Connor Perseveres
A humor short story
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It was one of those cool days in early spring when all the world seems hushed and watchful as if Nature had overslept and hadn’t yet gotten the message about the changing seasons. The sky was gray and overcast with clouds which swept fitfully across the horizon, buffeted by a persistent breeze that descended to the ground and lifted the curled remnants of last autumn’s leaves and carried them into corners and under hedges. The earth had not yet that exuberant fresh smell of spring but rather the mouldering chilled fragrance of winter’s end, the sort of smell that kept you hibernating inside near the fire rather than outside gardening and sowing and mowing and playing pickleball.
Such was the state of the local climate around and, to a lesser extent, inside the clubhouse of the Oakwood Golf Course owing to the fact that the club building had central heating.
Bill Hastings, the resident clubhouse barnacle, was at the bar watching a cocksure twenty-something take practice swings at the first tee outside the large windows, a young man who had yet to learn the lessons of the fourth, eleventh, and fifteenth holes on a windy day like today, when a different young man sat down at the bar a few seats over with a heavy sigh and ordered a Bud Lite.
“Tough round?” Bill said to the young man.
“Ha,” the young man said with one of those mirthless laughs. “I was in and out of the rough, in but not out of the water; it was one of those days that starts promising from the first tee, a nice steady hit right through the meat of the ball and down the fairway, and then it all just fell apart.”
Bill nodded sympathetically. “I think that young man on the first tee now, Christopher Marlowe if I’m not mistaken, may encounter the same road bumps, the same pitfalls of our course. Even the best start to a game does not ensure that the subsequent eighty strokes don’t turn into a hundred and twenty strokes mostly utilizing a wedge from the sand. Still, a bad game has its advantages.”
The young man added a second mirthless laugh to his first. “Like what?”
“It teaches humility, of course, and a certain degree of discipline and perseverance in the face of opposition; and the power of honesty.”
“That’s all well and good but, if you appreciate honesty, here’s some: I don’t even like golf.”
Bill Hastings scoffed. “Like? Like golf? No one actually likes golf, son. Don’t you know that? Oh I’m sure some Scotsman liked golf back in the Middle Ages but these days we’re all here just passing the time with one of the greatest exercises in masochism ever invented. No one plays golf because they like it. You play because one day while driving innocently through the countryside you encounter eighteen holes replete with water traps and sand hazards that the Greens Committee decided to build spread over fifty acres of what once grew corn and soybeans. You play because it’s there. To test yourself. I knew a young man once, like yourself, whom humility and perseverance benefitted far greater than any innate ability with the club. If you like, I could tell you about him.”
“Oh, sure. I’m all ears,” the young man said, taking a swig from his beer and then pulling his phone from his pocket.
“Alright. You’re sure I’m not boring you?”
“Not at all,” the young man said, head buried in his phone.
“Good, good. I think you’ll learn a lot.”
***
It was several years ago now (said Bill Hastings) that I encountered Connor Kittredge at this very golf course. He was quite bad as far as his golf game went, a thirty handicap at best, but he was surprisingly persistent in his approach to the game. He would get to the links well before his tee time to practice his putts and hit balls at the range. I would often catch him leaned against a tree or the shady side of the clubhouse watching instructional videos on How To Prevent A Slice or How To Avoid Topping The Ball or presenting the Three Best Ways To Increase Your Drive.
It was a day completely unlike to day; a day in early summer, warm and just a light breeze out of the west and the sun shining brightly on the dewy grass driving off the morning mist and releasing the gentle fragrance of fresh-cut greenery.
I had made no effort to remain unseen when I approached Connor leaning against a tree by the putting green. He was standing there with his nose in his phone again. As I got closer I heard a soothing female voice on his phone say, “Today you’ll have a long, hard drive…” at which point I said “Morning, Connor.”
He skittered like a startled rabbit and yelled, “It’s just golf!”
“Of course it’s golf, son. Everyone’s looking for a long, hard drive and we could all use a little positive female reinforcement now and then. What else should she be talking about?”
He blushed deep crimson. “I don’t know.”
“When’s your tee time?” I said.
Looking relieved at the change of subject, Connor said, “Not until nine. The others aren’t even here yet.”
“Who’re you playing with today?”
“Tommy, Hunter, and Ginger.”
I nodded at the names.
Connor often played alone or with whomever the course manager paired him but sometimes by appointment made a foursome with Tommy Troxel, Ginger Fox, and her brother Hunter Fox. I knew them well. Tommy, frat-boy handsome and well-muscled, was very nearly a scratch golfer. Hunter, Ginger’s older brother and the best of the bunch with respect to his golf game, had a negative two handicap which matched his sunny, easy-going disposition. Ginger, very different from her brother in all things, had a handicap of eight and was improving all the time. She had dark walnut hair and an elegant swing that, if far less powerful than those of the men, tended to be more accurate, especially in her short game. Unlike her brother who golfed well and was happy, Ginger was serious about her golf game and tended to be a bit dour on the links, which in my experience was never a good combination for the aspiring scratch golfer. Serious but not too serious was the key, otherwise one had a tendency to press with the hands and twist the hips too far and overswing and top what would have otherwise been a decent drive.
I noticed that he said young Miss Fox’s name rather wistfully with a far-off look in his eye.
“You have a bit of a sweet spot for Miss Fox.” I stated the fact rather than asked the question.
He blushed again and nodded. “Is it that easy to tell?”
“For someone like me who’s been around a while, seen his share of loves, had his share of loves, yes, it is.”
Like the walls of Jericho, his defenses came tumbling down.
“That’s just it. That’s why I’m out here practicing and watching golf meditation videos. I’m terrible at golf—I don’t even like it—and she’s much better and I know she admires Tommy’s game and he’s such a better match for her on the fairway and off. They’re both so good at golf and she’s serious and he’s more easy-going so how could they not be a good match and I can see how she watches his game when all I do is hold them up when we play. I just can’t get any better. There’s no way she’s ever going to come around to me.”
“Have you told her any of this?”
Connor looked at me like I’d asked to melt down his favorite putter. “Tell her? Oh, yeah, just tell her that I’m crazy about her. Like that ever worked for anyone. Are you nuts?”
“I am, indeed, not nuts; but if you insist on not opening up to her you’re playing a dangerous game of withholding information from the woman you love. Open communication is the key in relationships, even ones that have not yet commenced. All she can do is say ‘no’ and break your heart in a thousand pieces.”
“That’s just the sort of thing I was afraid of.”
“Why be afraid of that? There are other girls out there.”
Connor shook his head solemnly. “Not like her. Have you seen her smile when she hits a smacker in the teeth? Or the way she tosses her hair to one side before lining up a deadly accurate chip? Or the way her legs—”
I held up a hand. “Okay, alright. I don’t need to hear about her legs, son. Suffice to say that you’re madly in love with Miss Fox. What do you propose to do about it?”
“Nothing. I know intellectually she’s a person with cares and foibles (what they could be I couldn’t imagine) just like the rest of us but emotionally, biologically she’s the epitome of the feminine mystique, a cypher, an angel brought to earth by Providence to teach mortals such as myself the meaning of the ineffable and the sublime. I mean, have you seen the way she screws up her eyes before a really tough putt? And the way she snorts at a really good joke?”
“Oh you’ve told her some juicy ones then?”
“No, I’m just imagining how wonderful a really good laugh of hers must be.”
Bill shook his head. “Surely you could try to talk to her.”
“Nope.” He sighed. “There’s nothing I’m going to do at the moment except play golf.” He nodded in the direction of the club house and I turned to look.
Tommy Troxel was approaching. With him was Hunter Fox and a few paces behind walked Ginger Fox. She had a light, airy walk but a serious demeanor and her walk seemed to get heavier as she approached us and the putting green.
“Alright, Connor?” Tommy said. “All warmed up? Watched enough videos?”
Connor turned crimson again while Tommy addressed me.
“Hello, Mr. Hastings,” Tommy said.
I took his proffered hand.
Tommy was the sort of man who was oblivious, the sort of man who was a jerk without knowing he was a jerk and without meaning to be a jerk. It wasn’t a harmless condition and it did tend to make him unliked and unlikable by more sensitive, self-conscious men on which he chanced. Connor was one of these. He only tolerated golfing in Tommy Troxel’s presence because Ginger Fox happened to be there at the same time and her presence very nearly wiped from Connor’s consciousness the impressions that Tommy made.
Ginger acknowledged Connor with a tight-lipped smile that gave little room for Connor to make an inroad at that moment. She was clearly focused on her game.
As reported to me afterwards, Connor’s mind was a whirl from the start and it affected his game badly.
Tommy, Hunter, and Ginger all teed off before him. Each in turn put the ball down the middle of the fairway, an easy shot on the first hole, and all three waited patiently (somewhat less-than patiently in Tommy’s case) as Connor approached the tee.
His conversation with me was still whirling around in his head and his love, normally buried deep, was occupying all of the space in his brain normally devoted to making sure he placed his feet shoulder-width apart, angled his stance so his ball would fly straight, didn’t press with his hands, didn’t swing back to fast, didn’t swing forward in a jerky fashion. Love and nerves displaced the lot.
He swung fast and hard. He looked out into the distance.
There was no ball in the sky where there should have been.
He looked down. The maddening white spheroid was still sitting on its pinewood pedestal.
Tommy stifled a guffaw. Connor smiled sheepishly then positioned the head of the driver again behind the ball.
Then he waggled.
This threw off Connor almost more than the missed ball. He was not a waggler but now he found himself swaying the club back and forth as if casting a spell over the ball. The clubhead settled next to the ball. Connor looked down the fairway then back at the ball. Sweat stood out on his forehead. The driver, seemingly developing a mind, indeed consciousness, of its own waggled again. He had become a waggler!
Anger, frustration, nerves burst forth and before he knew it the ball was sailing down the fairway. It proceeded a promising hundred yards straight before bending, slightly at first then with an increasingly alarming angle, into the welcoming embrace of the tall grass to the right of the fairway.
“Could be worse!” Hunter said gaily.
Tommy snorted.
“No one likes messing up their first shot, Connor,” Ginger said. “It’ll get better.”
Connor, ignoring Tommy, felt the glow of kind words from the woman he loved warm his insides. He smiled at Ginger and tried not to look too disappointed.
While the others proceeded down the fairway, Connor replaced his driver in his bag and wandered in the direction of his ball. He tried to keep his chin up and not walk too morosely. After all, it was only the first stroke of the game—actually the first two—but he wanted to make sure that a bad start didn’t end up meaning a bad game overall.
He was still cursing the soothing-voiced woman who had guaranteed him a long, hard, straight drive when, after deploying his trusty breathing exercises that came in handy in such cases, he whacked at the ball with an eight-iron and put it back on the fairway past the others who had been waiting a respectful distance behind so as not to be in the way of the likely path his ball would take.
As usual, Connor was playing a game against himself. The others holed out in three but Connor’s abysmal putting put him at six for the first hole.
Things did not improve from there. Though the sun was shining and the birds were singing, a cloud had descended on Connor’s game and try as he might he sliced and hooked into every bush, tree, rough, bunker, water trap, and gopher hole throughout the rest of the front nine. He did his best to soldier on, to laugh off the bad shots alongside Hunter who teased him gently and to ignore Tommy’s rising frustration with waiting for him but the pressure and the embarrassment of playing so poorly, even by his typically low standard, in front of Ginger began to weigh on him.
Still, he had the back nine to look forward to and he stolidly soldiered on like some patient pack animal, golf bag on its back, its eyes on the ground, taking the course step by step until the bitter end and before every shot he breathed slow and steady, emptying his mind of thoughts, of anger, of everything and just hit the ball.
They teed off of the tenth hole, Hunter ahead of Tommy by a few strokes, Ginger behind Tommy by a few, and Connor trailing woefully as usual.
Hunter drove first, then Tommy. It was all Connor could do to stop from vomiting as he saw Ginger admiringly watch Tommy drive a smacker two hundred and fifty yards down the middle of the fairway.
Ginger, never a terribly spirited girl, couldn’t help but high-five Tommy after such a drive and Tommy grinned smugly at Hunter and Connor.
Spurred on by Tommy’s performance, Ginger endeavored to replicate it. She squared her feet, took a typically graceful practice swing, then knocked the core out of the ball, her raven ponytail flashing in the sunlight as she twisted on the follow-through. The ball flew straight for eighty yards then climbed higher and landed for a solid hundred and fifty yards just on the right side of the fairway.
Connor was about to open his mouth to compliment Ginger when Tommy elbowed his way in.
“Nice hit!” Tommy said, his revolting mustache wiggling across his upper lip as he spoke and flashed a smile at Ginger.
“Thanks,” she said.
Connor fumed. “Yeah, nice shot,” he said as gently and warmly as he could while barely making himself audible.
“I think you’ll hit a good one too this time, Connor,” Ginger said as he passed her on the way to the tee. “I know it.”
His knees suddenly turned to jelly, Connor made a heroic effort to remain standing. “I can only do better on the back nine than I did on the front,” he said grimly.
Hunter laughed. “That’s the spirit.”
“Don’t think about it too much,” Ginger offered. “Just hit it.”
Connor did as he was told. He placed the ball, placed the head of the club, resisted the urge to waggle, only looked down the fairway once to check that it was still there, and finally separated the ball from the tee like an expert executioner.
“Nice!” Hunter said.
The ball sailed two hundred yards down the fairway before settling just to the right of a bunker. He was a short chip from the green.
“See? I told you,” Ginger said.
Connor glowed. “Well I just gotta do that eight more times.”
Alas, the good times could not last for all. Although Connor managed the short chip to the green and holed out in three, Ginger put her ball past the green and it rolled down the hill on the other side. She had to chip back up and ended up with five for the hole. That performance seemed to make her withdraw into herself once again and despite Connor’s encouragements her demeanor became more insular and distracted.
The eleventh hole not only doglegged to the right less than a hundred yards from the tee but after the kneecap it climbed up a steep hill to the green which had two sand traps conveniently placed to snatch balls from the air and bury them like greedy squirrels saving up for winter.
Despite the difficulties of the landscape and having landed in one of the sand traps, Connor managed a bogey. He was still cleaning sand from club, pants, and mouth while Ginger was just getting to the green having teed off into the brush then having gotten stuck in the sand and once again overshot the green.
Unlike when Connor played badly, Tommy and Hunter waited patiently for Ginger, keeping their eyes respectfully averted and staying out of her light of sight while she putted. Golf etiquette dictated no less.
The remaining holes played out similarly with Connor struggling somewhat less than usual and Ginger struggling much more than usual. The cloud that had descended on Connor’s game in the front nine had shifted to Ginger’s game and was pouring gouts of black rain and hail on her club.
The fourteenth hole was especially bad with the men clearing the ravine that split the fairway in half while Ginger lost a ball down the bottomless depths.
After they had all holed out Connor said, “Bad luck, Ginger. If I had a nickel for every ball I’ve lost in that gully I’d have an extra hundred dollars jangling around in my pocket.”
Ginger merely grimaced.
Tommy said, “You know when I’m not playing up to my usual scratch I like to crack a club in half. It really releases the tension, gets my frustration out, helps me concentrate. Look.” Tommy helped himself to one of Connor’s clubs and bent it over his leg. “See? Much better.”
“You’re supposed to use your own club,” Connor said as he took the mangled club back from Tommy.
“Whoops. Oh well.”
Ginger shook her head, shouldered her bag, and strode off toward the next tee.
Meanwhile Connor fumed, imagining what it would feel like to bend a club around Tommy’s larynx.
When everything was tallied up at the eighteenth hole, Ginger had only just beaten Connor’s hundred and ten, a personal best for himself but hers an absolute personal worst.
“Thanks for the game, all,” Connor said. “I had some good luck today.”
“Too bad you don’t play like that more often,” Tommy said.
Connor glowered but brightened as Ginger passed on her way to the clubhouse. “Better luck next time, Ginger!” He ventured a compliment. “I thought your form looked great. I mean, your golf form, like your swing. I’m sure your next game will be better.”
“Next time. Next time!” Ginger said, almost wailing, and stormed off.
Connor was left flabbergasted. Tommy and Hunter, who had wandered toward the clubhouse, turned their heads to look back in Ginger’s direction, but didn’t stop her or ask what had happened. They looked at Connor who shrugged.
Connor was left wondering what he had said wrong to upset her so badly.
***
Fortunately, Ginger, in her infinite wisdom, sought me out at the clubhouse bar. I am known for my wealth of golf experience and my hard-earned wisdom from many years of life and Ginger exhibited near limitless intelligence by coming to me for advice. We were also, I should add, on fairly intimate terms since I had known her from a young age and I was a longtime friend of her father’s.
Ginger was normally a girl who knew what she wanted and got straight to the point but this time she sat down next to me and proceeded to give her lower lip a good chewing. She reminded me of a goat I once saw at a farm that’d gotten hold of a piece of straw and insisted on attempting to swallow the thing using only its lips (I would of course never mention such an unflattering comparison to the dear girl herself. I mention it only for the sake of providing a little color and to indicate her apparent distress).
Setting aside the animal impression, she added several heavy sighs before finally addressing me.
“Bill?”
“Yes? I’ve been wondering what’s on your mind. Clearly something. Have a rough round?”
“Yeah. But that’s not all.”
“You’re worried about your chances during the upcoming course championship?”
“Yes, exactly. I’m not even sure I’ll qualify if I keep playing like this.”
“So?”
She whirled on me. “So? So?”
“There are worse things than playing golf poorly.”
“I need to qualify. I need to win. My dad—”
“Ah, fathers. Mothers. Parents. Grandparents. Step parents. Uncles. Aunts. They put a lot of pressure on us. Or maybe we put the pressure on ourselves for them. School was my parents’ hobby horse but it just wasn’t very important for me. I wanted to be on the links and I started working very young to pay for my copious rounds of golf.”
She was quiet again, possibly because I had taken up all the air. Then she said suddenly, “You know Connor Kittredge, right?”
I said I did.
“He’s not a very good golfer.”
I said there were certainly better golfers.
“How does he do it?”
I asked her to clarify her question.
“Just keep going. No matter what. He whiffed his first drive today then sliced the ball into the bushes on his second and yet he just kept going. And he seemed to have an okay time doing it.”
I leaned back and took a deep breath. “There are likely several factors at play. First of all, he is simply someone who perseveres. I once had a dog, a coonhound named Roger, that would of his own accord chase racoons and squirrels up trees and stay there, baying for hours. Couldn’t get him to leave. Roger persevered. The sun went down, the moon rose, and yet, Roger persevered. Connor is much the same way. I should also add that one of the factors is love.”
Ginger nodded. “Love of the game. Of course. You have to love it to keep going like that.”
I shook my head. “You misunderstand. He loves someone with whom he plays the game, not the game itself.”
“But he doesn’t play with anyone except the three of us, who—ohhhhh…me?”
I nodded.
“Then why hasn’t he said anything? I’ve known him for years and he’s never made a move once. Tommy on the other hand…”
“Except perhaps for Thomas, as you rightly point out, Troxel, in my experience all young men are afraid of the word ‘No’. It is as simple as that. So to preserve the status quo, we simply remain silent and love from afar. It’s a mistake I made with my first wife and should have gone on making until I met my second wife, but that is neither here nor there. I should hasten to add that Mr. Kittredge may also be experiencing a feeling of inadequacy since his golf game is not as good as yours.”
“That’s ridiculous. He never has a problem playing worse than me—”
“Merely a suggestion.”
“—And today, in fact, he nearly beat me.”
“Maybe you should ask Connor what his secret is.
“Oh yeah, just go up to him and say, ‘Hey, Connor, how do you stay so happy while playing a round when you’re such a stinker at golf?’ He’d never talk to me again!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You’d be surprised what one will tolerate for love.”
“Well I wouldn’t tolerate it.”
“No, but he might.”
Ginger stared pensively into the middle distance. She hadn’t given a hint as to whether or not Connor’s feelings for her were reciprocated and I wasn’t going to press her.
***
Connor was still puzzled by Ginger’s response and what happened next didn’t help matters. He was just drying his hands in the washroom when he heard the sound of voices on the other side of the door. It was clearly Ginger and Tommy. They made no effort to keep their voices down and Connor made no effort not to eavesdrop.
“That boll weevil Connor didn’t upset you, did he?” Tommy said.
“I’m surprised you know what a boll weevil is.”
“I sometimes listened in school.”
“No, he didn’t upset me,” Ginger said.
“Hmm. If you say so. Want to go out this weekend?”
“Yeah, sure,” Ginger answered distractedly. “No, I have the tournament. Next week some time?”
“Sure, I’ll text you.”
Connor’s heart sank to the floor and mingled with the shredded bits of paper towel his anguished hands had deposited there. He tried to push down the feeling that he had missed his chance for all time, to convince himself that he didn’t in fact hear wedding bells in the distance, to imagine all the ways that Tommy might mess things up with Ginger. Nothing came to him. His shoes felt like lead and he cursed his plodding, dithering nature that had been content to admire Ginger from a club’s swing away and had been too complacent in doing so.
If only Connor could have known that it was not Tommy Troxel that occupied Ginger’s thoughts but rather in a close third after golf in general and the upcoming ladies’ tournament in particular it was Connor Kittredge’s quiet persistent perseverance with respect to his golf game. But, alas, Connor could not read minds and while he could have guessed at the contents of Tommy’s mind he could not even have attempted the same for Ginger.
That moment was very much nearly the limit for Connor but, like all good men in extremis, his nature was not subverted but reinforced. His natural perseverance was redoubled and he thought only of winning over Ginger once and for all. Of course, his was a slow, plodding mind, intelligent in the long run but not clever in the short and so, as he wandered home and ate his eggs and hash the next morning and the morning after his perseverance began to waver under its own weight for perseverance and determination without a plan tend to crumble in on themselves.
The magnetism that attracted Connor to Ginger exerted its force and he found himself on Saturday morning hovering near the first tee hoping to catch Ginger on her way to start her game. It was a single-day tournament and to the woman with the lowest score went a handsome pewter cup and bragging rights for the next year. The competition was sure to be stiff but Ginger was all but guaranteed to be in close contention for the championship along with a handful of other competitors who stood out from the crowd of otherwise casual golfers.
Looking intently among the crowd, Connor caught a glimpse of white—a white skirt and top, a white visor crowned by dark raven hair—brilliant in the morning sun and realized that it was indeed Ginger heading toward the first tee. He was about to call out to her, to wish her well and offer to carry her bag when striding through the crowd behind her came that worm Thomas Troxel with Ginger’s clubs slung over one shoulder.
Everything Connor was about to say died on his lips and he only managed a slightly confused smile and a mumbled “Good luck” in Ginger’s direction as she passed. He stepped aside for Tommy, who winked at him and waltzed by humming a jocular tune that sounded disturbingly like Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.
As he glowered at Tommy’s retreating back, Connor was torn between his desire to support Ginger and his desire to be anywhere else, especially as far away from Tommy Troxel as possible. The patented Kittredge Perseverance won out and Connor joined the throng following Ginger and the other competitor with whom she was paired.
Ginger played well on the first hole and the second but she sliced her drive off the third and from there it was apparent that something was wrong with her game. Her normally smooth swing was jerky. Her feet seemed too far apart. She failed to hit through the ball when she was in the bunker and her putter seemed to have a mind of its own, swaying back and forth on its way toward the ball.
As is often the case Ginger’s playing rubbed off on her partner and the crowd that had started strong dwindled as twos and threes peeled off to watch more competitive pairs until by the turn at the tenth hole Connor was the only one left in the gallery, a position that made him somewhat self-conscious. He made sure to stay out of Ginger’s line of sight and suddenly took an intense interest in the state of the grass, the height of the rough, the size and shape of each bunker, and the depth of every water hazard while maintaining a polite but close distance from her and Tommy.
Ginger’s game, I’m sorry to say, continued to deteriorate and it was as she addressed the ball at the start of the twelfth that Connor wished for the hundredth time that instead of Tommy Troxel it was he who was offering advice to Ginger, he who was providing consultation on the club to use, he who was testing the direction of the wind and forecasting the odd cloud passing overhead.
Connor couldn’t have known it at the time but the current state of affairs to which he objected so much was about to favor him in the long run.
It was right after Ginger had missed the ball for the second time that Tommy, approaching the distraught golfer and offered these words of advice: “Just keep your eye on the ball.”
Immediately stung, Ginger rounded on Tommy. “Oh, just keep my eye on the ball? Is that it? Why didn’t you say so before? Here this whole round I’ve been looking everywhere except the ball.”
Sounding hurt for the first time in his life, Tommy said, “Just trying to be helpful.”
“Well don’t—”
“You know,” Tommy said, cutting off Ginger and putting a thoughtful thumb between his front teeth, “when I’m having trouble in a game it can help to blow of some of that steam and if I’m having trouble putting that energy into the ball with, say, a real smacker down the fairway, I’ll break a club or two over the old knee.”
Ginger stared at him. “Give me my four iron.”
“Why the four?”
“It let me down today.”
“How about the six? You haven’t used that.”
“The four.”
Tommy handed it to her. She handed back the iron looking more like a boomerang than a golf club.
Ginger addressed the ball again where it sat on the tee. A slightly less jerky but still far from smooth swing hooked the ball badly to the left.
Ginger’s driver now more closely resembling a paperclip joined the number four iron in the grass. No doubt Ginger’s partner, a wholly mute woman named Alice, was thinking this habit of breaking clubs could only mean good things for her chances in the tournament.
With no driver left Ginger reached for a hybrid on the thirteenth and a five iron. By the end of the hole both had been accordioned and tossed in Tommy’s direction.
As Ginger’s golf bag came to more closely resemble a swiftly wilting bouquet of flowers, Connor wasn’t sure whether Tommy was trying to help Ginger or sabotage her game.
The final straw came on the green of the fourteenth when, after Ginger missed a three-foot putt, Tommy suggested that her putter join the others.
“I won’t have anything to putt with! I can’t putt with a wedge. I won’t even have enough clubs to finish the round.”
Tommy merely shrugged.
And with that, unfortunately for Alice, Ginger gave up on the club-breaking act after putting in one more performance (her pitching wedge the unlucky victim) as the growing pile of broken clubs was doing nothing to curb her frustration or improve her game.
Reasserting herself seemed to help Ginger’s game on the last few holes but nothing could save her score and by the time she holed out on the eighteenth she had been beaten by her partner Alice and by nearly every other competitor in the field.
Connor, Ginger, Tommy, and Hunter didn’t play golf together again until a week later when Ginger had shaken off her loss and taken some time away from the links in an effort to restore her game through a kind of avoidance therapy, which has largely fallen out of use in favor of the more successful exposure therapy.
It was another glorious morning on the links: sun shining, blue-blue sky, green-green grass, the singing of birds, a gentle breeze out of the west, and the cart girl pocketing huge tips from the already tipsy retirees infesting the course like thirsty ticks.
The foursome exchanged pleasantries and advanced to the first tee. Hunter and Tommy teed off and hit well. When it was her turn, Ginger, shy and awkward for the first time, approached Connor and asked him, since he was not much taller than her, if it would be alright for her to borrow his driver as hers had been broken under mysterious circumstances.
Connor, ever the gentleman, obliged.
“It’s not my club,” she said, laughing as she addressed the ball, “so I’m not expecting too much.”
Ping! She smacked the guts out of the thing and they all stared as it landed nearly two hundred yards down the fairway.
“That’s it!” Connor said. “Just don’t care. That’s my motto.”
Ginger looked at him inquisitively. “Just don’t care?”
“Yup.”
Ginger chewed on that one while Connor teed up and hit. His drive fell far short of Ginger’s but it was on the fairway.
As is often the case when people share and share alike, which is easier to do when sharing golf clubs than, say, a tennis racket, Ginger and Connor were brought close, physically and emotionally, by sharing Connor’s clubs. They walked the fairway together, Connor talking about his last round and how the current round differed, doing anything he could to prevent an awkward pause. Despite his concerns, the conversation flowed naturally and wended its way away from golf to such topics as their plans for the weekend, the weather, their parents’ health, and the valuation of both short and long-term bonds in light of the general trend toward securitization in the municipal bond market.
They meandered a ways behind Hunter and Tommy, the latter of which seemed to be keeping his distance from Ginger, possibly because he felt responsible for her lack of clubs.
After a brief terrifying (for Connor) lull in the conversation Ginger said to Connor, “You never seem to get upset. Even when you play badly.”
“I play badly a lot.”
“Yeah but it can’t just be that you’re used to it.”
“No, not really. Like I said, I kind of just don’t care. It’s just golf after all. That and I have this breathing technique that I use.”
“What breathing technique?”
“Oh just in and out and hold between each inhale and exhale.”
“You do that all day?”
“No, just when things aren’t going well.”
Ginger was still thinking about what Connor said throughout the front nine and each time she addressed the ball she breathed as he had instructed and found herself calmer and more ready to take the shot and when that shot didn’t go as planned she breathed as instructed on her way to find her ball. Stroke after stroke her game steadily improved, even using Connor’s borrowed clubs, and her stroke count dropped precipitously from where it had been during the tournament just days before.
Connor too played well, almost his best ever, sharing with Ginger bringing a lightness to his heart that had been absent for so long.
The same could not be said for Tommy.
The front nine had been average for him. A decent nine holes. But on the tenth he sliced his drive badly and ended up beating the rough with his nine iron looking for the ball.
After he sliced his drive off the eleventh, steam appeared to be escaping from his ears.
When he sliced off the twelfth tee, his driver was brought down swiftly on his knee and then boomeranged into the trees.
Ginger and Connor exchanged glances but said nothing. Hunter, never one to be tactful, said, “I don’t think it’ll do you any good over there,” and laughed.
Tommy attempted to brush it off but his attempt only amounted to glaring at Hunter.
When his next drive off the thirteenth went well, despite being sans driver, everyone, including Tommy, thought the clouds had parted and a clean game would be Tommy’s again but his approach shot landed in a steep bunker which Tommy took five strokes to clear before giving up on the hole. His pitching wedge joined his driver, this time in two separate pieces, left in the bunker as a sort of offering to propitiate the angry god of the place that had ruined the hole for him.
False hope appeared once again for Tommy on the fourteenth when three subsequent drives put three brand new balls into the ravine halfway down the course. Tommy left his substitute driver, a one iron, bent fully in half at the tee and stormed off into the ravine to try to rescue at least one of his brand new balls.
Ginger looked thoughtfully after him as if his performance today were reminding her of her own just a week before during the tournament. As is so often the case, a different perspective lends perspective and Ginger felt that she was getting a glimpse into how she had appeared on that fateful day when she took Tommy’s advice. She did not like what she saw.
Since Hunter’s gibe the trio had kept fairly mute with respect to Tommy but after he hooked his drive on the fifteenth Connor felt that he had to step in, to do something, as one so often feels when seeing a friend drowning.
Unfortunately, Connor held out an oar for the drowning Tommy to grab onto but instead of saving him, smacked him on the head as Connor suggested that Tommy, instead of spitting like a tea kettle and breaking clubs should try breathing in a rhythmic pattern which he (Connor) was all too willing to demonstrate. Tommy rounded on him.
“Breathe!? I breathe every day! All the time! The only thing that will help me now is to stop breathing altogether.”
Then with one almighty stroke he buried ball, tee, and the head of the club in the ground and stalked off, leaving the shaft of the club quivering in the earth.
“I don’t get it,” Connor said.
“You just can’t help some people,” Ginger said to Connor. She looked him in the eye. “Is that how I looked during the tournament?”
Connor suddenly found his feet very interesting.
“Come on, you can tell me,” Ginger said. “I can’t be with a man who isn’t honest with me.”
Connor’s heart quivered like the nearby club shaft. “Be with—”
“Are you going to tell me or not?”
Connor leveled his gaze at her, looked deep into her eyes and said, “You looked like a dingus.”
For a moment Ginger was stunned, then she showed a little smile, grinned sheepishly. “A dingus?”
“Yeah.”
“A dingus?”
“An impossible dingus.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope. Just a dingus.”
All of a sudden she melted, threw back her head, and laughed, a high, tinkling, liberating laugh and Connor couldn’t help but join her.
“It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” Ginger said.
“Yeah, it really was.”
“And all my clubs are gone! Just breathing and not caring is a lot better than breaking all your clubs. Who would have known? Do you want to finish the round?”
Connor shook his head. “If it’s honesty you want, how’s this for honesty? I don’t even like golf.”
Ginger cocked her head. “You don’t?”
“Nope.”
“Then why have you been playing with us all this time?”
“To be with you, of course.”
It was the first time Connor had seen Ginger blush.
“Can I tell you something?” Ginger said. “I don’t like it either.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head. “Hunter played so I had to play. My parents were big on it. Proper classy sport and all that.”
Just then there came from the direction of the previous hole the sound of a dozen charging cape buffalo. Connor pulled Ginger out of the way just in time to watch a golf cart laden with drunk retirees go careening past, strike Tommy’s upright club, then tip to the side, and tumble head over khakis over polyester Nike polos into the nearby creek.
They both stared at the sodden men, soaked with water and High Noon, emerging from under the cart, staring around wild eyed as if looking for the culprit.
“So you don’t like golf and I don’t like golf. Then what the hell are we doing here?” Connor said.
“I have no idea.”
“Would you guys hurry up!” Tommy shouted from down the fairway.
“No!”
“What?!”
“No. We’re leaving!”
“What?!”
Ginger cupped her hands around her mouth. “We’re leaving!”
“You can’t leave there are four holes to play!”
“Who cares?!”
And with that Ginger faced Connor and said these six magical words: “Have you ever heard of pickleball?”
Connor shook his head.
“Want to play? My parents never let me. They said it was silly.”
“Absolutely. I love silly things. Do you use clubs? Can I use these or am I going to have to throw them away?”
“No, toss ‘em. It’s a racket.
“Like tennis?”
“No. It’s like a huge ping pong paddle.”
“Round?”
“No. Oddly square.”
“A rubber face so you can control the ball direction and spin?”
“No. Completely slick. No one knows where the ball will go.”
“What kind of ball?”
“The best. An extremely hard whiffle ball.”
“Like with holes? That I used to hit off a Fisher Price baseball tee when I was only yea high?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need a special court?”
“No. Just invade the first tennis court you can find.”
“I bet the country-club types hate it.”
“They do.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“It is.”
***
The next day, the new sun and the singing birds and the skipping squirrels saw a couple, newly in love, walk hand-in-hand onto what had until recently been a tennis court and christen it a pickleball court complete with rackets and whiffle balls, the devilish accoutrements of the game forbidden by all self-important country clubs. This court, however, was in a public park and, despite the cracks and tufts of grass, looked to Connor Kittredge as perfect as a freshly-mown fairway though that may have had much to do with the woman standing opposite him on the other side of the net.
“Get ready,” Ginger said.
The ball flew over the net and bounced. Connor swung. The ball, rocketing from Connor’s paddle, left residue on the sideline and sped off into the next zip code.
“Did you mean to do that?”
“I think so.”
“Here’s another one.”
Connor repeated the performance.
“If you keep this up, we’ll have no trouble in the county tournament in July.”
“I guess I prefer a racket to a club. Who knew?”
“Well I knew the club didn’t prefer you the first time I saw you swing one,” Ginger said laughing.
***
Bill Hastings pushed back from the bar and breathed as he had not breathed for some time—minutes, hours, well not hours, no story that short takes hours to tell but it was a while—and took a deep draught of porter, his standard coat of mail against winter’s chill.
“So you see, young man,” said Bill Hastings, “in the case of Connor Kittredge, whom you can ask yourself if you see him around on one of his rare visits to the clubhouse, discipline, perseverance, pure grit, and determination.”
“Huh?” said the young man, lifting his face from where it nearly pressed his phone to the bar top. “Oh, yes, yeah, of course. Connor and what’s her name?”
“Yes, Connor and what’s her name. I’m glad you were listening so intently, though ignore all the nonsense about quitting golf. You can never quit golf. You don’t have to like it, but you can’t quit. Where’re you going?”
Bill Hastings, much like Connor Kittredge was never one to shirk from a challenge and seized his sole audience member by the shoulder and gently encouraged him to return to his recently vacated seat.
“Well if you don’t remember the girl’s name it seems you didn’t quite make the most of my story. Get yourself another drink—
“I really have to go—
“—and I’ll start from the beginning.”
The young man struggled to his feet as Bill Hastings had clamped onto his elbow. He wriggled out of his coat and was gone.
“Hey!” said Bill Hastings. “You forgot your coat.”
He cast his gaze around the room. His eye fell on the young man whom he had seen teeing off from the first. Moving at a surprising pace for a man of his age and bulk, Bill accosted the young man who had just come in after the ninth for a break from the cold.
“Christopher!”
“It’s Gristopher, actually.”
“Christopher, my boy, how is your round going? Got a minute? Come right this way.”
Bill steered him to the bar and sat him down in the recently vacated seat.
“Sit, sit. Get anything you like to drink and let me tell you about the power of humility, of discipline and perseverance in the face of opposition; and the power of honesty.”
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.