Sticks - A Golfer's Tale by W. Sautter (whitelam books .TXT) 📖

behind the ball and then pulled back and fired. He hit it clean and squarely. It leapt from the club like a bullet, straight ahead, hitting the green in the distance and bouncing out of sight.
“Great shot!” cried Pete. “Had to be two hundred and twenty yards!” he added.
A faint smile broke over Bob’s face and he proceeded towards the green with his head a bit more erect and his chin held a little higher.
The other three continued their play. Pete played his second shot to the green as did Frank. Mike landed in the trap on the left and then all four walked up the hill to the green.
As they walked Bob strained to see his ball. He even walked up on his toes a bit, trying to peer over the elevated lip attempting to see it. They moved closer and the entire putting surface then came into view. Two balls on the green, one in the trap and no sign of the fourth!
Bob’s eyes scanned rapidly back and forth over the periphery of the green and around the traps. It was nowhere to be seen. Soon, everyone was milling about searching for the lost ball.
Suddenly, Pete shouted from the edge of the pond at the rear of the green.
“Here it is. Bring your ball retriever.”
Bob’s stomach turned. That beautiful fairway shot had landed and bounced off the green into the water.
“Some bullshit,” he muttered as he walked towards the pond. “I can’t fuckin’ believe it,” he shouted as uncontrolled obscenities deluged from his lips.
The words sprang from his mouth and the frustration within him erupted completely. Frustration changed to anger and then anger rapidly turned into blind rage. He stamped his feet in heavier and heavier steps as he walked. He clenched his right fist and hammered it repeatedly into the palm of his other hand as he approached the submerged object.
There it was staring up at him from the murky bottom through a foot water at about three yards from the bank. He stood on the bank, peering down into the pond with the humiliation and embarrassment crashing in on him. His vision blurred, a dry hard lump swelled in his throat and he gritted his teeth together.
Then, suddenly in a fit of uncontrollable rage, he reached into his bag and ripped the driver from it. In the next moment fragments of graphite showered everywhere, exploding from its shattering shaft. He flung the broken handle and club head with its protruding, splintered shaft high into the air. Both came down in unison, landing with a resounding splash in the pond. Without hesitation, he again tore another club from the bag, sharply snapped its shaft over his knee and cast the broken pieces into the pond. One club followed another and another each yielding an ear splitting crack as the shafts flew into a thousand fragments that sprayed everywhere over the surface of the water.
Pete, Mike, and Frank stood dumbfounded, with their mouths opened and dazed stares as Bob continued his maniacal rampage. After most of his clubs had been dispatched, he grabbed the entire bag with its remaining contents and cast it too into the water. It was done. The very thing that he had so highly venerated just hours ago, now, by his own hand, was no more.
There he stood, hands hanging at his sides, breathing heavily, and sweating profusely. He stumbled backward from the edge of the pond and sank ankle deep into the soft mud near the bank. Lost in the fatigue and confusion of the moment he hardly even noticed.
Then without a word, with head bowed and his eyes staring straight at the ground, he took the first stumbling steps of the long, trance-like walk back towards the first tee.
“Wait a minute! Wait!” shouted Frank.
“How are you going to get home?” he yelled.
Mike and Pete said nothing. They remained motionless, still spellbound by the spectacle they had just witnessed.
Bob never looked back. He trudged step after step with the squeak and squish of his mud filled shoes sounding a doleful beat as he walked. He had left home that morning filled with optimism and anticipation and now this is how it ended. He continued to walk straight passed the starter and all those waiting at the first tee, in silence. Everyone stared in bewilderment as he tramped passed them.
It was a five-mile walk home but Bob didn’t care. Somehow, this was to be part of the punishment for his foolishness. He wasn’t quite sure which was more foolish, his unwarranted belief that he could actually buy the skill that he didn’t really have or his childlike tantrum when his expectations failed to be fulfilled. In either case, he knew he was a fool and that feeling was a heavy weight which he carried as he walked.
He thought back to what he had just done. How could he ever face those guys again? How could he face Maryanne and tell her what he had done? How was going to face himself, the buffoon that he was?
But, as he thought back to the events that had just occurred, he somehow felt, just for an instant, a flash of bittersweet pleasure. He no longer would have to endure that nagging fear of impending failure that sometimes welled up in him as he stepped up to the tee. No more would he have to endure self-ridicule for having missed a crucial putt. No more self-doubt plaguing his every stroke. No more self-chastisement and despair. It was all behind him now. In a strange way, just for the moment, he felt a paradoxical sense of freedom.
But then again too, gone was the thrill of that great drive, the really long one, and a beautiful seven iron to the green, the one that lands two inches from the hole. Gone too, was the excitement of the ten-yard putt that just creeps over the lip and tumbles into the cup on its very last lazy turn. And the chip from the fringe that hits the pin and drops into the cup for birdie. Gone too!
His emotions churned. Over and over tormenting thoughts raced through his head as he plodded down the road towards home. Mindless of his surroundings, he was living and reliving every second of his actions as he walked.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, the long, painful journey ended and he arrived home. He stopped in front of the house, reluctant to enter, fearful of openly confronting his guilt before Maryanne.
A car was missing from the driveway. She wasn’t home.
“Thank God! Thank God!” he thought.
He walked around the house into the backyard and sank into a deck chair, exhausted physically and emotionally by the morning’s events. He closed his eyes; eager to escape the torture was nagging at his thoughts. He immediately fell into an uneasy sleep.
“What are you doing home so early?”
The voice came piercing through the sleepy shroud and startled him into consciousness. He shot up with his back straightened against the chair and snapped open his eyes. There stood Maryanne.
“And what happened to your good shoes? It looks like you’ve been doing construction work instead playing golf,” she said quizzically.
“Well – I got home early,” Bob replied sheepishly.
He wasn’t really sure what to say next. Should he blurt it all out and get it over with, he asked himself. Or should he just pretend nothing had happened and postpone the inevitable misery that was surely to come?
She sat down across from him.
“How did you play? How did the new clubs work out?” she asked enthusiastically.
There was a long pause. To Bob, it seemed longer than the waiting time in the dentist’s office. His thoughts raced through his mind as random fragments, colliding with each other in mental explosions, never solidifying into any complete logical sequence.
Should he tell her or shouldn’t he? Then, in an instant, the conflict ended. Like a timid diver perched above icy water, he finally summoned the courage and dove headlong.
“0h, what the hell, she’s going to find out anyway” he thought and in the next moment the entire story with every grotesque detail spewed from his lips.
He told the whole story from its hopeful beginning to its miserable end in one long, nonstop, continuous stream of words without even so much as a pause for breath.
She sat in stunned disbelief as he spoke. When he finished, she sank back into her chair speechless, with a bewildered look spread across her face. She remained seated there for a long moment, with a muted, sullen stare in her eyes.
“Twelve hundred and fifty dollars! What a price to pay to become the laughingstock of the neighborhood,” she wanted to scream at the top of her voice. But then, she looked up at Bob. She could see the embarrassment and anguish pouring from his saddened gaze and somehow, as furious as she was she couldn’t bring herself to torment him further.
She swallowed hard to stop herself from blurting it out. Then, she looked straight into his eyes and mustered all the compassion that she could find.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said in a soft, controlled voice. “You’ll have to work this thing out yourself. You are an adult, I think, and you should start acting like one,” she continued within an admonishing tone, as if speaking to a child. She didn’t know what else to say.
“Now let’s forget any of this ever happened,” she concluded with a childish air. Then she rose and slowly walked into the house leaving him alone with his agonizing thoughts.


Chapter 2
About a month or more had passed. Bob had swallowed what little pride he had left and called the other three to apologize. They, being longtime friends, readily accepted his regrets and tried to laugh it off. Bob knew deep inside however, that in spite of their best attempts to make light of the incident, he would always wear the mark of a fool. And with that knowledge he refused their every effort to convince him to play again.
All three had called, each assuring him that they understood completely and that they themselves had often been tempted to do the very same thing that he had done. Each pledged to never mention the incident again if only he would reconsider. All three had extended the courtesies and kindness of their friendship to the limit.
He hadn’t touched a club or a ball or even watched a golf match on TV since that day. He even found it impossible to listen to the golf scores during the sports reports on the radio. He found himself immediately changing the station the moment they began. The very mentioned of the word “golf” sent shivers down his spine and made his stomach roll.
“Golf Digest” arrived in the mail as usual. He didn’t even tear off the wrapper. It went straight into the garbage can without so much as a page turned.
It was strange to get up on a Saturday at eight thirty. It sure felt better than six fifteen. He hadn’t slept this late on summer Saturdays in years.
Maryanne too, took some pleasure in Bob’s newly found free time. Many of the little chores that