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I sneak a look at him as he eyes my Wilson clubs. For a moment he seems unsure what to do and then he starts to delicately wipe off one of the clubs while keeping the club at a decent distance from his chest. I recognize the cleaning movement—sort of how you clean your shoes when you stepped in dog poop.
I shank two more shots into the distance before me. Then, the clock tolls, Harry returns my clubs to the Wilson bag, and says, "OK, guys, we're up next. Remember, we've got to keep the pace going."
With that we're off on a professional course with our own caddy.
1. Hole One: If you've never played golf with a caddy before, it's incredibly nerve-wracking. Of course I get nervous playing golf with people I don't know so this is doubly terrifying for me.
I'm teeing off first. It's a par four. Harry points into the distance and tells me where I need to aim. The hole doglegs a bit to the right but from the tee-box we can see the foursome in front of us approaching the green. I take the power chamber driver and take a practice swing. I set my ball on the tee and take another practice swing. My legs are shaking and I'm taking deep breaths trying to calm myself. I address the ball, take a deep back swing -- picture the ball splitting the fairway.
Then I swing. I crush the ball. There's a resounding bang. My ball has slammed into a pine tree trunk on the far left of the hole. For a moment no one says anything. Then Harry breaks the silence and utters the first comment on any of my shots on the round. "I think that ball's underneath the palmetto bush," he says.
It's under the palmetto bush. A dead yank left from the tee box. After everyone else has hit great drives, we ride in the golf cart to the palmetto bush. My ball, and this is the complete truth, is sitting in the dead center underneath the palmetto bush. It's a completely unplayable lie and almost unreachable. I climb down on my stomach and punch the ball out with the end of one of my clubs as if I'm striking the cue ball to begin a game of pool. Then I pitch back out into the fairway.
"That's a penalty stroke, I guess."
"You think?" asks Harry.
From the fairway I'm about 80 yards from the pin, a nice pitching wedge to the hole. Except I land in the bunker 20 yards to my left. The ball is also almost behind me. The shot I've just shanked is a difficult angle that almost defies the law of physics -- one that most professionals would have trouble pulling off. I'm on my fourth shot now (5th overall) and everyone else is already on the elevated green looking back down at me. From the bunker I take a swing and catch mostly sand, yep, I'm still in the bunker. "Double bunker," Tardio calls, shaking his head from the first green. Eventually I take an 8, the rare quadruple bogey. Tardio makes par. Our playing partner, Craig, the Purina V.P., makes a birdie. This is going to be a very long round.
2. "Why didn't you use your sand wedge?" Tardio asks as we drive to the second hole.
"Because my clubs didn't come with a sand wedge," I say.
"Makes sense," Tardio says.
While I wait for my turn to tee off at the par 5 second hole, (it occurs to me I may never have honors again) I convince myself that things can't get worse on this round. Of course I'm wrong. But on this hole I hit a nice drive and then I hit a superb five-wood, about as well as I can possibly strike the ball, just short of the green. "Perfect," says Harry. I beam. I'm laying two and have a short chip to be on the green in 3. My chip is executed with less than perfection and I eventually leave a par putt short. "Your skirt blew up on that one," Harry says.
3. After a bogey we're on to the 152-yard par 3 third. My tee shot doesn't get much more than about 6 feet off the ground. "Nice loft," Tardio says. But the shot comes to rest just short of the green. After a decent pitch I barely miss the par putt. "Now that's a good putt," says Harry. I'm on golfing fire. Just to prove this point, I blow on top of the power chambers to cool them off. Tardio rolls his eyes.
4. At some point in my golfing life, after every nice golf shot, I started to remark that I was, "Dialed the F(expletive) in." As you can imagine I'm quite reserved on the golf course. I take out the power chamber driver and hit a perfect drive. Then I utter my exclamation. Only I use the letter instead of the expletive. After all, we're in classy company. Hence, "DTFI," I say.
Tardio pretends he doesn't hear me.
With my second shot, a five wood, I land on the green and then carry off the back.
At this point Craig, the Purina V.P. comes undone; he's laid up his second shot just short of a small water hazard in front of the green. On three consecutive shots he mishits the ball and it lands in the water. Tardio and I are both uncomfortable. Up until this point Craig has seemed like the kind of golfer who might break a club over his knee and stab both of us in the eyes if he makes an error and we say anything at all.
But he laughs at himself. We breathe easier. So easy in fact that I hit a nice chip back onto the green and make a par. Harry gives me a fist bump. My debut on the PGA Tour appears imminent.
5. Perhaps carried away by my performance on the fourth hole I overswing and yank the next drive into a sand trap on five. The sand trap is way left. Almost impossibly left. The kind of sand trap where, when you stand in the tee-box, you think, "Why in the world would they even put a sand trap there?"
