Fore! Play (24 page)

Think Chuck Connors meets John Daly. We figured out the little honey in our hotel room, then carried it under wraps to the
practice range at the tournament, where I loaded it, cocked it, put it behind the ball, pulled the trigger, and winced.

There was a harmless “click,” followed by another and another and another. New bullets didn’t help. Rereading the directions
didn’t help. All it would do was misfire.

(After the tournament I sent the Driver back to the manufacturers. I tried to call them to discuss another try sometime, but
the phone was disconnected. Their fax no longer worked. My letters went unanswered. I did some research and read that this
was not the first time the Ballistic Driver had failed during a public demonstration.)

I was crushed. I would have to try to win this thing “legitimately,” if you will.

The Ballistic Driver was just like everything else I tried to improve my golf game: It didn’t work.

I am placed in an esteemed (here, at least) foursome, with President McMeel, titular vice president Oliphant, and their buddy,
John O’Day, who is a complete gentleman and a good golfer, all of which means he has absolutely no business being in this
tournament. If he wins the tournament with low score I’ll be filing a protest with the commissioner. How can they allow this
… golfer! … into this tournament.

Luckily, a tournament sponsor provides golf shoes to every contestant, because I don’t have mine. I really like the clicking
sound the spikes make as I tread the walkways. Feel like a real golfer. I have worn them once since, and had to take them
to the pro shop to be refitted with the mandatory, new soft rubber spikes that make no racket and are no fun at all.

Luckily, they’re renting clubs, because I don’t have any of those either. Probably I would do a lot better if I had a $2,000
set of custom-made clubs, but it is still unclear to me whether I want to hit the ball farther or not until I get the whole
directional thing worked out.

The “golfers” board their carts, Indy 500–style, and hear a man with a bullhorn bellow: “Good luck and bad golf to all!” There
is a little bumper cart action as sixty-six carts scatter to their assigned tees.

John McMeel drives me to the first tee, where he pencils in our names on the scorecard. Everyone else has short little golf
pencils, but his is long, with an eraser. “All the better to make necessary adjustments,” he explained. So …
he
will be scoring—a potentially decisive advantage.

Pat and John O’Day arrive, and it’s time to tee off. They’re suspicious of me. I talk a bad game, sure, but you know it’s
not enough to simply talk a bad game—there comes a moment in time when you have to tee it up and prove yourself on the field
of play. And I will, time and time again, in the sands, the groves, and the ravines here at this country club.

We go over a mental checklist, like pilots readying for takeoff:

“Plenty of paramedics on hand?” I ask.

“Check,” replies McMeel.

“Chainsaws, shovels, machetes?” queries Oliphant.

Check.

“Trailerful of balls?”

Check.

“Scorecard already filled out for all 18 holes?” Oliphant asks McMeel.

Suspiciously, no answer.

“Beverage cart operational?” Oliphant asks with a serious note of concern.

Check.

They want me to tee off first, but we have to wait for a foursome ahead of us, which is taking a little of the pressure off
me by hitting some astonishingly ghastly drives.

“Wait for the laughter to die down,” McMeel advises, “then you can go.” Say what you will, McMeel
knows
bad golf etiquette.

And, of course, bad golf etiquette requires your partners not to be quiet when you’re lining up a shot, but rather to advise
and encourage you. As I stand over my first drive, McMeel compliments me on my “matching outfit,” clearly just trying to distract
me because my outfit is purposely mismatched owing to my complete disdain for those cute cabana sets some golfers wear.

“Don’t think about the trees,” Oliphant says helpfully.

“Could you guys be quiet for a second?” I plead.

“Bill, Bill, Bill,” chides McMeel, walking over and opening the BGA rule book. “This is covered right here in the BGA rule
book.”

And, indeed, there it is, right there on
page 5
, Section 1–2: “Consideration for Other Players: When a player is addressing
the ball or making a stroke, the general atmosphere of camaraderie is enhanced when other players stand close behind and talk
to each other, and make disparaging remarks concerning that player’s ability.”

I should have remembered my Walkman. I swing away, hitting the ball rather nicely, except for the sharp right it seems to
be taking.

“Do you see it?” I ask. I never see where my drives go. I think it’s because I really don’t
want
to know.

“Yes,” answers McMeel.

“It’s on the fairway,” says Oliphant.

“Just not
our
fairway,” adds O’Day. “Please try again.”

Now here is a group of good Christian athletes, who will give a guy a little down on his luck a second chance—unlike most
of the uncharitable bastards who play this game.

My second drive is better: shorter, in the rough, next to a stand of trees and probably even findable.

“You’re in the shade,” cheers McMeel, “which is good. It’s a hot one today.”

I step back, standing ready now myself to helpfully offer advice and encouragement to my golfing partners.

“Don’t even think about the crowd of people watching, here, Johnny,” Oliphant says, as McMeel steps to the tee. His first
two tee shots go … somewhere. His third lands near mine.

Pat hits his drive farther than we did, right in the center of the fairway, but not
this
fairway. He decides to play it from there, however, as it is not all that far—as the crow flies—from the intended green.

O’Day hits a painfully beautiful drive, but it hits a rock or sprinkler head or something and bounces almost sideways into
the rough.

To speed things up—can you even
imagine
how long it would take the 132 worst golfers in America to play 18 holes?—this is a “best ball” tournament, which means the
four of us each take our second shots from wherever the best of our four first shots landed. However, on the opening drive,
none of us had hit even a
good
shot, let alone a
best
shot, so maybe we should be playing “better ball” or “least bad ball” or maybe here in the BGA tournament we should be playing
“worst ball.” Best ball for our foursome meant that in almost every case we’d be hitting our next shots from wherever O’Day’s
previous shot landed.

McMeel hits his second shot. Five feet. He hits his third shot. Ten feet. I figured everyone had just been giving him a hard
time about his game, but you know something? John McMeel is every bit as bad as people say he is.

In keeping with BGA etiquette, McMeel’s lame shots are met with Oliphant’s loud guffaws. “It’s the ground crew’s fault,” McMeel
snaps. “If they’d mown the rough instead of the fairways, we’d be fine.”

To fit in, I hit my second shot ten feet. I seem to be playing down to the level of the competition, and they like that.

“Beautiful form though, Bill,” McMeel comments, at once politely and impolitely.

Pat is over on the other fairway behind the trees having his way with his ball, as O’Day hits his second shot distressingly
well. It rolls to the edge of the green, but then somehow rolls back into the sand trap. Tough luck.

There is a sponsor sign on the sand trap. Unlike other tournaments, the
holes
are not sponsored here, the
hazards
are. Because that’s where most of the action takes place. By the 18th hole the sand traps should have been sponsored by Dr.
Jack Kevorkian.

O’Day blasts out of the sand—on his first try!—to within five feet of the pin. Then McMeel takes his S wedge and begins flailing
away at the sand, like a dog going after a buried T-bone or perhaps a cat trying to cover up something in a litter box. After
his fourth whack at it, he picks up his ball and carries it out of the sand.

With scores already soaring, my partners are beginning to take things into their own hands.

“Let me show you the art of bunker play,” Pat says to me, as he steps into the sand: “First of all, you wait till everyone
else is up on the green, so all they can see is the top of your head, then you take the ball and some sand in your left hand,
swing your club, and release the ball and the sand during your swing, letting the ball and the sand fly onto the green.”

He demonstrates as I watch from the green. He makes a perfect toss that rolls within inches of the hole, and from my vantage
point it looks like Tiger himself has stroked it.

“Good out!” yells McMeel.

“But isn’t that, you know …
cheating?
” I ask.

“No, no, no, Bill, please,” says McMeel. “We don’t like to call it ‘cheating.’ Our creed or credo or whatever, is that if
you can get away with it you can do anything: We don’t like to call it cheating—a compromise, maybe, or self-help. Anyway
that shot is covered in the rule book.”

And, indeed, there it is, right on
page 29
: “Relief Situations: The ball may be lifted and resituated. … When the player has
been unable to hit the ball over the overhanging rim of a sand trap, the player may pick up the ball and a handful of sand
and launch both as far as possible toward the pin. The sand lends authenticity and should head off imprudent questions.”

Okay, so I try it. But my shot isn’t nearly as graceful or believable or close to the hole. In golf, even cheating well takes
practice.

John O’Day sinks his putt, so our team takes a 4 on the first hole. “Couldn’t the other three of us just head on back to the
clubhouse?” I ask. “I’m not sure I understand our function out here playing ‘best ball’? Can’t O’Day just do this himself?”
Yet we play on.

On the second tee, I fail to hit the ball as far as the ladies’ tee and Oliphant immediately whips out the rule book. He turns
to
page 17
, and tries to invoke the rule whereby “a male player having not, on his initial drive, hit his ball beyond the
ladies’ tee shall complete that hole with his ‘membership’ hanging out.” Fortunately, mulligans were on sale at the tournament
for $25 and McMeel buys me one, explaining: “Nobody wants to see that.” I tell him I haven’t seen it for a while myself without
the aid of a dental mirror. Not that I need it, it’s just nice to know it’s still there.

After the second shot on the second hole, we three dingbats are wandering the woods on the right side of the fairway—slicers,
all—in search of our (golf) balls. Oliphant shows me the rule book’s definition of: “Lost Ball: A ball is ‘lost’ if you have
decided the terrain does not warrant screwing with it. If the ball is actually found in such terrain it can be quietly booted
into the next county and another put down without penalty in more hospitable surroundings. If the ball is actually lost …
the same solution applies.”

There are nuances: “It is sometimes profitable for a player to assist another player in the search for his or her ball. If
the assisting player should find the ball first, that player may find it possible to pocket the ball without attracting undue
attention and … the [other] player will then have to put down another ball for a one-stroke penalty.”

“Here’s your ball,” he says, handing me my ball. “I’ll give you a break this time, since you’re a novice.” Truly a babe in
the woods. So much to learn from these masters. I notice that Oliphant always speeds ahead in his golf cart to take command
of the situation, and I start riding with him. My scores improve immediately. He has found ways to improve his game without
costly equipment and lessons.

“Found mine!” he yells, discreetly dropping a new ball on the edge of the fairway.

“Me, too!” calls out McMeel, whose ball, believe it or not, is also on the fairway. How fortunate.

Pat instructs me that when playing with straight-arrow sticklers it’s sometimes necessary to be deft of hand to disguise the
fact that you are dropping another ball. He’s the one who advises cutting a hole in my right front pants pocket and dropping
the ball down through it rather than tossing a ball or stooping over to put one down—both of which arouse suspicion.

At the next tee some absolute
fool
is trying to sell chances to win airline tickets if we hit a hole-in-one. We all have a good chuckle over that. (There is
such a thing as “hole-in-one insurance,” whereby a tournament offers, say, a $100,000 prize for a hole-in-one and buys insurance
based on the hole distance, number of players in the tournament, and so forth. So, the insurance premium for, say, a $1 million
prize on a two-hundred-yard hole at the BGA tournament would probably run about what? Five bucks?) At another hole, golfers
could, theoretically, win a new Buick for a hole-in-one. If you’re in the market for a late-model Buick that’s never been
driven, it’s probably still sitting there.

Over the course of the next couple of holes, I notice an odd thing happening—a great thing: O’Day isn’t always hitting the
best ball. Sometimes even
I
do. In golf, we what?
Learn from one another!
Bad golf is contagious.

“John O’Day was a fine golfer until he met us,” McMeel explains.

“I used to be a 16 handicap,” O’Day confirms, “then I went to 20, played with these guys a few more times and went to a 24,
and today I’m probably a 30 thanks to them.”

On the next tee, I whiff, missing the ball completely. Luckily BGA rules read: “These swings shall be deemed practice swings
and are not subject to penalty … intent to hit the ball is immaterial and cannot be proven anyway.”

I swing again, hitting my ball about three feet on my second try, ten feet on my third, and next elect to
throw
not the ball, but rather my driver. Just five feet or so, but the head comes off, which makes driving just that much more
difficult the rest of the day. There is laughing. You never see laughing at PGA tournaments. Even my throwing is critiqued:
“Use more of a helicopter motion rather than just the straight toss,” Oliphant suggests, sounding like he knows whereof he
speaks.