Golf had been his father’s game, so Goshkin never played it. Adolescent rebellion, he supposed. In 1950s Philadelphia, football, baseball, basketball were the only honorable sports.
In recent years, though – 70-some and 3000 miles later – he had come to enjoy golf on TV, while his interest had faded from football, baseball, everything athletic in fact, except the Warriors, who continued to drive his blood pressure up 20-points, and the exercise he deemed necessary to keep his own surgically-enhanced heart pumping.
“What do you think your dad would say,” asked Ruth, his wife, a former therapist, “about your seeing the light?”
Goshkin snorted. Not his story. Left behind with the Liberty Bell.
…
It was relaxing to know almost nothing about the players and not to care who won. His eye was taken by the layers of green or gorse, the flowering or cactus-studded landscapes, the waters – ocean, lake or creek – into which balls plopped, accenting the risks of even best laid plans. The occasional, punctuating camera shots of egret, alligator or sea otter delighted. Alligators should be mandatory on courses, he thought in his more macabre moments. Preferably lean, fast-moving, hungry ones.
The past weekend’s play of the Masters had hooked him deeply though. The final round had been programmed opposite the Warriors-Clippers trying to avoid the NBA play-in, and he’d given more time, viewing and mental, to Rory McIlroy’s striving to complete a Grand Slam on his 11th attempt, than by Steff and Draymond’s efforts toward a fifth ring. McIlroy had won the US Open (2010), British Open (2014), and PGA twice (2012, 2014) but not the Masters, nor a single major since, while shooting the best combined score, relative to par, of anyone. For a decade, golfing greats had been expecting to welcome McIlroy to Valhalla, but fate had not yet punched his ticket. In fact, he had become as well known for his collapses as his triumphs. He’d finished third in a US Open (2022) after leading by two shots with nine holes to go. He’d led last year’s Open by four but bogeyed three of the final four holes, twice by missing four-foot putts, and lost to Bryson DeChambeau – with whom he had now been paired in another final round.
This pairing increased the drama for Goshkin. McIlroy seemed a nice fellow, despite his shabby treatment of the Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, breaking their engagement after the wedding invitations had already been sent, for which Ruth had not yet forgiven him, while DeChambeau was a prickly beast with odd ideas suiting this distinctly odd time. He’d refused to be immunized against Covid – and spent much of the tour’s shut down beefing up with 40-pounds of muscle so he could further belt the ball – or anything else, Goshkin supposed, that displeased him. DeChambeau feuded with officials and fellow pros and used specially designed clubs, unlike anyone else’s on the tour. He was one of the first big-names to quit the PGA for the “sportwashing” Saudi-backed LIV, only days after publicly announcing he was not bolting. (McIlroy had remained a PGA loyalist.) DeChambeau was a stone-solid Trumper, frequently golfing with him or his older sons. (McIlroy had been mildly critical of Trump, which for a professional golfer was about as controversial as a kaffiyeh-sporting Cantab running amuck in Widener Library.) In their round together, McIlroy and DeChambeau did not speak to one another once. Nary a “Nice shot” or “Well-played” or “Hope there’s hot water left in the showers.”
Eighteen holes take about four hours to play. But less than 15 minutes are spent addressing the ball and striking it. So the “action” – back-swing to follow-thru – took what? Two minutes? Three? But all that went into the interim – each interim – over four days of competition made golf a uniquely arduous event. And for McIlroy the weight had been increasing each moment of each year since he had won that damned third leg of the slam. He had led the 2011 Masters by four shots entering the final round – and lost. This year he shot a record six straight threes at one point – and set another with four double bogeys, which no previous winner had overcome. He ended the first day behind by seven shots, yet had a two shot lead entering the fourth. He lost that lead within two holes, regained it, extended it to five on the back nine, let that slip away, and came onto the 18th green needing an eminently makeable putt to avoid a play-off with Justin Rose, another star-crossed competitor, who’d won one major and finished second in four.
McIlroy missed.
…
“Golf must be excruciating,” Goshkin said. He shared an outside table beneath the cafe’s green awning. There had been a lull after their excoriating Donald Trump for the 50-cent increase in espresso drinks, which he hoped to fill. “No opponent but yourself and the garbage in your head. At the mercy of the daily whims of grass mowers and green waterers and hole placers and the momentary ones of the weather gods. Knowing each shot you hit over each of the four days may be the difference between victory and defeat.”
“Both my parents were club champions,” Schmuel said, patting himself on his back. “Grace under pressure fills my genes.”
“So do blueberry scones,” Iorg said. Then he looked at Goshkin. “I feel you, my brother. All week, I’ve been trying to figure out how to light the backyard grill in the face of fog and wind, while facing the demons and humiliations of past failures, the ridicule of Lucy and the kids.”
Pres laughed – and shifted the conversation to his prostate.
His friends seemed not to have grasped the big picture. Across the avenue, a woman on two crutches adroitly swung herself past the post office like someone who had been that way a long time. At every step, no matter how well measured, lurked collapse. Pleasure necessitated pain, not always in balance, neither erasing the memory or eventuality of the other. How we see the world determines our feelings, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. If you love the game, you must love the mistakes, McIlroy’s psychologist instructed.
He’d won, the first hole of sudden death.
…
Note
1 Wozniacki bounced back nicely, marrying the ex-Warrior David Lee, by whom she’d had two children and was now pregnant with a third.