Amen Corner (11 page)

Sam played decently, but he was clearly the least skilled member of his group—and he hadn't had time to listen to music that morning. The song that kept intruding into his thoughts was a mildly irritating commercial jingle he'd heard on the locker room TV while he was changing into his golf shoes. He tried humming “Georgia on My Mind” to cleanse his brain, but the jingle wouldn't leave.

Dwight wasn't doing well, either. His limp got worse on the front nine.

“Hamstring tightenin' up,” Dwight said through clenched teeth as they walked up the steep 9th fairway.

“You want to put the bag down?” Sam asked. “I can carry it.”

“No, no, I'll get through this. Don't worry about me.”

Beyond the occasional sight of a private plane flying overhead or the sound of a train passing somewhere in the distance, there was never a hint of anything existing beyond the shrubbery-covered fences—except that, for Harmon Ashby, the outside world might have gotten inside the cloister just long enough to kill him.

There was no sign of Monday's drama on the 12th green. The police tape was gone, the gallery was in its usual place in the grandstand behind the tee and up the hillside along the 11th fairway, and the grass where the message had been written looked almost unscathed. Augusta's makeup magicians had figured out a way to hide the blemishes. Only the faintest discoloration was visible. CBS—at David Porter's insistence—would find a way to filter their camera shots of the fairway so that the repair work would be invisible to the viewing audience.

Sam's team lost $50 each in the best-ball match, but Bellecourt didn't mind. He was like most pros Sam had met: all business on the course, but once the round was over, it was forgotten. Just another day at the office.

“Good luck this week,” Bellecourt said, shaking Sam's hand after the round. “If you don't do anything stupid, you could make the cut.”

“Thanks,” Sam said. “That's what my caddie thinks, too.”

“Listen to him. He's the best thing you got goin' for you.”

Dwight had barely been able to make it up the hill to the 18th green, and there was pain and concern etched into the soft folds of his face after the round. Sam didn't want to risk losing him for the rest of the week.

“Let's skip the practice round tomorrow, Dwight,” he said. “We'll just do the Par 3 Contest in the afternoon.”

The Par 3 Contest had been a Masters tradition since 1960. It was played on the nine-hole par 3 course to the west of the short-game practice range, and behind the cabins. Players often had their wives or children caddie for them on the short course that wrapped around Ike's Pond—named for the former president, who suggested creating it for fishing.

“You want to go another 18 tomorrow, I can make it,” Dwight said, but his sweating, pained face told Sam otherwise. He told Dwight to go home and get some rest, and took his own clubs back to the bag room.

He was looking forward to a hot shower and a beer. The temperature had again reached the 80s by the end of the round, and Sam felt drained. His knee was stiff and sore—for all the golf he'd played in the past year, he hadn't played on a course as hilly as Augusta National. He thought about Al Barber and admired him even more. Somehow the old guy managed to get around this golf course in fewer shots than guys half his age.

Sam was about to enter the locker room when one of the Masters officials in a green jacket tapped him on the shoulder.

“Mr. Skarda? You're wanted in the press building.”

“I am?” Sam said. “Why?”

“They'd like to interview you.”

Sam laughed and said, “Must be a slow news day.”

Chapter Ten

Sam walked with the club official down the hill from the clubhouse to the two-story media building, painted Masters green and hidden from view to the right of the first fairway by a row of tea olive trees.

Sam had worked as a volunteer security guard at the PGA Championship at Hazeltine, and knew that the other major tournaments—held at rotating sites—housed journalists in an air-conditioned tent the size of a football field, complete with carpeted floors laid over miles of computer, telephone, and video wiring.

The Masters, of course, was different. The permanent press building at Augusta National replaced an old Quonset hut in 1990. The new building had all the comforts of a luxury suite at a football stadium, combined with the amenities of a modern newsroom. The main press room looked like a concert hall: eight rows of work stations with enough seating for several hundred journalists and their computers, descending to a main floor dominated by a 20-foot-tall replica of the main Masters scoreboard. A half-dozen large-screen TVs were positioned around the walls, allowing reporters on deadline to keep up with every shot of the tournament. Reporters covered most golf tournaments anchored to their laptop computers in the press tent. At the Masters, they were even less likely to venture onto the course, because they were not allowed inside the ropes. With food, 60-inch TV screens, and air-conditioned comfort inside the press building, why fight with 40,000 spectators for sight lines?

The Masters official led Sam to the door of a separate interview room off to one side of the main press area. Clive Cartwright was just finishing up his interview with several dozen reporters looking for the second-day spin on Ashby's death. A page stood near the rows of folding chairs, ready to pass a wireless microphone from one reporter to the next as they raised their hands to ask a question.

“…so, no, I don't have a position on what Augusta National should do about its membership policies, to be perfectly honest,” Cartwright said in his crisp English accent. “I mean, it's really none of my business, is it? I leave this matter in the good hands of the membership. I may have a green jacket, but I don't have a vote. Incidentally, we have men-only clubs in the U.K., you know. Muirfield, for one. I'd wager some of you have played there? Well, cheerio, ladies and gents.”

Cartwright popped out of his chair, unclipped his collar mic and exited the room, having put the reporters on the defensive and then leaving before they could actually make him say something of substance.

Sam slid into the chair Cartwright had just occupied and pulled a chilled bottle of Mountain Spring Water—with the Masters logo on the label—from a cooler next to the table. He opened the bottle and took a drink while a page attached the mic to his shirt. He was uncomfortable staring at the faces before him—mostly middle-aged men representing the largest newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and networks in the country and around the world. As a cop he'd been interviewed many times by local newspaper and TV reporters, but there had rarely been more than two or three reporters present, and they were usually in a hurry to get back to their newsrooms. This was going to be different.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sam Skarda,” said a man in a green jacket who was in charge of the interview room. “Sam is the reigning U.S. Public Links champion. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. How old are you, Sam?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“You're one of the older players to win the Publinx recently, aren't you?”

“Yeah, I think the college kids all felt sorry for me,” Sam said. “I was giving up 40 yards off the tee to some of them. I'll feel right at home here this week.”

A few of the reporters laughed, but none jumped in with a question.

“Are you married? Have any kids?” the moderator asked.

“No,” Sam said.

“Who's got a question?” the moderator asked the room.

Sam stared straight ahead, noticing the TV camera that was taping his interview. After a few awkward moments of silence, a thin man with a round pot belly and a New York accent asked the page for the microphone.

“Sam, now that you played a couple of practice rounds, what are your impressions of Augusta National?” the reporter asked, pressing down the record button on his tape recorder.

“Well, I made a few impressions on the pine trees to the right of the 5th hole this morning,” he said, drawing a few laughs. “It's a spectacular place.”

“Did you play college golf?” one of the reporters asked.

“Yes—Dartmouth College. I usually played third or fourth spot. But you know Ivy League golf—it's like Ivy squash, without all the glamour.”

“Weren't you and Shane Rockingham teammates there?”

“Yes. Amazingly enough, we never made it to the NCAA tournament. I blame myself.”

“According to the press guide, you haven't won any other significant amateur tournaments,” a reporter said.

“They have managed to elude me,” Sam said. “That's because I haven't played in any of them.”

“Why not?”

“Too busy making a living.”

“You seem pretty straight-arrow,” Russ Daly said. “You got a wild side? Tattoos? A motorcycle? Prescription drug addiction?”

“Nope. I guess I'm a by-the-book kind of guy. That's why I like golf. Rules matter to me.”

“The press guide says you're a musician,” another reporter said.

“My one vice,” Sam said. “Aside from a stiff drink now and then.”

“What do you play?”

“Guitar and piano—badly. I'm in a band with some other cops.”

“What do you call yourselves?”

“Night Beat. We don't play very often—a bar or a party now and then. I haven't had much time since I started practicing for the Masters.”

“How was your game today?”

“If you ask my caddie, he'd say I got my bad shots out of the way. He's a positive thinker.”

“Sam,” said Deborah Scanlon, “what's your opinion on the membership controversy at Augusta National? Should the club invite women to join?”

Sam paused for a moment. Even Tiger Woods didn't criticize Augusta National's membership policies, and no one was in a stronger position to express his opinion than Tiger. Ducking the question would be the safe and smart thing to do—but then again, they couldn't very well dis-invite him now, and chances were he'd never be back here again. Sam might have been the only man in the field who had nothing to lose by speaking his mind.

“I believe in the right of private clubs to make their own rules, whether the rest of us like it or not. Like Clive Cartwright said as I was walking in, it's not my place to tell them what they should do. But personally, I'd rather belong to a club that had women members.”

“So you don't think there should be all-male golf clubs?”

“No, I didn't say that,” Sam said. “If 300 men want to belong to an all-male club, that's up to them. They should have that right. So should women.”

“Why do you suppose they don't want women here?”

“I have no idea,” Sam said. “You'd have to ask them.”

“Do you think they ever will admit women?” Scanlon asked.

“Someday, sure. I think it's inevitable. Dartmouth had been all-male for 200 years. They finally got around to admitting women before I got there.”

“Any thoughts on who ought to be the first woman member now?” Scanlon asked.

“My mother,” Sam said. “She might invite me to play here once in a while.”

The room broke up—except for Scanlon, who maintained a look of intense resolve. This story was obviously far more important to her than any golf tournament.

Daly raised his hand, and the page carrying the transistor microphone walked back and handed it to him as several reporters were still laughing.

“We know from your bio that you were a cop,” Daly said. “Are you still a cop, or what?”

“I'm on a leave of absence,” Sam said.

“Why?” Daly said.

“I got shot in the knee.”

“How'd it happen?” Daly persisted.

“My partner and I were investigating a shooting in a night club,” Sam said, taking another sip on the water bottle. “We had interviewed a suspect whose story didn't sound right, so we decided to take him downtown. On the way out the door he said he had to go to the bathroom. My partner went in with him to keep an eye on him. A minute later I hear them struggling in there, so I go through the door just as a shot is fired. The guy had stuffed a gun down the back of his pants, and was trying to get it out to shoot my partner. He shot himself in the ass instead, but the bullet went through him and hit me in the knee.”

Some of the reporters laughed. Others winced.

Sam told them that the bullet had broken his left kneecap, severed a ligament, and taken out some cartilage. The damage was too serious to scope; it took two operations to put the pieces back together.

“I haven't got much cartilage in the left knee now, and I hurt the right one a long time ago playing football,” he said.

“You seem to be getting up and down these hills okay,” Daly said.

“I took a medical leave to rehab my knee,” Sam said. “The doctors said walking would be good for it. I started with three holes a day.”