Wood & Iron

Chapter 7

"Hey Benji, your 10 o'clock called and asked if they could push to 10:30."

Adam's little brother had spent his entire life on this golf course. He knew he was second in line to run this place from a young age, but that had never bothered him. He saw the hours his father put in at the clubhouse and vowed to spend his time on the golf course, and not simply working for the golf course. While Adam was learning the ropes of running the business, Benji used the business to refine his swing.

Adam had never really been competitive with his little brother, either. Adam liked golf as a boy, but Benji breathed it. Benji won his first tournament at the age of 11 and didn't stop winning until he graduated from the University of Oregon. Adam had always been his biggest fan, sometimes driving through the night to make sure he was standing next to the tee box when his little brother hit his driver.

As a child, Benji hoped to go pro, but the chasm between a good college golfer and a PGA golfer was too vast, and by his junior year, he knew he couldn't make the jump. So he finished his degree and took a job as the club's golf pro, spending his days giving lessons and helping wealthy businessmen fix their slice. It was a small price to pay to get to spend his mornings standing under the sun with well-manicured grass under his feet. And most afternoons, he could manipulate his schedule to play a few holes before the sun disappeared behind the mountains.

"10:30 is fine," Benji replied to the girl at the front desk. "Just don't schedule anything over lunch. By the way," he looked around the clubhouse's sizable wooden lobby, "where's Adam?"

"Mr. Wood is in his office."

Benji looked past the lobby to the closed door at the other end of the building. That door had spent much more time closed than open the last few months, and Benji wondered if he was the only one who had noticed.

When their father announced his retirement, Benji was blown away at how well his brother handled it. He knew the pressure Henry Wood could bestow on his sons, and he knew that Adam must've felt the full weight of all of it... not to mention the expectation he had put on himself. But from the moment Adam held the keys (and the ball marker that their dad loved so much), he had stepped up to the plate in ways that his little brother didn't know he had in him.

Adam was a great leader, and the club's culture changed the minute he ascended to the top of the org chart. There wasn't a member, an employee, or even an employee's spouse... who didn't see how much Adam Wood cared about this place and these people.

"18, 475, and 150," Adam had said one night after a few drinks around the fire pit. "If I take care of those three numbers, I can sleep easy at night."

"Let me guess," Morgan had replied. "18 is how far over par you shoot. 475 is how much it takes to keep the bar stocked every night, and 150 is how many yards you can hit your driver."

"Number of employees, number of members, and amount of acres we have." Benji was the one who replied. He had heard Adam recite those numbers in staff meetings, passionately reminding the crew at Wood & Iron of their priorities: each other, their members, and their land. And everyone in those staff meetings and around the Friday night fire pit knew that these were far more than just numbers to Adam Wood.

So it surprised Benji to see the office door closed more than it had been open these past few months. And it wasn't just that... something was different about Adam as well. Like most little brothers, Benji had always been able to tell when Adam was under a lot of pressure. And usually, it sent him on a chase to find out what was happening.

Like a couple of years back, when Adam's sighs were a couple of seconds longer than usual and happened more frequently while driving the cart around the course. It only took a little digging for Benji to find out how close the club was to running out of money. A quick trip to the finance office confirmed his worry. Of course, he never mentioned it to Adam. It never even crossed his mind.

But this seemed different, and it wasn't just the closed door. It was the way that his brother wouldn't make eye contact with him... the way he got up and left any conversation that spoke of the future, their father, or anything even remotely profound. And it wasn't just that; there were days when it seemed like Adam waited until Benji's truck left the parking lot before he left the deck and made his way to his golf cart and through the forest back to the cul-de-sac.

Something is definitely going on with Adam.