So Sorry

After dinner I walked up to t he suite Harry Crebson and Mart Snyder shared on the second floor of the Upland Club. The Upland always puts up the big boys who come each year to compete in the Southland Open. It is only a quarter mile from the first tee and very plush.

I represent Miramar Sporting Equipment of Los Angeles. You know the line. Get ten more yards distance from the Miracle Ball. Improve your swing with Marvel Irons. Twelve of America’s top-flight pros use Pesky Watson Woods. Actually the line is as good as any, and you can’t go far wrong buying them.

It was in the nature of a little consolation party for Joe Sarant who had failed to qualify. The Upland course on which the Southland Open is always played is a long hilly course with narrow fairways, high trapped greens and plenty of shrubbery. Joe’s hook had gotten out of control and his qualifying round had been something to put on an adding machine.

As I had expected, Mart Snyder and Harry Crebson had invited Hal Lovelord and Jimmy Ratchelder over. Joe Sarant and I were the outsiders. It was practically an even money bet that one of the four in the room would knock off the $7500 they give you for being best man.

You know them all. Mart Snyder is a thin, dark, expressionless man with ulcers. He’s been on the circuit for thirteen years now and in spite of his dead pan, he’s always tied in knots. Harry Crebson is the big blonde guy who started to knock them dead just after he got out of the army. He has freckles and a grin. Hal Lovelord is a Canadian who has a vague expression, a dim wispy mustache and a deadly eye on the putting green. Jimmy Ratchelder is, of course, the plump pink little guy with the shrewd grey eyes who has made more out of tournament golf than any man in the last twenty years. It’s a business to Jimmy — pure and simple.

“Buy yourself a drink, Dave.” Harry Crebson said to me. “Right there on the table.”

I grinned at the group, mixed a weak rye and sat on the couch beside Lovelord. “How many of you boys are going to join the big happy Miramar family?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t use a Marvel iron to club your thick skull,” Mart Snyder said.

“Now that we’ve got that out of our way,” Jimmy Ratchelder said, “let’s get back to the discussion which Dave Able so rudely interrupted.”

“Oh, lay off the guy Jim,” Crebson said.

“Lay off who?” I asked. “The new course champion?”

“Yeah,” Crebson said. “Jimmy’s all upset about our little Japanese friend who got the sixty-three this afternoon. I say to hell with him. He’ll blow up.”

“But suppose he doesn’t?” Jimmy asked, his button mouth pursed.

The boys were talking about Tommy Suragachi of Oregon. A big tournament attracts all sorts of people who think they can get hot and take a big one away from the boys who know how. Some of them are very spectacular for a while, but generally the grueling pace of a long tournament grinds them down into quivering lumps that couldn’t put a ball into a cup with both hands and a snow shovel!

The press hadn’t noticed Tommy, a slim, nervous acting boy, until he had banged out that miracle round of sixty-three, beating the course record by one stroke. Then the press had picked him up. He had played golf before the war and had been a caddy. He served with the infantry in Italy during the war. He had brought himself and his clubs to the tournament on a bus. He was being staked by a whole bunch of Japanese farmers on the West Coast who had kicked in a little bit apiece. Apparently it was a very little bit because Tommy Suragachi was living in a down-at-the-heels tourist cabin a mile and a quarter from the course.

“If he doesn’t,” Mart Snyder said dryly, “he’ll beat us tired old men.”

“We got to make sure he doesn’t,” Jimmy Ratchelder said. We thought he was kidding at first, but his tone was very serious.

“How are you going to do that?” Lovelord asked. “Kick his drives into the rough?”

We laughed but Ratchelder didn’t even smile. “You men better think about the game and what it means to the country rather than make cheap jokes.”

“Just what do you mean?” I asked.

“Golf is one of our biggest national games. It will hurt the game and hurt this one. It may be that some of the us if a Jap wins a big tournament like private clubs that have tournaments now will cancel them if they find they’ve got to put up a Jap in the club.”

“Japs don’t bother me a bit,” Harry Crebson said. “They were pretty handy to have around in Italy.”

“Do you want a Jap beating you and winning this tournament?” Snyder asked, obviously siding with Ratchelder.

Crebson yawned. “I don't want anybody beating me, boys, unless he happens to play more golf than I do. I got a couple of kids to feed. And my old lady eats like a horse.”

“If this Sura-something wins,” Jimmy said, “they’ll have a national holiday in Japan. What the hell was the use of licking them if we’ve got to make heroes out of them?”

“You take this too seriously,” Love-lord said in his prim manner. “The odds are greatly against his winning any part of the prize money, you know.”

“I know one way that would stop him quickly,” Jimmy Ratchelder said. “If the four of us resigned from the tournament and demanded the entrance fee back, they’d force him to quit.”

“Use your head!” Mart Snyder snapped. “That would make a martyr out of him. If he keeps coming, all four of us ought to get a chance to take a hack at him. All we have to do is play the best we know how.”

Crebson laughed. “Brother, I do that anyhow!”

“Besides,” Snyder continued, “the public might take the wrong slant on it. They wouldn’t realize that we were doing it to help the game. They might think we were doing it because we were prejudiced or something. I’m not prejudiced against him.”

“Neither am I,” Jimmy said. “I just don’t think that a Jap ought to be given a chance to win the Southland Open or any other major tournament. Maybe they should be allowed to play in some of the small city tournaments on the public courses.”

Crebson winked at me and said, “Well, to hear that you boys aren’t prejudiced sure makes me happy. It surely does!”

“I don’t like that smart-aleck tone of voice, Crebson,” Jimmy snapped, his round pink face getting pinker.

Crebson grinned at him, “Then get the hell out, friend.”

“This is my room too!” Snyder said coldly. “And he’s my guest. He stays.”

“You’re acting like children,” I said.

“We surely are,” Crebson agreed. “Goodnight all. Crebson needs his beauty sleep.” He walked into the bedroom and closed the door. Joe Sarant had passed out on the couch near the liquor table.

I stood up and said, “I got to run too. Thanks for the drink.”

Mart nodded at me. Hal Lovelord stood up and came along. As I closed the door I heard Ratchelder say, “Mart, the other way that we can—”

Hal Lovelord walked downstairs with me. He had a puzzled look on his face. At the foot of the stairs he said, “I wonder how much good it does the game to have a man like Ratchelder win tournaments?”

Suddenly I found that I liked the vague Canadian with the wispy mustache. I said, “Jimmy’s a smart man, Hal. You’ve got to give him that.”

Lovelord wandered away still looking bothered. I went out to my car and drove down to the cabins where Suragachi was staying. The light was still on in his cabin. I had the funny feeling that I was making up for what Jimmy had said. He opened the door as soon as I knocked at it.

He was a lean boy with dark, expressive eyes, hollow cheeks, and a tight look around his lips and chin.

I shook hands heartily, saying, “Can I come in for a minute? I’m Dave Able of the Miramar Company.”

“Hello, Mr. Able,” he said quietly. I had half expected some sort of an accent. “Please sit down. There — isn’t much room here.”

I sat on the one chair and he sat on the bed. I liked the look of his hands. He had the thick square wrists of the distance hitter, the long sensitive fingers of an iron artist.

“I expected you to be asleep already,” I said.

He grinned. “I’m not sleeping so good. I guess I’m nervous.”

“That was one hell of a fine round this afternoon.”

“I was lucky, Mr. Able. That long iron shot on the fourteenth was way off line. It hit a pebble or something and made a good bounce.”

“And stopped eight feet from the pin.”

“And rimmed the cup all the way around before it dropped.”

We both laughed.

“Have you had any offers from any of the sporting good companies? Endorsements. That sort of thing?”

He sobered. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, I’ve got an option form here. What it says in all that fine print is that you agree not to sign up with any other company until we’ve had a chance to meet their best offer. I can give you a hundred bucks to sign this.”

I had thought I was going to say fifty dollars. But it came out a hundred. I groaned inwardly when I thought how the boss would react. He doesn’t like to have me kick money around, particularly when the recipient thereof is a long shot.

He read it over carefully and quickly. I handed him my pen and he signed. I signed the copy and gave it to him, along with a crisp fifty and five wilted tens.

He grinned again. “If I win, then, you have made a good business deal?”

“A very, good deal, Tommy. And I hope you do win.”

“There isn’t much chance of it, I guess.”

“How do you mean?”

“I took some psychology courses in the University of Washington. I have a hunch that my temperament isn’t right. I can’t seem to relax enough. I’ll give you the hundred back if you want it.”

“Not a chance. But to protect my investment, I want to tell you that—”

I didn’t know how to say it. He saw my confusion. “I think I know, Mr. Able. You have heard the other contestants say that they don’t want a Jap to win. Is that it?”

“It’s a little more than that. I think they’ll try almost anything to foul you up.”

“I thought that they would. I saw the way Mr. Ratchelder looked at me today. And Mr. Snyder. You can tell when people look at you like that. I’ve gotten used to it out on the Coast. They hate all of us out there. Most of them do.”

I admired the way he faced up to it. There was no false appeal for sympathy. No martyr complex. Merely a statement of fact.

I got up. “Well, you need your sleep. I’ll be running along. You’ll have a rough tomorrow, Tommy.”

We shook hands at the door. “Thanks for — everything, Mr. Able.”

I went back to my room in a downtown hotel and spent my sleeping time trying to figure out how Ratchelder and Snyder would try to fix Suragachi’s wagon.

The Upland Open is a big time tournament and the rules, though somewhat similar to the National Open, have their own variations.

Each contestant approved by the committee has the privelege of playing one qualifying round. One half of the entrance fee is paid before trying the qualifying round. Qualification consists of shooting 80 or lower. Once you qualify, you pay the rest of the fee. Usually around eighty to a hundred qualify. The tournament itself last three days. Opponents are chosen by lot. Eighteen holes are played each of the first two days and thirty-six rounds the third day. At the end of the first day, the high fifty percent of the group are eliminated. Counting the boys who flub, drop out, and turn in no score, that usually leaves forty going into the second day. At the end of the second day, on the basis of total score, another fifty percent are ruled out.

The twenty survivors have their roughest battle on the morning of the third day because once again, on the basis of total score, the contestants are weeded down to exactly eight for the afternoon round. First money is $7500. Second money-$1750. Third money-$500. Fourth money-$200. And that’s all, brother.

It is a colorful tournament, with the usual pretty girls, sportscasters carrying back packs of equipment, messenger boys running around with copy, gay umbrellas over the tables on the lawn where the lazy sit and watch the huge scoreboard which tells of the results of the weary men hacking their way across the beautifully tailored course, officials with little badges, worried marshals with bamboo poles holding the throng back, photographers, famous faces, all the mad tangle and excitement of the big time.

Tommy drew Bert Housen from upstate New York with tee-off slated for ten twenty. That gave me time to get the dozen balls to him. I had a set of irons for him to use that seemed to be about the right weight but he said politely that he was afraid to change without a chance to practise with them.

He disappeared and I watched the big board until it appeared that Ratchelder was getting hot. I caught him on the fourth green. He was matched with a boy from Massachusetts named Regan and he had the boy shaking in his pants at playing with such a famous guy.

Ratchelder racked up a fine 69. The puffy little pink man was superb. He didn't seem to work at it. The grooved swing was like honey in a warm greased pan. Swish! Click! The little white ball soaring away, low and flat, climbing up and up, sailing at last back to the manicured fairway, with just enough tail on it to give it a strong roll.

His approaches were a little ragged, with a tendency to carry too far. But the putting bought those strokes back. The little metal “clunk” of the ball falling into the cup was like a firm period at the end of a very pleasant sentence.

Once the caddy, a boy who was the captain of the local college golf team, handed Jimmy the wrong club. Jimmy didn’t say a word. He just didn’t take the club. The boy held it out for a moment, grew red, fumbled and finally brought out the right one.

“Thank you very much!” Jimmy said sweetly.

When I got back to the big board I found out that Forward had nosed Tommy out by a stroke. 67 to 68. They wouldn’t let me into the locker room. By the time Forward came out, I found that he’d been signed by Spaulding the day before. Some days it goes that way.

After the miserable, unhappy, cursing fifty percent had been eliminated, Forward, Tommy, Crebson, Lovelord, Ratchelder and Snyder were all in the running, of course. Snyder was right on the borderline with a 76, Lovelord and Crebson both had seventies. My Tommy was number two man. Ratchelder was breathing on his neck. A one stroke advantage on the first day of the Southland Open is no lead at all.

Forty tense men were left to play the second day. At five thirty all the scores were in, the brushoffs administered and the drawings made for the next day. Tommy’s name went up on the board paired with a man named Brilon from Rhode Island. Brilon had turned in a 72. I breathed a big sigh of relief that Tommy hadn’t been paired with either Ratchelder or Snyder. Unless Snyder managed to turn in a good score to add to his bad 76, he had a good chance of getting that touch on the shoulder at the end of the second day.

That evening I stayed away from Tommy. I had him on paper and the boy needed his sleep. I was reading a paper in the lounge of the Upland Club when Crebson came over pawed the paper aside and said, “Dave, boy, did you notice the board?”

“I didn’t notice you, if that’s what you mean.”

“I drew my roommate. Jolly old Snyder. I got him six strokes today and he’s going to be pushing like crazy.”

I grinned. “Does that scare you?”

“No. But listen to this. Ten minutes ago Mart says to me that he’s going to try like hell the first nine and if he can’t make up strokes, then he’s going to coach me. He says that either Ratch or I have got to knock off the Jap. How do you like that?”

“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.

It took Tommy a long time to make his second shot. With any kind of a break he might have overcome the effects of the disturbance. He had a long wood shot to the green. It was a par five hole that he had birdied on the first two rounds. The ball sailed away, sharp and true. It looked for a moment as though it would strike short of the green and roll on. A vagrant wind caught it and pushed it a bit to the left. It carried a shade too far and hit the sharp angle of the slope up to the green. Even then it would have been good, had it not hit a woman in the leg and skidded off into the trap.

Even then he might have recovered, except that the ball tucked itself under a slight overhang at the rear of the trap.

Some wag in the crowd hissed loudly and said, “So sorry!” The gallery laughed. Tommy studied it for long moments. The strategy was clear. He couldn’t get under it to loft it onto the green. He would have to pitch out of the trap toward the fairway in front of the green. Then he would have to make his pitch onto the green so true that he could collect a par five. Jimmy was out of trouble, ten feet from the edge of the green.

Tommy stepped into the trap, gave himself too little time and swung. A shower of sand exploded out, but not enough. He hadn’t dug a deep enough cushion for the ball. It sailed away a good thirty yards, crossing the fairway and rolling down into a second trap which was designed to catch the unwary who sliced on their second shot.

This time at least ten people hissed simultaneously and yelled, “So sorry!”

The explosion out of the trap was four. The pitch to the far corner of the green was five. The two putts made it a fat seven.

Hisses! So sorry!

Tenth hole, a drive that faded into the rough. A recovery shot taken while still tense. An unlucky bounce into the rough beyond the green. Five. One over par.

Hisses! So sorry!

By the time Jimmy had recovered his four strokes and five in addition, the crowd began to sober, realizing that somehow they had been to blame for shoving the kid out of first money. They quieted down and so did Tommy. But it didn’t do any good. His delicate control was gone, and even his judgment in selecting clubs. He tried to push to make up the lost strokes, and lost more.

Jimmy played his bland, mechanical golf, making it look like a game any child could master.

Had it not been for Tommy’s eagle two on the eighteenth, added to the lucky birdie on the seventeenth, the score would have been worse. Even so, it was about as bad as it could get. He turned in an 80 to Jimmy’s 69.

At noon all the scores were in and posted. Jimmy Ratchelder leading with 208. Harry Crebson second with 209. Lovelord third with 211. Gustaffsen-213. Brilon-214. Suragachi 215. Willison and Humboat-216 each. They were the eight. In spite of the 80, Tommy’s first two scores of 68 and 67 had left him in the running.

I noticed Crebson beside me peering up at the score.

“Nice going!” I said.

“Thanks. What happened to Suragachi?”

I told him. He listened carefully and said, “We should have guessed he’d pull something like that. It’s nothing you can put your finger on. He just figured out how the gallery’d react and gave them the stimulus. Damn him!”

“He’s still got a chance,” I said.

He looked at me. “Not for my money. Once you crack in this game, you’re all done. I get the great Jimmy this afternoon. I’m going to make him sweat if it’s the last thing I ever do!”

There was something hard and relentless in Crebson’s voice. I know what match I was going to watch.

“Where is the kid?” Crebson asked.

“Probably gone back to his cabin to nurse his jangling nerves.”

“Let’s take a run down there. Your car handy?”

This time Tommy didn’t open the door. He called, “Who is it?” His voice was unnaturally high.

“Dave Able,” I called.

We waited. Finally he opened the door, his face haggard. “What is it?”

Crebson leaned on the door, pushing it open the rest of the way, and we went in. Tommy’s battered suitcase was open on the bed, clothes thrown hastily in.

“What’s all this?” Crebson demanded.

“What is it to you?” Tommy said harshly.

Crebson sighed and leaned against the closed door. He said to me, “You might know it would be a deal like this. No guts.”

Tommy stood very still. At last he said, almost whispering, “How could you know what it’s like?”

“It’s easy to be a tragic figure, Dave,” Crebson said to me. “You ever notice that? There must be something delicious about being a martyr. Something that gets you. Tommy here is going slinking back with his tail tucked between his legs and when his pals ask what happened, he’ll tell them all about the hissing business and then they can all sit around and cry. This punk hasn’t got any guts, Dave. He’s yellow.”

Tommy sobbed something that could have been a curse and rushed Harry Crebson. Harry twisted away from the overhand punch and caught it in the palm of his hand before Tommy’s knuckles smashed against the door. Tommy hit him once in the temple before Crebson could grab both his wrists.

Harry sneered and said, “You should have saved all this fight for the afternoon round, kid.” He pushed him roughly back toward the bed. “Come on, Dave. We’ll tell them back at the clubhouse that the Jap is licked.”

He pushed me out the door before I could say a word. I was angry enough to swing on him myself. The odd light in his eyes stopped me. He held a finger to his lips and then went silently around the side of the cabin, peered through the window. He was back in a moment, took my arm and hurried me toward the car.

“He’ll be okay, I think,” Crebson said. “He was taking stuff out of the suitcase and throwing it toward the bureau and tears were rolling down his face.”

The gallery looked puzzled as Crebson tied up his ball. His standard procedure was to grin at the audience, kid with the caddy, clown a little and then blast one down the middle, yards out in front of anybody else in the tournament.

But his face was sour and glum. Jimmy stood aside looking puzzled. Crebson addressed the ball, settled his feet firmly, swung the club head back and down again. At the moment of impact his cocked wrists snapped through and the club head made a sound like a pistol shot. The ball was a rising streak of white. The gallery gasped. It came to rest at last, an almost incredible distance away. I knew that Crebson was pushing himself right to the limit of tolerance. If he tried for even a foot more distance, his control would be gone.

Jimmy Ratchelder hit his usual steady drive. It was a good fifty yards behind Crebson’s drive. That seemed to bother him a bit. He stroked the second shot carefully. It rolled dead, four feet from the pin. Crebson’s pitch was just inside his. After they holed out, Crebson walked on without a word or a backward look.

Jimmy picked up a second stroke lead on the third. Crebson, playing silently, got one back on the sixth and a second one back on the eighth. The match was even. At that moment Crebson walked over to Ratchelder and said, “Okay, friend. Now I’ve got that stroke back. We’re even from now on. Do your best.”

Jimmy flushed. “Are you trying to rattle me?”

“Not at all!” He turned and grinned at the gallery. “I’m just warning you not to try and hiss me out of this one, the way you did Suragachi.”

“I don’t like your inference, Crebson,” Ratchelder snapped.

Crebson grinned cheerfully. “And I don’t like you. The papers are going to give us a big play on this, you know. Pros yammer at each other during match. Let’s have some fun. I’ll tell you just what I’m going to do so you’ll know what you’re up against. I’m going to get a three on the ninth to give me a 34 for the first nine. Then I’m going to rack up a 33 for the second nine, home with a 67. That means you need 68 to get a playoff and 67 to win. You’ll do well to get a 69 for second place money.”

Behind me I could hear the excited low tone of the radio announcer. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just heard one of the strangest challenges in tournament golf! Harry Crebson, the big blonde ex-G. I. who has been burning up the course has just told that grand old man of the game, Jimmy Ratchelder that he was going to—”

I moved away. Crebson had just placed himself in a spot where he would be either a hero or a bum. The odds were against him. Mo man can predict his own score. Jimmy looked at him with open mouth. Crebson grinned and walked away.

Suddenly I realized that he had promised a three on the par five ninth. Five hundred and eighty-nine yards. Crebson teed up, waggled the club head, grinned at Jimmy and said, “Watch this three, friend!”

Once again the drive was tremendous. I estimated it at three hundred and fifteen yards. Maybe three twenty. On his second shot, with roughly two hundred and seventy yards to go, Crebson raised a towering spoon shot that dropped dead on the green. Jimmy was just over the green with his third shot, a number six iron sunk his shorter putt and took a five.

Crebson said, “Say! You better watch those extra strokes. With the 33 I’m going to get on the second nine, you can’t afford any. Right now you need a 3 to tie the match.”

While the tense gallery watched, Crebson linked four birdies and two pars on the first six holes of the second nine. Jimmy, pushing a little, managed to get four pars and two birdies. That left Crebson four strokes up for the round and three strokes up for the match. Three holes to go.

On the sixteenth tee Crebson stretched and yawned. “Well, Jimmy I can relax from here on in. I need three pars to get my 33 for a total 67. You need three birdies to tie. Two birdies and a par to lose.”

The sixteenth is a dogleg with a shallow bend just halfway down the fairway. Crebson drove over the brush and the yell from the gallery told us that the ball was on. Jimmy addressed the ball and began to tremble. He glanced at Crebson and then at the fairway and back at the ball.

His drive hit the ground thirty yards from the tee, bounded high in the air and came to rest about a hundred and forty yards out.

“I think you looked up,” Crebson said.

With the match obviously lost, Jimmy settled down, took a par on the hole and birdied the last two.

I was weak from the strain. Crebson looked completely unruffled. I watched Lovelord and Tommy come in. Tommy seemed to be completely loosened up. I guess that once the money was out of his grasp, he had forgotten the tightness.

The cup and the cash was waiting just off the eighteenth green. The cameras popped as Crebson accepted, after waiting around long enough to make certain he couldn’t be caught by any of the boys plugging their way home with miracle scores for the last round.

After Lovelord holed out I walked over to him and said, “Third money?”

He chewed the edge of his mustache. “Fourth,” he said disconsolately.

“How come?”

“Tommy, blast him! Sank four approaches. Home with a bloody 66 for a 281 against my 282.”

And that was it. Crebson took the big money and Ratchelder took second. Tommy was in for the $500 and Lovelord took fourth.

Third money in a tournament like Southland meant that my hundred bucks was a good investment. Our spread would say that three out of the four big money winners in the Southland had used Miramar equipment. Tommy would make some extra dough out of his third place win.

I was particularly intrigued by the way he had come in so completely relaxed. When the prizes were given out, I edged closer.

Jimmy Ratchelder had gotten over the effects of the ride that Crebson had given him. He was his suave pink self again.

When Tommy got his prize, Ratchelder came over. He didn’t shake hands in the customary way. He merely said, “I trust you’ll be in our other tournaments, Mr. Sukiaki. I hope to have the pleasure of playing with you again.”

The crowd knew what was up. Everybody seemed to hold their breath. Crebson, hemmed in by celebrity hunters, elbowed out of the pack and drifted closer, a worried look on his face.

He didn’t have to look worried. Tommy glanced toward him and smiled. It was a smile that said Tommy had caught on to what Crebson had done for him.

He switched the smile to Jimmy Ratchelder. The smile turned into a wide grin. In a high voice, almost a falsetto, he said, “Name not Sukiaki. Name isss Suragachi. Hope to play again with honorable Ratcheldersan. Hear you make miserable shot on sixteenth hole. Hisssssss. So sorry!”

Jimmy, his pink turning to a deep red, went blundering off into the crowd.

I knew right then that neither Crebson nor I had to worry any further about Tommy Suragachi.

Sometimes a tournament will do that for a man.