The Downhill Lie (6 page)

The Loneliest Number

S
oon after my relapse, friends began lecturing me on the importance of establishing a handicap. This is a number calculated to rate a golfer’s level of performance, under parameters set by the United States Golf Association. The higher one’s handicap is, the more strokes that he or she is awarded toward par during a round.

The purpose is to enable mediocre players to compete evenly against much better players, a charitable tilting of the field that doesn’t occur in most other sports. It’s like giving a lousy bowler three extra frames to catch up.

A golfer with an astronomical handicap can shoot 95 and still take money off a low handicapper who shoots 80, which has always struck me as a somewhat hollow victory and not much to brag about. The pros typically play to positive handicaps (Tiger Woods’ hovers around +8), meaning that in a friendly match they actually must
forfeit
strokes to par. It seems absurd.

I can understand the attraction of a mathematical formula that permits a duffer on his greatest day to “beat” a pro on his worst, but it dances around the rather glaring truth that the two of them don’t belong on the same golf course together, much less in the same foursome.

The main reason I’d resisted handicapping my scores was that the system brands hackers such as myself with the numerical equivalent of a scarlet letter. This, I feared, would corrode my new, fragile truce with the game. I knew very well what a crummy player I was; double-digit documentation wasn’t necessary.

Among sports, golf is uniquely driven by a quest for numbers that are low, not high. Many golfers don’t always keep score, and on those days they’re undoubtedly the happiest. Writing in
The Wall Street Journal,
Jeff Silverman argued eloquently for tossing out the scorecards and pencils, and he lamented the symptoms of “lead poisoning” that afflict so many of us:

“We become so hostage to the accumulation of the 2s and 3s and 4s and 5s we covet, en route to the 70s, 80s or 90s we aim for to validate our golfing selves, that the point of the pencil begins to leach into our swings. Our arms grow heavy. Our grips tighten. Our teeth clench. Our spirits sag…and our numbers spike like a fever.”

Silverman described the liberating joys of numberless golf—the time freed for quiet reflection, bonding with nature and experimenting whimsically with new shots. It’s an idyllic scenario, but back at the clubhouse somebody is bound to nail you with the most ancient question in golf: How’d you shoot?

And they’ll expect you to cough up a number, not a sonnet.

When I was a teenager, my friends and I kept score although we never bothered to calculate our handicaps. There was no reason; being perpetually broke, we never bet when we played.

The grown-up world is different, I was warned. It’s not cool to be guessing at one’s handicap when cold cash is involved.

As it happened, I’d been saving my scorecards in order to track my progress, or lack thereof. Many of the outings were nine holes, because that’s all I usually had time to play after work.

One June morning, after stern rebukes from Leibo, Lupica and others, I sat down at the computer and painstakingly began entering my scores online. When all the numbers were tabulated, I was stunned: My home course handicap was 17, and my USGA index was 14.2.

It seemed impossible, since I seldom shot better than 92, twenty strokes over par, and occasionally I ballooned above 100. When I complained to my friends that the computer had screwed up, they explained that the ranking system weighs a golfer’s best scores disproportionately while discarding the worst.

“It’s easy to bring your handicap down,” Lupica said, “but it’s much harder to make it go up. Don’t ask me why.”

According to the USGA, the handicap system “is based upon the potential ability of a player rather than an average of all his scores…. [The] average player is expected to play his Course Handicap or better only about 25 percent of the time, average three strokes higher than his handicap, and have his best score in 20 be only two strokes better than his handicap.”

That was a surprise. Naively, I’d assumed that my handicap index would be the disparity in strokes between my average round and a score of even par. In fact, the method for determining individual handicaps is so convoluted that your head will split open like a bad melon if you try to decode it.

Of your twenty most recent golf scores, your ten lowest receive a “handicap differential,” which is your “adjusted gross score” minus the USGA Course Rating (usually a couple strokes either side of 72), multiplied by 113 and then divided by the Slope Rating (somewhere between 55 and 155). The differentials are then averaged, and the sum is multiplied by .96 and rounded to the nearest tenth.

Wouldn’t you love to know the handicap of the pinhead who cooked up that equation?

Another reason for my incongruously low handicap was the relative difficulty of the golf course, as indicated by the assigned Slope Rating. The USGA considers a slope of 113 to be of “standard” hardship. The course I play, Quail Valley, is rated 133 from the blue tees, meaning that a score of, say, 90 is weighted for handicapping purposes the same as a lower score on a less demanding layout.

If all that wasn’t sufficiently confusing, it turned out that my handicap index was artificially suppressed because so many of my early scorecards covered only nine holes. As any bumblefuck knows, it’s easier to play like a star for nine than it is to sustain a streak of competence for the full eighteen.

As is true in sportfishing, golf for some men is basically a dick-measuring contest. Lying inevitably occurs, some of it clever and some of it clumsy. Among true devotees of the sport, honor is prized because there are no referees or judges on the course; each player is relied upon to be truthful. Consequently, it’s easy for a common shitweasel to nudge his ball out of the rough, cheat on his scorecard and churn those bogus pars into a lower, more impressive handicap.

That’s the nature of many, though not all, clubhouse lies. A more cunning tack of deceit, I learned, is to present oneself as a worse golfer than one actually is. This is achieved by withholding your lowest scorecards, thereby falsely inflating your handicap. The hotly scorned practice, known as sandbagging, results in extra strokes being awarded to the dishonest player, enhancing his chances of winning and/or collecting on a tasty wager.

“Enter all your scores,” Mike Leibick told me. “Good and bad.”

And that’s what I’ve done, with no small measure of pain and humility.

Day 209

It’s taken seven months, but I finally break 90.

The scorecard is bizarre: three birdies, five pars, two bogeys, six doubles and two triples. I’m quite certain that I’ll never again make three birdies in a round as long as I live.

Bill Becker’s observation: “You hit the ball in places where you’re in no danger of being in somebody else’s divot.”

Day 215

My first, and probably last, eagle!

Naturally, there are no witnesses. That’s because I’m playing alone, as I often do, being pathologically terrified of embarrassing myself in front of other players.

The wonder shot takes place on the seventh hole, a par-5, where my drive slices to an adjacent fairway. I recover with a solidly struck 6-iron, though it lands in a yawning trap, 145 yards from the middle of the green.

I can’t even see the flagstick over the manicured lip of the crater. Needing serious loft, I take a 9-iron and set up the way Bill Becker had once coached me, with the ball well back in my stance. Amazingly, I pick the shot so clean that hardly a grain of sand is disturbed.

Hurrying down the fairway, I scout in vain for a gleaming white speck on or near the green. I’m left to assume that the ball bounced over the putting surface and into the lake, which really pisses me off.

I search the shoreline, swearing viciously. The couple on the next tee are giving me an odd look, and I wonder if my long bunker shot nearly beaned them. However, they seem more amused than angry.

As I’m preparing to take a drop, a ludicrous thought crosses my mind. Just for the hell of it, I walk up to the pin and peek inside the cup….

And there’s my Titleist.

I know it’s mine because of the Grey Goose logo—Leibo had sent me a box of freebies from Bacardi. I pluck the ball from the hole and euphorically scratch a “3” on the scorecard.

Thanks to the eagle, I end up shooting my best nine ever—a 41, and that includes a tragicomic 9 on the third hole.

My fifty-third birthday was a couple of days ago, so this is a nice present. I allow myself to imagine that I’m actually getting better at golf.

Day 238

Paul Bogaards, a good friend and big shot at my publishing company, arrives for a promised round at Quail Valley. The wind is blowing mercilessly from due east, and I’m swinging like a woodchopper.

On the fifth tee I do my famous Babe Ruth impersonation, pointing down the edge of the fairway to the precise location where my drive will veer over the watery ditch, out of bounds.

I take a big swing, and there she goes. Paul is impressed.

He cards an 89, while I gimp home with a 97.

Day 246/Los Angeles

Dinner with my friend Wil Shriner, the television and movie director. He introduces me to big Dan Boever, a professional stunt golfer and long-drive contestant. One of Dan’s tricks is driving a ball through a piece of plywood. Another is hitting it three hundred yards with a putter.

He would be a fun partner for the next tournament at my club, although I’m not sure the other members would approve.

Day 256

Scorching hot and nearly dead calm. My card is 43-45 for an 88, after tripling the last two holes (including an ignominious four-putt on No. 18). Another clutch finish for The Kid. Whatever the reason—tiredness, tension or just nerves—I always seem to melt down on the home stretch whenever I’m playing well. It’s uncanny.

Overall, though, it’s been a good day, including as it did a surreal string of five consecutive pars. Once again I find myself encouraged, though a dark inner voice warns that I’m fooling myself.

Day 262

Sure enough: A swift descent into the bowels of hell. I lose seven balls in nine holes, which is the only score I keep.

With a northeast wind howling like Satan’s own hound, every aspect of my game disintegrates. By the end of the afternoon, I’m too drained to kick the golf cart, much less bash it with my driver.

The Mystic Link

O
ne day, after a particularly disheartening round, I turned on the Golf Channel and became transfixed by an infomercial touting a product called the Q-Link, a basic-looking pendant that was said to hold marvelous powers. According to the manufacturer, the device contained a special “resonating cell” that would “eliminate stress and improve focus” on the golf course.

The idea sounded so loony that I found it irresistible. The Q-Link Web site promised that the pendant would fortify my “biofield” and improve mental acuity. It was also a trendy fashion accessory: “Sleek and chic, with a dual-tone design, this beveled-edge triangle has two distinct sides, each making a unique statement. It can be worn by both men and women as a signature piece, dressed up or down. Designed by internationally acclaimed designer Neville Brody…the result is leading-edge attitude and supercharged power.”

Brody is a hip young British typographer and graphics innovator, but nothing in his biography suggests that he knows squat about the stressfulness of golf. Nevertheless, I took the bait.

No sooner had I dialed the 800 number than the fellow on the other end clued me in on a hot deal—the solid gold Q-Link just happened to be on sale for $899!

“No thanks,” I told him.

“The titanium model is available for $269,” he said. “Today only.”

“I don’t think so.” I ordered the Q-Link in basic black ceramic for $129, and contemplated what I would tell my friends if my golfing skills mysteriously improved.

Leery though I was, opening the package was still a letdown. “Golf’s secret weapon” appeared to be a simple copper coil encased in plastic and attached to a very ordinary leather string. It looked like a bovine intrauterine device.

I looped the dorky thing around my neck, discreetly concealing it under my shirt, and headed for the practice range. Nothing mystical occurred except that I began hooking my metal-woods in a screaming, knee-high arc that defied Newtonian law.

Later, standing at the first tee box, I adjusted the lanyard to make sure that the coil was centered above my sternum, as the instructions recommended.

Then I took out my driver, addressed the ball……and promptly hammered it far into the nastiest patch of the heaviest rough. I double-bogeyed the hole, feeling as stressed out and unfocused as ever. I staggered through the front nine awaiting the promised embrace of serenity, but my Q-Link failed to resonate even faintly. I caught myself wondering if I should have sprung for the titanium upgrade.

I finished with a bruising 97 that included six three-putts and only two pars, a sorry-ass performance even by my sorry-ass standards. It was tempting to blame the $129 cow IUD around my neck, but I wanted to be fair. Perhaps I had deployed it improperly.

Upon returning home I carefully reviewed the instructional video that had come with the pendant. The presentation was made by a man named Robert Williams, identified as the Q-Link’s inventor. Looking more like a Napa vintner than a scratch golfer, he explained that we each have unique life forces that are disturbed by electromagnetic frequencies from coffeemakers, microwaves, computers, televisions—presumably even the televisions upon which Williams’s commercials are aired. He said that the Q-Link “harmonizes” these human biofields using a patented method called Sympathetic Resource Technology.

Inside the plastic triangle was more than just a coil of common copper; there was also a miniature tuning board and the aforementioned resonating cell. Williams asserted that more than twenty-five “scientific” studies had shown that the Q-Link had a salutary effect on stress, fatigue and even human blood. (According to a disclaimer, the device would not cure diseases or even minor medical problems, but I didn’t care. If it could heal my putting woes, I’d deal with the arthritis.)

Among other useful facts provided by the company video:

• Unlike hypodermic syringes, your Q-Link can be shared with someone else and there are “no harmful effects.”

• The Q-Link never wears out and is perfectly safe to wear twenty-four hours a day, even in the shower.

• Although most golfers keep their Q-Links around their necks, it may also be carried in the right-side pants pocket. However, studies showed that pocket placement is only 75 percent as effective, because the resonating cell is farther from your heart. (For the record, there’s no claim of any sexual benefits while your Q-Link is in trouser mode.)

• Unlike Tinker Bell, the Q-Link “requires no belief for it to work.” This was a bonus for nonbelievers such as me, who would be inclined to think that the product was a complete rip-off.

Risking another dose of electromagnetic poisoning, I revisited the official Q-Link Web site and learned that twenty-eight touring pros had used the pendant during PGA competition, including Fred Funk and Mark Calcavecchia. How well these guys performed while sporting their Q-Links was not thoroughly chronicled.

A fellow named Ted Purdy won the 2005 Byron Nelson Classic while supposedly draped with a Q-Link, and several top money-winners on the Champions Tour (formerly the Seniors Tour) were listed as satisfied customers. In fact, the entire European Ryder Cup roster of 2002 was said to have been necklaced en masse on the road to victory. I assumed they got a bulk discount.

The next time I tried the Q-Link, I wore it facedown to position the cosmic coil closer to my heart. According to the instructions, this method was entirely acceptable and, in fact, favored by many golfers.

It helped not even slightly. I still had five three-putts on the way to a 91, featuring a stellar 50 on the back side.

For two weeks I waited in vain for my stress levels to subside, and for my focus to sharpen. Although I didn’t shower in my Neville Brody creation, or loan it to friends, I did wear it faithfully on the golf course, despite mild chafing. Its effect on my game ranged from indiscernible to adverse.

One afternoon, after making a hash of the 16th hole, I whipped off the pendant and vowed to get my money back. That evening, the following exchange took place between me and the woman who answered the phone at Q-Link HQ.

Q. Why are you returning it?

A. Because it doesn’t work.

I mentioned my deplorable putting, but she seemed unmoved. Your refund, she said, will be forthcoming.

No sooner had I transferred custody of the Q-Link to the United States Postal Service than I experienced an almost transcendental unburdening, as if a toxic mojo had been purged from my biofield.

Wishful thinking, as it turned out. My inner golfing frequencies remained hopelessly jangled with static.

Day 283

After hitting three consecutive 7-irons into the lake from the eighth tee, I suavely pick up and move on.

Day 289

I’m considering switching from the overlapping grip favored by Ben Hogan to the interlocking grip preferred by Nicklaus and Woods. I experiment by alternating on each hole.

Day 290

My first golf foursome in thirty-three years. That sonofabitch Leibo talked me into it. It’s me, him, Al Simmens and a genial, mild-mannered fellow named Bill Anderson.

Apparently, betting is involved. I assign myself a Quail Valley handicap of 20, which sounds about right. Leibo and I are paired together and that’s fine; he’ll keep me laughing. When I tell him that I’ve been going back and forth between overlapping and interlocking grips, he suggests switching in the middle of my backswing.

Before teeing off, I dip into my small stash of pre-flight Xanax. It might as well have been a Tic-Tac, for all the good it does. I shoot a ghastly 103; Leibo shoots 80. Somehow we still win the Nassau, with a couple of side bets, and end up splitting $26.

“How is that possible?” I ask.

“Just shut up and take the money,” he says.

Day 295

I’ve officially switched to an interlocking grip, with no detectable improvement in either my driving or my long irons. However, my hands don’t ache as much at the end of the day.

At Sandridge I shoot 50 on the front nine after being tailed for two holes by the ranger, who finally busts me for driving off the cart path on a par-3, which apparently is a Code Red violation.

All this I blame on residual bad karma from the Q-Link, still en route to the refund bin.

Day 297

I phone Lupica to vent about my terrible putting. He advises me to try a different putter.

“I can’t do that,” I say. “Fenia gave me this one as a present.”

“You can always keep another putter on the side,” he says, lowering his voice. “She wouldn’t have to know about it.”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Keep it in your locker out at the clubhouse. She’ll never find out,” he says.

Just thinking about other putters makes me feel guilty. The Scotty Cameron is flawless and true, and I feel bound by loyalty. Yet there’s no denying that a certain restless tension has crept into our relationship.