“Do you need coaching?”
“Snyder seems to think so.”
“You lucky boy!”
We had one slow beer and then he went up to bed and I went down to the hotel and wrote the usual daily report to the company. I had to think up some fancy excuses about how I hadn’t been able to sign Forward.
In the morning of the next day, a heavy old man named Willison put the pressure on Forward and on the twelfth Forward blew up with a nine. He collected an eight on the next hole and came home with an 84 which put him out of the tournament. I felt sorry for the kid, but it gave me something to put in my report which would make the report of the day before look better.
I traveled with the small gallery that followed Harry Crebson and Mart Snyder. Crebson, with his usual freckled grin, played as though it was all for fun. Mart was dark, deadly serious and exact. He had strokes to get back. At he end of the first nine they had even 34s. On the tenth Snyder’s drive left him on a downhill lie. He took a lot of time over it, and, a split fraction of a second before the face of his number three wood smacked the ball, it moved a fraction of an inch. The wood shot dribbled down into a creek. The rules allowed it to be set back for three. With a four iron, Mart lifted a good one toward the high green. It seemed to split the pin all the way. But it dropped short, wedged deep in the steep pitch up to the green. Snyder was pale. He carved it out with a seven iron, but a clod of dirt stuck to the ball and halted it fifteen feet short of the pin. His sixth stroke, a long putt, left him four feet away. His seventh stroke rimmed the cup and popped out. He holed out for eight. It was heartbreaking. What made it worse was that Crebson’s four iron shot, after his drive, stopped eight feet from the pin and his putt went down for a birdie three.
As they walked toward the eleventh tee, Snyder said something to Crebson. Big Harry stopped dead. The caddies and marshals looked puzzled Crebson laughed his booming laugh and yelled to the gallery. “Hey, folks! After a hole like that last one, this guy is trying to tell me how to play!”
There was a moment of shocked silence and then the gallery laughed long and loud. If Crebson had done it to anyone else, they wouldn't have been as amused. In fact they would have considered it very bad form on Crebson’s part. But Snyder had been long due for a fall. His face was the color of the sand in the traps as he stood aside for Crebson to drive. The eleventh is rough — a 235 yard par three.
Crebson was still smiling, but the knot of muscle at the corner of his jaw bulged. He swung gently and easily. The ball headed off to the right of the green, faded back easily, hit short and rolled up over the edge of the green, dead on the flag. The distant gallery yelled.
Crebson stepped back and said, “Did I do that right, Mart?”
Snyder drove a low screaming slice into the dense rough. I turned and headed slowly across the course.
Tommy Suragachi and Brilon were just holing out on the fifth. I wandered into the gallery and found out that Tommy had just collected his fifth four in a row. Tommy’s lips were a thin, tight line. After three holes I found out that it was too painful to watch him. He was giving Brilon a bad time, but each stroke seemed to require a terrific effort of will for Tommy to relax before he could swing.
With a long, cool drink in front of me, I sat under one of the gay umbrellas and watched the scores build up on the big board.
Jimmy Ratchelder was piling up his usual threes and fours somewhere on the second nine. But Lovelord, Crebson and Tommy were doing just as well. I didn’t like to think about Tommy out there. Golf at its best is a lonely game. It becomes a great deal rougher when you have a racial reason for loneliness.
When the scores were all in. I found that Tommy was leading the field by four strokes. He had turned in an amazing 67, eight under par for a halftime total of 135. Ratchelder had added a seventy to his sixty-nine for a 139 and second place. Lovelord had Jimmy tied with a 139 and Crebson with his double seventy was fourth man with 140. Three men had 141. Four had 142 and one had 143.
That night I went to see Tommy again. As before he opened the door quickly, made me sit in the one chair while he sat on the bed. I could see what the two days had done to him. And the third day would be far worse. He was thinner, more tense. His hands shook and his lips trembled when he tried to smile.
“You’re right up in there, Tommy,” I said.
“But for how long, Mr. Able?”
“Championship golfers can’t have a defeatist attitude, boy,” I said firmly.
He smiled. “I feel as though every stroke I make winds a big spring inside of me one notch tighter. Already its so tight I can just about stand it. A few more turns and its going to break.”
“Maybe once it breaks you can play good golf.”
His smile looked tired. “I’ll keep going as long as I can. Tomorrow morning I’m matched with Ratchelder.”
“I saw that. Don’t let him get you. Don’t pay any attention to him. He makes the game look so easy that the opposition nearly always goes to pieces.”
“I won’t have any trouble not looking at him, Mr. Able. All I’ve been able to see out there is the ball. I’m vaguely conscious that there’s a gallery around, but I can’t hear them and I can’t see them.”
“Good! Is there anything you need? Anything I can do?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Back in my own room I sat for a long time thinking about the kid before I wrote my daily report. I wouldn’t have traded places with him for a triple A rating in Dunn and Bradstreet.
Naturally, Jimmy Ratchelder and Tommy Suragachi drew the big gallery in the morning. By the time they teed up, the crowd stretched in a solid mass from tee to green, leaving a narrow passage down the middle of the already narrow fairway.
Both drives were straight down the middle and not more than twenty feet apart, with Jimmy longer by a few feet. Both second shots were just off the green. Jimmy nearly holed his approach, but they were both down in four.
I knew that Jimmy had to pick up strokes. If Tommy came close to halving the morning match it would leave Jimmy four strokes or three behind going into the afternoon, and that was too many for comfort. In spite of the urgency of the situation, Jimmy was as pink and bland as ever. Each time Tommy would step up to the ball, his hands would be so tight on the shaft that the knuckles would be white. He would address the ball and give his shoulders a little shake. Slowly he would loosen up, then pivot smoothly into his grooved swing.
It was the kind of golf you read about. Golf is a game which implies the precise control of variables. One degree excess angle in the club head at the moment of impact creates an error which, at the end of a two hundred and seventy yard drive is measured in yards. Traps are planted with precise care to swallow the results of those one degree errors.
At the eighth hole they were still even. On the short walk to the tee I noticed that Jimmy had a new tight look around his mouth. He had been close to picking up a stroke on the eighth, but his perfect approach had hit a clumsy spectator.
Tommy had the honor. As he addressed the ball, I saw Jimmy walk right into a spectator. He jumped back, bowed from the waist, hissed loudly and said, “So sorry!”
Tommy tightened up again. He gave himself a little time, loosened up, and smacked a good one down the middle. Some rowdies in the gallery bumped into other spectators, hissed and said, “So sorry.”
It was stupid, but the tension of the match had turned it into some kind of a joke. The marshals went around shushing people, but it didn’t do much good. The tight look was gone from Jimmy’s face. The hissing noises from the gallery made them sound like a nest of snakes. The traditional polite hiss of the Japanese.