Miracle at Augusta

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looser, and funkier than any that we’ve experienced so far.
    “We at Shoal Creek or Soul Creek?” asks Earl with a smile.
    “Come on, Travis,” says a mellifluous southern voice I recognize as Owl’s. “You got to bring it, too.”
    Hearing my name called out elicits a quizzical look from Earl. “Travis, you got family down here?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    This is Earl’s first time going off in the final group on Sunday, let alone with Morgan and Irwin, and the southern hospitality is just what he needs. He comes out of the gate striping the ball with his characteristic precision and gets right back on the par train he’s been riding since dawn. Unfortunately, conditions have been steadily improving since then, and by the time we approach the green of the par-five 3rd, a chilly, blustery morning has blossomed into a gorgeous Alabama afternoon without a trace of wind. The perfect weather and receptive greens are not a propitious combination, at least not for Earl, because it means that par isn’t going to get it done after all, and as if to emphasize the point, Irwin rolls in a twenty-six-footer for birdie and Morgan rolls his twenty-two-footer on top of it, cutting Earl’s precious lead to one.
    If Earl’s going to get his name engraved in silver, he’s going to have to go low too, and as I learned from Earl in Sarasota and Louie in Winnetka, it’s not easy teaching a middle-aged dog new tricks. On 5, Earl has an eminently makeable eighteen-footer of his own for birdie, and after referring to my crib sheet, I pass on this wisdom from Owl: two inches right and firm. Earl starts it on line but comes up half a foot short, as usual, and on the next four holes he leaves three more birdie putts in the jaws. When we walk off 9, Earl’s lead is gone with the wind (and the cold and the rain) and the Birmingham chapter of Earl’s Platoon is as frustrated as his caddy.
    Not that Earl lets it affect his ball-striking. He opens the back nine with two more solidly struck shots to give himself yet another legitimate birdie chance. This one is from nineteen feet, not that it really matters, and as Earl looks it over, I return to Owl’s notes and diagrams, sickened at the thought of all this proprietary reconnaissance coming to naught.
    “Looks like an inch and a half off the right to me,” says Earl. “What do you think?”
    “I know exactly what it is. But why bother reading ’em if you’re not going to get the ball to the goddamned hole?”
    Amazed, Earl stares at me hard, and I meet him halfway. “Right edge,” I say, and slap the Bridgestone in his palm.
    “Jesus Christ,” he says. “One forty-five-second fight and you’re a certified motherfucker.” Then he bangs the nineteen-footer into the back of the cup.
    “You’re welcome,” I say.

30
    WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE rarest of phenomena—an Earl Fielder birdie binge.
    Earl follows up his birdie on 10 with three more on 11, 12, and 14. With that last ten-footer, he snatches back the lead at five under, one better than Morgan and two up on Irwin, and the ruckus raised by Earl’s Platoon echoes off Double Oak Mountain.
    Now it’s just a matter of coaxing Earl back to the sprawling antebellum clubhouse, and using my proprietary database of local knowledge, I walk him through three stress-free two-putts. On 15, I get him to play a twenty-two-footer like it’s thirty. On 16, I add two inches of break, and on 17, I pass along Owl’s instruction to ignore what he sees and hit it straight.
    As a result, Earl steps up to the 18th hole with both his lead and his nerves intact, and as he has all day, he pipes another drive straight up Broadway. I walk off the yardage to the nearest sprinkler head and do the math, then do it two more times just to be sure. As I told Owl, math was never my strong point. Three times I get the same numbers—158 yards to the middle, 143 to the hole, but with water in front, I’m only thinking about that second number, the one to

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