Read Online Fast Greens by Turk Pipkin - Free Book Online Page B

land.”
    â€œ Our land.”
    â€œMy father’s buried there! What the hell are you worried about, anyway? You’re one hole up and you got nothing to lose.”
    â€œForget it; let’s play.”
    Roscoe pulled a club from his bag and we looked down the third fairway. The mower was gone.
    *   *   *
    Easier on the eye than it is to play, the third hole at Pedernales Golf Club is a classic example of the strategic design theory of golf course architecture. The strategic theory, the wolfsbane of the casual golfer, was developed and refined by a long line of masochistic architects who were obsessed with their mamas and hated their papas. In order to punish the latter, they built golf courses which guaranteed that a golf shot lacking proper planning, let alone near perfect execution, would end up in a place from which the hole looked like a flickering star as seen through the windblown branches of a bare tree. On a strategic course the duffer has to go around the trouble and thus ends up playing a much longer layout than the pro. Sounds fair enough—if you’re the pro.
    What it meant here was that this short dogleg hole had a large pond yawning across the left corner of the fairway. The front side of the water was only about two hundred and twenty yards from the tee; the far side about two-fifty. Strategic intelligence tells the few who have it that they’re not likely to fly the ball two and a half football fields. So the prudent course is to lay up short with a shot that lands high on the right side of the fairway and rolls down the slope to the bank of the pond. Any shot foolishly landing in the middle of the fairway might as well be bouncing off the end of a diving board because it’s just as certain to get wet. On the other hand, a bold long knocker who successfully navigates his tee shot to the far side is faced with an easy wedge instead of a long iron to the bunkered green.
    Beast, I figured, was considering all these pros and cons as he stared long and hard down the third fairway and scratched loudly at the stubble on his chin.
    â€œHave a shot somebody,” interjected March. “But don’t hit the ducks on the pond.”
    â€œI don’t see no friggin’ ducks and neither do you,” said Beast flatly.
    â€œRight you are, Mr. Larsen,” answered March. “I don’t see ’em. I smell ’em.”
    â€œBullshit!” mumbled Beast, testing the wind with a lofted pinch of grass. “Roscoe, you hit first, and don’t whiff it!”
    Some people shed life’s capricious insults and embarrassing moments like a duck sheds water, while others are forever burdened by the heavy wet feathers of these past vagaries. Because Roscoe’s mightiest blows had once been spurned by a lowly Scottish golf ball, he had taken great pains to learn to hit the ball properly. And a perfectly placed shot from the third tee at Pedernales finally proved that he could still do it.
    With Roscoe’s ball as insurance, Beast was free to go for the other side of the pond. Standing to one side, I could sense Beast’s toes gripping the ground through his leather Foot-Joys. I could see the veins bulging in his forehead; each muscle and tendon tightened toward one object: power. It occurred to me then that I was caddying for the biggest, meanest, ugliest golfer that ever came out of Texas. When he swung I was sure that the clubhead had broken the sound barrier, but that mini-sonic boom we all heard was just the sound of wood on ball, a scorching blast that soared in screaming flight. Turning slightly to the left as if it had eyes, the ball landed safely on the other side of the pond, and bounded up the hill toward the green. From where the ball stopped Beast could probably toss it into the hole for an eagle.
    Around the tee there was the smell of burning air, as if the devil himself had grabbed a driver and tried to knock his ball into a hole