Walking with Jack (35 page)

I fell asleep last night thinking of an old, dear friend whose father loved and played golf into his nineties at the Rochester Country Club. If he had been caddying for Jack yesterday, I think I know what he would have said to him as they walked to the 3rd tee: “Son, you just made two outstanding pars on the 1st and 2nd holes and you are near the top of the leaderboard with sixteen holes to play, and you may think you have your ‘A’ game today and that you can fire at every pin, but I saw your first two drives on those holes, and I am here to tell you in no uncertain terms that you
do not
have your ‘A’ game today. So from here on out, you are going to have to dial it back if you want to shoot a respectable score and win some cash money.”

We are going to have to regroup these next two weeks and then get back here and fight on. I have no idea how it will all turn out in
the end. That is just more uncertainty. But tonight before we turned out the lights, I said this to my son: “Whatever happens from here on out for the rest of the tour, you had the courage to try to do something most people, most very good golfers, would never try because they couldn’t face the disappointment and the failure that you have endured here. I will always respect you for that. You never made excuses. You never gave up. You played every shot as hard as you could even when you were defeated and humiliated. Even if this is all you win here in Texas, I hope you will take that with you for the rest of your life and be proud of yourself and grateful that you had the chance.”

We’ll be home for Christmas, as the old song says.

I have cooked up a secret plan for Jack. Barry O’Neill, the lad from Ireland, has agreed to work with Jack through our final six events on the tour, playing practice rounds with him every free day he has. Jack has never had the opportunity to have a coach before.

In Maine we got to sneak onto the Prouts Neck golf course again and hit a few balls for Teddy to chase. It was one of those perfect winter afternoons with the lowering sun throwing blazing bands of red and pink light across the fairways and through the tall dark fir trees. It was far too warm for December in Maine, and when Jack checked the temperature in Houston on his iPhone, he told me it was ten
degrees colder there. We talked for a while about going back. He said he felt good about it. “We’ve got half the tour still left to play,” he said. “I feel like I’m just getting started.”

“Well,” I said, “we learned some things in the first half. We played a few lousy rounds, a few solid rounds, and for a while you were at the top of the leaderboard. So I guess we hit all the highs and lows.”

“I guess so,” he said. Then he looked out across the harbor for a moment before he told me that during the round when he was four under par through nine holes, he was thinking that maybe he might go further than the Adams Tour. “It felt so good to finally be playing to my potential,” he said. “I thought about trying to find a sponsor to cover my expenses so I could enter Monday qualifiers for the Nationwide Tour, you know?”

“It’s something to think about,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll see.”

Then I told him that when we returned to Houston, I was going to be stepping into the background.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Barry O’Neill, the Irish lad, has offered to play practice rounds with you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He’s happy to help out.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I can learn a lot from him.”

Much of the time back home in Maine, after hearing from Barry, I thought about shadows. Until I worked as a caddie, I never thought about my shadow before. But a caddie must always be conscious of where his shadow falls. You don’t want it to lie across the line of the golfer’s putt. Or pass over his stance, or distract him in any way. In Scotland, where it stays light until ten thirty at night in the summer months, it takes a while to get used to having to think about your shadow at so late an hour. Sometimes, I suppose, metaphors match the physical world. As Jack’s father, I wonder if maybe I must fall
back a little ways now for the rest of the tour. We know that a son has to be released from his father’s shadow. I wonder if it is the son who must step free or if it is the father who must move aside. Or if it is a little of both.

Back in Houston now, as Jack took a place on the practice range at Panther Trail beside more than twenty players on the tour, I was thinking about the pink light in the winter sky above the Prouts Neck golf course when we were there together over Christmas, and the hope in Jack’s voice when he spoke about the possibility of this tour leading to another tour if he could find a measure of consistency in the next six events. I had said nothing about what I was thinking then. I would never talk with my son, or with anyone else, about how I wished that this winter together would turn into a spring and summer together on another tour. But I would give anything to help Jack achieve that measure of consistency in the weeks ahead of us this winter so that maybe, just maybe, we can go on further. All the players on the range with him want the same thing that Jack wants. To achieve that elusive measure of consistency that will carry them on. I know this. Just as I also know that golf is a leaking ship of dreams. And you board at your own peril.

Jack and I talked about this last night for a while in a conversation that began with the physical layout of the golf course but soon veered off to the metaphysical. It turns out that nothing in my son’s life has made him question his nonbelief in God the way Tim Tebow has. Jack has believed in him from the time he won two national championships in college, and when the Denver Broncos fired the coach who had drafted him and then benched him early this season, Jack began telling me that someday all the Tebow doubters in the world would be proven wrong. “I think I’ve figured out what it is with you,” I said to Jack. “You don’t believe in God, but you want to believe. And right now Tebow is making you doubt your own doubts. It was
the same for me when you and your sisters were born. I mean when I held each of you for the first time.”

“That’s interesting” was all he had to say.

“Well,” I went on, “as far as God and golf are concerned, I can’t be the first caddie in St. Andrews to have discovered this little insight. Make a vertical list, by name, of the six golf courses in town”:

Balgove.

Jubilee.

Old.

New.

Eden.

Strathtyrum.

“Now, take the first letter of each name, line them up horizontally, and you get”:

B JONES

“And given that most of these courses were named long before Bobby Jones came into the world, I used to tell my golfers that this was proof not necessarily that there was a god but most definitely that there was a golf god.”

“I guess we believe what we need to believe,” Jack said.

We left it at that. And then he told me that he’d received a text from Barry. “He’s not going to play in this tournament. After the long break he needs more time to practice. But he says that he’ll catch up with us for the next one.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I wonder how he’d play number 18 if he needed to make a par.” The 18th hole featured another island green, but this one was so small that anything more than a high-lofted wedge or nine-iron would never hold. And because the hole was a
sharp dogleg left from the tee, you needed a perfect drive to set up the shot into the green.

“You have to go for it in two,” Jack said.

“I’m not sure about that,” I argued. “If you don’t nail the drive, you can lay up on the second shot, fly a wedge to the pin, and make a one-putt par.”

He sighed. He wasn’t buying it.

Four in the morning. We start the second half of the tour today with an early tee time. Eight twenty. Which means I will be waking Jack at 6:15 so we can begin our drive to the course at 7:00, up Route 45 in the dark. I am more than a little concerned about what lies ahead today after playing a ragged practice round yesterday. Jack hit every fairway and had only one three-putt green, but the best he could manage was seven over par. We teamed up with two other players from the tour. One of them, Gabe from Iowa, had won his state title as a freshman at age fifteen. He was thirty-five now and still trying to chase down his boyhood dream, though after all the years he had enough perspective on life and the game to play with a mirthless smile on his face. I had wanted a disciplined and rigorous practice round, but it turned out to be a lighthearted affair. Maybe that is what the boys needed after the long break. We’ll see. It is now thirty-three degrees and the wind is high. It will be long underwear and a wool cap for me. I’ve been scrolling all the greens through my mind since I opened my eyes this morning after misreading four putts yesterday. There was a lot of rain while we were away, which made the Bermuda rough very sticky. Jack left three wedges short yesterday. I
was hoping we’d have time to hit a hundred more on the practice range, but it was dark by the time we finished our round. Today we are going to have to land the greens in regulation in order to have a decent chance. I don’t want to try for anything more than fairways and greens. Keep it simple. Fairways and greens. If we make pars, we’ll make the damned cut.

Hole 1. A 365-yard par-4.

“Here we go, Jack,” I say. “Freezing cold. Gale winds. If it was raining sideways, it would be just like Scotland. Play well, man.” With twenty knots of wind in our faces on the 1st tee, a dogleg left with water down the left side and out of bounds right, we can hit a three-wood today instead of the four-iron we hit yesterday, when the wind was squarely behind us. What we need to do is survive the first few holes. Just get it in play, Jackie boy, I am thinking to myself. And he does. But his second shot from 168 yards bleeds right in the wind, and he has to sink a six-foot putt to save a bogey.

One over after one.

Very quickly it becomes “House of Horrors golf.” The guys in front of us are in the woods, in the water, climbing over hills into the hell of out of bounds. Our playing partners are not faring any better, but somehow Jack is keeping the ball low, under the wind, and in the fairways. After he sinks three six-foot putts to save bogeys on the first three holes, I tell him, “Not as poor a start as we had at Houston National, buddy. Keep fighting.” And he hits the fairway again on the 600-yard par-5, then plays solid the rest of the way on this hole to make his first par of the day.

“It’s like Carnoustie,” I say as we climb to the 5th tee. The wind is still in our faces, but Jack nails a six-iron to six feet on this 197-yard par-3.
His first golf shot of the day. He’s looking at his first birdie putt. “Just lay it on the left edge,” I say. He agrees. Bang! Center of the cup. We get one stroke back.

Two over after five holes.

Hole 6. A 435-yard par-4.

We have to keep it up the left side here off the tee. Water all the way down the right. Great drive, but the ball kicks right, and now we have a second shot of 165 yards, over water all the way to the green. It’s a lovely seven-iron, but the ball spins off the green, and it takes us three strokes to finish. Another bogey.

Three over after six holes.

Hole 7. A 228-yard par-3.

“Put a good swing on this one, Jackie,” I say. He does. Fifteen-footer for birdie. He hits it way too far, and now we have a seven-foot comeback, downhill, to save par. He looks confident. It’s a good roll. And it’s dead center.

Three over after seven holes.

I tell him, “Three over will be in the money in weather like this.”

“I hear you, man,” he says.

Hole 8. A 322-yard par-4.

Yesterday this was a green we drove. But in all the wind today, we’ve still got 130 yards left to the hole after a nice three-wood from the tee. He has to hit a touch shot here, and his hands are blocks of ice. I’m worried. Very nervous. He nails it! Six feet left for birdie. The putt breaks left instead of right. We both saw it breaking right. He’s fuming mad now. “I can’t miss those putts,” he says. “I
have to make those putts.” Be grateful, I am thinking; it’s a par, be grateful.

Three over after eight holes.

Hole 9. A 571-yard par-5.

“It’s like Carnoustie here because the wind is never behind us, Jackie,” I tell him as I hand him his driver. He hits a righteous drive, 311 yards into twenty-five knots of wind, but it kicks left into the trees. Oh no. Oh no, I am thinking all the way to the ball. Just give us a damned shot, please. And we have one. Jack very smartly does not try to reach the green, which is guarded by a pond in front and right. He punches out a low six-iron. Then hits a masterful wedge from there to four feet, and we have our second birdie. “A working-class birdie,” I tell him. “I prefer those, coming from where we do in this world.” He smiles.

Two over after nine holes.

It’s getting colder, and the wind is picking up. Jack records three bogeys and a par through thirteen, and we’re sitting at five over. And I am thinking, If we hold on, we are going to make the cut and be playing tomorrow. That is all I’m asking for.

Hole 14. A 529-yard par-5.

Straight into the wind, this has to be a three-shot hole to the green today. Jack stripes his drive right up the right side. There is a big holdup. All three players ahead of us are in the swamp and the trees. I walk up ahead, leaving Jack with 211 yards left to the hole on a narrow green with water left and right. I know this next shot will make or break our round. The last thing I say to Jack is “We’re going to be waiting fifteen minutes here. Take plenty of good hard practice swings.”

I’m up waiting just right of the green when Jack plays his second shot. I know it will spray right, I know it. And it does. It then rolls onto horrible ground. Roots and dead branches. Jack says nothing. He studies his lie, then asks for his sixty-degree wedge. He keeps his head down, and the ball flies true, lands softly, and stops four feet from the hole. Another birdie. Another working-class birdie.

Four over par after fourteen.