Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

 Many unlikely people play golf, including people who are blind, who have only one arm, or even no legs, and people often wear bizarre clothes to the game.  Other golfers don’t think them odd, for there are no rules of appearance or dress at golf.  That is one of its minor pleasures.  But Goodell had made an attempt to look smart at golf and that is the only way of dressing that is incongrous on a links.  It was as if Goodell had gone to Nike and said, ‘Dress me for golf.’

Social errors made no impression on Balls, and for the matter of that he rarely noticed them.  With Goodell it was different.  Everything about the man grated on Balls’ teeth from the first moment he had seen him.  The assertive blatancy of his clothes was just part of the malevolent animal magnetism that had affected Balls from the beginning.

Goodell executed his mechanical faultless swing.  The ball flew true but just failed to make the slope and curled off to the right to finish pin high off the green in the short rough.  Easy five.  A good chip could turn it into a four, but it would have to be a good one.  Balls walked over to his ball.  It was lying cocked up, just off the fairway.  Balls took his three wood.  Now, for the ‘all air route’ – a soaring shot that would carry the cross-bunkers and give him two putts for a four.  Balls remembered the dictum of the pros: ‘It’s never too early to start winning.’

As soon as Balls hit the shot he knew it wouldn’t do.  The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same as the difference between a beautiful and a plain woman – a matter of millimeters.  In this case, the club face had gone through just that one millimeter too low under the ball.  The arc of flight was high and soft – no legs.  The ball hit the lip of the far bunker and fell back.  Now it was the sand wedge and fighting for a half.

Balls never worried too much about his bad or stupid shots.  He put them behind him and thought of the next.  He came up with the bunker, took the wedge, and measured the distance to the pin.  Twenty yards.  The ball was lying well back.  Should he splash it out with a wide stance and an outside-in swing, or should he blast it and take plenty of sand?  For safety’s sake, he would blast it out.

Head down and follow well through.  The easiest shot in golf.  Try and put it dead.  The wish, halfway down his back swing, hurried the hands in front of the club head.  The loft was killed and there was the ball rolling back off the face.  Get it out, you fucking dipshit, and hole a long putt!  Now, Balls took too much sand.  He was out, but barely on the green.  Goodell bent to his chip and kept his head down until the ball was halfway to the hole.  The ball stopped three inches from the pin.  Without waiting to be given the putt, Goodell turned his back on Balls and walked off towards the second tee.  One down.

Hawker said encouragingly, ‘It’s early days yet, sir.’

Balls knew it wasn’t. It was always too early to start losing.  Goodell had already teed up.  Balls walked slowly behind him, followed by Hawker. Balls stood and leant on his driver.  He said, ‘I thought you said we would be playing strict rules of golf, but I’ll give you that putt.  That makes you one up.’

Goodell nodded curtly.  He went through is practice routine and hit his usual excellent safe drive.  This time Balls played the hole better and evened the match.  On to the third.  The third is a blind two hundred and forty yards, all carry, a difficult three.  Balls hit a good one, he would be on or near the green.  Goodell’s routine drive was well hit, but would probably not have enough steam to carry the last of the rough and trickle down into the saucer of the green.  Sure enough, Goodell’s ball was on top of the protecting mound of rough.

He had a nasty, cuppy lie, with a tuft just behind the ball.  Goodell stood and looked at the lie.  He seemed to make up his mind.  He stepped past his ball to take a club from his caddie.  His left foot came down just behind the ball, flattening the tuft.  Goodell could now take his putter.  He did so and trickled the ball down the bank towards the hole.  It stopped three feet short.

Balls frowned.  The only remedy against a cheat at golf is not to play with him again.  That was not good in this match.  Balls had no intention of playing with the man again.  And it was no good starting a you-did-I-didn’t argument unless he caught Goodell doing something even more outrageous.  Balls would just have to try and beat him, cheating and all.

Now, Balls’ twenty-foot putt was no joke.  There was no question of going for the hole.  He would have to concentrate on laying it dead.  As usual, when one plays to go dead, the ball stopped short – a good yard short.  Balls took a lot of trouble about the putt and holed it, sweating.  He knocked Goodell’s ball away.  He would go on giving Goodell missable putts until suddenly Balls would ask him to hole one.  Then that one might look just a bit more difficult.  Still all square.

Goodell and Balls halved the fourth, fifth, and sixth.  On the seventh, after Goodell’s usual safe tee shot and Balls’ longer drive, Goodell made his first mistake.  He took out a pitching wedge, not to go for the green, but to get over the bunkers and through the valley.  There came the dull thud of a mis-hit.   Goodell’s ball, hit off the heel, sped along the ground and into the stony wastes of Hell Bunker – the widest bunker and the only unkempt one, because of the pebbles, on the course.

Balls could not afford to play it safe.  He had to go for the green.  He addressed the ball, seeing in his mind’s eye it trajectory through the valley and then the two or three bounces that would take it on to the green.  He laid off a bit to the right to allow for his draw.  Now!

There came a soft clinking away to his right.  Balls stood away from his ball.  Goodell had his back to Balls.  He was gazing out to sea, rapt in its contemplation, while his right hand played ‘unconciously’ with the money in his pocket.

Balls smiled grimly.  He said, ‘Could you stop shifting till after my shot?’  Goodell didn’t turn around or answer. The noise stopped.  Balls turned back to his shot, desperately trying to clear his mind again.  He hit a good shot.  Goodell got well out of the bunker and put his chip dead.  Balls putted too hard and missed the one back.  Still all square.

On the short eight, Balls hit a soaring shot that ended twenty feet beyond the pin with a difficult putt over and down a shoulder.  Goodell hit his into the deep bunker on the left. They walked to the green in silence.  Balls glanced into the bunker.  Goodell’s ball was in a deep heel-mark. Balls walked to his ball and listened to the birds.  This was going to put him one up.  He looked for Hawker to take his putter, but Hawker was on the other side of the green, watching with intent concentration Goodell play his shot.

Goodell got into the bunker with his sand wedge.  He jumped up to get a view of the hole and then settled himself for the shot.  As his shot went up, Balls’ heart lifted.  He was going to try and flick it out – a hopeless technique with that buried lie!  Down came the club, smoothly, without hurry.  With hardly a handful of sand, the ball curved up out of the deep bunker, bounced once, and went in the hole.

Balls swallowed.  How the hell did Goodell manage that?  Balls was still running that through his brain as they played the ninth.  He was determined not to have another mid-round puke and to make the turn even.  He tried to do too much off a poor lie and lost the ninth.  Two down at the turn!

Balls asked Hawker for a new ball.  Hawker said softly, ‘You saw what he did at the eighth, sir?’

‘Yes, damn him.  It was an amazing shot.’

Hawker was surprised. ‘Oh, you didn’t see what he did in the bunker, sir?’

to be continued…