The Club

Chapter 4 - The Development Program

I had been working at the club for 6 days. Jason and I had the place in top shape. I had seen Cloudy twice all week. The man talked in a constant mutter. The latest rant today was about the legendary Canadian golfer, Moe Norman – his unique golf system and relentless focus on the target.

“It’s a left-handed game for Christ sakes. You gotta reach out and shake hands with that target. You play it underhanded. People aim too far right” … and on it went.

As the clock turned towards 2 p.m. the course was wide open so I asked Jason if he wanted to go out and play a few holes before the Canberra evening faded to black. Jason figured we could safely get away so off we went. I had been around the course a bit in the first week but this was my first chance to play an extended number of holes. My game is pretty steady. I hit it an average length and, though the ball strays from its intended path more often that I’d like to admit, I have a knack for making par. Jason has a knack for hitting monster drives, striking unbelievably long majestic iron shots and putting with the virtuosity of a conductor. Of course what he can’t do is concentrate for more than 20 minutes and therefore, as his mind wanders, he fails to see danger lurking, makes a poor choice or two, compounds it with a silly attempt at recovery, and runs up some big numbers when he really shouldn’t.  Jason would beat me every day on the range and, if golf was bowling and we were presented with the same challenge every shot, I’d never get close to him. But every round of golf is a tapestry, and when you drop that crucial stitch the prized afghan you are making becomes a tea towel and fast. I guess I always felt the artistry of the game supplanted its physics. Unfortunately my take on the art form that is golf was that of a lion tamer. I never tried to kill the lion. I preferred to coexist with it – I never gambled; I simply thought a step ahead of the beast and kept from being killed. I saw victory as even par while others dominated the game and beat me.

We made it through 7 holes and our stamina and the daylight started to wane so we headed back towards the shop. There, I was surprised to see Cloudy having a chat with the Chairman of the Club and the General Manager. I was even more surprised when I was invited to join the conversation.

“Hey Teddy,” Cloudy started. “The boys and I were trying to figure out the best way to go about getting a decent team together for pennants next year. We’re getting smashed by every club in town and it looks bad. We’d really like to stick it to those pricks from Kings but we just don’t have the players. It’s a god-dammed geriatric convention around here; no players at all,” he said.

“Well, we’ve got a few decent juniors,” I said. “Why don’t we develop them, coach ‘em up, and maybe in a year or two we’ll have a tough team to beat?” I contributed like I knew what I was talking about.

“Yeah, we’ve tried that but inevitably the kids find different clubs and come back and shove it up our backsides,” said Peter, the club’s manager.

But the Chairman of the club, Charles Samson, wanted me to go on. “Do you think you could put a program like that together, Teddy, really set a goal and achieve it? I’d like the club to be known for more than overpriced, undercooked pasta some day.”

“It’ll be up to you, Teddy. I can’t coach kids,” said Cloudy.  It was a response I was fully prepared to hear.

And just like that I had volunteered myself to lead the Junior Development Team at the Club in Canberra. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized what I had done and how uniquely unqualified I was. Kids? What did I know about teaching kids how to play golf? I cut my teeth at a resort course in Coolum. I taught rich 55-year-old women how to hit the ball 100 meters and not hurt themselves. I hadn’t played with a student since I was a student myself and even then not for very long because by the time I was 16 I was playing on the men’s amateur circuit. I had never spent any time with a teenager. I was an only child. My father said that he made one mistake in his life and cast a glance at me every time he said it.  However, by the time the Falcon came to a stop in the underground parking I had calmed my nerves. Hey, how hard could it be?

I had never lived in an apartment before. My only experience in an apartment was in year 7 at school when Frank Merckle and I used to go to his apartment building for lunch and throw apples, onions and oranges off the balcony towards the cool kids that walked to the park for lunch. For 3 straight weeks we emptied his mother’s crisper drawer and, with the aim of drunken sailors, hurled this assortment of fruits nowhere near our intended targets. On the last day we ever played our game of vegetable target practice I threw my last apple and, as soon as it left my hand, I knew I was actually going to hit this poor guy from 4 stories high. The moment it left my hand the conscious part of my brain said, “What the hell are you doing?” Crouched in the relative seclusion of the panel protecting the balcony, I glimpsed the apple hitting Roy Thompson on the shoulder, and Roy went down hard. Eventually his friends were able to get him to his feet and, like secret service agents, scanned the neighbourhood for book depositories. My heart was jumping out of my chest. Frankie looked at me in horror. We never spoke about it again, and his mother was able to cut her weekly fruit bill tenfold thereafter. Later, when I signed up for the high school rowing team in Grade 9, my seat mate was Roy Thompson. We became great friends and eventually I was asked to be in his wedding party. There are secrets that will go to my grave. This is one.

That night I had a nightmare about a group of 13-year-old kids hitting Titleists at me from a fourth floor balcony. Morning couldn’t come soon enough.