I distinctly remember the day my life started smother-hooking toward
Hell. It was just another day of gentlemanly golfing competition
among the Chops at Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Links and Deli, known
across the land as America’s worst golf facility. It was our usual
fivesome: Two Down, Hoover, Cementhead, Dannie-the hot-tempered,
hot-blooded little five-handicap who also doubled as my wife-and
me.
“Are those shorts heavily padded?” Dannie asked Cementhead.
“What’s it to you?” Cement said.
“‘Cause I’m about to give you a serious butt-kickin’.”
Across the way, the hyper Leonard “Two Down” Petrovitz-half-man,
half-cappuccino-was locked in mortal combat with me in a game of
$20 one-down automatic press bets. Of course, he couldn’t have been
too worried, since he was beating me like Liza’s ex. I’d given him
half a shot a hole, plus a hundred-yard head start on every hole,
plus one throw a side. And yet, just because he was beating me
didn’t mean he was going to stoop to any gamesmanship.
“I see you changed your putter since last time,” Two Down observed.
“I guess that last one didn’t float so good.”
“Keep it up, Chirpy,” I said. “And you’ll be joining it.”
Ponky was famous around Boston for three things: 1) Being full of
morons who bet way more than they had; 2) Being to golf what
Velveeta was to French culinary schools; 3) Being next door to one
of the great courses in America, the blue-blooded high-hatted
Mayflower Club, whose members were so choosy about who they accepted
they simply stopped letting people in three years ago. The line
around town was, not even the original Pilgrims could get into the
Mayflower now.
Since Ponky and the Mayflower were built in the 1900s, one by Donald
Ross and one by Ronald Ross-a small mistake made by the city
fathers-the two courses had moved in opposite directions from birth
until one became the very symbol of posh blue-blood aristocracy and
the other of fried-egg SPAMwiches. Now, the only thing that
separates the Mayflower and Ponky is a twelve-foot-high redbrick
wall, a whole lot of deb balls, and general good breeding.
The Mayflower was so stuck up it had refused to even host a U.S.
Open or a PGA or a Ryder Cup, despite being begged. Never, that is,
until five years ago, when it agreed to finally lower itself to play
host to the greatest players in the world at the U.S. Open, which
would descend upon it the following summer. Not that they didn’t
have events. They had their lavish “Pilgrimage” every year, and
their “Heritage Hoopla” and their “Member-Member” (never a
member-guest). And whenever they hosted such prestigious events,
they rented Ponky’s course out to park all the Bentleys that
strutted through. For the month after, you’d get tire-track lies in
the middle of the fairways. But what could we do? We were privately
owned by the cheapest man in the world-Froghair.
Froghair got his name for his length off the tee, which was none at
all. He averaged about a buck-eighty. He was straight, though, so we
said he led the tour in FIR (Froghair in Regulation). Froghair would
rent Ponky out to Islamic Hamas if he thought he could get an extra
thirty-seven dollars out of it.
It always delighted us to see those Numerals-you know, your Worth
Havermayer III and your Gray Stoneham the IV-get out of their
cherry cars and take a look around at the eighteen-hole municipal
dump that is Ponky. We loved to watch their faces react in horror at
the course we played every day, the abandoned ’57 Jell-O green Chevy
near the 8th tee, sitting as it did just under the half of a Boston
Globe billboard that jutted out over the tee box. We giggled to see
them hurry away from our battleground practice range, where bad
golfers hailed cut, yellowed practice balls at Nuke, our range boy.
Froghair wouldn’t pay to have the range tractor fixed, so Nuke was
out there, eight hours a day, wearing two twin-size mattresses roped
together and fitted to his skinny body, a lacrosse helmet with face
mask, and a shag bag in each hand. (“Hey,” Froghair always said in
defense, “the kid’s a stoner. He doesn’t even feel it!”) And it gave
us a kick to see Boston’s gentry get an eyeful of the unshaven
community outside the Ponky fences-the pawnshops and strip bars
along our 18th hole bordering Geneva Avenue, the ratty blue-collar
cemetery out our front windows, the spirited youth who populated the
Roosevelt Park Projects off 5 and 13, having their innocent fun with
needles and small-arms fire.
Over the last one hundred years, every inch of this part of
Dorchester had gone from debutante to drugstore whore except the
Mayflower, which just kept building its walls higher and higher
until it couldn’t see out anymore, which is just how they liked it.
But screw them. I wouldn’t have traded one of them for a single
Chop. I loved Ponky. I guess because my dad was a member of the
Mayflower and, until the last three years, I hated my dad the way
mailmen hate Dobermans.
Anyway, on this particular Thursday, it was the usual cast of x-outs
and out-of-round humans who probably should’ve been taken out of
play years before.
One hundred and twenty yards behind us, Hoover, our fifth, was
taking his sweet time hitting his shot, despite playing against
nobody for no bet at all.
“Why don’t he hit the goddamn thing already?” Dannie said,
exasperated. “He’s already pulled a JFK Jr.”
“What’s a JFK Jr.?” asked Cement.
“Three lost in the water.”
“I believe it’s your turn, Hoov!” Dannie yelled, knowing all the
while that there was no such thing as “turns” at a free-for-all
etiquetteless joint like Ponky. It’d be like one hyena saying to
another over a downed zebra, “I believe it’s your turn, Herman!”
But Hoover was back in the fairway, on one knee, holding his latest
gadget-the new GPS-enabled SuperTech Bushnell Laser Range Finder
3000-up to his right eye and making sure the yardage was exactly
176 and not 177 even though Hoover could not hit a green from 17
yards much less 177. He was going to get his yardage all lined up
and then smother-toe it left or hosel it right or cold-top it five
feet. There was a reason we called him Hoover. He sucked.
“What are you, Patton?” Two Down yelled. “Hit the fuckin’ ball!”
Hoover rose and yelled back, “Seven percent of all shots fail due to
lack of precise yardage! That was in this month’s Scientific Golf
America!” Then he stepped up and chunked it about twenty yards, or
about two yards short of his divot.
“And 93 percent of all shots fail ’cause Hoover sucks like Linda
Lovelace,” Dannie said to nobody in particular.
So here we were on the 17th, with me down three, down two, and down
one to Two Down and needing this hole to have any chance of saving
the Claudette Coldbeer fund.
Still, Two Down was lying four. I was lying two right in front of
the green. He was taking a long look at his difficult sand shot-all
sand shots at Ponky are difficult on account of there being no sand
in Ponky’s bunkers-when he announced, “I haven’t had my throw yet,
right?”
I was hoping he’d forgotten.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I grumbled. “You get one throw a side.”
And Two Down got out of the bunker, walked over to my ball, picked
it up, and threw it over the twelve-foot-high hedge into the
Mayflower Country Club. Then he returned to his shot without
comment.
One really needs to think out all bets with Two Down in advance.
As we came to the picturesque 18th hole at Ponky-with its
unforgettable view of Manelli’s Dry Cleaners on the left-I was down
two hundred dollars all day to Two Down. I needed something big on
the last hole to bail me out.
“Two, I need a get-even.”
Two looked at me and said, quite firmly, “Okay, you know what? No.”
“But you haven’t even heard it yet,” I said.
“Unless the get-even is you chew off your left hand before you play
this last hole, I don’t want any part of it.”
“No, it’s better than that. I’m offering you a simple wager.”
If there is one thing a true Chop will not turn down, it’s the offer
of a simple wager. A true Chop will bet on all things at all times.
Would that guy eat his ear of corn like a typewriter or in a wheel
around it? What odds will you give me that I can’t chip one onto the
clubhouse roof, run around to the other side, and catch it my mouth?
(Odds were set at twelve-to-one against.) One time, on a rainy day,
Two Down and Dom bet ten bucks on who would swing first on Jerry
Springer: the blimp who was about to find out her daughter was
screwing her son or the two-toothed dad who was finding out his
hunting buddy was in love with him.
Offering Two Down a simple wager was like offering a wolf a pork
chop. Half the reason he came to Ponky from his brief exile in
Chicago was that nobody would play golf with as many bets on the
line as we did. They’d just play the standard two-dollar Nassaus. No
comp presses, no indies, no greenies, sandies, barkies, or even
barfies, in which if the player can finger-barf on command, he can
play the shot over. So that’s why he came back to us. That, and the
fact that his wife divorced his ass.
And so I cast out my bait: “I’m a little longer than you off the
tee, am I right?”
“Does Michael Jackson subscribe to Boys’ Life?” he said.
“Exactly. I’d say I’m about fifty to seventy-five yards longer than
you, on average, with the driver, yes?”
“Yeah, and you’re about two hundred dollars down to me, too, Mr.
Two-Time Massachusetts Junior Amateur Runner-Up. So shut the fuck up
and hit.”
“Right. Well, here’s the bet. I tend to swing only 75 percent with
my driver. I think I can be three highway exits past you if I wanted
to. In fact, I’ll bet you two hundred dollars that you can’t knock
it past my drive from this tee box in two shots. Frankly, I think
you’ll choke like Mama Cass.”
This got Two Down’s famous ADD eyebrows to itching. Two hundred
dollars was a lot for a guy who was working as the clubhouse
assistant at America’s only all-women’s golf club, Boston National
Ladies Golf. Come to think of it, two hundred dollars was a lot for
me, a guy who wrote greeting cards at twenty-five dollars a pop.
“Two shots?”
“Two shots,” I said.
“Who goes first?”
“Well, it’s your honor. We stand on tradition here at Ponky,
naturally.”
“Naturally,” he said. “Two shots?”
“Two.”
“You’re going to hit your ball and I’m going to hit my ball and
neither of us gets to hit the other guy’s ball, right?”
“Right.”
Cementhead was starting to get annoyed. “Damn, you guys. People have
circumcised the globe faster than this.”
We both looked at him.
“Circumnavigated the globe,” I said.
“You sure?” he said.
“I’m sure.”
Two Down was back in my face. “Golf ball, not any other kind of
ball? Not nads, right? Today? Here at Ponky? Right now?”
“Precisely.”
“And if I can get past your single shot in my two shots you’ll pay
me two hundred dollars, U.S. legal tender, stacking zops, today,
back in the clubhouse, right?”
“Right.”
“Bank,” he said.
This set off much whooping and taunting and side-betting among the
other three members of the fivesome, as is custom. And then Two Down
stepped his wiry little Polish ass up to the tee and put his usual
unfilmable quickslash on his ball, which produced his usual
190-yard-long, two-feet-high bunny-raping line drive that could go
under a 1977 Datsun. “I see you’ve gone to a higher-lofted driver,”
I observed, stepping up for my shot.
“Blow me,” he said.
I teed my ball up nice and high and began to waggle my driver. I
waggled and exhaled and waggled some more. Then I stepped away,
pretending to reassess my shot. Then I went around to the other side
of the ball and began waggling the club again, only in the complete
wrong direction.
“Ray, hole’s the other way,” Cementhead said.
I said nothing. I just drew it back and slapped the dimples off it,
about three hundred yards back up and over the T-tracks, over the
group putting out on 17, over the fourteen-foot-high hedge
separating us from Mayflower and God knows where from there, perhaps
into the matching Louis Vuitton purse of Mrs. Carter Annuity III,
playing in the Ladies C-Team Nine-Hole Golf and Tea-Cozy Group
approximately 490 yards from Two Down’s ball.
I looked at him. He was struck mute. The blood abandoned his face.
He looked like a man who’d just been stabbed in the foot with an
icepick. Dannie was laughing so hard she was bent over the
ball-washer, crying. Hoover was smiling. Cementhead was befuddled.
“Damn, Ray, how’s he’s gonna catch up to that in only one more
shot?” he said.
Two Down turned and stomped off down 18. Dannie was now down on her
knees. Cementhead was scratching his thick skull. “Wait, explain
something to me.”
“Okay, Cement,” I said, walking with my arm around his shoulder down
18. “Shall we start with the alphabet?”
As we putted out on 18, we got the usual snide comments from The
Voice. Nobody knew the guy. Nobody knew his name. He was supposed to
just announce over the PA who was up next-“Crumpacker, eight
minutes” and the like-but he could never help adding his little
chippy remarks. For instance: “Mr. Finster, you’re up in sixteen
minutes. Oh, and Mr. Finster? Woodrow Wilson called. He wants his
pants back.” He was pretty funny, The Voice, until he noticed you.
“The group coming down 18?” he announced to us then. “Bad news:
There’s a job fair coming to town. You can hide at my house.”
But the bad news was worse than that and it was very real. It came
the next day. I knew it as soon as I saw Blind Bob’s face. He was
regripping his ball retriever.
“You should sit down.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Sit.”
I sat.
“Froghair’s selling.”
I started to feel a little lightheaded.
“Selling?”
“Yeah. It sucks huge, doesn’t it? He’s getting out. He’s selling the
course and moving to Florida. Joining a nudist colony.”
“Selling Ponky?”
“Yeah, Stick. Selling Ponky. Selling P-O-N-K-Y.”
I was trying to catch my breath. I guess I completely passed over
the disturbing idea of Froghair nude and went to the truly
paralyzing news. Ponky was my happy place-five bets riding on every
shot, cold ninety-five-cent beer anytime you wanted, and hilarious
guys who didn’t want to tell you how their Google stock is doing
every fucking day. I was happy at Ponky.
“To who?” I managed.
“He doesn’t care. Probably won’t get much for it. Who wants land
that was a fill once? Maybe some cheap-ass developers. Maybe the
Mayflower would want it. Pave it over so people have a nice place to
park when they hold the U.S. Open next summer. Real nice for us.”
I was starting to feel a little queasy.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Shanks for Nothing
by Rick Reilly
Copyright © 2006 by Rick Reilly .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Doubleday
Copyright © 2006
Rick Reilly
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-385-50111-0
