Money Green

Rick Lorry sat on the bed, using the buffing cloth on the face of Dinah May. Dinah is a thin old girl who has been around. The immortal Cedric Jerome used her in that unforgettable British Open when he came up from the ruck and one-putted eight greens in a row, with no putt under fifteen feet, to snatch victory right out from under the nose of the man who thought he had it cinched. Dinah May has a lemonwood shaft and a silver head.

Rick stared at me and said, in his soft Oklahoma drawl, “Man, sit down. You’re wearing out the hotel.”

I dropped into a chair. “If they’d washed me out today, Rick, like I expected, I’d be okay now.”

“Tournament golf,” he said, “is a very easy thing. You want to get the same feeling sometime, just get a hammer with a nice balance and stand on one foot and see how many times you can club yourself behind the ear before you fall down.”

“The trouble is, I don’t belong up here with you people.”

“Nobody feels like they belong on top, kid. You got a lot of years ahead of you. Take old Sixty-six, now. How many years has he got left?”

He was talking about Sam Clyde. The old-timers still called him Sixty-six after the nineteen thirty-something L.A. Open when he qualified with sixty-six and then strung four of them together for a two-sixty-four and the cup. But in the sports pages they have been calling him Hard-luck Clyde for the past few years.

“What’s he got to worry about?” I said, annoyed.

Satisfied with the sheen on the face of Dinah May, Rick laid her aside. “Nothing, I guess. When he was winning he had his choice of pro jobs at the best clubs in the country. Endorsements, everything. Money coming in from all directions. But he hasn’t won a major in five years.”

“Has it been that long?”

“Everybody loves a winner. Now, when he isn’t on the circuit, he’s pro at a little old club and if, out of lessons and the pro shop, he can squeak out fifty bucks a week, he’s lucky. Hard to save up the lump to hit the circuit on that, kid.”

“He plays like a man made out of ice, Rick.”

Rick chuckled. “Guess he must have some ice in him, all right. Last year it looked like he’d place high in the P.G.A. I was off and I got washed out. I saw him play that fifteenth hole in the morning round of the last day. Murder! No wind at all until he drove off. Then a pocket-size cyclone to take his ball deep into the rough. It lands in a hole so deep all he can do is pitch out onto the fairway. He pitches out and hits a rock the size of an English walnut and back it comes, right to him. No change on his face. He pitches out again, and there he is with a fat three and another two hundred yards to go. Takes his three wood and puts a pretty one right on the apron, set to roll up dead on the pin and a damn fool kid is running across. It hits his heel and trickles off into that trap they call Lost Canyon, and so close to the overhang that he can’t blast it to the pin. He has to blast out for a thirty-foot putt. His sixth, the long putt, rolls nice for ten feet and then picks up a wad of chewing gum that nobody had noticed. Don’t ask me why. It leaves him with a fifteen-footer, and the seventh, which should have gone down, rims the cup completely. He’s in for an eight.”

“That’s when I start throwing clubs,” I said.

“Tommy, you should have seen him. He had a peaceful smile on that big horse face of his. And he knew right there that he was at the end of the line on that tournament.”

“Maybe he’s got dough socked away from the big years.”

“When he had it, he spent it. Something about this racket makes it tough to hang onto money. He’s got two kids in high school and a young one who has been in more hospitals than you can count. He needs this one, but you’d never tell from looking at him.”

We were at the Dumott Open. They run it every year at the Carey Springs Club in Connecticut. Old Henry Dumott, a wealthy perennial dub, left the ten thousand dollars’ worth of annual prizes in his will, with a trust fund big enough to provide the prizes permanently. But Old Henry set up the invitation tournament with his own ideas of how a tournament should be played. The low forty qualify. Eighteen holes the first day, twosome, match play. So ten twosomes go into the second day for eighteen holes. The ten survivors then play as twosomes in the morning of the last day, but on straight medal play, with the highest two eliminated for the final and afternoon round. The eight are then split into two foursomes for the afternoon round of medal play, and the lowest scores get a hack at the six prizes. Five thousand, twenty-five hundred, one thousand, six hundred, three hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty.

Before the war I played kid golf, sharp enough around the greens, but without the beef for the long game. The war gave me the beef and I came back and found I could hit a long, long, wild ball. By ’48 I had enough control to start winning small local tournaments, amateur stuff, around Maryland and Virginia. Then, in a tournament at the Hillside in Kentucky I shot over my head for a 30–30, a sixty, made possible by two eagles, four strokes under the course record. It got a play in the papers but I was still pretty surprised to be invited to try my luck at the Dumott Open.

Betty said that she thought I’d better try it, just for the experience, and the company was willing to have me take off, so here I was, all wound up like a ninety-cent watch after squeaking through the first day, winning two and one over Hal Underlund who was definitely off his game, and having the luck to draw another amateur on the second day who, despite a 69 the first day, went all to pieces and went down seven and six.

There was only one other amateur left among the ten survivors of the first two days of play, an unknown oil character from Texas named Wilmer Fraiden. The other eight were big names. Sam ‘Sixty-six’ Clyde, Rick Lorry, fat little Bobby Broom with his deadly irons and the red felt hunting cap, Steve Corning, the robot golfer, Billy Ruff, second high money man last year — and the others whose names I had read in the papers for years. If the first two days had been upsetting, I knew the third day would be worse. Nationally known sportscasters with their portable mikes, heavier crowds swarming behind the bamboo poles of the officials, all the razzle-dazzle of the top-side in any sport. It made me feel as though I had crashed a party wearing a borrowed suit.

I had a 141 for the total of the first two days and that put me number six in the surviving ten. I was eleven strokes behind Bobby Broom, however, who led the field by a fat three strokes, with Rick Lorry second with a 133, Sixty-six Clyde next with a 134, Steve Corning and Billy Ruff tied at 136 — and then a big five-stroke empty gap to my 141, and the other four bunched closely behind me, two tied at 142, one of them the other amateur, and two good pros at 143 and 144. To stay until the afternoon round, I had to play eighteen holes well enough to keep more than two of the four from passing me.

“There you go again,” Rick I said. “Wearing out the hotel.”

I grinned and sat down and tried to relax. “Sure,” I said. “Take it easy. All I’ve got to do tomorrow is try to look good playing with Billy Ruff. Nothing to it.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get one or two others I could name. Hell, I’ll name one of them. Steve Corning. He’d give you a real bad time. He knows all the tricks. Here’s what he did to me once. He doesn’t hit a long ball. It was in the Albuquerque Open in forty-eight. Demaret took that one with a two seventy-two. Anyway on the twelfth, on the drive, I’m away by about three yards. I heard him ask for a six iron. I was going to use a four but when I heard him, say that, I asked for a five. I was short. After I belted it he handed the caddy the six back and took out his four and put it on. Nothing illegal about it, you understand. It was my own damn fool fault. Another thing he does. When he plays with a man that likes to keep moving right along, Steve’ll line up each putt for what seems like an hour. He’ll move like a snail until the other guy is ready to blow his top. Then when he plays with a slow player, Steve’ll tee up and wham the ball just as soon as he straightens up, without hardly getting himself set. You’d be surprised what that’ll do to a man’s timing if he isn’t experienced in tournament play. No, old Steve’s a hard man to play against, almost as tough as The Hague used to be. You got Billy Ruff, one of the nicest little guys in the whole game, and one of the most popular. The only way he’ll break your heart is with that long ball of his. Better not try to out-drive him. He’ll have you pressing every time, and eventually pushing it over into left field.”

I went to bed at nine-thirty and I think it was a quarter of three when I got to sleep.

Ruff and I were the third flight out. I looked at the big board and saw that Rick Lorry and Bobby Broom were already posted for the first two holes, Bobby with a three and a four and Rick with a pair of treys. My name was in the sixth slot, Thomas Firth, and I could imagine the spaces being filled with sevens and eights.

Ruff slammed one out there for a good two-seventy, maybe more. He smiled and stepped back. I addressed the ball. It was the size of an aspirin tablet and the handle of the driver felt as though it had been greased. The crowd was five deep around the tee watching everybody hammer it away, waiting to follow their favorites. They had sighed nicely at Billy Ruff’s drive. I couldn’t keep them waiting forever. I had to do it. The backswing creaked and I felt that I’d swayed back off the stance and I’d come down on it with a hack that would smother the ball. In tournaments you just don’t hit any grass-cutters off the tee.

It was like swinging a strand of wet spaghetti at the ball. To my intense surprise the click was crisp and the ball drew a white line out across the green to the fairway. In my anxiety I had hit close to the outer limits of control. A hundred yards out it started to climb. It climbed and soared and dropped with a little tail on it, bouncing and running, coming at last to rest a good ten yards beyond the gleaming dot of Billy’s drive. The gallery applauded. I guess they thought I meant to do that.

About forty or fifty people followed us out, better than half of them moving ahead to the green. Billy took a clean full swing with a seven iron, getting a lot of loft. It dropped to the right of the pin, bouncing once straight up and coming down to rest at the place where it had first hit.

I had hoped to be out of the daze, but once again the ball shrank away to almost nothing and the club felt too loose and limber in my hands. I swung and found myself looking up, like any dub. The club edge apparently bit into the ball right at the middle. It rolled, and rolled, and rolled. It rolled up a little isthmus of grass between two bottomless traps, rolled across the green, and came to rest on the far edge, a bit closer to the pin than Billy’s was.

Half the gallery, who knew the game, roared with laughter. The other half applauded, wondering what those jerks were laughing at. I surprised a grin on Billy’s face.

“That ought to break up the buck fever,” he said.

“A little child shall lead them,” I said. “Next time I’ll bounce off a horseshoe in the rough.”

My confidence was back and suddenly it was a game, a good game played out under the clean sun, with the smell of moist grass, the click of club-face on ball, the white perfect parabola of a pitch to the green. My putt went down for the bird and Billy, after long consideration of the roll, dropped his.

At the end of eight I had a stroke on him. He got a bird on the ninth to my par and half the morning was over with a pair of thirty-fours posted.

I guess playing him even on the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth did too much for my head size. The fourteenth is a long dogleg to the left and you have to get out there a good two fifty before you can make the turn with the green in view. A shorter ball, played to the right of the fairway, will put you far enough from the tall pines so that you can take a chance on cutting the corner. My drive was short and Billy was out there where he could see the green. I sat right in the middle of the fairway and the choice was up to me. I could play a long low iron and try to put enough tail on it to catch the roll and go around the corner down toward the green, or I could slam one over the trees.

My caddy, who had been glowing with pleasure at the way I was doing, had the iron half out of the bag.

“Four wood,” I said.

He turned and looked at the trees and then at me. He handed me the four wood without much enthusiasm. I tried so hard for loft, playing it well off my left foot, that I went under it a shade too far. I was higher than the trees, all right, but I wasn’t long enough, not by fifty yards.

We found it, still in bounds, in the bottom of a ravine, on a sand bank, with just the top showing over the slow-moving water. I walked up to the top of a knoll, looked at the green, with Billy’s ball sitting almost insolently four feet from the pin for a certain birdie, and trudged back down to my ball. The safe play was to belt it out onto the fairway for a safe pitch to the green and a certain five. So I tried to slam it over the knoll onto the green. The water and sand smothered it. It bounced on the top of the knoll and rolled down, still in the rough. The ball came out cleaner than I expected and I overshot the green, chipped back up for the fifth and took two putts for a fancy seven to Billy’s three.

“Rough,” he said.

“My fault.”

He took the four-stroke lead and built it into a six, coming home for the morning with a nice 69 to my one-over-par 75. Every time I thought of that fourteenth I wished I was standing in front of myself so I could kick myself in the stomach.

It seemed to me that I would be out of it entirely, because the odds were in favor of at least three of the men tailing me to come in with a low enough total to put me back in the final two, the two who would be all through.

I hung around, hoping against hope, watching the scores go up on the board. When Wilmer Fraiden’s six on the eighteenth went up to give him a 78 for the round and a total of 220 as against my 216, I had a flutter of hope. If anybody else was going out, it had to be me or a pro named Forrester who had gone into the morning round with a total of 143 and who wasn’t being any ball of fire. As the scores came in and were posted I was getting dizzy from the mental arithmetic. With two holes to go he needed a pair of fours to tie me at 216. The first four went up. Now if a three went up on the board, I was all done. I could see the eighteenth green, ringed around with spectators. The boy with the chalk reached up to the board as the crowd broke up. He wrote a nice round fat five and I was in the afternoon round by one stroke.

I took a look at the other scores. Bobby Broom had taken a 71 for 201 and Steve Corning had banged out a 65 to tie him. Rick Lorry, with his 69, was in second place with a 202. Sixty-six Clyde was in third with a 204, two strokes behind Rick, with Billy Ruff breathing down his neck with a 205. The man who had gone into the morning with the highest gross, 144, a man named Branders from Tennessee, had put together threes and a few fours for a whistling 63 to make him fifth with a 207. Lambertson, the pro who had gone in with 142, one stroke over me, shot a 66 for a 208 to place sixth. And there I was with my 216, eight strokes behind him, in the seventh slot. With the tie for first, that made up the eight for the afternoon round.

To keep the gallery split, it was the custom for the two men in the lead to head up different foursomes. Before lunch the officials called the eight of us into one of the club rooms, wrote six names on slips of paper and put them in a hat for Bobby Broom and Steve Corning to draw alternately.

Broom drew Branders, and Corning drew me. He looked at the slip and then at me as though he smelled something bad. Broom drew Billy Ruff and Corning drew Rick Lorry. Broom drew Lambertson and the only man left was Sixty-six Clyde, so he belonged with the Corning group. That was the way it was set up. Rick Lorry, Sixty-six, Steve Corning and me, in one foursome and Bobby Broom, Billy Ruff, Lambertson and Branders in the other. The high total for the group had to tee off first, and of course, with my 216, that was our group.

Steve Corning put his hand on my shoulder as we left the room. He was smiling but his eyes were frigid. A wiry man with square wrists, sideburns a shade too long, a white peaked cap. “Kid,” he said, “this’ll be good experience for you.”

“I guess so, Mr. Corning.”

“Just remember that we’re in there for blood, kid. This is our living even if it’s just a game to you. You know all the customs and courtesies, don’t you?” I shrugged out from under his hand, faced him in the corridor. “I’ve played the game before,” I said.

He laughed. “Don’t get rattled, kid.”

Rick came up behind him. His Oklahoma voice was soft. “What are you doin’, Steve? Get down off the horse; it’s too tall for you. I’ll take Tommy Firth and you take anybody you want to and one of these days we’ll play you any way you say.”

Steve spun around and his smile was gone. “This kid is just a lucky plumber.”

Rick studied him. “Luck doesn’t figure much in your game?”

“I don’t let it.”

Rick balanced himself on the balls of his feet and smiled sleepily. “Sure, I remember that five iron at Albuquerque. Cost me two hundred and fifty bucks.”

“Maybe you can make it back today,” Corning said. “And maybe not.” He walked away.

“Did he bother you, Tommy?” Rick asked.

“He made me a little sore.”

“That’s what he was trying to do. There’s always a chance he could blow and you could burn up the course and squeeze him out of a money place. He doesn’t miss any bets, that boy. There are probably two or three pros on the circuits would sell that boy a bucket of water if his pants were on fire. Come on, let’s eat a little something. Two hours before we got to go out there and beat on that ball again.”

Sam Clyde joined us. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him before. I liked him. He had a long sad face and steady eyes, with weather wrinkles at the corners. He seemed calm, but I noticed that there was a small tremble in his hands.

“How’s Sammy?” Rick asked him seriously.

Clyde shrugged. “Why, he’s doing fine. He’s walking all the way ’cross a room now. Kit wanted to bring him on down here, but the doc said no.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Sam Clyde studied me. “You got a good game for your first big one, Firth. Ever think of taking it up as a business?”

“Not before today,” I said, grinning.

For a moment the sadness and despair showed through. “I wouldn’t advise it,” he said.

“Listen to him!” Rick said. “Trying to cut down the competition. He doesn’t want you working on the southern circuit against him this winter.”

Sam didn’t smile. “This is the last one, Rick. If I place high, maybe I’ll try again. But if I don’t—”

The tension was uncomfortable. Rick met my glance and looked away. After we ate lightly, I went to one of the rooms they had provided and stretched out on a couch. The sleepless night crept up on me. The next thing I knew Rick was shaking me.

“Trying to hold up the game, boy?” he said.

I was on the first tee before I had shrugged off the last mists of sleep. We drove in the order of score. Corning hit his crisp, straight, mathematical drive out to about two-twenty-five. He’s a picture golfer, with every swing right out of the book. Rick swung in his slow sleepy fashion, with the wrist-snap at the last moment. He outdrove Corning by twenty yards. I could feel the tension in the gallery. Sam Clyde, Old Sixty-six, stepped up with his unorthodox swing — the shortened backstroke and the power coming from the right arm — and dropped one in between them. The recent sleep had relaxed me. I glanced at Corning’s expressionless face and whipped the club down through the groove. I outdrove the lot of them and the tail on the ball took it a shade too far to the left.

We trudged on out across the fairway. Four players and four caddies, with a swarm following us and another batch around the green, and a thin line on both sides of the fairway.

Corning took what looked like a three iron. He played the gentle wind and dropped dead on the front of the green, with two bounces and a gentle roll taking him nicely up to the pin. Sam Clyde used more loft and his ball was not more than one inch off the green, on the left, nestled in the stubbly grass which prevented it from rolling down into the smaller trap. Rick made his slow-motion swing and clicked one up to within six feet of the pin, two feet outside Steve Corning’s ball. My turn. All the tension was gone. My hefty drive had put me within six iron range. I kept my head down well after the ball was gone and lost it high in the air. I was still squinting when the yell went up. I looked at the green just in time to see its last foot of roll and see it lodge against the pole.

Rick cuffed me across the shoulder and Sam Clyde gave me a broad smile. Corning held his back rigid as he walked toward the green. Sam Clyde, away, took his time and curved in a long putt that hesitated on the lip and then dropped as the crowd applauded. Rick tapped his almost negligently. It bounced against the back of the cup, almost too hard, and stayed down. I knew how Steve Coming felt. He had been the first man to hit his second shot, and had laid it up there for what seemed to be a sure birdie. He had seen the next two shots land for a probable par and a possible birdie. Then the dub of the group had eagled out on him with a miracle shot and the other two had gone down for their birds. That little four-footer had suddenly stretched itself way out. He had to hole it or take a four to a pair of treys and a deuce.

He took so long addressing it that the green crowd shrank down to almost nothing as they walked off to pick spots for the second hole. It rolled up and dropped. Steve’s mouth relaxed after it went down.

The second hole is two hundred and sixty-five, par three, untrapped, but with the green set up on top of a five-foot knoll with steep sides. The drive has to be close enough for an accurate clip in order to collect the three. Birdies are as rare as star rubies.

My honor. Expanded with the glory of that eagle and with the applause still ringing in my ears, I really uncorked one. I’ve never hit a straighter drive, or a lower one. I don’t know what I did to it, but it never did get more than three feet off the fairway. Thirty yards in front of the green it turned into one of the fastest rollers I’ve ever seen. It hit that sharp incline and shot a good thirty feet into the air. Miraculously, it bounced on the green, bounded once more, and rolled to within three feet of the pin. If the green had been on the level of the fairway, I would have been thirty yards beyond it.

“That’s just the way I told you to play it, Tommy,” Rick said easily. I turned to grin at him, but his face was sober. Sam Clyde looked mildly astonished and Steve Corning’s expression was one of disbelief, mingled with faint horror. When Steve marched over to drive, Rick Lorry winked at Sam and held his finger to his lips.

Steve banged out the normal drive, close enough for a clip to the pin. Rick took a long time over his drive. I noticed that he played it well back off his right foot. He hit what was almost a duplicate of my drive. Not quite as hard, however. It, too, scooted up the incline hard enough to shoot six feet in the air before dropping to roll on the green. Sam hit his out next to Steve’s. Corning, once again, was away. He chipped it up to within a foot of the pin. Sam Clyde chipped his in for a two! Rick dropped his for a two. I had my three-footer to make for a two. It dropped, but just. And there Corning was, with picture golf and yet needing a one-footer to come in last man.

He sank it, but it took him the next six holes to make a full recovery and knit up the raveled edges of his game.

In the meantime I had suffered the inevitable rebound to mediocrity, but the double deuces had helped out enough to bring me home on the first nine with a 34. We heard that both Bobby Broom and Billy Ruff were burning up the course behind us. Steve, carding a 35, to tie Rick Lorry, looked distinctly unhappy, particularly when he glanced in Sam Clyde’s direction. Old Sixty-six had strung together birdies on the last five holes to make a nice 33. And, in the aggregate, he was thus tied with Rick and only one lousy little stroke behind Steve and Bobby Broom.

The pressure was really there as we started the final nine of the day and of the tournament. Thousands were riding on each stroke, and it took a man with Rick Lorry’s temperament to look casual. The tremble in Sam Clyde’s hands was evident now, but you could see him bringing it slowly under control before every swing. Steve Corning had a white, bloodless look and knots of muscle bulged at the corners of his jaw, below those extra-long sideburns.

We were on the twelfth when word came out that Bobby Broom had blown the ninth to rack up a 36, with Billy taking a 34. I could almost hear the wheels going around in Corning’s head. That made him top man with a total 236 going into the last nine. But the fly in the ointment was the set of three 237’s, breathing down his neck. Bobby Broom’s, Rick Lorry’s and Sam Clyde’s. Billy Ruff was next with 239. The rest of us were back in the ruck, with Branders the best bet for sixth-place money.

After hacking out a six on the twelfth and a five on the thirteenth, I could relax. I could relax and watch Steve trying to fight Rick Lorry and Sam Clyde off. He enlarged his lead to two strokes on the fourteenth. Rick gained one back on the fifteenth and both Rick and Sam gained one on the sixteenth. That left Rick and Steve Corning in a tie, with Sam one stroke back. Steve Corning was playing every stroke more slowly. Despite his care, Sam gained one back on the seventeenth and Rick played him even, so, on the eighteenth tee, there they were, three of them tied up. It had been a hot round and they all had twenty-nine strokes as of that point. If Bobby Broom played miracle golf, they might be playing off a tie for second money, but the odds were that if one man could pull out ahead on that hole, he’d have five thousand. I had a 33 to that point, and the best of luck would give me a 36 for the round, a 70 for the afternoon, for a 286 that would be way out of the money. The pressure was off me, but the waves of it, welling out from those three, were so intense that I was all knotted up.

The eighteenth at the Carey Springs Club course was designed to take advantage of a very wry freak of nature. Wry, that is, for the golfing brethren. Par four, four hundred and twenty yards. But the first two hundred of those yards slant to the right. If you’re short and stick on it, you have a terrible lie. If you don’t stick, you roll down into a nice wide shallow stream with a sandy bottom — and frogs.

But if your drive is a good two-fifty to seventy, you are on top of the world, looking down to the big rolling green circled with the yellow traps, the chateau type club house beyond it. If you want to gamble, you try to hit over the knoll, playing it to slice. That’ll carry you down a slope that will add another thirty yards and simplify the problem of pitching to the green.

It was Sam Clyde’s honor, of course. He banged one out onto the knoll, not trying for the roll beyond it. After he drove the club slipped out of his hand and he picked it up in a dazed way. Rick was up next. He swung his arms to loosen his shoulders. His grin in my direction had no humor in it. Steve Corning was standing off to one side. In a leisure-hour game he would have been jangling change in his pocket.

Whiss — crack! Rick’s drive sped out. I could tell that he was trying for the maximum. We watched it. It went over the knoll and, just as it went out of sight, it faded into a hook instead of a slice. Everybody who knew what that meant groaned.

Steve Corning stepped up to bat. He looked more confident. The ball was hit as hard as Rick’s had been, but with the precise amount of slice necessary. The trouble was, it clipped the knoll and took a bad kick off to the left. And I knew that he was just as bad off as Rick was. I had nothing to lose, so I whammed it. It skipped over the knoll, neither slicing nor hooking, and my second shot was in the hands of the fates. We walked up to the knoll. Sam played a nice five iron onto the edge of the green.

My ball was down in the flats, a foot from the edge of the creek.

Rick’s ball and Steve’s were two chummy little white dots, ringed with spectators, sitting almost side by side on dry sand in the middle of the creek. They were both about one-thirty yards from the elusive cup.

Steve Corning was away. Rick would shoot next, then it would be my turn. I noticed for the first time that Rick Lorry’s eyes can look very cold. He studied the sand from a short distance, then motioned the caddy over and pulled out the sand wedge. Steve Corning looked at the club, at Rick, at the distant green. He knew Rick’s reputation as a judge of sand. I could see him lick his lips with indecision. He had to slam his out first, Sam Clyde was up there on the green. Rick Lorry could be kidding him into picking the wrong club, as turnabout for Albuquerque. Or Rick could be right in deciding to play it safe and settle for a probable four and possible five.

Maybe the right and wrong of it was too much in his mind. He snatched his own blaster, squared away and popped it out. But he gathered up too much sand with it and got ten yards where he could have had thirty.

Rick Lorry gave him a long, cold-eyed grin.

“I’d advise you to use your sand wedge, Rick,” Steve said, his mouth twisted with rage.

“Would you now? Pretty city, that Albuquerque.”

Curious spectators moved in to hear the conversation. They drifted over toward me. I went closer to Rick and Steve just in time to hear Steve say, in a sneering way, “That’ll make two of us, Rick, who use those little tricks to win with. Nice to see somebody else getting smart in this racket.”

Rick gave him another long look. He kept the wedge, stepped into the sand and addressed the ball. He played it well off his right foot to decrease the angle of the club head. He swung and picked the ball off the sand without disturbing a grain. The ball fled out, towering higher and higher, descending, bouncing, rolling, stopping six feet from the flag.

I played mine short of the green, not on purpose. Steve slammed his third shot up for a fifteen-foot putt.

Sam Clyde was away. He looked bent and old, crouched over his putter, after I pushed mine up close to the flag. It took a long time for the trembling to stop. The crowd, knowing what was at stake, was patient and silent. The ball came in across the tricky green, apparently headed six feet to one side of the hole. But slowly it came around, coasted around a corner and down into the cup. There was the pock sound as it dropped for his three. Steve Corning was away. Sam Clyde slowly straightened up and for a moment I saw him as he had looked a dozen years before, when hopes were high and Sixty-six was one of the sharpest golfers in the country.

Steve dropped his for a four. He looked like a man who has just bitten into a bad apple. Rick took a long, long time over his six-footer. The ball stopped six inches short of the hole as the crowd groaned. He tapped it in to tie Steve Corning.

We waited around. Bobby Broom came home with a 36. Sam Clyde had won the five grand. The next morning Rick played Steve for second money to break the tie. He won, three and two.

My big shock came when a surplus in the prize fund was doled out. As tenth man in the field of ten, I got a consolation prize of twenty dollars. Betty bought a dress for forty-nine ninety-eight with my prize. Sometimes her finances are hard to figure.

Anyway, before I checked out, I was alone in the room with Rick.

I sat on the bed and said, “Tell me something. That putt yesterday on the eighteenth. If it went down, you had to play off with Sam. He was on his last legs. He would have blown sky-high on a playoff and you know it. And not sinking it gave you a playoff with Steve and a chance to settle an old score. How hard did you try on that putt?”

“Kid, there isn’t any sentiment in this business. You ought to know that.”

“You didn’t answer the question, Rick.”

“Look, why don’t you try a year at this? Hit the southern circuit with us. Bring the wife. The four of us can travel together. Betty and Clara ought to get along good from what you’ve told me of her.”

“Rick, did you try to sink that putt, or didn’t you?”

“Nice courses down there, kid. Miami four ball, Texas open. In November we can take a shot at the Hawaiian Open.”

I gave up trying to get an answer. Maybe next winter he’ll tell me. At Jacksonville. Wonder if Harbert’ll cop that one again.