“We play the blues,” Lou said.
Steve looked over to where they were standing, and Lou shut up. Then he lifted his driver and took a look at the club face, flicking at it with his thumbnail. Then he addressed the ball, looked up a few times to check his line, and with a short back swing and a fluid motion struck it. The hit was straight and low. The ball carried about two hundred yards out in the middle of the fairway, and it came to rest a good thirty yards beyond that.
“That’s a good hit, Steve,” Lou said seriously. “Do it good, Frankie.”
Frankie scowled a little, as if the young man had been a little too familiar with him. He went to the back of the tee, teed up and took a practice swing. He had a full if slightly inside-out back swing, and when he hit the ball it hooked a little, coming to rest short of the first shot, near the rough to the left of the fairway.
“Good place to come in from, Frankie,” Lou said.
“Yeah?” Frankie said, and then as if to cover the sharpness of his response, “Could be worse, I guess.”
Allen figured the younger man for a hot dog, a fair to good college player who had lost some of the sharpness of the practice which went with that. When he saw Lou hit, he thought he was probably right. He outdrove the other two by a good thirty yards. He was straight but a little high, and he did not get as much roll as Steve had. He had gotten his shoulders through the shot a little too quickly. His swing was economical, but he had muscled it a little, trying for too much power.
Then it was his turn. The first hole was a par four. For all practical purposes it was straight; there was a slight dog leg to the left, but it would not come into play unless his shot was short and to the extreme left. The green, visible from the tee, was slightly elevated, with a trap to the right front. Along the left of the fairway was a stand of trees about two hundred yards out. He figured to come through nicely on the first shot but to get it high and short and play a bit of a slice. He started the ball off to the left in the direction of the trees; when it got near the top of its arc, it curled in a little. He had put a little less than he had wanted to into it, and it got closer to the trees than he had figured, but it took a good bounce, and when it came to rest, it looked to be sitting where he would have a possible shot, along the trees, around the slight bend, and into the right of the green. It was a bit shorter than the other three balls. Nobody said anything after he had hit.
When he got to his ball, he saw that if he brought it in slightly he could come around the edge of the line of trees and make the green; he would be right of the flag, but there was a down slope, and he figured it would, with a little bite in it, wind up close enough to the cup. The three waited for him to hit, Frankie sitting in the cart behind and to the side of him with his arms crossed over his chest; the other two were to the right and back in the middle of the fairway, in line with their balls. The proper club would be a five-iron, but he went back to the cart, took a four out of the bag, paused for a moment, looked toward the green, and then put the club back and took out a three.
“I think a three, can’t quite tell how far I am,” he said.
“Can’t help; don’t know how ya hit,” Frankie said. “There’s the one-fifty marker over there.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the other side of the fairway ahead of them, indicating a red stick at the edge of the rough.
Allen approached his ball and stood behind it, sighting down the row of trees, then he stepped up to it. When he hit it, he caught a little grass behind it, meeting it fat. It was low, along the line of trees, and straight.
“Trap,” Frankie said matter-of-factly behind him before the ball landed. It hit in the middle of the sand trap to the right of the green.
“Right,” he said, and he got back into the cart with Frankie.
Frankie was next. He hit a shot, again with a slight hook in it, that was high and stopped where it landed, on the green to the left of the flagstick, pin high, about twenty-five feet from the cup. Steve hit a seven-iron; the shot was as straight as his drive had been. It hit about ten yards short of the green and ran up to within six feet of the hole. The hot dog used a wedge, less club than he needed. He came through it smoothly and with considerable snap; it clicked off the club face, and a good-sized divot rose up a few feet in the air ahead of where it had rested. It was high and true. It landed to the back of the green, bit, and shot back about three feet, coming to rest on the high side of the hole, about twelve feet away, leaving him with a tricky downhill putt.
When they got to the green, all of them got out of the carts, and the three others waited for Allen to hit from the trap before they walked up onto the putting surface. The trap was wide and flat; good sand, he thought, and his ball sat up cleanly, a thin furrow in the sand running from the back of the trap, where the ball had hit, to where it now rested. He was about ten feet from the lip, which was low and would not come into play. There was about fifteen feet of green between him and the cup. The first five feet or so were level, and then the green sloped down a little. On the other side of the cup there was another thirty yards of level green and another ten feet of good apron before the slope down into the thicker rough. He hit the ball thin, lifting only a little sand, and the ball flew most of the green, hitting near the far edge, and trickled to the back of the apron and just over into the beginning of the rough. He looked up to the others and shrugged in an embarrassed way, then raked the trap and walked around their lines on the green to the far side. He had forgotten to get a club, had his sand wedge in his hand, and he trotted back to the cart to get one.
“Take your time,” Steve said, smiling for the first time.
He got three clubs out of his bag, a wedge, a seven-iron, and his putter, and crossed the green again. He looked the shot over, took a practice chip with his seven-iron, then dropped it beside the putter in the grass and selected the wedge. He did not want to mess with roll on this shot. He could see enough level green near the pin where he could lay it down. He had a good lie, and he decided not to bring the ball back at all. He lifted it carefully, quite high; it landed and rolled a few feet and came to rest five feet from the hole. Lou missed his putt and took a tap-in for a four. Frankie missed his also, had a tricky three-footer coming back, but knocked it in with some authority. Allen took a bogey five. Steve ran his into the heart of the cup for a birdie three. It was not until they got to the back nine that they began to gamble in earnest.
IT WAS HOT IN THE FOOTHILLS, BUT THE AIR WAS DRY. When he got to where the road ended abruptly beside a staked-out lot, he sat on a rock and took a sip of water from the small cough-syrup bottle he carried in his shirt pocket. From his back pocket he took out a piece of cloth and tied it around his forehead as a sweatband. While he was resting he checked the gunny sack for holes, and in the bottom of it he found an old golf cap with the words Redwood Links stenciled on a patch above the brim. He put it on, and his face felt cooler.
He had gotten a ride from two Indians in a pick-up truck who were headed over the foothills to their reservation. They had passed a few words, and they had let him out where the last of a series of dirt roads spurred off from the blacktop, heading deeper into the hills. When he got to the end of the road, where he rested, he was above all the development, though the two men had told him that that would not last and that the white men were planning more roads further up. After he’d rested he walked off into the wilds of the foothills, snaking back and forth though moving significant distance away from the developed land.