Miracle on the 17th Green (13 page)

I was one over par for the day, five under for the tournament, and
one behind
Nicklaus and Floyd, who were tied for the lead.

If anyone’s interested, here’s my scorecard through the first sixteen holes:

Ah, sweet 17. Perhaps you never thought we’d get here. I know I had my doubts.

The 17th at Pebble Beach is a 209-yard par 3 that runs perpendicular to the coastline, with the green tucked up right against the Pacific and framed by a cypress as ancient and solitary as the Joshua tree.

Not only is the green extremely small and severely sloped, but the hole is constantly buffeted by the strong ocean winds. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the hole can require anything from a 7-iron to a driver.

On Sunday, Jack and Raymond pulled out 2-irons, striking them so cleanly they had the high parabolic trajectory of 5-irons before they landed softly on the distant green.

Under the circumstances, hitting 2-iron was a little rich for my
blood, so I tried to cut a high soft 3-wood. I caught it flush and watched it hang over the Pacific — then lazily drop out of the sky, landing, as Sam Snead used to say, like a butterfly with sore feet.

The ball nestled nine feet from the cup. The crowd at the green whistled and cheered.

After Raymond and Jack graciously missed their birdies and collected their automatic pars, I looked over my putt to tie.

For a second, as I crouched behind the hole and squinted
at my ball, I had the hugely unsettling feeling of
not knowing exactly where I was
.

Was I at Pebble Beach in the final round of the U.S. Senior Open, or right back where I had started six months before on Christmas Day, standing on another 17th green, looking over a nine-foot putt that would change my life?

The two putts even had the same break — right to left — and speed — fast — and once again I could see the line as clearly as if I had snapped it with a chalky carpenter’s string.

But there was a difference. This time, standing on the far side of the green on the exact line of my putt was Sarah, and with her dark-brown hair and sparkling eyes she looked at least as beautiful and determined and animated as the day we met. Based on what I did next — it occurs to me now — maybe I wasn’t seeing the line of my putt at all, but only the line of my heart.

“Travis,” I heard Earl whisper nervously behind me, “you all right, Travis?”

“All right?” I thought to myself, “of course I’m not all right.”

I slowly walked back to the other side of the hole, but instead of stopping at my ball, I kept going until I had left the green altogether and was standing beside Sarah on the front edge of the murmuring gallery.

At that point, Sarah, along with about fifteen million other people, including the TV announcers Musberger, Nantz, and Rosburg, my grandfather, my playing partners, my children, and most of all Earl, concluded that I had finally fried my circuits and lost it altogether.

In a way, they were right. I had lost it.

But I didn’t lose it that afternoon. I lost it thirty-one years before on a spring morning at the University of Chicago when I saw Sarah standing off by herself before a biology lecture. I lost it again when I saw Sarah fixing her hair in the mirror, minutes before we got married in her parents’ backyard on a perfect June day. And I lost it beyond any hope of ever getting it back when I saw her holding day-old Elizabeth in the hospital the morning after Elizabeth was born.

In one way or another, I think I’ve lost it every time I’ve looked at her or talked to her, and if there is anything I can do about it, I am determined to stay lost until that chilly winter morning when I close my eyes and heart for the last time.

“Sarah,” I whispered, “I bought this the week I came home to Winnetka, and I’m afraid if I carry it around with me for another second something very bad is going to happen to my heart.”

I held out a diamond ring, just like the one she had lost on our honeymoon.

Actually, it was slightly nicer. All right, it was a lot nicer.

After leaving Winnetka last week, I didn’t drive directly to the
airport. I had stopped first at Harry Winston’s, Chicago’s most pretentious and overpriced jewelry store, and for some reason I can’t logically explain, I kept asking the salesman to show me something a little bigger, more dramatic, and more radiant, until he showed me the ring I had just showed Sarah.

As you might suspect, size, drama, and radiance are not something they give away at Harry’s. As a matter of fact, they put a certain premium on it. Fortunately, however, you can still get a rather lovely stone and setting for $135,000.

That’s not a typo. I spent my entire BellSouth winnings on the ring. I mean what the hell. It was a rain-shortened win. I didn’t deserve it.

But Sarah did.

As I stood there on the outer edges of the 17th green, I was shaking a little. I looked into Sarah’s eyes and I was close to losing it.

“I love you, Sarah,” I said, and to my everlasting amazement and happiness and infinite relief, she let me slide the ring gently on her finger. “I shouldn’t, Travis, but I love you, too,” she whispered. “And by the way, you’re returning this as soon as the round is over.”

“No way,” I said as I kissed her, and walked quickly back to my ball.

You’d think I’d have been distracted by all this, but it was the opposite. I had never been more focused in my life. Without taking a second peek at the line or another practice stroke, I dropped my putter behind the ball. I set my feet.

Then I let it go.

I didn’t even look to see what happened. I didn’t have to. I was a fool in love, who was loved in return. The instant I hit it, I knew it was
dead center, and that I was in a three-way tie for the lead of the U.S. Senior Open with Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd. As the gallery erupted and sprinted to the final tee, Earl slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Travis, my friend, it’s a real good thing you sunk that putt. Because if you hadn’t, you’d be carrying this bag right now.”

I peeked behind me and saw Sarah and the kids jumping up and down, inventing the McKinley jig.

Thank God, I said to myself.

So, it’s not a dream.

They’re actually here.

And so am I.

I can’t deny I felt a certain glow as I walked to the 18th hole. But I was also feeling like I was being wheeled into some foreign city’s emergency room at three in the morning.

My body was numb and there was a heat blister on my brain.

My back felt like one of those vast quadruple knots in Noah’s shoelaces.

My stomach was a disaster.

I had tunnel vision and cold sweats, and I was starting to see things that I hope weren’t really there — like my fifth-grade science teacher, Evelyn Kochanski, sunbathing naked along the left side of the fairway.

None of this was relieved by the fact that the par-5 18th at Pebble Beach, with the Pacific running the entire left side of the hole, is the most frightening finishing hole in golf. Hook the ball off the tee,
something I’m particularly adept at, and the only thing that can save you is the Coast Guard.

For reasons I’ll never understand, I hit a perfect drive, as did my co-leaders, and since none of us could reach the green in two, all I wanted to do with my second shot was advance the ball up the right side with a nice little 5-iron. No sweat.

As I started my backswing, I thought:
Smooth and easy
.

Then I thought:
Miss it anywhere but left
.

Then my grandfather screeched (inside my head, I hope):
One swing thought!
Which unfortunately was my third swing thought.

The result of all this complex thought was a wicked shank slice that scattered the gallery and rolled to a stop among a thick stand of pines on the right side of the fairway at least 275 yards from the green.

I felt like digging a shallow grave and throwing myself in.

Instead, I looked over at Simon, and he looked like he was taking it even harder than me.

So did Elizabeth and Pop.

But then I caught the eye of Noah, who offered one of his “Oh, well, what are you going to do?” shrugs.

And as usual, the little gink was right. Whatever happened was going to happen, and besides it was only golf. The 18th hole was important, but it wasn’t that important.

And standing right behind him, Sarah held up her new ring, and she mouthed “It’s beautiful!”

I headed toward the trees to find my damn ball.

I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty when I spotted Rosi gingerly hovering over my ball as if it were a radioactive turd, shaking his head and whispering into his headset in hushed, funereal tones. However, as soon as Earl and I got close enough to survey the damage ourselves, I saw that I wasn’t dead. I was just screwed.

There’s a difference.

Although there was a stand of hearty pines rooted between my ball and the fairway, there was a small gap, no more than a yard square, between the third and fourth trees, and if I could somehow hit a hard low draw through the hole, I could not only get back to the fairway, I could hit it at the green.

To say that it was unlikely I could poke a full-throttle drive through an opening the size of a small window is putting it politely. But with
Jack and Raymond both sitting pretty in the center of the fairway less than a hundred yards from the flag, chipping it sideways would have been tantamount to surrender anyway.

I figured I might as well scare a few trees first.

Now I know I’ve already used up more than my quota of miracles in this story. In fact, I probably had to use a couple of yours, too. So I won’t categorize what happened next as yet another piece of divine intervention. Let’s just call it the greatest shot in golf history, and leave it at that.

With the gallery rubbernecking with morbid delight, I pulled back my driver and swung at that ball as if I were wielding a sledgehammer at a county fair. When all I heard were gasps, I knew that sucker was rocketing toward the green.

In fact, I was a little disappointed when I raced back to the fairway and discovered that the ball had stopped rolling a couple of yards short on a little knoll.

Raymond Floyd was next, and with a wristy flourish he lofted a wedge that covered the flag the whole way. The shot stopped on a dime six feet from the hole.

Jack’s approach was even prettier, so pretty that as it dropped out of the sky my heart dropped with it, and I turned to Earl and said, “We’re going to lose on a slam dunk.”

“No, we’re not,” he replied, never taking his eyes from the ball.

An instant later the ball struck the cup or the flag, or the point where the cup and the flag came together, and struck it so cleanly that the ball bounced almost thirty feet away on the slick green.