I appreciate that only Jack Nicklaus has earned the right to lift his putter when the ball is four feet from the hole, but I’ve never hit a better lag in my life. Ever. My only mistake was being too close on the line. Ten inches left or right, I’d have a kick-in par, but because I missed by a fraction, I’ve got ten feet.
Even worse, I’ve given Peters hope. Now he doesn’t have to make. Despite his dunking his tee ball, two putts will likely extend the play-off, and one could end it. Since I’ve given him such a good read, he steps up and lets it roll while the line is still fresh in his mind. By this point, I’m too exhausted and traumatized to risk another hernia. I just turn away and glance at Johnny A…until the crowd explodes.
I’ve got to give Johnny credit. He doesn’t bat an eye. “You already hit one good putt,” he says. “We need one more.”
He’s right as usual, old Johnny, and it’s shorter than the one I just made on 18. But that feels like a year ago, and I’m not the same golfer as the one who sank that putt. I wouldn’t recognize that guy if I were sitting next to him. I tell myself not to hit the putt until I’m ready, but that could take a week and I doubt the networks would go for that. When I can’t put it off any longer, I step up to the ball and give it a roll. It’s not even close. Peters, that son of a bitch, is going to be living in my head for the rest of my life.
But wait. It’s not over. First I have to watch two beautiful beige-skinned Hawaiian girls in grass skirts prance onto the green, kiss Peters on each jowl, and anoint him with red leis. As I’m enjoying this lovely native ceremony, Dave Marr, the on-course reporter, comes up from behind me, lays a consoling hand on my shoulder, and asks me to tell the viewers “how I feel.”
“Like puking,” I say. “And please take your hand off my shoulder.”
13
FOUR HOURS AFTER PETERS hoists his crystal pineapple, Earl and I are lifting filthy shot glasses at the horseshoe bar of the Ding Dong Lounge, a gritty dive on the border of Honolulu’s red-light district.
“This place is even better than I remembered,” says Earl.
“That’s the beauty of dives,” I say, “they improve with age.”
“Just like you and me, my friend.”
We toss back our shots and chase them with cold beer.
“To the Ding Dong,” says Earl.
“Long live the Ding Dong.”
“Fuck. I’m amazed it lived this long.”
After Earl heard what happened in sudden death, he felt duty bound to get me hammered as quickly as possible, and after five shots of Jameson and four cans of Primo, which I’m told is the Pabst Blue Ribbon of Hawaii, we’re making solid progress. And since neither one of us sees any benefit in being photographed stumbling onto the curb at closing time, he thought we’d be better off in an obscure hole-in-the-wall than one of the glittering tourist traps near the hotel. Then he remembered the Ding Dong Lounge, first visited almost thirty years ago on an R&R trip during his second tour in Vietnam.
Despite my gloom, the Ding Dong had me from aloha. From the gentle, murky light to the pleasantly dank aroma to the scarred wood surface of the horseshoe bar, everything about it is imperfectly perfect. Halfway through my fourth Primo, even the name starts to grow on me.
“I know it was a sad occasion,” says Earl, “but it was great to spend a little time with Sarah and the kids. You’re one lucky motherfucker. And not just for being born white.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” I say with a straight face.
“Oh, really?”
“Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. It’s science, really. But speaking of luck, I’ve got to say, I didn’t feel so goddamned fortunate four hours ago when that putt caught the lip on eleven and…”
Earl puts down his Primo and points an admonishing finger. According to the ground rules for this excursion, clearly laid out on our walk from the hotel, any reference to “ancient history,” as in what happened on the golf course this afternoon, is strictly off-limits. “The goal,” he said, “is not to understand it, which would be impossible anyway, since it’s golf, or even to learn from it, but to forget it, or at least dilute it.”
“You’re right,” I say, getting back on script. “I’m a very lucky Caucasian. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. Although I’m not sure Sarah feels the same way.”
“How could she, under the circumstances? But let’s take your kids. You know how many turn out to be assholes? A lot. Yours are smart, decent, and fairly good-looking.”
“Thanks, Earl.”
Earl reaches for his Primo, and in midsip, his eyes go slack, like he just saw the ghost of an old army pal who didn’t make it home.
“You okay?”
“Not really,” he says and, with the same blank expression, mumbles more to himself than me, “Motherfucker…of all the joints, in all the towns, in the whole motherfucking world, this motherfucker walks into mine.”
When I swivel in the direction of Earl’s empty gaze, I see that three large, beefy men have joined us at the bar, and that the one in the middle is wearing a red lei.
“Hey, Travis,” says Peters. “Hey, Earl.”
Although his greeting could not be more innocuous, it causes his two friends to double over with laughter. All three are at least as intoxicated as me and Earl. Why shouldn’t they be? They have something to celebrate.
“Hi, Hank,” responds Earl for both of us.
“Travis,” says Peters, “I got to say something. For the record. What happened on eleven was the worst piece of luck I’ve ever seen.” And when I don’t respond, he adds, “No shit.”
“I know, Hank. I was there. Remember?”
“We’re grown men here, give or take. We’ve seen lipouts and power lipouts. But this was another level. A tsunami to a hurricane. Your ball came out the other side like Dale Earnhardt coming out of the five turn at Daytona.”
Peters, to my surprise, has a gift for simile.
“It was like one of those putting machines some asshole executive has in his office where the ball goes up a little ramp and when he makes it, there’s a bit of a pause before the thing spits it out. Then the ball rolls down the little ramp back to his loafers, the kind with little tassels on them. And then his hot secretary sticks her head in the door and goes, ‘I got Chandler on the horn. What should I tell him?’ ‘Tell him what you always tell him, doll face—I’m busy.’ You know the kind?”
“Yeah, Hank, I think I do.”
“Why am I telling you? You were in advertising. You probably had one.”
In the last couple of minutes, his friends have managed to regain their composure, but now beer comes flying out of their mouths and they slap the bar.
“Could we talk about something else? Believe it or not, I’m actually trying to forget it. As a matter of fact, that’s why we’re here.”
“I mean, what the fuck was in that hole, Travis? A snake? A frog? And one other thing, what was your putter doing in the air?”
I still hear their laughter, but now it seems far away, as if reaching me from a distant room, because at this point I’m out of my chair and flying through the air toward the red lei and his giant jug head. Even in midair, I’m aware of having crossed a line from which there is no graceful retreat. As soon as I reach Peters, I have no choice but to start punching, and Peters has no choice but to punch back.
14
THE SPORTS BAR BETWEEN Gates 7 and 8 in the American Airlines section of the Honolulu International Airport is no Ding Dong Lounge. There’s the antiseptic airport smell and the barrage of highlights and scores blaring from overhead TVs—does a twenty-seat bar really need four televisions?—but my biggest issue is with the light. There’s so much glare bouncing off the tarmac, I’d need sunglasses even if I didn’t have a black eye.
A respite from the noise induces me to glance upward. ESPN has gone to a commercial and there’s Earl, three miles outside of Hanoi, walking in his new Reeboks, over terrain he used to hump in combat boots. Now he’s talk
ing to some elders in a village, sharing photographs of himself as a young soldier, and now he’s standing beside some rice paddies doing a clinic for the kids as a water buffalo looks on. I hope it doesn’t end up as a pair of golf shoes.
When SportsCenter resumes, I take a sip of my Bloody Mary and assess the damage. In addition to my shut right eye, which is more purple than black, all the ribs on my left side are sore, and one may be cracked, because when I raise my left hand to push my Ray-Bans back on my nose, there’s a piercing pain. That must be why I’m drinking with my right. In addition, my head hurts in a way that can’t be explained entirely by a hangover.
Nevertheless, I don’t feel bad. On the contrary. Sixteen hours after the fact, the thrill of having survived and almost held my own in a brawl with camo-wearing, tobacco-juice-spitting Hank Peters hasn’t worn off, and my niggling list of injuries seems a small price to pay for glory. As I’m nursing my drink and my memories, the bartender, a brunette in her late twenties, pauses in front of me.
“Want to see something hilarious?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“Then check out these two clowns.”
I peer up gingerly (my neck) and see a man who looks a lot like me flying at a man with a lei around his neck. Then the two flail at each other in a highly undignified manner. When they cut back to the anchor, there’s a reference to a security camera at a Honolulu bar.
“How often have they been showing this?”
“A lot. Apparently, they’re both professional golfers…on the Senior Tour.”
I’m resisting the urge to ask her which of these two clowns, in her estimation, won the fight, when a call comes in on my cell from Ponte Vedra, Florida.
“Is this Travis McKinley?”
“Yes.”
“This is Tim Finchem.” The commissioner of the PGA tour. “I need to see you in my office tomorrow afternoon.”
15
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, PETERS and I are side by side again. Instead of being perched on bar stools, our butts are nearly scraping the broadloom in a pair of low-slung leather chairs. The chairs are facing PGA Commissioner Timothy W. Finchem, who looks down at us, in every sense, from behind his brilliantly polished mahogany desk. Despite the quality of Finchem’s furniture, suit, and haircut, the scene reeks of high school, specifically that doomsday moment when you’re summoned to the principal’s office.
For a couple of minutes, Finchem lets us twist in the over-air-conditioned breeze. As we endure the silent treatment, I notice that Peters is as banged up as me, with a badly swollen lower lip and a shiner of his own. I’m struck by how young Finchem looks. On paper, Peters and I may only have him by about five years, but he has spent a lot less time in the sun and a lot more in the gym, and it shows.
Then again, we work for a living. Kind of.
I’m also puzzled by the three black plastic cassettes on his desk. Presumably they contain the surveillance footage ESPN has been wearing out on SportsCenter, but why three? Has Finchem made duplicates so we can each take one home and study it before we write our essays on how we will never get caught fighting on camera in a dive bar again?
Finchem takes the top one off the stack and feeds it into the VCR, which along with a monitor has been wheeled into his office. By now I’ve seen the footage half a dozen times, but it doesn’t get any easier. This version, which picks up the action about a minute sooner, is even more damning than the one they’ve been airing. A camera mounted on the far wall shows Earl and me bent over our drinks as Peters and his friends take the empty spots beside us, then captures our awkward surprise as we discover we’re sitting next to each other. Finchem winces at the monitor, as if the seedy interior of the Ding Dong is desecrating his immaculate office, and seems baffled that anyone, let alone three members of the Senior Tour, would choose to be there.
For the next thirty seconds or so, the tape shows Peters attempting to engage me in conversation. While Peters’s posture is upright, expansive, and friendly, I look down at the surface of the bar. Then, without any apparent provocation, I spring from my stool and attack him.
“This is from last night,” says Finchem as he ejects and replaces the tape.
The screen fills with color bars, which give way to a stage on which Jay Leno is in the midst of his Tonight Show monologue.
“I guess you’ve all heard about those two palookas McKinley and Peters? Did you know HBO’s doing a rematch—McKinley and Peters II? It’s going to be on pay-per-view for nineteen ninety-five. Sounded pricey to me, too. Then I realized they’re going to pay us to watch.”
As Peters mimes a burlesque drummer providing a rimshot, Finchem switches cassettes again, so we can see what Letterman can do with the same material.
“You know where this fight took place?” asks Letterman, fingering a button on his double-breasted blazer. “A very classy watering hole by the name of the Ding Dong Lounge. I’m not making that up,” he says, then slowly repeats the name with exaggerated clarity—“the…Ding…Dong…Lounge. I know what you’re thinking—what kind of person goes to a place called the Ding Dong Lounge? Well, now we know the answer: ding-dongs. The Ding Dong Lounge is a place where ding-dongs feel welcome and at home.” As the CBS Orchestra plays the theme from Cheers, Finchem hits Eject and the audio-video presentation is over.
“Commissioner,” says Peters, “I have nothing to say about these last two tapes, except that they remind me how much I miss Carson. As for the first, it couldn’t be more misleading. Based on that tape, you, or anyone else, would think Travis started this. In fact, this fight was instigated entirely by me and my big mouth. Without sound, you can’t hear me taunting Travis repeatedly about what happened a few hours before in sudden death.
“Commissioner, I didn’t say one or two things. I said about five, all unnecessary, all uncalled-for, and at least one came after he politely asked me to stop. Under the circumstances, I think Travis showed a lot of restraint.”
“You call that restraint?”
“That’s what I said, Commissioner. Restraint.”
“Hank, I appreciate you standing up for your fellow competitor, but the video shows what it shows. You two have embarrassed the tour and tarnished our brand. You think the banks and investment advisors who sponsor our events want to see two of our most popular players brawling in a dive? Hank, you’re on probation for the rest of the year. Travis, you’re suspended for six months.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Peters. “If anyone should be suspended, it should be me.”
But this isn’t a hearing, and Finchem is already out of his chair.
“I feel terrible about this,” says Peters when the two of us are alone. “And you were playing great golf. That shot on eighteen was the best shot I’ve seen this year. You need to borrow some money to tide you over, don’t hesitate to ask. It’s the least I can do.”
“Thanks, Hank, I’m okay on that score. And I appreciate what you said.”
“It’s all true. Not that it did any good. But what do you expect from a guy who went to college on a debating scholarship? And one other thing…my friends call me Stump.”
16
BEYOND THE UNFAMILIAR WINDSHIELD is an empty parking lot illuminated by the last few minutes of daylight. On the passenger seat are a half-eaten turkey sandwich and an empty can of iced tea, and I have no memory of either. The insignia on the steering wheel indicates the car is a Chrysler, and a glance over my shoulder reveals the interior of a minivan. The odometer shows 169 miles, so that explains the new-car smell, but not much else, and the clock, when I finally find it, reads 6:09. It’s not until I open the glove compartment and unfold the rental agreement from the Jacksonville Airport Alamo that I remember where I am and why, and realize I’ve been sitting like this in the deepening dusk for nearly an hour.
For the second time in little more than a year, I’ve lost my job, but this one I loved and was actually quite good at. Against lotto-like odds, I achieved a lifelong quest to play compe
titive golf for a living, and in forty-five videotaped seconds screwed it up. A spot on the Senior Tour is fleeting to begin with. Under the best circumstances, three or four years is a pretty good run, so losing six months of my middle-aged prime is a pretty stiff price to pay for a relatively harmless fight.
Yet as stunned as I am by Finchem’s harsh penalty, I’m more undone by Peters’s generosity. How could I have been so wrong about the guy? I spent thirty years hating a person who didn’t exist. Pressed to come up with an explanation for my dislike, I would have cited his good ol’ boy routine and his redneck shtick, but I can see that was nothing but a smokeless smoke screen.
The reason I didn’t like Hank Peters is because he is a better golfer than I am. And he knows it. That’s not the abridged edition. It’s the entire volume. You want to earn my lifelong enmity, just be better than me at something I care about, exude a little more self-confidence, and beat me in a college match in which I have you down two with three to play.
Do that, and I’ll hate you for life. I promise. And how does Peters respond to all my petty bile and cranky bullshit? How does he repay me for three decades of tight-lipped, phony smiles and bad-vibing? By treating me like a friend.
According to the dashboard clock, another twenty minutes have gone missing as mysteriously as that half a sandwich. If I’m going to make my flight, I need to hustle. I find the keys, start the car, and turn on the lights, and as I reach back for the seat belt, I catch a glimpse of the one person I least want to see.
17
MY RECEPTION IN WINNETKA is more in keeping with the return of a conquering hero than a disgraced asshole. As I step through the front door, all three remaining full-time residents of the McKinley household—woman, child, and dog—hurl themselves at me with delight. Sarah plants a fat, juicy kiss on my mouth, Louie paws my legs and crows like a rooster, and in between, Noah wraps his arms around me and says, “Dad, that fight was awesome.”