John D. MacDonald
Money Green
Rick Lorry sat on the bed, using the buffing cloth on the face of Dinah May. Dinah is a thin old girl who has been around. The immortal Cedric Jerome used her in that unforgettable British Open when he came up from the ruck and one-putted eight greens in a row, with no putt under fifteen feet, to snatch victory right out from under the nose of the man who thought he had it cinched. Dinah May has a lemonwood shaft and a silver head.
Rick stared at me and said, in his soft Oklahoma drawl, “Man, sit down. You’re wearing out the hotel.”
I dropped into a chair. “If they’d washed me out today, Rick, like I expected, I’d be okay now.”
“Tournament golf,” he said, “is a very easy thing. You want to get the same feeling sometime, just get a hammer with a nice balance and stand on one foot and see how many times you can club yourself behind the ear before you fall down.”
“The trouble is, I don’t belong up here with you people.”
“Nobody feels like they belong on top, kid. You got a lot of years ahead of you. Take old Sixty-six, now. How many years has he got left?”
He was talking about Sam Clyde. The old-timers still called him Sixty-six after the nineteen thirty-something L.A. Open when he qualified with sixty-six and then strung four of them together for a two-sixty-four and the cup. But in the sports pages they have been calling him Hard-luck Clyde for the past few years.
“What’s he got to worry about?” I said, annoyed.
Satisfied with the sheen on the face of Dinah May, Rick laid her aside. “Nothing, I guess. When he was winning he had his choice of pro jobs at the best clubs in the country. Endorsements, everything. Money coming in from all directions. But he hasn’t won a major in five years.”
“Has it been that long?”
“Everybody loves a winner. Now, when he isn’t on the circuit, he’s pro at a little old club and if, out of lessons and the pro shop, he can squeak out fifty bucks a week, he’s lucky. Hard to save up the lump to hit the circuit on that, kid.”
“He plays like a man made out of ice, Rick.”
Rick chuckled. “Guess he must have some ice in him, all right. Last year it looked like he’d place high in the P.G.A. I was off and I got washed out. I saw him play that fifteenth hole in the morning round of the last day. Murder! No wind at all until he drove off. Then a pocket-size cyclone to take his ball deep into the rough. It lands in a hole so deep all he can do is pitch out onto the fairway. He pitches out and hits a rock the size of an English walnut and back it comes, right to him. No change on his face. He pitches out again, and there he is with a fat three and another two hundred yards to go. Takes his three wood and puts a pretty one right on the apron, set to roll up dead on the pin and a damn fool kid is running across. It hits his heel and trickles off into that trap they call Lost Canyon, and so close to the overhang that he can’t blast it to the pin. He has to blast out for a thirty-foot putt. His sixth, the long putt, rolls nice for ten feet and then picks up a wad of chewing gum that nobody had noticed. Don’t ask me why. It leaves him with a fifteen-footer, and the seventh, which should have gone down, rims the cup completely. He’s in for an eight.”
“That’s when I start throwing clubs,” I said.
“Tommy, you should have seen him. He had a peaceful smile on that big horse face of his. And he knew right there that he was at the end of the line on that tournament.”
“Maybe he’s got dough socked away from the big years.”
“When he had it, he spent it. Something about this racket makes it tough to hang onto money. He’s got two kids in high school and a young one who has been in more hospitals than you can count. He needs this one, but you’d never tell from looking at him.”
We were at the Dumott Open. They run it every year at the Carey Springs Club in Connecticut. Old Henry Dumott, a wealthy perennial dub, left the ten thousand dollars’ worth of annual prizes in his will, with a trust fund big enough to provide the prizes permanently. But Old Henry set up the invitation tournament with his own ideas of how a tournament should be played. The low forty qualify. Eighteen holes the first day, twosome, match play. So ten twosomes go into the second day for eighteen holes. The ten survivors then play as twosomes in the morning of the last day, but on straight medal play, with the highest two eliminated for the final and afternoon round. The eight are then split into two foursomes for the afternoon round of medal play, and the lowest scores get a hack at the six prizes. Five thousand, twenty-five hundred, one thousand, six hundred, three hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty.
Before the war I played kid golf, sharp enough around the greens, but without the beef for the long game. The war gave me the beef and I came back and found I could hit a long, long, wild ball. By ’48 I had enough control to start winning small local tournaments, amateur stuff, around Maryland and Virginia. Then, in a tournament at the Hillside in Kentucky I shot over my head for a 30–30, a sixty, made possible by two eagles, four strokes under the course record. It got a play in the papers but I was still pretty surprised to be invited to try my luck at the Dumott Open.
Betty said that she thought I’d better try it, just for the experience, and the company was willing to have me take off, so here I was, all wound up like a ninety-cent watch after squeaking through the first day, winning two and one over Hal Underlund who was definitely off his game, and having the luck to draw another amateur on the second day who, despite a 69 the first day, went all to pieces and went down seven and six.
There was only one other amateur left among the ten survivors of the first two days of play, an unknown oil character from Texas named Wilmer Fraiden. The other eight were big names. Sam ‘Sixty-six’ Clyde, Rick Lorry, fat little Bobby Broom with his deadly irons and the red felt hunting cap, Steve Corning, the robot golfer, Billy Ruff, second high money man last year — and the others whose names I had read in the papers for years. If the first two days had been upsetting, I knew the third day would be worse. Nationally known sportscasters with their portable mikes, heavier crowds swarming behind the bamboo poles of the officials, all the razzle-dazzle of the top-side in any sport. It made me feel as though I had crashed a party wearing a borrowed suit.
I had a 141 for the total of the first two days and that put me number six in the surviving ten. I was eleven strokes behind Bobby Broom, however, who led the field by a fat three strokes, with Rick Lorry second with a 133, Sixty-six Clyde next with a 134, Steve Corning and Billy Ruff tied at 136 — and then a big five-stroke empty gap to my 141, and the other four bunched closely behind me, two tied at 142, one of them the other amateur, and two good pros at 143 and 144. To stay until the afternoon round, I had to play eighteen holes well enough to keep more than two of the four from passing me.
“There you go again,” Rick I said. “Wearing out the hotel.”
I grinned and sat down and tried to relax. “Sure,” I said. “Take it easy. All I’ve got to do tomorrow is try to look good playing with Billy Ruff. Nothing to it.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get one or two others I could name. Hell, I’ll name one of them. Steve Corning. He’d give you a real bad time. He knows all the tricks. Here’s what he did to me once. He doesn’t hit a long ball. It was in the Albuquerque Open in forty-eight. Demaret took that one with a two seventy-two. Anyway on the twelfth, on the drive, I’m away by about three yards. I heard him ask for a six iron. I was going to use a four but when I heard him, say that, I asked for a five. I was short. After I belted it he handed the caddy the six back and took out his four and put it on. Nothing illegal about it, you understand. It was my own damn fool fault. Another thing he does. When he plays with a man that likes to keep moving right along, Steve’ll line up each putt for what seems like an hour. He’ll move like a snail until the other guy is ready to blow his top. Then when he plays with a slow player, Steve’ll tee up and wham the ball just as soon as he straightens up, without hardly getting himself set. You’d be surprised what that’ll do to a man’s timing if he isn’t experienced in tournament play. No, old Steve’s a hard man to play against, almost as tough as The Hague used to be. You got Billy Ruff, one of the nicest little guys in the whole game, and one of the most popular. The only way he’ll break your heart is with that long ball of his. Better not try to out-drive him. He’ll have you pressing every time, and eventually pushing it over into left field.”