Don't Kiss Girls and Other Silly Stories (12 page)

‘Really? Probably sweat.'

‘No, it must have been the ball.'

‘Might have landed in a puddle,' I say.

He lifts his hand to his face and has a whiff.

‘It smells disgusting! I think some sort of wild animal has peed on it.'

‘Yeah, that's what musta happened. When I walked up, I saw a wild animal run off.'

‘What type was it?' he asks.

‘Umm ... a lizard. A really big one.'

He gives me a suspicious look and then strides towards his ball.

*

‘What did you score on that one?' asks Dr Graham after the hole.

‘A par for me,' says Dr Edwards.

‘A par? You disappeared in the rough for so long I was going send a search party.'

‘Took us awhile but Tony's eagle eyes
finally spotted
the ball.'

I spotted it all right. With my third eye.

Dr Edwards keeps explaining. ‘Turned out I had a great lie. Punched it right out onto the fairway.'

Dr Graham looks at me for confirmation.

‘Yep,' I say. ‘Dr Edwards told a great lie.'

Dr Graham chuckles. ‘That's a Freudian slip if ever I heard one, don't you think, George?'

He doesn't answer.

Who's Freudian? I think.

‘Remember the penalty for cheating, George,' Dr Graham says. ‘A one-year ban from the club.'

‘Hang on,' says Dr Edwards. ‘I think I made a mistake. Put me down for a bogey.'

Dr Graham looks smug. ‘Bogey it is.'

Before the last hole, Kane tells me that Dr Graham is winning by one shot. By the looks on their faces both players are either really nervous, or constipated.

Dr Graham
slices his long drive and ends up zigzagging his way to the
green, getting there in four shots. Dr Edwar
ds hits the ball shorter but straighter, and is on
the green in three.

Putting
first,
Dr Graham curls
the ball down the long, downhill slope. It's a
perfect putt, except the ball doesn't go in the hole –
it stops at the very edge of the cup.

‘Unlucky,' says Dr Edwards, grinning.

Kane is squatting down beside me, and suddenly I hear a whooshing sound coming from his direction.

The ball drops in.

‘Yes!' says Dr Graham.

‘Unbelievable!' cries Dr Edwards.

Kane smirks.

Dr Edwards takes a long
time to line up his putt. As he stands over the
ball, he says, ‘This is the exact birdie putt I
saw in my mind before the round. All I
have to do is nail it and I'll force
a tie. I live for moments like this.'

At the moment, I'm living for the chance to have a drink and a rest. I've been carrying a heavy bag around a paddock for three hours and my back is killing me. There are sandflies and mozzies everywhere and they love my blood. It must taste like red cordial.

In fact, there's a mozzie buzzing around me now and it's ticking me off. I can't kill it because I'm holding the
flag
in my right hand, and it keeps landing on my left arm.

Dr Edwards is still
standing over the ball. He's taking forever.

The mozzie lands on me and sinks its teeth in. I shake my arm but the bloodsucker is too busy drinking to care. I can't resist.

Smack!

My hand moves with lightning speed and I squash the mozzie dead. Blood splatters over Dad's white shirt. Gotcha!

Clack.

It's the tap of a ball against a putter.

I reach back for the
flag
quickly, but it's not there. It's started to fall! I make a grab for the thin metal rod, but I miss it.

‘Get in the hole!' yells Dr Edwards.

Clink!

The ball stops dead as it …

… hits the fallen
flagpole.

‘No!' screams Dr Edwards.

‘Uh-oh,' I say. This can't be good for my tip.

*

After taking his head out of his hands, Dr Edwards unhappily signs the official scorecard, and opens his wallet to pay a beaming Dr Graham.

Then Dr Edwards calls me over. His wallet's still in his hand, which might be a good sign. ‘Tony, I need to give you your tip,' he says.

Really? I wasn
't sure if I'd get one, not with the
sneezing, peeing, and dropping the
flag
on the ball. But
it looks like old Dr Edwards isn't such
a bad bloke after all.

‘My tip to you is …'

I hold out my hand, hoping for a twenty. Or maybe a
fift
y.

‘… never, ever,
ever
step on a golf course again! You are the worst caddy in the history of the world!'

Hmmm, I might only get a tenner.

‘You have no talent for golf, which probably means you have very little talent for life. I expect to see you one day as a patient, in which case I'll refer you to someone else so I don't give you an overdose of antidepressants.'

I reckon I'd need an antidepressant just to be in the same room as him.

‘My job is to help people with major problems,' he says. ‘You, however, are beyond help.'

He starts walking away.

Hey, I think. He said he was going to give me a tip? And then it hits me.

He's just given it to me.

I'm about to yell, ‘Loser!' but Dr Graham's already walked up beside me.

‘Tony, what can I say?' he says.

I don't know. Knowing my luck he'll probably call me stupid as well.

‘You're a genius,' he says.

‘What?'

‘You see, I've never beaten that jerk.' He points a
finger
at Dr Edwards. I can think of a lot of better words to describe him. ‘And when I asked Kane to
find
a caddy who'd put him off his game, he said he knew the perfect person.'

‘He did?' This is getting confusing.

‘You're a professional actor, Tony. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that you really were the most stupid bloke alive.'

Really confusing. ‘Yep, that's me,' I say. ‘Pro actor.'

‘I know that Kane said that he'd give the money to you later, but you did such a great job I wanted to hand it to you personally. Here you go.'

He gives me 100 bucks!

‘Thanks!' I say. ‘Thanks a lot!'

Before I can
figu
re out what's going on, an idea pops into my head. It mightn't be the smartest one in the world, but who cares? That's never stopped me before. ‘Hey, George!' I yell.

Dr Edwards is packing his golf clubs into the back of his car. He turns around.

I hold up the cash. ‘Hundred bucks says I'm better than you.'

He pauses, then looks away. For a moment I think he's going to drive off, but as they say in the movies, money talks.

He saunters back to me. ‘What are you proposing?'

‘One hole. Winner takes all. What do you say, psycho-man?'

He points a
finge
r at my chest. ‘I say you're on.'

Lacey suddenly appears. She must be
finished
her $100-an-hour lesson. ‘I heard that! What are you doing, Rossy? You've never played golf.' She almost looks worried for me.

‘I know. I might need a few tips,' I reply.

‘There's something else you'll need.'

‘What's that?'

‘Clubs.'

‘Oh, yeah.' I'd forgotten about those.

She shakes her head. ‘You can use mine. But only if I can caddy for you.'

‘No worries.'

Kane's hanging around, probably because he's got the whiff of more money, so Dr Edwards asks if he'll caddy for him.

Kane accepts. The traitor.

We walk back to the start of the last hole and Lacey sticks the little wooden thing in the ground and puts the ball on it for me. I could get used to having a caddy. It makes me feel rich.

‘Stand here,' she says, lining up my body side-on to the ball, about a metre away from it. ‘I'm giving you a three wood, one of the easiest clubs to use. Don't try to murder the ball, just stroke it nice and easy and let your club head do the work.'

I like that one. Let my club head do the work. Better than my real head doing the work.

I'm about to swing when I remember something. ‘Just one more thing, Lace. How do I actually hit it?'

Kane sniggers.

Lacey says, ‘Here, put your hands like this.' She takes my
fingers
and curls them around the handle and each other. ‘All you have to do is count to three: One when you take the club back, two when you start swinging down, and three after the hit. Count nice and slowly and you won't rush the shot.'

‘It's as easy as one, two, three, hey?'

‘Yep.'

‘Okay, here goes. One …' I stand very still and stare at the ball. It looks small. ‘Two …' I take the club back. ‘Three!' I swing down and actually hit the ball. It goes
flying
through the air. Yes! This is easier than I thought.

All of a sudden the ball starts hooking like a banana and heads straight for the trees. How did that happen? I didn't mean to put any spin on it.

Thwack!

A bird squawks and
flies
away. I nearly got a birdie.

The ball rebounds off a branch, whacks a
rock, hits a smaller tree and bounces back onto the middle
of the fairway.

‘That's the luckiest thing I've ever seen,' says Kane.

‘What are you talking about?' I say. ‘I meant to do that.'

Dr Edwards doesn't hit his ball perfectly but it still goes a fair way past mine.

‘Good shot, sir,' says Kane.

‘Crawler,' I whisper.

Because I can't use the little stick thing
on the fairway, I can't get the
ball up in the air. My next two shots kill
a few worms but at least they go straight, which is
more than I can say for Dr Edwards. He
hits his second shot a long way but it drops
into a bunker that's so steep it looks like
a sand dune. He chucks his club to the ground.

Kane has to pick it up.

Sucked in, I think.

For my fourth shot I want to try a run-up like I saw on
Happy
Gilmore.
Maybe then the ball will get some air-time. Lacey says it's a bad idea.

‘It's hard enough to hit a golf ball when you're standing still,' she says. ‘Just swing nice and easy with this and you'll get it on the green.' She hands me a nine iron. ‘Trust me.'

I decide to take her advice. I take the club back and …
whack!
The ball actually gets off the ground and goes high in the air, like I saw when I watched golf on TV that one time.

It lands on the green.

‘Great shot!' says Lacey.

I pump my
fist.
‘Yes!' I'm a natural.

I'm even happier when Dr Edwards hits his next shot into the bunker. The same bunker. He gets on the green with his next effort, but he's further away than me and we've both hit four shots.

I can't believe it. I can beat him!

Dr Edwards putts
first
and the ball pulls up a few metres short of the hole.

‘Tough game, isn't it, sir?' says Lacey.

He gives her a dirty look, putts again and misses to the right. Finally his third putt drops in the hole.

Lacey gives me some advice. ‘The secret to putting,' she says, ‘is to not think.'

‘I'm good at not thinking,' I say.

‘Aim just past the hole, clear your mind and let your body take control.'

My body's good at taking control. Especially my eyes when I walk past a pretty girl.

I line it up, take a deep breath, and hit the putt.

For a second it looks like it might go in the hole, but then it curves left and just misses.

‘Nice putt,' says Lacey.

‘Thanks.'

This is so good! Only a piddly little half-a-metre shot left and I win!

As I'm lining up, Kane coughs into his hand. It's a strange cough that sounds like, ‘Loser!'

‘Stop it, Kane!' Lacey and I say.

‘Stop what? I've got an itchy throat.'

Kane is always trying to put me off, especially when we're playing ping-pong or handball. It makes me so angry.

I back away to calm down and Dr Edwards says, ‘Kane, do you remember when Greg Norman missed a putt like this to lose the Masters?'

Kane nods. ‘I watched it on Foxtel Greats.'

‘Who's Greg Norman?' I say.

‘Ignore them,' says Lacey. ‘They're just trying to put you off.'

I know, but the thing is, it's working. If some pro golfer with two
first
names like Greg Norman can miss a putt this close, then what hope has Tony Ross got? I decide I better concentrate for once in my life.

Get it in, I say to myself. Get it in. I step up and hit the ball
firml
y. I don't want to come up short.

It goes in, all right. In the lake, right behind the green.

‘Tough luck, Tony,' says Dr Edwards, taking my hundred. ‘In life there are two types of people: winners and losers. You're a loser.'

‘Well, you're a tosser,' I say.

Dr Edwards holds the hundred in the air. ‘You know, I make more money in a year than you'll see in a lifetime. I don't need this.'

He might be going to give it back to me. At least that'd be one good thing to come out of today.

‘I'll give it to you on one condition,' he says. ‘Spend it however you want, but don't give it to a loser.'