The Downhill Lie (10 page)

Rodent Golf

I
have a history with vermin.

For years I kept red rat snakes, so named because of a specific culinary preference. The hundreds of rats that I fed to my pets were domestically bred, but they were rats nonetheless; basically the same tenacious flea-friendly critter that in the Middle Ages decimated Europe with the bubonic plague.

Several months into my golfing comeback, a rat chewed to shreds the auxiliary wiring harness in the underchassis of my Chevy Suburban, causing the air conditioner to more or less flame out. The gluttonous destruction was achieved on nighttime forays during the summer, while the vehicle was parked in the driveway of a house that my family and I were renting.

The cost of the rat noshing: $2,196.92.

Astonishingly, my insurance company agreed to pay for most of the damages. I was informed that rodents in Florida regard automotive wiring as a delicacy, and claims such as mine were not rare.

Nonetheless, the inconvenience was aggravating. I’d been driving my SUV back and forth to the golf course several times a week, clueless to the nocturnal sabotage. Never once had I spied a rat lurking near the Suburban, or anywhere in the yard.

Anticipating a repeat attack—and diminished sympathy from the insurance company—I was eager to locate the culprit before he commenced snacking on my replacement wiring.

The summer vacation ended without further incident. Then, on the day the kids went back to school, I finished breakfast and went outside to a shed where our appliance boxes were stored. I found the box I needed, opened it—and immediately spotted a funky-looking nest made of shredded packing material, from which protruded a long, twitchy black tail.

Hastily I shut the box and dashed into the house in search of a weapon. There were two choices, both of which I’d purchased because of commercials on the Golf Channel. The first was the Medicus dual-hinge driver, endorsed by Mark O’Meara; the second was the Momentus Swing Trainer, endorsed by Fred Funk.

I’d been practicing sporadically with both devices, though my golf had not improved perceptibly. The Medicus is about the same length as a regulation driver, but the clubhead is rigged to waggle on a hinge if you make a mistake at any one of six compass points in your swing. It’s an effective training aid, but to do battle with a wild rat I needed a bludgeon that wasn’t going to flop impotently at the critical moment of impact.

So I grabbed the Momentus, basically a foreshortened 6-iron that’s weighted heavily to build muscle strength. It has a molded grip for the hands, a sturdy steel shaft, and it tips the scale at a formidable 40 ounces—a full half-pound heavier than Barry Bonds’s baseball bat.

What happened next wasn’t pretty, but save your postage stamps. A rat is nothing but a rat, okay? They’re dirty, destructive, disease-carrying pests; as a species, the opposite of endangered. When the icecaps melt and the oceans rise, I promise you that billions of rats will be nesting safely in the treetops, warm and dry, making more rats.

Truthfully, there’s no humane way to get rid of the bastards. The traps you buy at hardware stores painfully snap their bones. Poison causes their stomachs to explode. Cats just gnaw off their heads and then toy with their writhing corpses.

As a universal rule, rats are not euthanized; rats are exterminated. It’s been that way since the beginning of man.

I had to make a split-second decision, and I have no regrets.

The Momentus golf trainer turned out to be ideal for mortal combat with feral rodents in close quarters. Three of the razor-toothed intruders were hiding in that cardboard box, and I waxed two of them. Admittedly, mine wasn’t a textbook swing plane—more Lizzie Borden than Sam Snead—but I kept my head down, held my left arm straight and followed through to the target, which (unlike a golf ball) was hopping and thrashing and snapping at the clubhead.

Afterwards, while I was hosing the blood and fur off the hosel, it occurred to me that Fred Funk probably never envisioned the Momentus being deployed for such a mission. I considered dropping him a short note, with a sunny blurb for future infomercials:

“Forty ounces of rat-smashing power! I highly recommend the Momentus swing trainer for anyone trying to groove their golf swing, or battle a stubborn vermin infestation.”

One lucky stiff escaped the hail of blows on that August morning, leaping clear of the mangled box and making a charge at my wife, who shrieked and slammed the porch door. Before I could give chase, the rat disappeared into the shrubbery.

If it’s the same one that gnawed the wiring out of my Chevy, I hope we meet again. I’ll be waiting,
chico,
me and my leetle friend.

Day 377

Sheepishly I call Sandridge for an update on the wet cart. To my relief, John reports that the mechanics have cleaned out the muck and gotten the engine running.

“Did they check that brake?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t quite right,” he says. “I think they changed the pads.”

Vindication? Or is he just being polite?

“What do I owe you?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Just don’t put another one in the lake, okay?”

The Tiger Beat

F
or me, the only thing more nerve-wracking than golfing with strangers is boarding airplanes with strangers. Or boarding alone, for that matter. Or with 250 nuns, each of them saying a Rosary.

I’m not and never will be a carefree flier, but when duty calls I’ll grit my teeth, inhale a Xanax and step up to the plate.

David Feherty had asked me to tag along with him inside the ropes at the Bridgestone Invitational, which is held at the legendary Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. The purpose of the trip was to observe up close the level of divine skill at which professional golf is executed—an experience guaranteed to validate my own futility about the game.

According to MapQuest, the driving distance from my home in Florida to the front gates of Firestone was 1,072 miles, too far for a weekend road trip. So, on a Friday afternoon, the second day of the tournament, I courageously headed to the airport and medicated myself as prescribed.

The skies in the Midwest were stormy, so the flight was gut-heaving and miserable despite the sedation. I lurched off the plane and beheld downtown Akron, beckoning like Paris in a drizzle; no traveler has ever been so relieved to set foot in the former tire-and-rubber capital of the Western World.

At the golf course everyone was buzzing about a 9-iron that Tiger Woods had hit from the woods along the 18th fairway. The ball had traveled 212 yards, aided by a cartoon-like bounce off a cart path, and ended up briefly on the roof of the clubhouse though technically not out of bounds. Apparently at Firestone you can hook one all the way to Toledo and still escape a penalty stroke.

A conclave of PGA officials met while a lengthy search ensued. (A cook who was standing on the loading dock had innocently picked up Tiger’s ball.) Eventually Woods got a free drop, chipped creatively to the green and nearly holed the putt for a par. The proceedings took thirty-two minutes, a soul-grinding eternity even for the most avid fans. Tiger finished the round with a 64, and as usual he was leading the tournament.

While Feherty taped the CBS highlights show, I chatted with another popular commentator, Gary McCord, who still competes on the Champions Tour. When I told him about my attempted comeback, he suggested that I take on a “real challenge” and try to qualify for a seniors amateur tournament. I informed him that things weren’t going nearly that well.

“I sank a golf cart the other day,” I confessed, “in a lake.”

“Oh, I’ve done that,” McCord said matter-of-factly.

“You have?”

“Yeah. We were chasing a roadrunner.”

This was music to my ears.

The next afternoon, armed with network credentials and a cumbersome portable monitor that displayed the live network feed, I followed Feherty to the practice range, where Woods and his caddy were stationed distantly at one end, by themselves. We did not approach. Nobody did.

Feherty prowled the tee area, muttering to himself and greeting the other pros with “Hey, asshole” and other graphic endearments that unfailingly caused the players to grin or crack up. Despite giving the impression of being authentically miserable—he recently quit drinking—Feherty is one of the wittiest, most likable companions you could find. He’s also uncommonly wise about golf and, although he claims to despise the sport, can be heard to say in unguarded moments, “I love to watch these guys hit the ball.”

During his playing days Feherty won ten tournaments worldwide, and was a member of the 1991 European Ryder Cup team that dueled the Americans in the so-called War by the Shore at Kiawah Island, South Carolina. When asked why he retired from professional competition, Feherty said he saw a young rookie named Eldrick Woods hit a tee shot in Milwaukee and thought: “I’ve got to find another line of work.”

He took a broadcasting job with CBS, penned a hilarious golf novel called
A Nasty Bit of Rough,
and now writes a column for
Golf Magazine
that is refreshingly blunt and occasionally raunchy.

After pacing the Firestone practice area, Feherty alighted near Ernie Els, who’d pulled a driver out of his bag. “Watch,” Feherty whispered to me.

Els owns the Perry Como of golf swings, smooth and oh-so-easy, but the impact off the composite clubface sounded like a high-caliber rifle shot. The ball vanished on the fly over the back fence of the driving range.

I turned to Feherty and said, “Okay, I’m quitting golf again. This time for good.”

Practicing next to Els was one of the tour’s top young players, Adam Scott, who was rocketing one 3-iron after another downrange. All these guys are staggeringly good, and television doesn’t do justice to their talents. Watching them swing, I was simultaneously awestruck and discouraged. My ball flight in no way resembled theirs, and I didn’t need Stephen Hawking to tell me why.

Woods and Davis Love III teed off at 2 p.m. sharp, with Feherty and me in brisk pursuit. The Firestone South course is famously long and lushly maintained, and the stroll would have been lovely if it weren’t for the gummy, sweltering weather. Feherty sullenly reported that he was in gastric distress; still, he traveled the fairway like it was carpeted with hot coals, and keeping up was a challenge. Behind Tiger and Phil Mickelson, he is arguably the third-biggest celebrity at PGA tournaments. Fans hollered his name constantly, and tugged at him for autographs.

“My constituency—drunken white guys,” Feherty grumbled in mock annoyance. “I’m a magnet for morons.”

Wielding the monitor, which the CBS crew had affectionately dubbed “the Turdhurdler,” I tried to appear useful when in reality my only interest was scoping out Woods. Having never seen him play in person, I didn’t want to miss a trick.

And there were no shortage of those. On one hole he choked down on a 7-iron and cozied it 145 yards, a low draw to an uphill green. On the very next hole he took the same club and knocked it 215 yards, a high fade over the treetops.

“He’s a freak of nature,” Feherty said admiringly. “The hundred-year flood. Maybe even the five-hundred-year flood.”

Woods had finished first in his last three tournaments, including the British Open and PGA Championship, and was earning approximately $2,500 per stroke. At age thirty he’d already won fifty-two times on the tour, including twelve majors, and banked $63 million in prize winnings.

Some fans gripe that Tiger’s dominance has made professional golf boring, but excellence isn’t boring. Nobody ever turned off the television when Hank Aaron was at the plate, or when Dan Marino was dropping back in the pocket. Woods is the rarest of media phenomena, an athlete who lives up to the hype and surpasses it. He’s done for golf what Muhammad Ali did for boxing and Michael Jordan did for basketball—attracted millions of new fans to a sport that desperately needed a spark.

Every player on the tour should drop to his knees and thank God for Tiger. Since he turned pro in 1996—in truth,
because
he turned pro—the amount of PGA prize money has tripled. The golfer who finished dead last on the Sunday scoreboard at Bridgestone would pocket $30,750, a nice paycheck for four days’ work.

As it happened, a dubious blip of history occurred on the front nine: Tiger carded four straight bogeys, something that hadn’t happened to him during a tournament in ten years.

“This is my fault,” I told Feherty after Woods’ second bogey. “All my bad putting mojo—it’s probably wearing off on him. Maybe I’m standing too close.”

“You fucking Norwegians,” Feherty groaned.

But after the fourth bogey, his skepticism evaporated. “Jesus, Hiaasen, I think you’re right!” he exclaimed after Tiger missed another short putt.

“We call it the Nordic pall of gloom,” I said.

Once leading the field by two strokes, Woods was suddenly five down. Feherty was itching to ask him what was wrong, but Tiger’s stare would have made a suicide bomber wet himself.

After Woods birdied the 10th, Feherty sensed an opening. As we hurried along the 11th fairway, the Irishman sidled over to the world’s greatest player and said, “What was goin’ on back there, mate? All of a sudden you turned into a 12-handicapper.”

Woods smiled ruefully. “I
wish
I was a 12-handicapper. I suck.”

Feherty and Woods have a cordial relationship, partly because Feherty makes him laugh. In the heat of a tournament Tiger seldom speaks to anyone except Steve Williams, his caddy, yet he doesn’t seem to mind the occasional profane zinger that Feherty fires his way.

Before the day was done, the other leaders faltered and Woods rallied to stay in the hunt. He made another birdie and finished only one shot behind Stewart Cink.

Rain was predicted for the next day, so the starting times were moved two hours earlier. That meant CBS would pre-tape the final round and broadcast it later, in the usual afternoon time slot. Feherty foresaw chaos, and blamed me for the oncoming monsoon. Nevertheless, he took mercy and decided I wouldn’t be required to lug the Turdhurdler around all day. Instead I was issued a live headset as a prop, and ordered not to utter so much as a syllable into the microphone, under penalty of castration.

Woods, who was playing with Cink and Paul Casey, got off to a sluggish start. The booth announcers, Jim Nance and Lanny Wadkins, speculated that Tiger was getting tired after battling to three consecutive victories.

Listening on his headset, Feherty rolled his eyes. He didn’t believe that Woods was fading. “He’ll find a way to win if you give him a hockey stick and an orange,” he said.

Sure enough, the birdies began to fall, and soon Tiger’s name was on top of the leader board. He was shaping golf shots as gorgeously as Eric Clapton bends the notes on a Stratocaster. On one monster par-5, Woods pushed his drive into some thick rough in the maples, a gnarly lie from which most pros would have humbly chipped back toward the fairway.

Tiger never considered it. He shredded the heavy grass with a supercharged 3-iron, cutting the shot first around the outreaching limbs, then high over a distant stand of oaks and then finally across a pond before dropping it five feet from the flag, where it trickled to the fringe.

Feherty lowered his microphone and shook his head. This was golf as art.

Yet Cink lurked stubbornly, dropping clutch putts as storm clouds gathered to the west. Tiger missed a four-footer for par on the 16th, Cink birdied the 17th and they both finished at minus 10.

A tie meant a sudden-death playoff, and Feherty was roiling. The sky was turning purple, and he was booked on an early-evening nonstop to Dallas. “It’s all your fault,” he hissed at me. “The Norwegian curse.”

The first three holes were a survival contest, Woods and Cink scrambling to match bogeys and pars. As soon as the players teed off on the fourth, the heavens of northern Ohio unloaded.

With rain pelting his face, Tiger calmly pulled out an 8-iron and through the squall fired the ball eight feet from the pin. Cink dumped his shot in a bunker, Woods rolled in his birdie and the soggy marathon was over.

“Finally,” sighed Feherty.

He hopped into a waiting cart and, with me clinging like a gibbon to the rear bumper, the driver sped toward the CBS sound trailer. There Feherty hastily shed his microphone and harness, and bid farewell to the crew members, whom he would not see again until the new broadcast season in January.

Before bolting for the airport, Feherty asked if I needed any more clubs from Cobra.

What I needed, after watching Tiger play, was a bowling league.

Day 385

Halfway through the front nine, I run for cover as the thundering remains of Tropical Storm Ernesto shut down Quail Valley. I’ve made exactly one good shot—a full wedge that stopped five inches from the cup on No. 3. Everything else was Hack City.

I also seem to have misplaced my Mind Drive concentration capsules, a clue that they’re not working as advertised.

Day 386

In the disarray of my office I find the blister pack of Mind Drives, and gulp two caps before driving to the course. Soon I start feeling jumpy and flushed. Sweat is dripping off my visor and landing squarely on the blade of my putter—I might be sick, but at least I’m properly centered over the ball.

Another lightning storm chases me off, but not before I execute some spectacularly wretched golf. The lowlight is losing two balls on No. 5 before smacking a large 4-iron to the green and sinking a twenty-five-footer to “save” double-bogey. On the par-3 eighth, I push two tee shots into the lake before hitting a 6-iron fifteen feet from the flag. Coolly I miss the putt and take a 7.

New theory: Whomping those rats has screwed up my swing.

Day 388

The Cobra 9.0 and I have reconciled, so Big Bertha is being exiled to my locker at the club.

“They have ways of getting out, you know,” Lupica says darkly.

The neon Ping putter seems to be bailing on me, as well. To add to my aggravation, the apparatus has so many peculiar curves and sharp angles that it’s impossible to get it clean with a golf towel. I need to take the blasted thing to a car wash and have it detailed.

Day 390

“This game is fluid. It’s always changing. It’s always evolving. I could always hit the ball better, chip better, putt better, think better. You can get better tomorrow than you are today.”

This is Tiger Woods, speaking to reporters after firing a 63 to win the Deutsche Bank Championship, his fifth tournament victory in a row. He’s played his last twenty rounds at a stupefying 86 under par, yet all he talks about is improving his golf game.

If that doesn’t motivate me, nothing will. Over my last twenty rounds, I’m approximately 438 over.

Day 391

A new personal worst—I accrue five 7s on my way to a drag-ass 96. So much for the miracle Mind Drive pills. My stepson says he wants to try them while he’s doing his homework.

Go nuts, I tell him.

Day 392

Scotty Cameron and I are pals again—no three-putts today! As Lupica would say, this is epic.