He sank it, but it took him the next six holes to make a full recovery and knit up the raveled edges of his game.
In the meantime I had suffered the inevitable rebound to mediocrity, but the double deuces had helped out enough to bring me home on the first nine with a 34. We heard that both Bobby Broom and Billy Ruff were burning up the course behind us. Steve, carding a 35, to tie Rick Lorry, looked distinctly unhappy, particularly when he glanced in Sam Clyde’s direction. Old Sixty-six had strung together birdies on the last five holes to make a nice 33. And, in the aggregate, he was thus tied with Rick and only one lousy little stroke behind Steve and Bobby Broom.
The pressure was really there as we started the final nine of the day and of the tournament. Thousands were riding on each stroke, and it took a man with Rick Lorry’s temperament to look casual. The tremble in Sam Clyde’s hands was evident now, but you could see him bringing it slowly under control before every swing. Steve Corning had a white, bloodless look and knots of muscle bulged at the corners of his jaw, below those extra-long sideburns.
We were on the twelfth when word came out that Bobby Broom had blown the ninth to rack up a 36, with Billy taking a 34. I could almost hear the wheels going around in Corning’s head. That made him top man with a total 236 going into the last nine. But the fly in the ointment was the set of three 237’s, breathing down his neck. Bobby Broom’s, Rick Lorry’s and Sam Clyde’s. Billy Ruff was next with 239. The rest of us were back in the ruck, with Branders the best bet for sixth-place money.
After hacking out a six on the twelfth and a five on the thirteenth, I could relax. I could relax and watch Steve trying to fight Rick Lorry and Sam Clyde off. He enlarged his lead to two strokes on the fourteenth. Rick gained one back on the fifteenth and both Rick and Sam gained one on the sixteenth. That left Rick and Steve Corning in a tie, with Sam one stroke back. Steve Corning was playing every stroke more slowly. Despite his care, Sam gained one back on the seventeenth and Rick played him even, so, on the eighteenth tee, there they were, three of them tied up. It had been a hot round and they all had twenty-nine strokes as of that point. If Bobby Broom played miracle golf, they might be playing off a tie for second money, but the odds were that if one man could pull out ahead on that hole, he’d have five thousand. I had a 33 to that point, and the best of luck would give me a 36 for the round, a 70 for the afternoon, for a 286 that would be way out of the money. The pressure was off me, but the waves of it, welling out from those three, were so intense that I was all knotted up.
The eighteenth at the Carey Springs Club course was designed to take advantage of a very wry freak of nature. Wry, that is, for the golfing brethren. Par four, four hundred and twenty yards. But the first two hundred of those yards slant to the right. If you’re short and stick on it, you have a terrible lie. If you don’t stick, you roll down into a nice wide shallow stream with a sandy bottom — and frogs.
But if your drive is a good two-fifty to seventy, you are on top of the world, looking down to the big rolling green circled with the yellow traps, the chateau type club house beyond it. If you want to gamble, you try to hit over the knoll, playing it to slice. That’ll carry you down a slope that will add another thirty yards and simplify the problem of pitching to the green.
It was Sam Clyde’s honor, of course. He banged one out onto the knoll, not trying for the roll beyond it. After he drove the club slipped out of his hand and he picked it up in a dazed way. Rick was up next. He swung his arms to loosen his shoulders. His grin in my direction had no humor in it. Steve Corning was standing off to one side. In a leisure-hour game he would have been jangling change in his pocket.
Whiss — crack! Rick’s drive sped out. I could tell that he was trying for the maximum. We watched it. It went over the knoll and, just as it went out of sight, it faded into a hook instead of a slice. Everybody who knew what that meant groaned.
Steve Corning stepped up to bat. He looked more confident. The ball was hit as hard as Rick’s had been, but with the precise amount of slice necessary. The trouble was, it clipped the knoll and took a bad kick off to the left. And I knew that he was just as bad off as Rick was. I had nothing to lose, so I whammed it. It skipped over the knoll, neither slicing nor hooking, and my second shot was in the hands of the fates. We walked up to the knoll. Sam played a nice five iron onto the edge of the green.
My ball was down in the flats, a foot from the edge of the creek.
Rick’s ball and Steve’s were two chummy little white dots, ringed with spectators, sitting almost side by side on dry sand in the middle of the creek. They were both about one-thirty yards from the elusive cup.
Steve Corning was away. Rick would shoot next, then it would be my turn. I noticed for the first time that Rick Lorry’s eyes can look very cold. He studied the sand from a short distance, then motioned the caddy over and pulled out the sand wedge. Steve Corning looked at the club, at Rick, at the distant green. He knew Rick’s reputation as a judge of sand. I could see him lick his lips with indecision. He had to slam his out first, Sam Clyde was up there on the green. Rick Lorry could be kidding him into picking the wrong club, as turnabout for Albuquerque. Or Rick could be right in deciding to play it safe and settle for a probable four and possible five.
Maybe the right and wrong of it was too much in his mind. He snatched his own blaster, squared away and popped it out. But he gathered up too much sand with it and got ten yards where he could have had thirty.
Rick Lorry gave him a long, cold-eyed grin.
“I’d advise you to use your sand wedge, Rick,” Steve said, his mouth twisted with rage.
“Would you now? Pretty city, that Albuquerque.”
Curious spectators moved in to hear the conversation. They drifted over toward me. I went closer to Rick and Steve just in time to hear Steve say, in a sneering way, “That’ll make two of us, Rick, who use those little tricks to win with. Nice to see somebody else getting smart in this racket.”
Rick gave him another long look. He kept the wedge, stepped into the sand and addressed the ball. He played it well off his right foot to decrease the angle of the club head. He swung and picked the ball off the sand without disturbing a grain. The ball fled out, towering higher and higher, descending, bouncing, rolling, stopping six feet from the flag.
I played mine short of the green, not on purpose. Steve slammed his third shot up for a fifteen-foot putt.
Sam Clyde was away. He looked bent and old, crouched over his putter, after I pushed mine up close to the flag. It took a long time for the trembling to stop. The crowd, knowing what was at stake, was patient and silent. The ball came in across the tricky green, apparently headed six feet to one side of the hole. But slowly it came around, coasted around a corner and down into the cup. There was the pock sound as it dropped for his three. Steve Corning was away. Sam Clyde slowly straightened up and for a moment I saw him as he had looked a dozen years before, when hopes were high and Sixty-six was one of the sharpest golfers in the country.
Steve dropped his for a four. He looked like a man who has just bitten into a bad apple. Rick took a long, long time over his six-footer. The ball stopped six inches short of the hole as the crowd groaned. He tapped it in to tie Steve Corning.
We waited around. Bobby Broom came home with a 36. Sam Clyde had won the five grand. The next morning Rick played Steve for second money to break the tie. He won, three and two.