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Authors: James Patterson
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feeling it, too. On the range early, just after dawn, he hits a couple of balls off-center.
For those who didn’t complete yesterday’s round, there’s a shotgun start at 8:16 a.m., and shortly before that our threesome is ferried out to the dew-covered 12th green, where the previous afternoon, Earl marked his ball in the rain. The 460-yard 12th is a brute of a par 4, and reaching the green in regulation was no mean feat. Still, there’s a lot of work to be done. If you placed the ball by hand, you couldn’t come up with a longer or more difficult putt on this green.
Earl’s marker sits on the right edge, and the hole is cut on the far left. In between is a seventy-five-foot travelogue that features two knolls and a steep drop. The first half of the putt is uphill and slow and the second half is the opposite, with a dozen feet of break from right to left. After a couple of minutes to digest it, Earl shakes his head and says, “It’s like putting over a camel…that’s drinking water.”
While Earl walks the width of the green and surveys the putt from both sides, I refer to my notes from last night’s cram session at the caddy shack. Before Owl focused on the pin placements for the third round, he spent a good ten minutes breaking down this first crucial, tone-setting putt, and since I could tell him where Earl had marked his ball, he could be extremely specific. He even made a little sketch:
“The first key,” I say, “is hitting it firm enough to get it to the top of the second knoll.” I make a point of avoiding the word hump. “The second is getting it right enough to account for the break. Because of the rain, the first half of the putt is even slower than it seems. You need to hit it twenty percent harder than it looks. The second half of the putt will be hardly affected by the rain. The back half of the green always drains a lot better than the front.”
I walk to the apex of the putt and point to a spot on the right side of the second knoll. “This is our target. If you can get the ball to die here, the slope will do the rest.”
For a second Earl appraises me as coolly as the putt. Although he doesn’t say a word, I know what he’s thinking:
When the fuck did you become an authority on the drainage of the 12th green at Shoal Creek?
On the practice green, I had Earl hit a dozen putts of similar length, but there was no way to prepare him for these contours or the pressure of having to deal with them on his first stroke of the day, and when he replaces the marker with the ball and squats behind it, I can see he’s still struggling to believe in both himself and me.
“Earl, I did my homework. The line is perfect. You got to trust it.” Earl makes three long practice strokes, takes one last peek at his distant target, and gives it a roll. The hit is solid and the ball easily crests the first knoll, slows as it climbs the second, and settles at the top, exactly what I asked for, except that the ball has come to a complete halt. For the next couple of seconds it doesn’t budge. It just sits there like Louie refusing to take a walk, and it’s not clear if it’s going to stay put or roll back to Earl’s feet. Instead, it makes a quarter turn forward and then, after a second pause, another, until once again it is on its merry way.
When it stops for the third time, it’s three inches from the hole.
“Hell of a putt, Earl.”
“No, Travis, it was a hell of a read.”
Compared to that, the next six holes are a piece of cake. Earl pars them all, and his 71 keeps him perched at the top of the leaderboard, two up on the only other golfers who managed to shoot par in the second round. Hale Irwin and Gil Morgan, who else?
29
“LET’S GO, EARL.”
“Come on, baby.”
“Time to go to work, big fellah.”
Earl attracts some of the most boisterous galleries out here, particularly since he laced up his Reeboks and went back to Vietnam. Nevertheless, this crowd is louder, warmer,
For those who didn’t complete yesterday’s round, there’s a shotgun start at 8:16 a.m., and shortly before that our threesome is ferried out to the dew-covered 12th green, where the previous afternoon, Earl marked his ball in the rain. The 460-yard 12th is a brute of a par 4, and reaching the green in regulation was no mean feat. Still, there’s a lot of work to be done. If you placed the ball by hand, you couldn’t come up with a longer or more difficult putt on this green.
Earl’s marker sits on the right edge, and the hole is cut on the far left. In between is a seventy-five-foot travelogue that features two knolls and a steep drop. The first half of the putt is uphill and slow and the second half is the opposite, with a dozen feet of break from right to left. After a couple of minutes to digest it, Earl shakes his head and says, “It’s like putting over a camel…that’s drinking water.”
While Earl walks the width of the green and surveys the putt from both sides, I refer to my notes from last night’s cram session at the caddy shack. Before Owl focused on the pin placements for the third round, he spent a good ten minutes breaking down this first crucial, tone-setting putt, and since I could tell him where Earl had marked his ball, he could be extremely specific. He even made a little sketch:
“The first key,” I say, “is hitting it firm enough to get it to the top of the second knoll.” I make a point of avoiding the word hump. “The second is getting it right enough to account for the break. Because of the rain, the first half of the putt is even slower than it seems. You need to hit it twenty percent harder than it looks. The second half of the putt will be hardly affected by the rain. The back half of the green always drains a lot better than the front.”
I walk to the apex of the putt and point to a spot on the right side of the second knoll. “This is our target. If you can get the ball to die here, the slope will do the rest.”
For a second Earl appraises me as coolly as the putt. Although he doesn’t say a word, I know what he’s thinking:
When the fuck did you become an authority on the drainage of the 12th green at Shoal Creek?
On the practice green, I had Earl hit a dozen putts of similar length, but there was no way to prepare him for these contours or the pressure of having to deal with them on his first stroke of the day, and when he replaces the marker with the ball and squats behind it, I can see he’s still struggling to believe in both himself and me.
“Earl, I did my homework. The line is perfect. You got to trust it.” Earl makes three long practice strokes, takes one last peek at his distant target, and gives it a roll. The hit is solid and the ball easily crests the first knoll, slows as it climbs the second, and settles at the top, exactly what I asked for, except that the ball has come to a complete halt. For the next couple of seconds it doesn’t budge. It just sits there like Louie refusing to take a walk, and it’s not clear if it’s going to stay put or roll back to Earl’s feet. Instead, it makes a quarter turn forward and then, after a second pause, another, until once again it is on its merry way.
When it stops for the third time, it’s three inches from the hole.
“Hell of a putt, Earl.”
“No, Travis, it was a hell of a read.”
Compared to that, the next six holes are a piece of cake. Earl pars them all, and his 71 keeps him perched at the top of the leaderboard, two up on the only other golfers who managed to shoot par in the second round. Hale Irwin and Gil Morgan, who else?
29
“LET’S GO, EARL.”
“Come on, baby.”
“Time to go to work, big fellah.”
Earl attracts some of the most boisterous galleries out here, particularly since he laced up his Reeboks and went back to Vietnam. Nevertheless, this crowd is louder, warmer,
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