Walking with Jack by Don J. Snyder Read Free Book Online Page B

Fighting to release my hands. I softened my hands on the club, then took it back low just until my wrists had cocked before I started down and through the ball. When I raised my eyes, I saw the ball climbing and then falling from the sky. All right! I thought.
    I fought to par number 8 with the wind mercifully behind us at last. Jack made a brilliant birdie after hitting an eight-iron to within four feet. “Well,” I said, “I’m going to really have to light it up the rest of the way.” Jack was already walking to the tee, a little too victoriously for my taste at that particular moment.
    Which brought us to number 9, End, the short, 307-yard wide-open par-4 that I had birdied on our first time around. I took out my driver, swung easily, and caught a nice roll across some of the only open, flat ground on the course.
    I found my ball in perfect position. Meanwhile, I watched Jack climb into the bushes and hack out his ball with a wasted stroke.
    I ran a seven-iron the rest of the length of the fairway onto the green and made two putts for par to Jack’s bogey.
    That was the end of the front nine. With a double-bogey 7 and a quad 8, I knew my score was high. I added up 48 strokes to Jack’s two-over-par 38. Slaughter. When you’re losing like that, golf can be a hard, hard road of humiliation and despair. Or, occasionally, it can lift you up if you can just manage to hold on.
    And I did. Though it was back into the wind, we both were onthe green in two on the 10th hole after hitting safe drives to the right of the deep rough. My drive had come to rest eighty-five yards from the green, right at the edge of the malevolent Kruger pot bunker. It could just as easily have rolled down into it. But my luck had turned. Or I was turning it. I made par. Jack made birdie and was up by another stroke.
    We both parred 11 and 12.
    Number 13, Hole O’Cross (In), bears the stamp of the hideous Coffins bunkers down the left side of the fairway and then the Cat’s Trap and Walkinshaw bunkers farther up the fairway. The best landing area is a narrow path straight over the Coffins.
    We both hit fine tee shots, but I pulled my second shot left into trouble and took another bogey while Jack made par.
    We both parred the long par-5 14 and the par-4 15, and drove our tee shots over the round-killing Principal’s Nose bunkers on 16 and went on to make par there as well.
    So we walked to the most difficult hole on the course, the 460-yard par-4 17th, Road Hole, where so many great golfers have met their demise across the years. To hit a great drive, you have to stand on the tee and hit a line that runs so close to the broad flank of the Old Course Hotel that if the drive is off to the right by four or five yards, you’re going to go right through the windows. There’s no place to hide. You have to go for it. If you play safely left, then you’ll catch the rough down that side, and it will seem like forever to the green. Each time I played this hole four years earlier, I used to say to myself as I stood on the tee, the faint of heart need not apply.
    I did the same today and hit a perfect drive. So did Jack, outdistancing me by eighty or ninety yards. I took out a four-iron for my second shot. I saw Jack up ahead of me waiting. Swing easy, I told myself. Down and through. Down and through.
    It was another shot where I didn’t feel the club strike the ball. Pure. Pure! I watched it climb in the sky, on a path straight for thepin. It landed short of the green and started rolling straight again. Then I lost sight of it in the little gully in front of the green.
    I watched Jack face his Achilles’ heel. The short wedge to a tight green. He swung effortlessly with a smooth turn of the hips, about as handsomely as anyone could hit a golf ball, but from where I was walking, I knew he had given it too much again. I saw his ball hit the green and bounce off the back out across the road.
    From there he made a bogey 5, while I rolled a seven-iron