournaments.

As they chatted among themselves in a relaxed, confident manner, the Americans looked as if they had partied long into the night. Many of them were bleary-eyed and complaining of sore heads. Even Al Neumann's mighty frame seemed to sag a little, and his face looked a trifle less bronzed than yesterday as he strode purposefully onto the first tee. He wore a weatherproof suit of bright red with the word
HARVARD
emblazoned on the back in big white lettering. This made him look even bigger and more formidable.

An elderly man in a matching tweed cap, overcoat, and scarf stepped forward, inquiring, “Mr. Lynch?”

When Loopy nodded, the man explained that he was the match referee. “Have you met your opponent? No? Well, come along and I'll introduce you to him. That's how we like to do things at Ballykissane, y'know. Keeps everything nice and friendly, we find, which is how we like it.”

They approached Al, who was making practice swings with his driver just off the tee.

“This is Laurence Lynch, your opponent. Laurence, meet Albert Neumann.”

During the perfunctory handshake Al eyed Loopy closely. Looking somewhat perplexed, Al asked, “Larry Lynch? Say, Larry, I know your face. Haven't we met somewhere before?”

“Yeah”—Loopy grinned back at him—“last night in the dining room. I'm the wild card no one has heard of, remember?”

The American stiffened noticeably but said nothing. Instead he muttered to the referee, “Let's get on with it, ref.”

“As you wish. Eighteen holes match play, gentlemen. Strict rules of golf. Referee's decision is final. Is that clear, gentlemen?”

When both men nodded wordlessly, he added, “Mr. Neumann, as holder of the Atlantic Trophy, has the honor off the tee and goes first. Best of luck to you both, gentlemen, and may the best man win.”

The wind had changed from yesterday. Not only was it much stronger, but it was coming from a different direction. Now it was blowing hard from left to right across the narrow fairway. The opening hole ran uphill for all of its 448 yards. Its fairway was a thin ribbon running between immense sand dunes, which served to funnel the onshore wind, making it more intense on some parts of the fairway than others. Standing on the tee, in the lee of one such monstrous sandhill, the players felt nothing more than a strong breeze. Yet when Neumann struck a towering drive, his ball was quickly snatched by the gale and deposited into thick rough on the right-hand side of the fairway.

As Loopy prepared to drive, an excited buzz and not a few loud chuckles came from spectators at the sight of his driver. He overheard someone remark, “Christ, look at his driver. It must have come out of the Ark.”

Another could not keep the incredulity out of his voice: “Look at his
grip!
He's holding the club like a ruddy
hockey
stick!”

Setting himself up to hit the ball, Loopy blotted out the voices from his mind and concentrated his entire being on swinging Weeshy's driver as slowly and smoothly as possible. As he did so, he could just catch the unmistakable growl of O'Hara from somewhere in the crowd: “That's the grip of a hurler, you fool. And a bloody good one at that! Now keep quiet and don't put him off his stroke.”

He caught the driver short, halfway down its shiny leather grip. As Weeshy had told him, he swung much more slowly than usual while aiming far to the left. The ball was heading straight for an evil-looking patch of rough that lay between two sand dunes. As it did so, it struck a violent jet stream cascading out between the two hills, which radically altered its flight pattern. The ball veered sharply to the right and came to a halt on the fairway, to a smattering of polite applause, some 180 yards from the pin.

The green was perched on plateau, high up in the hills. Only a fluttering red triangle indicated its presence in an otherwise forbidding moonscape of dune grass and heather. Putting yesterday's disaster at this hole out of his mind, Loopy cast his mind back instead to his game with Tim Porter months before when Weeshy had handed him a seven iron. At the time he had thought it was not nearly enough club, but the caddy was right.

This time Weeshy handed him a six iron. “Y'see the path to the left? Aim for the stone to the left of it.”

“The white one?”

“Aye, that's the one. A nice low shot is all you need.”

Loopy did as he was bid, and the wind again obliged and blew his approach far to the right and toward the flag. With the green out of sight, he could not be sure if his ball was on the putting surface, but more applause from the onlookers suggested that it was not far off it.

In the meantime, Al and his caddy had been looking for his ball. Only then did Loopy notice that Neumann senior was caddying for his son. When they eventually found it, the ball must have been buried deep in the wiry dune grass, for Neumann's most powerful slashing blow was barely enough to send it scuttling along the fairway, still some hundred yards short of the hole. From there he struck an elegant pitching wedge, allowing not quite enough for the wind, if Weeshy's grunt of satisfaction was any indication.

When they reached the summit, both balls were just feet apart, on the fringe. Neumann putted first to within six inches, and Loopy gave him the putt for a one-over-par five. With two putts for a win, Loopy was taking no chances. After consulting his caddie, he stroked the first putt to within a foot, then tapped the next one in without waiting for his opponent to concede it to him.

“Mr. Lynch goes one up after one hole,” the referee announced in a calm voice that could not quell the buzz of excitement among the spectators, who had by now grown more numerous.

The second hole was the two-hundred-yard par three off an elevated tee. The hole played in the opposite direction so that the gale was now from right to left, bringing the out-of-bounds area to the left of the green very much into play. Having won the first hole, Loopy had the honor off the tee.

Weeshy handed him the same six iron. “Same shot as the last one. Aim for the biggest bunker on the right.”

Had Loopy not decided to put himself completely into Weeshy's hands and follow his advice to the letter, he would have laid off another twenty yards at least to the right of the evil-looking bunker. Instead he did as he was told, fully expecting the gale to blow him out of bounds and give his opponent a chance to draw level after two holes. However the laws of nature appeared to be suspended for the duration of his six-iron shot. The ball hung in the air over the cavernous bunker for what seemed like an eternity, barely missing it as it dropped to earth onto the outer rim of the closely mown apron that surrounded the saucer-shaped second green. It bounded past the flag-stick, skidded to a halt against the steep slope of the saucer, then rolled back down again to stop some ten feet below the hole.

So great was his surprise—and relief—that he barely noticed the excited clapping and cries of “Bloody fine shot!” and “Well done, young fella!” that assailed his ears. As for Weeshy, he merely grunted and watched intently as the Neumanns debated on what club to play and where to aim it.

“Seven iron—twenty to the right!”

“You reckon? I'd figure it to be an eight. And mebbe not that much to the right, either. That ball didn't move all that much, did it?”

Al was referring to Loopy's ball, now staring back at them mockingly across two hundred yards of nothing but grief and unplayable lies. Eventually Al played the eight iron. Perhaps mindful of his father's suggestion that it mightn't be enough club, he overhit it. The ball climbed steeply and was headed safely to the right, into the crosswind. Then, unlike Loopy's lower-trajectory six iron, it was grabbed by the wind and slammed to the left. It was lucky not to end up out of bounds. It struck the wire-mesh fence that separated the hole from the public road and took a lucky rebound off a fence post, leaving about six inches of clearance between it and the wire mesh.

Weeshy was moved to speech as he shouldered the bag and made for the green far below them: “That's Old Moll for you.”

He did not explain this cryptic comment, so Loopy decided that his caddy had taken to talking to himself. It would be revealed to him later that Old Moll was the name of the sand dune that guarded the second green from the sea. Out of sight from the tee, she shielded a low shot like Loopy's from the wind. The American's forced eight iron, however, had soared high above her, and his ball was lucky to catch the fence rather than be swept clean over it.

When he saw his lie and realized that he had no room for a proper backswing, Al appealed to the referee. Quite what grounds there were for his appeal, Loopy did not know. He had just spotted Edward Linhurst and Amy among the spectators and suddenly felt a surge of confidence as he watched the anxious discussion between the referee and the Americans. The sensation he was now beginning to feel was the same as he had got from the standing stones that surrounded the old fort. He felt drowsy, yet relaxed with his mind empty of every distraction except the task that lay before him, the sinking of an uphill putt not more than ten feet. The excitement and bustle of those around him seemed to be part of another world that had nothing to do with him. He was lost in an oasis of calm like the eye of the hurricane. He knew with an absolute certainty that if he could maintain this mental state, no task was too difficult, no golf shot too demanding, for him to achieve. As Al Neumann might have put it, Loopy was now well and truly “in the zone.”

“The bastard is looking for a free drop. Will he get it?” O'Hara's panic-stricken question, though directed at Weeshy, momentarily dragged Loopy out of the trance and back to reality.

The caddy seemed unconcerned and merely shrugged his shoulders as he muttered out of the side of his mouth, “Dinna matter whether or which. Our man's got the measure of him anyways.”

The American
did
get a free drop. It was in a designated dropping area circled with a white line painted on the turf. Between it and the green lay a big mound. Neumann could either pitch his ball over the mound or putt it along the ground with enough force to climb over it and trickle down onto the green. In the end after another lengthy discussion with his caddy, he elected to fly it. A demanding shot, it had to clear the mound, yet land softly if it was to finish anywhere near the hole. To make matters worse, the green sloped away from him. The ball would have to drop like a butterfly on a downhill slope that had been dried out to a granite hardness by today's wind and yesterday's sun. If he caught it heavy, the ball would catch the mound and trickle back down to his feet. Were he to overhit the shot, it would scamper off the green and almost certainly end in one of the surrounding deep pot bunkers.