Hole in None

Mr. Fingerhaver, cherubic and bovine, sat on a bench in the locker room of the Elmwell Club.

He was depressed. He had just finished a round of golf with his business partner, Bert Upson. They had started golf together, twenty-six years ago, and Mr. Fingerhaver had improved not at all. He now had to take a thirty-stroke handicap to play even.

He remembered Bert’s air of careless superiority as he’d said, “You just haven’t got it, George. No muscular co-ordination. You’ll never get any better at the game.”

He had tried so hard. The careful backswing — and then something always happened. He looked down at his fat arms, realizing that there was a lot of muscle under the fat. Maybe if he could try it with nobody around...

He padded over to the window and looked out. It was dusk. He grabbed his driver, a ball, and a tee and hurried out the side door. He walked to the seventh tee, a three-hundred-and-thirty-yard par four with a ravine to the right of the fairway.

He teed up the ball and squinted through the gloom. He wound up carefully and hacked at it. He sighed. It was as b d as ever. The ball darted diagonally toward the ravine. He walked to the ravine. The ground crumbled under his feet and he slid down the bank. His head whacked into a birch and he rolled into the brush. He propped himself up on his elbows and saw, in front of his nose, a gleaming golf ball of gigantic proportions. It glowed with pale blue luminescence. He stared — fascinated.

A remote voice said, “George Fingerhaver, it is my privilege to bestow on you one wish — by courtesy of the golf immortals who, from the nineteenth hole above, have been watching your dogged efforts to improve your game. Please submit your wish.”

Mr. Fingerhaver said in a quick voice, “My wish is to always play par golf.”

“I regret that we cannot grant a wish so beyond the realm of credibility,” came the answer. “It’s against union regulations. I can offer you a substitute. The golf you will play from now until dusk tomorrow will be composed of the best shots that you have fever made. You will make those lucky shots again.”

The world darkened. Something brushed Mr. Fingerhaver’s face and he heard music. The large golf ball was gone. He felt a lump over his ear from hitting the tree. He smiled.

Screwy dream. He fumbled around until he found his ball. It was a dream, and yet it had seemed so real. It wouldn’t hurt to try. He walked up and dropped the ball on the fairway in the same spot where a ball had sat one July day in ’31. On that day he had hit one that soared off and dropped into the hole for an eagle two.

He teed up, feeling silly. He lunged at the ball and heard a crisp crack. The ball disappeared. He hurried to the green, two hundred yards away. He squatted for a long time near the cup, his finger-tips touching the ball. He picked the ball out of the hole and walked back to the clubhouse.

He added figures in his head. When you play an eighteen-hole golf course for twenty-six years, no matter how much of a dub you are, luck will give you a few breaks each year. He figured out the best score he had made for each hole. His heart thumped. One eagle, sixteen birdies, and a par. Eighteen under par. Eighteen holes in fifty-eight!

He phoned Bert Upson.

“Hey, Bert. This is George. How about some more golf tomorrow morning?”

“You nuts, George? Tomorrow’s a workday. Remember?”

“I mean early. Start at six.”

“No caddies then.”

“What’s the matter? You going soft? Carry your own bag.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“Please, Bert. It’s important. Maybe I got the game licked now. Let me play you for a hundred bucks a stroke. Only twenty strokes handicap. If I get licked too bad, I’m giving up the game. O.K.?” He bit his lip. That was funny. He’d meant to say a dollar a stroke. Then he remembered Bert’s cool superiority. He’d show the smartpants!

Finally Bert said, “O.K. I think you’re out of your head, but I’ll meet you on the first tee at six.”

Mr. Fingerhaver hung up with shaking hands. Too bad that there wouldn’t be a gallery. But Bert would tell people. Then they’d point and whisper, “Fingerhaver went around in fifty-eight!”

At six the next morning Mr. Fingerhaver stood on the first tee, waiting for Bert to drive.

Bert took his time. He drove and the ball sailed away with the usual finesse. Mr. Fingerhaver teed up and drove. He lunged at the ball. It clicked and soared out, not quite so far as Bert’s. He remembered making a drive like that in 1940. Bert gave him an odd look and said, “Nice drive, George.”

The first at Elmwell is two hundred and ninety-eight yards, par four. Mr. Fingerhaver was sixty yards from the green. He selected a seven iron and dug at the ball. It carried far over the green. It dropped against a small boulder in the rough and bounded back out. It rolled up and stopped eight inches from the cup.

Bert said, “That was the damndest thing. Saw you do that one before, didn’t I?” Mr. Fingerhaver nodded. Bert lofted on and holed out with a par four. Mr. Fingerhaver took a birdie three.

The second is four hundred and twelve yards, par four. There is a hill in the fairway and traps beyond the narrow green. Bert raised his eyebrows when Mr. Fingerhaver’s drive carried two hundred and twenty yards. He teed up his own ball and tried to push it. He sliced into the rough, even with Mr. Fingerhaver’s ball. His second shot was a high iron that cleared the crest of the hill and left him with a fifty-yard approach. Mr. Fingerhaver’s second shot was a mighty smash with a spoon. It rolled across the green into a trap. Bert relaxed and dropped one close to the pin.

Mr. Fingerhaver waddled down into the trap. He hammered at the ball. It jumped out in a cloud of sand, hit the edge of the green, leaped into the air, rolled gently down to the cup and slapped in. Bert turned pale. He missed his putt, taking a five to Mr. Fingerhaver’s birdie three.

On the third, Mr. Fingerhaver sank a thirty-foot putt for a birdie two. Bert took a four. On the fourth, he slammed a shot off an elm tree. It rebounded off a pump, rolling between two traps — stopping inches from the cup. Bert took six to Mr. Fingerhaver’s birdie three.

On the fifth tee, as Mr. Fingerhaver addressed the ball, Bert sat on the ground and held his head in his hands. Mr. Fingerhaver waited impatiently. It was wonderful to have a score so low. Eleven strokes for four holes. Bert had nineteen. Eight hundred bucks ahead without counting the handicap. He smiled fatuously.

Finally Bert lifted his ravaged face and stared with haunted eyes at Mr. Fingerhaver. “Four holes! Four birdies! All done with the same spavined contortion. Birdies off rocks, trees, pumps... All the books are wrong. All the pros are wrong.”

Mr. Fingerhaver coughed impatiently and drove off. Bert stood up and smothered a drive out a hundred and forty yards. Then Mr. Fingerhaver got his fifth birdie.

The sun climbed higher. So did Bert’s score. He stumbled as he walked. Mr. Fingerhaver played like a man in a dream.

When the second nine was half over, Bert had started to mumble. Mr. Fingerhaver added up the sleek rows of twos and threes after each hole.

When Mr. Fingerhaver drove off on the eighteenth, a long screaming slice into the rough, only to have the ball bound back out and sit gleaming on the fairway, Bert threw his own ball as far as he could toward the green. Then he panted for a few seconds before he trotted out and got it. He teed up and topped it. Mr. Fingerhaver estimated that his profit would be about fifty-seven hundred dollars, including two thousand for the twenty-stroke handicap that he didn’t need.

Bert hacked out of the rough. His second shot wasn’t up to Mr. Fingerhaver’s first. He slammed it again, a high iron that faded off into the trees at the right of the green. Instead of waiting for Mr. Fingerhaver to shoot, he blundered out into the line of fire. Mr. Fingerhaver’s wood shot was a screamer. It glanced off the side of Bert’s head and, direction corrected, ended up inches from the pin.

Bert lay on the fairway, his eyes closed. His bag of clubs lay a few feet away. Mr. Fingerhaver rubbed his wrists and slapped his face, but he didn’t come out of it.

The doctor told Mr. Fingerhaver he could go in and see Bert. Bert’s face smiled wanly at Mr. Fingerhaver.

“Guess you’ll have to tell me what happened, George. The doc says I got a concussion. My memory’s shot. I can remember leaving the house before six, but I can’t remember another thing.”

Mr. Fingerhaver gulped. “You said — you mean you can’t remember?”

“That’s right. I even had a screwy dream — that I was plumbering every shot and you were shooting nothing but birdies. Imagine you shooting under par!”

Mr. Fingerhaver said, “I shot a fifty-eight.” His fingers were tight on the score card in his pocket.

Bert looked up at him and said, “Oh, I see. We played nine holes before I got hit?”

Mr. Fingerhaver smiled woodenly down at Bert and crumpled the score card in his red fist. “That’s right, Bert. Nine holes.”