Miracle on the 17th Green (7 page)

I hit my drive as well as I can — low and hard with a slight draw and it got all the way to the bottom of the hill almost 290 yards from the tee. But I still had another 270 left, this time uphill.

I mulled it over, but there was really nothing to think about it. An 8-degree driver is a tough-ass fairway wood, even with a flat lie, but it was my only chance to get there.

I took one long last look at the green, recalling how lovely and alluring
it had seemed my first night in Tallahassee, and how I had walked over this very spot in the moonlight.

You’re almost home, I thought to myself. Just give me one more solid swing … from the heels!

When you’re trying to crush a fairway wood harder than you have any right to, there is a tendency to top it, and send a pathetic little dribbler about a hundred yards up the fairway. As I stood up to the ball, I told myself to squat down on that thing, and if anything catch it a little chubby. So as not to overswing ridiculously, I used a trick I’ve occasionally resorted to in somewhat less-pressured situations. Even though the flag hung straight down in the breezeless afternoon, I imagined a hurricane howling at my back.

All my little head games worked. Probably because I’m not that smart. I kept my balance and flushed it straight up the gut of the fairway, and after two low, hard bounces, my ball rolled onto the green. It was only the second time all week anyone had reached 18 in two.

I had just struck, back to back, two of the best 1-woods in my life, and hit them as straight as they can fly, but there was nothing triumphant about my walk up 18.

There wasn’t a single spectator following our group or waiting on the green, and after six hours of fighting for my life I had one of the nastiest headaches I’ve ever hosted. I felt as if I were wearing a cap four sizes too small.

Eighteen feet stood between me and the Senior Tour. Eighteen feet between my shitty old self and my glorious future. Eighteen lousy feet.
Although I swore to myself I wouldn’t stoop this low, it now seems almost eloquent.
So close and yet so far
.

Then again, as I looked over my putt, it looked closer than it did far. Considering where I was a month ago, eighteen feet looked pretty negotiable. Hell, it seemed like a gimme.

I was staring at a flat run across the grain, the kind of putt you have to hit crisply to keep on-line, but once again the line was clear. Just give it a good ride, I told myself, just give it a good ride.

Which I did …

Which I did …

Which I didn’t.

I couldn’t believe it. I had stood up to the most important putt of my life and left it two inches short of the tin. I will never say “Nice putt, Alice” to anyone again, if I live to be a thousand. Thank God, Joe and Chuck and Ron weren’t there.

I tapped in for what seemed like the eighteenth time that day. A goddamn birdie! Then I slowly walked into the scorers’ tent. I added and re-added my score, hoping that somehow I could get the arithmetic to spit out 68. But it kept coming up 69.

Finally I signed the card, then staggered back to a wall behind the green to watch the leaders finish up. So close and yet so far is about right.

Although I’d played pretty well, I felt neither satisfaction nor relief.

I wanted to call Sarah or Elizabeth or Simon and Noah, but I didn’t have the strength. I was so tapped out, I almost fell asleep against the wall.

I actually heard the last threesome tee off a quarter of a mile away.

Ten minutes later none of them had appeared in the valley below the green. Strange.

In another five minutes or so, an electric murmur had begun to spread around the clubhouse.

I walked into the scorers’ tent and heard a marshal ask into his two-way radio: “What the hell is going on down there, Orville? It’s been twenty minutes.”

A few seconds later, there was a crackle in the tiny speaker. It was followed by perhaps the sweetest piece of news I had ever heard:
“We got three golfers O.B.”

For those unafflicted by this game, to be O.B. is to be out of bounds. As in deep gumbo.

On the final hole of the longest day, there had been the golfing equivalent of a three-car crackup on the last straightaway. All three players had hooked their drives onto Route 48 and out of bounds. By the time all the bodies had been cleared away and the paperwork filled out, 12 under par was good enough for eighth place.

I was a member in full standing of the PGA Senior Tour.

I showered and changed, and dreamily wandered back outside. By now it was close to six, and the sun was dropping fast behind the huge wooden scoreboard that had been erected beside the 18th green.

It was that time in a Florida evening when the earth seems to catch its breath and sigh, and I felt as calm and quiet as the cool still air.

What I really felt was
different
. That who I was at that moment was a significantly different person from the one who had got up that morning and driven to the golf course, distinctly different from even the person who was in eleventh place less than an hour before.

I was more comfortable in my body. It was a place I wanted to be, a place I had been looking for for a long time, probably my whole life.

Although I’d managed not to dwell on it, and had done everything I could to keep the knowledge from overwhelming most of my days, I
suddenly realized how depressed and ashamed of myself I had been for so long. What I had thought were just the usual regrets and doubts was actually a gorilla of self-loathing, and now, just like that, that hairy-handed gent had loosened his grip and slipped off into the Florida brush.

It wasn’t that I thought I was better than anybody else, only that I was just as good. I felt I could stand alongside the next person and look him in the eye. Do you know what I mean? I felt I could
breathe
.

I walked to the base of the scoreboard, which loomed over the clubhouse lawn like a white version of that monolith at the start of
2001: A Space Odyssey
. I read down the names and scores painted in a lovely old-fashioned script until I reached my own, eight names down.

Travis McKinley
.

Good God, I had really done it.

Golfers and their next of kin were still stumbling around the last green like dazed victims of a train wreck. No doubt about it, there were a lot more casualties than survivors on that final scoreboard. Maybe some day they would be able to recall with pride that they were even on the board at all, that they had not only come down to Tallahassee to chase their dream, but had performed well.

I doubted it. Some people say trying is all that matters, but unfortunately it’s only the first step. Sometimes you’ve got to catch a break and win one, too. You’ve got to stand up on the bar and do the antler dance. Plus, as I now knew as well as anyone, people really suck at consoling themselves.

“So tell me, Travis, what do you do for a living?” For twenty-three years, it was the question I dreaded more than any other. “What do you do?”

I work for an advertising agency. I’m an advertising copywriter. I write commercials.

God knows there are a lot worse jobs than being an advertising copywriter. And if that’s what you want to do, be my guest. But for me, that unavoidable answer had been breaking my spirit for two and a half decades.

Now I couldn’t wait for someone to ask me who and what I was.

“So tell me, Travis, what do you do?”

“I’m a professional golfer.”

“No shit.”

“Yup.”

“You teach?”

“No, my friend, I learn. I’m a player. I’m a professional golfer on the Senior Tour.”

There was a pay phone in the parking lot, and with a half-moon just appearing in the fragrant night, and my heart pounding in my chest, I made my call.

“Sarah,” I said as soon as she answered the phone, “what am I?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Are you calling from Florida?”

“What am I, Sarah?” I asked again, almost shouting the words. “What am I?”

The people milling around me were too caught up in their own miseries to find anything the slightest bit strange about my loud questioning, and perhaps, in her own way, so was Sarah. I had the terribly lonely realization that Sarah had no idea what I was talking about, and didn’t even know exactly why I was calling.

“You’re a lunatic,” Sarah said with a familiar hint of a smile in her voice. “And I guess you’re a decent father.”

“I can’t take the suspense any longer, Sarah, so I’m going to tell you what I am,” I said, looking up at the forlorn moon. “I’m a professional golfer.”

“You made it?” she said in amazement.

“I made it. I finished eighth. I have a spot in every senior tournament for a year.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “Listen, I’m really sorry to be telling
you now. I really don’t mean to spoil this, but I’m probably going to talk to a lawyer next week about a divorce.”

For a few seconds I was too staggered to say a thing. You know that Dickensian crap about the best of times and the worst of times. I guess it’s not crap.

“But, Sarah, we’ve barely even talked about this. Shouldn’t we at least try to see someone?”

“You mean like a marriage counselor, Travis?”

“Yeah.”

“You always end up with some Pollyanna on her second happy marriage.”

I sighed. “It’s just such a weird night, Sarah, and I don’t even know what the point is if I can’t share these little triumphs with you.”

“This one isn’t so little, Travis,” Sarah said. “Save the charming modesty for someone else.”

“You’re right, it’s pretty amazing. But don’t decide now. Please. I’ll be gone the next couple of months anyway.”

“Not to change the subject, Travis, but there’s a guy here who knows exactly how he feels about you, and he’s been hanging around all day for your call. Let me get him.”

I looked over my shoulder, where a line had formed behind me.

“Dad,” said Simon, “you made it?”

“I finished eighth. I got the last spot. I’m a professional golfer,” I said.

“You showed ’em, Dad,” said Simon letting out a hoot. “You showed everybody.”

“I really did, pal. Tell Noah for me, okay, and call Elizabeth.”

“I can’t wait to tell Pop,” said Simon. “This is amazing.”

“I got to go, Simon,” I said. “There are all these people waiting to use the phone. I love you.”

I had to get off so fast, not just because of the murmuring in the line behind me, but because as I thought of Simon and Noah and Elizabeth and Sarah and Pop, something just crumbled, and I started to cry. I don’t mean some sniffles or a few tears of joy. I mean serious chest-heaving, with snot coming out of my nose, bawling that stood out even in this disaster area.

I cried for everything that had gone right and wrong for thirty years. I cried about Sarah. But most of all, I think I cried out of stunned gratitude. Despite my uncanny tendency to screw up, I had never given up on myself.

“Don’t worry, pal,” said a kind voice from the darkness, “you’ll get it next year.”

I sat down on the curb in the dark at the back of the parking lot, waiting for my crying jag to stop. It took a while, and I didn’t care who saw me or what they thought.

Then I walked back to the clubhouse bar to go find Earl Fielder.

I owed him a beer.