John D. MacDonald
Loser Take All
At the end of the second day of the Crest Club Open, he stretched out on the bed in the small room they had assigned to him, the ache of fatigue bitter within him.
He was a smallish man, spare and leathery, his face impassive with the habit of the long years of tournament play, the crow’s-foot wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes so deep as to look as if cut by a knife.
The crumpled newspapers lay beside the bed. The sportswriters, he thought, would have ignored him, had not Al Werton of the Globe, written that item at the end of the first day.
Among the names on the roster is that of Jock Drew. Remember him? When I saw that name, I thought it must be the son of that man who, years ago, won steadily, back in the days when the purses were small.
But no! It was Old Jock himself. He teed up for the first hole, playing against a laughing blond giant from Toledo named Wallen. Wallen outdrove Old Jock by fifty yards. But there is still magic in the touch of Jock’s irons. Wallen was all through laughing by the sixth hole, where he was two down.
I asked around and found that when Jock retired from tournament play eleven years ago, he became pro at a little Vermont golf club. Four years ago Jock became assistant pro when the club hired Hiran LaMont. The word is that Jock has been little better than a greens keeper these last few years.
Folks, he’s an echo out of the past. Thirty-one years ago, Jock played in his first tournament. I, for one, am pulling for him to grab a slice of the prize money here at the Crest Club.
Jock thought of those early tournaments. In those days that wiry body never felt the heavy drag of exhaustion. Molly had traveled with him, after the first two years. Some seasons had been bad, but they had laughed together and lived cheaply.
After Al Werton had given them the lead, the others writers had picked it up, and gotten themselves into a bitter argument, some contending that modern golf was more expert than that played in the days gone by. As evidence they pointed to Jock’s last two years of tournament golf, when he had totaled eleven hundred dollars for the two years combined.
Others said that golf was a matter of hands and heart, and thus was a young man’s game.
Jock looked up at the ceiling and felt the thud of his heart. It was as though a small hammer was tapping steadily and too fast on the inside of his chest. A tired heart trying to restore exhausted muscles with oxygen.
He smiled, his lips a thin hard line. At least none of them had checked back and found out about Molly. That would have given them a field day. A hearts and flowers motif. The poor old man trying to win the money to buy the needed operations. What did the youngsters call that kind of a plot? Corny. That was it. Pure corn. And yet life, with impassive cruelty, could thrust a corny situation upon you. Foreclosure of the mortgage — only this was a mortgage on life. Molly’s life. Molly of the eyes which had never ceased laughing.
He remembered her face pale against the pillow when he had left. Her hand, weak on his. “Jock, you’re a stubborn old man. You know that, don’t you?”
He had grinned. “Maybe I can show the children something.”
“Ah, Jock, while you’re stitching out pars, they’ll be dropping birdies and eagles all around you.”
“A man can try,” he said.
When he had bent to kiss her cheek, she had put her arms around his neck, held him close for a moment. “Remember what I used to tell you in the old days, darling?” she had whispered. “Good luck, and a long roll, and magic on the greens.”
Though they had not mentioned it, he read the fear in her eyes. The fear that he would lose, and then, having lost, appeal to charity. She knew that for him, a prideful man, to take a gift of money would be like another form of death.
And so he was glad that the newspapers had not found out about Molly. Nor did they know that he, Jock Drew, one-time winner of the National Open, had spent many hours of this golf season driving the motorized mower across the sleek fairways, the sun hot on his wrinkled neck, the stench of the blue exhaust in his nostrils.
Time enough to let them find out when he lost. If he lost. Then he would endure the small death of charity because there would be no other out.
It had seemed certain enough in Vermont, when his heart had said, “Go out and win. This time you must.”
The reality was that golf had changed. A man could not win by playing the game the way he had learned it. They did not make carefully placed drives out to the bend of the dogleg, and then pitch onto the green for a careful par, as in the old days. They did not pitch short of the creek, then drop the third close to the hole for a second careful par. Not any more.
Nowadays they boomed high over the trees with a tremendous, controlled slice, and with great luck they were close enough to sink the approach for an eagle two. With less luck, you could collect a birdie. But with no luck, you were deep in the woods and out of the tournament. And you did not pitch short of the creek. You played it hole high with all the strength of wrist and shoulders.
A new kind of golf. A young man’s game. It made Jock think of driving down a city street at fifty miles an hour, foolhardy and young and daring.
The answer was obvious. To play his own game meant that he would play out of the money. Thus the caution of age must be forgotten. He was playing their game. And, stretched out on the bed, he felt the effects of it. It was an incredible strain to push his drives to the limit of tolerance, cocking his backswing deeper than ever before, playing for the pin when experience said to play safe.
Time to eat. He stood up, and swayed weariness. The others would be down in the dining room, laughing and joking, waving casually to him when he came in. More of them would notice Jock Drew. Though marked for early elimination, be had managed to cling close enough to the leader so that he would go into the last day’s play.
After dinner there would be a few mild parties for the big names who had gone off their game and had been crowded out of the last day’s play.
The first two days had sapped most of his reserve strength, yet he knew that the final day, the final thirty-six holes, would be incalculably rougher. Only one stroke separated Don Jeryde, the leader, and Finn Makinson, in second place. Jock Drew was six strokes behind the leader.
Six strokes to pick up in thirty-six. holes — one extra one to win. He fought down the tide of panic and helplessness, and when at last he had mastered himself he knew that he had done so at the cost of a bit more of his strength.
First place money was ten thousand — worth three times that in subsidiary contracts. Second place money was fifteen hundred — worth very little in subsidiary contracts. And the grave man from the clinic had said, “The chance is very slight, Mr. Drew. Fowler is the only one who had any success in this sort of thing through surgery. He’s — very expensive.”
“Without Fowler, she’ll die within the year. Is that right?” he had asked in a voice so rough that it concealed his feeling.
The grave man had nodded.
C. K. Arden, the man who ran the little golf dub in Vermont, had sought him out the day he left. Arden was a stout, brassy man with an air of great self-confidence.
“What’s this I hear, Jocko? Somebody told me that you’re going to try your luck in the Crest Club Open. What are they doing? Letting you in for old times’ sake?”
“I’m paying the usual entrance fees,” Jock had said stiffly. He saw Arden’s resentment at the absence of the usual “sir”. Arden felt that club employees should know their places.
“Then you’re throwing your money away, man.”
“And it’s my money to throw.”
“You needn’t think, Drew, that you can go down there and make a laughing stock of this club, and then come creeping back to your job, you know.”