Perfection

Perfection
"The lowest score ever made by a professional in competition is 62,...that's great golf.  But to my mind any time an 85-90 golfer shoots a 75, that's even greater golf".    Ben Hogan in Power Golf.

The driver chimed. The ball whistled working its way long and straight down the fairway.  At the end it faded left to bounce dead center, then rabbited through the spring grass for another twenty-five yards.  A two hundred and fifty-five yard drive on a three hundred and fifty-two yard, par four first hole.  Jim O'Sullivan wiped the club clean, slid on the cover and replaced the club in his golf bag.  No hurry.  No one waiting his or her turn on the tee, no one ahead until the two-some on the third green, and nowhere else he had rather be this afternoon.  Jim breathed in the smell of new grass and young clover, and watched two starlings harass a jay over an oak tree nesting site beside the tee box.  A lazy breeze brought the sweetness of blooming crab apple trees from the entrance road behind him.  What a day!  He grabbed the handle of his pull cart and strode down the fairway disdaining the macadam cart path for the freshly mown grass.
The day had started good and gotten better.  A good nights sleep, a morning without major hitches, a drive without traffic jams and an early exit from work put a spring in Jim's step as he by-passed the elevator and bounced up two flights of stairs to his desk.  Even the office coffee had been good.  Jim had knifed through his e-mails and messages before his first mug got cold.  On a roll, he mopped up a report before a mid-morning meeting and left the office as soon as it adjourned. 
Jim parked at the driving range and carried his clubs to the concession stand for a two-hot-dog-and-a-bottle-of-beer lunch at half past noon.  At the driving range a good day had become great.  The hot dogs were fresh, the beer cold.  Jim sat against the low wall of the patio eating as the only other mid-day costumer pounded balls like a work farm convict pounding rocks.  With the dogs and chips inhaled He sat back to enjoy the rest of the beer and the mid-point of a beautiful day.  He planned to spend the entire afternoon here, hit three or four buckets of balls, maybe work on his putting and relax away the day until time for dinner and family around six.  The plan only survived the first twenty balls.
A double-bogey golfer, when Jim bothered with a handicap, it fell between eighteen and twenty-five.  He shot in the nineties with an occasional foray into the eighties, usually near the end of the season, and on somewhat more frequent, bad days, he shot over the century mark, so what happened next blew him away.
After lunch, Jim paid for his first bucket of balls and set up on the tee-line with a lounge chair and a bottle of water. He stretched stiff muscles and pulled his nine-iron from the bag.  Teeing the first ball up on a tuft of grass, Jim swung and sent the ball high, straight down the line.  It glided gently to the ground, hopped once and came to rest against the one hundred-twenty yard marker.  A grin bisected his face but his one conscience thought was, "No way".  He pulled another ball from the bucket and repeated the swing.  The ball stopped a jaw-dropping six inches from the first.  He hit three more, and could have covered all five with the span of his two hands.  His performance with the seven- iron was even better.  Five balls flew straight, consistent and one hundred and fifty yards.  Two nudged the base of the yardage sign he had used as a target. 
"Okay", Jim thought, "Five good shots with the seven-iron, but I don't slice the seven".  He leaned the club against his bag and pulled the four-iron.  He sliced the four-iron.  He hit the ball one hundred and sixty or seventy yards most of the time and maybe half of the time where he aimed.  He stepped up to the ball ready to whale it, then stopped.  Considering his last ten golf swings, whaling it was not the way to go.
Taking a couple of practice swings, he stepped back up to the ball and caressed it one hundred and eighty five yards.  It riffled off the club head straight down the tube, fading left fifteen yards.  His heart started to hammer again.  He focused on the process of teeing up another ball; willing himself to hit this shot, not think about the last.  He adjusted his alignment for a fade and sent the next four balls bouncing and rolling to a gimme putt from the two hundred yard sign.
That was enough for Jim.  He could play nine holes and still be early for dinner.  He packed his bag and headed for his car, dropping the rest of the bucket of balls beside the "golfing con", still blasting away mightily.  He drove to the course still wearing his golf shoes.

Jim approached the result of his first shot on the first hole of his favorite course with boyish wonder.  His ball lay five feet inside the white one-hundred-yard marker. It sat up on bent grass some fifty yards before the ground turned up twenty feet to an elevated green.  He pulled his nine-iron from the bag and considered the next shot. 
The green sloped back and to the right.  The cup was cut high left.  The greens keeper seemed to love this pin position.  Every approach shot broke away from the hole.  Jim aimed for the left side of the green.  The ball missiled high to drop hard on the back center of the green.  It hopped right and began to roll.  He had visions of playing the same shot again from thirty feet to his right, but the ball stopped against the edge of the green. 
He had a difficult first put, but he could two put for par.  Closing his eyes, he took three deep breaths and relaxed.  Just having fun here.  No pressure.  He lined up the putt to run inside the fringe until the slope pulled it down hill.  He got it right.  The ball cornered hard to the left as it rolled, stopped perched on the lip of the cup, and -- took a header into the bottom.  Jim gaped at the hole.  He had birdied Number one.  What a start.
Jim trotted down the hill to the second tee, his cart hurrying him along.  At the tee box he gazed down a straight, level fairway to a smallish green three hundred and forty yards away, another short parr-four.  An easy hole if played from the fairway and that's what he did.  His tee shot was shorter, but as straight as his first.  This was too good to last.
His short drive had left Jim one hundred and ten yards from the front of the second green, with the pin cut tight to a front sand trap.  The distance was awkward for Jim.  A nine-iron would not get to the green but an eight might sail past.  A berm of short rough hugged the back of the green.  This acted as a backstop so he went with the eight- iron.  Of course the other option was to look up, chop the shot and leave an easy chip shot from the right fringe.  He rushed this shot too and the ball ran to the back of the green.  A small green and some luck set him on his way to number three with a bogey five and the sure knowledge that one over after two is better than two over after one.
Number three listed as the hardest hole on the course and the only par five.  Four hundred and ninety yards to an elevated green guarded by a huge bunker on the left, out-of-bounds on the right and a ball gulping pond in front made this hole a duffers nightmare.  Jim's play, so far today, would negate all of this if he kept the boogeyman at bay and thought only good thoughts.
Jim closed his eyes to visualize his drive.  The ball flew high; angling to the right then cornered hard right to crash through the trees separating the fairway from out-of-bounds and the street beyond. 
Shaking his head, Jim tried again.  He topped the drive and the ball skittered, bounced once and plopped into the pond.
Jim stepped back from the ball perched on its high tee and looked again at the line of the shot. 
Okay, with the horror stories fading away maybe he could focus.  This fairway was in three parts.  The narrow right side was low and flat and wet.  The center lay along the side of a hill and varied from a moderate to a steep left-to-right slope.  The preferred left side was high, dry and rolling, broken up by three stands of small trees on the left edge.
Jim visualized his shot fading left and running along the top of the ridge.  Stepping back up, he hit the ball with an easy relaxed swing and saw it follow the path he wanted.
His drive flew high, landed soft, took a single hop and stopped.  Two hundred and sixty yards from the tee a fifteen square yard landing area beat back the rough. He could actually see the ball from the tee.  Jim had known the perfect position for the second shot on this hole for years and he finally got to play a ball from there. Could this get any better?  He rubbed the head of the driver like a crystal ball with his towel before sashaying toward his ball.  He almost wished someone had been watching that shot.
The ball sat high, held aloft by blades of grass like the world in the up-stretched arms of Hercules.  Jim could not have teed it up better.  He had never successfully swung a fairway wood and was not tempted to try now.  The three-iron was risky enough.  He aimed down the left edge of the fairway.  If he sliced, it should still be playable and who knows, he thought, his luck might continue.  The ball did not slice but it did fade back to the middle of the fairway, well below the green.  He had one hundred and twenty yards to the hole.  Jim cut straight down the incline to the flat of the fairway and turned toward his ball.
The front of the green stood ten or twelve feet above the ball and the slope was steep.  Like the first hole, a short approach was penalized more than a long one, so out came the seven-iron.  The cup, cut dead center fifteen feet from the front edge, tempted players to play a shorter approach, but a little too short and the ball would roll back down to thirty feet off the green.  Jim shot for the middle of the green and once again the ball steered right down his projected path.  Jim had never been able to spin the ball back on a green before, but back it came, helped toward the hole by the slope, stopping eight feet above the hole. 
Jim laid the flag aside, strode to his ball and hit it straight to the hole.  Too hard.  The ball seemed to fly over the center of the hole, and proceed fifteen feet to the front fringe. 
Anybody who plays could have prophesized his next putt.  No break, straight up hill fifteen feet and he left the ball three feet short.  If you putt too hard down hill, you will hit too soft uphill.  It is a rule.  Even the pros do it.  Finally, Jim took a couple of deep breaths and made the third try for a bogey six. 
Number Three might be rated the course's hardest but number four had cost him more golf balls than the rest of the course combined.  A bowling lane fairway edged on the left by a forty-five degree up slope and on the right by trees, a creek and out of bounds.  At three hundred and forty-one yards the hole was dead flat to the green with not an inch of room for error.  If you played the ball to the left to stay away from the out-of-bounds, you had to play the second shot from below your feet to slice out of play or fly the green where the out-of-bounds curved around behind.  He did not consider the driver or three- iron.  If he could hit the four-iron one-eighty, one-eighty-five and keep it in the fairway, a six iron would play up to the front of the green and he could get away with out too much damage.
He took a deep breath and stepped up to the ball.  He tried to choke the club at address, brought the club back on the inside, rushed the back swing, came inside out, made contact with the ball with an open face and watched a shinny white Titelist imitate a well thrown boomerang.  It cleared the top of the fifty-foot maples protecting out of bounds, sailed past the water and over the fence at the edge of the construction site next door.  Jim hoped everyone was wearing their hard hats.
Taking another ball from his bag, Jim was at the top of another hurried back swing before stopping and backing away.  He moved behind the ball and gazed down the line.  His mind followed the path of the last errant stroke.  He had to get rid of that image.  His breathing, his mind, his emotions and his game were all hurling head first toward a train wreck.  He slowed.  He found his line and stepped back to the ball.  He cocked his head to his target and took two languid practice swings focusing on shifting his weight and turning over his hands.  He approached the ball and took a nice easy swing off the tee. One-seventy and in the fairway.  Respectable but barely halfway home.  He needed a tourniquet and used conservative play to stop the bleeding.  Using his six-iron he laid up his third shot forty yards short of the green.  His forth was a pitching wedge to the back of the green.  From there he two-putted for a triple-bogey seven.  Damn, but still only four over after four holes.  Time for a break.
He pulled a bottle of water and a granola bar from a small neoprene cooler stashed in his bag.  Leaving his clubs beside the fifth tee, he climbed halfway up the neighboring hill to the shade of an oak tree.  Here, at the farthest corner of the course, his only company was birds.  He broke corners from the granola bar and shared with a pair of orioles, then lay back on the hill to sip water and watch clouds.  Like staying angry while smiling, being stressed while cloud gazing is impossible.  A few minutes, and his snack later Jim sat up to take reassess his position. 
After a disastrous fourth hole, he was only four strokes over par, on track for his best nine holes ever, and was striking the ball like never before.  And he was having fun.  What a day!  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he strolled back down to his clubs.
The fifth hole was the easiest on the course, a one hundred and forty-five yard par three over water.  The green was large and like so many, was backstopped by a steep berm.  Jim pulled his seven-iron and the magic returned.  The ball flew high and straight.  The shot felt as natural as walking.  One bounce to the right and the ball rolled a curved path following the right to left pitch of the green and stopped three feet from the hole.  A right to left fade on the putt did not keep Jim from recording his second birdie of the day.  Back to three over and now after five holes.  What a day!
Number Six, a straightforward, three hundred and eleven yard par four had a wide, forgiving fairway.  The only thing adding difficulty was a low hill hiding the green from the tee box.  Jim's drive was short and high.  It faded left at the end, like a good drive should and rolled well to stop against the second cut at the crest of the hill, about seventy yards from the green.
Off the right side of the fairway, across fifty yards of waste ground lay four lanes of hurried traffic.  The border of maples and willows ate up the fumes and stifled most of the noise.  He watched the cars and trucks as he strolled along.  He could hear the traffic, but it did not mask the rustle of the wind or the quarrelling of birds.  He could not see if the drivers had the windows down but he thought not.  We close ourselves up in private steel and glass cocoons, locking out the environs we traverse.  We pipe in cold air in the summer and hot air in the winter.  We pipe in artificial sounds to cover the noise of our transit and in the process we bar ourselves from experiencing the day, even on a perfect day such as this one.  There is too much going on and too much to do and people everywhere get too caught up in it.  Well not everywhere he supposed.  Other cultures had not yet caught up and still others had moved beyond, but this culture seemed to demand every one and every thing to go, go, go.  He had learned the Japanese have a word for working yourself to death, karoshi. They have begun compiling statistics on it.  And the only country in the world whose population works more than the Japanese is ours.  We seem to have forgotten how to relax.  Even when recreating, we do not relax but play our games like Heaven awaits the victor.  A teaching pro had once told Jim, a measure of a rookie on tour was, "Swing fast, will not last.  Swing slow, make a go."  It is hard advice to take when the rest of society screamed, "Work harder, play harder, never slow down ", but excellent advice nonetheless, for golf and for life.
His ball had nestled down in the long grass at the edge of the fairway.  His sand wedge scythed through the lush grass, struck the ball cleanly on the down stroke and took a small divot.  An impeccable shot, it rose high and on line for the flag, then feel ten feet short, into a sand trap protecting the front of the green.  The high trajectory and dry sand partnered to create a classic "Fried egg" presentation, the ball buried to its equator.  This was not so bad.  He could make this shot.  He practiced it frequently.  The green was a figure eight, long from front to back.  It rose slightly in the back and to the left, then the ground dropped steeply off the back edge.  The ball probably would not roll far but he definitely did not want to be long.  He dug his feet in, struck the sand behind the ball and sent sand and ball flying twelve feet to the fringe between the bunker and the green, thirty feet from the flag.  A fifteen-foot second putt saved a bogey five for number six.  He stretched his back, inhaled deeply and smiled.  The maintenance crew was mowing the rough between Seven and Eight.  The mowed grass smelled so good.
At three hundred and sixty-eight yards, Number Seven was the longest par four on the course.  Trees lined both sides of a wide fairway both straight and flat. Both tree lines were open and even a bad drive had a fifty-fifty chance of a second shot at the flag.  And Jim set out to prove this was so.  His right hand dominated the swing from start to finish.  The ball started right then sliced farther right still.  It was his longest drive of the day, one hundred and fifty yards forward and a hundred and fifty yards right, three hundred yards total.  The ball had cleared the right tree line at its apex and sailed out of sight onto the fairway of the first hole.  He locked his eye where it had passed from view and went to find his ball.
As he emerged from the trees, Jim spotted a ball in the center of the adjoining fairway.  He started to step forward, but stopped to look to his right at the first tee.  An elderly couple were standing at the tee box, the woman to the side, the man behind the box penduluming a driver back and forth and both looking down the fairway at him.  Jim pointed at the ball in the fairway and at himself.  They both gave him giant head nods.  Yes, that was his ball.  He gave them back a sheepish shrug then waved for them to hit their drives.  He backed up to the tree line and leaned his clubs on one side of a tree trunk and his shoulder on the other. 
Jim watched the man line up his shot, take an abbreviated back swing and send his ball down the fairway.  It faded to the right side, thirty yards short of Jim's ball.  The two rode together to the ladies tee, twenty yards closer, and repeated the process with similar results.  Her drive was straighter, and fifteen yards shorter than his.
Jim pulled out his seven-iron and leaving the bag against the tree hurried out to his ball.  This was a time to play quickly but not rushed.  His goal was to get back on his own fairway without further embarrassment.  He stood over the ball, inhaled into the back swing, paused at the top and exhaled through a smooth swing.  The ball flew handsomely, straight and long.  He was safely back on fairway number seven.
Pausing to wave to the couple sitting in their golf cart and, by-God, holding hands, Jim smiled to himself as he swooped up his clubs without breaking stride and loped toward his ball.  What a life they must have, happy to be together on a golf course on a beautiful spring day.
Jim's ball had traversed the width of the fairway.  Maybe he was protecting the freshly cut grass from divots.  He was in the left rough, close to the cart path.  He would be standing on the macadam for his third shot and would have to aim left of the pin to keep from hitting the edge of the pavement.  At ninety yards from the green, he chose his nine iron, opened his stance and stroked the ball to the left center of the green.  For the second time his ball fell to the green and backed up.  He wished he knew how he was doing that.  The ball rolled back toward him and curved to the right down an incline to stop three feet from the hole.  Jim lined his putt up inside the upper cup rim and stroked the ball into the center of the cup for his first par of the day.
Jim's current score was thirty-one with a par three and a par four hole to finish his round.  If he could play the last two holes in eight he could break forty for the first time.
"Gee", he said aloud, "that's the way to keep it light with no pressure.  Maybe I could play them left handed too."  He laughed at himself as he walked to the eighth tee.
The two hundred and thirty-six yard par three rated as the second hardest hole on the course and not because of the distance.  The left rough fell steeply away as did the rear of the green.  This hole paralleled Number Four running along the top of the hill on Four's left.
Jim knew he couldn't reach the green with any club short of his driver and that was an invitation to disaster.  He considered the four-iron then dropped it back into his bag.  Thinking about the hole, he did some math.  He usually hit his six-iron between on hundred and sixty and one hundred and seventy yards, leaving him with a pitching wedge to the green and with a little luck, a reasonable putt for par.  The six it was.
The first remarkable part was he had thought of it.  The second was he visualized and played the shot without imagining a nightmare or two to make it interesting.  The next was he just played the shot without his mind getting in the way of his swing.  His ball angled toward the right side of the fairway, faded back left and rolled toward the green. 
Jim's ball had nestled down in high grass.  He was sixty yards from a large green running slightly up hill.  He selected his sand wedge.  The ball rode straight up and straight down.  It hit the front edge of the green, skipped twice and stopped twenty feet from the hole.
The ninth tee was closer than the green so Jim left his bag at the tee box and strolled to the green with his putter.  His first putt missed by two feet.  His second putt dived into the hole like a rabbit chased home.  Bogey four.  What a day!
Jim eased down the walk between green and tee box.  Halfway, under a row of Yellow Pines, set a bench.  He brushed pine needles off the seat and sat.  The afternoon was getting hot, but the air still held the gentleness of spring.  In a couple of weeks hot weather and the heavy air of summer would prevail.  Jim enjoyed three of the four seasons.  He could do without winter but not at the expense of spring, summer and fall, and you could not have three without the fourth.
He was tired, a good tired, and he was getting hungry.  His appetite quickened with the thought.  His face and arms were sun burnt.    He stretched out his legs, reached his arms up and back until he felt his shoulders pop.  He sighed out his breath and stood.  What a day.
The ninth hole was a three hundred and twenty-six yard par four, rated as the second easiest hole on the course.  The fairway was flat and wide.  A small pond protected the left front of the green out of range of all but pro length drives and usually did not come into play. Number nine was a nice easy finishing hole.
Jim teed up his ball and stepped behind it.  Looking to the left side of the fairway, he saw wild flowers blooming, white and yellow and purple.  Bees buzzed in the blooms.  A mockingbird flew off with a pine twig.  Jim took it all in then stepped to his ball.
The flowing ease of his swing came naturally, without thought or effort.  He might never find this swing again in years of play, be he would not loose it again today.  Thwack, the ball slid down the right side of the fairway, zenithed and fell.  It bounded ahead and stopped even with the one hundred yard marker.
Jim walked the fairway with the westering sun on his face.  Trees lined both sides of the wide fairway and he veered to the right to walk in shadow.  His ball lay shaded, on newly cut grass.  Jim chose his nine- iron.  It was uncanny how the ball seemed to track in on the hole.  He could really get used to playing like this.  His ball landed on the fringe of the green, jumped forward a few feet and rolled an arcing path to twelve feet from the cup.  Wow, what a day!
As Jim strolled up to his ball, he seemed to go into automatic pilot, his senses in high gear.  The grass was intensely green; the bouquet of the flowers and the grass strong and clear, and the cup grew to the size of a basketball goal as he walked to his ball.  He checked the slope of the green from both sides, then from behind the ball.  He picked an intermediate spot to aim at, stood above his ball, and. .  Bam! Dead center of the cup for a birdie.  Total, thirty-eight for nine holes, his best round ever.  He stood still for a moment, shut his eyes and ran back over each hole, each shot, etching each in his memory.  He had been playing golf for years.  He'd had holes this good before, but never a round.  Forty-three was his previous best nine hole score.  Today he had beat that by five shots.  He knew he might never shoot this well again, and that was all right.  Not great, but all right. 
As he headed home Jim thought about his day.  Nothing he could think of could make it better, but one think would be the perfect ending.  And he was right; his wife had made pot roast.  What a day.  Perfection.