Loopy Read online

  As they chatted among themselves in a relaxed, confident manner, the Americans looked as if they had partied long into the night. Many of them were bleary-eyed and complaining of sore heads. Even Al Neumann’s mighty frame seemed to sag a little, and his face looked a trifle less bronzed than yesterday as he strode purposefully onto the first tee. He wore a weatherproof suit of bright red with the word HARVARD emblazoned on the back in big white lettering. This made him look even bigger and more formidable.

  An elderly man in a matching tweed cap, overcoat, and scarf stepped forward, inquiring, “Mr. Lynch?”

  When Loopy nodded, the man explained that he was the match referee. “Have you met your opponent? No? Well, come along and I’ll introduce you to him. That’s how we like to do things at Ballykissane, y’know. Keeps everything nice and friendly, we find, which is how we like it.”

  They approached Al, who was making practice swings with his driver just off the tee.

  “This is Laurence Lynch, your opponent. Laurence, meet Albert Neumann.”

  During the perfunctory handshake Al eyed Loopy closely. Looking somewhat perplexed, Al asked, “Larry Lynch? Say, Larry, I know your face. Haven’t we met somewhere before?”

  “Yeah”—Loopy grinned back at him—“last night in the dining room. I’m the wild card no one has heard of, remember?”

  The American stiffened noticeably but said nothing. Instead he muttered to the referee, “Let’s get on with it, ref.”

  “As you wish. Eighteen holes match play, gentlemen. Strict rules of golf. Referee’s decision is final. Is that clear, gentlemen?”

  When both men nodded wordlessly, he added, “Mr. Neumann, as holder of the Atlantic Trophy, has the honor off the tee and goes first. Best of luck to you both, gentlemen, and may the best man win.”

  The wind had changed from yesterday. Not only was it much stronger, but it was coming from a different direction. Now it was blowing hard from left to right across the narrow fairway. The opening hole ran uphill for all of its 448 yards. Its fairway was a thin ribbon running between immense sand dunes, which served to funnel the onshore wind, making it more intense on some parts of the fairway than others. Standing on the tee, in the lee of one such monstrous sandhill, the players felt nothing more than a strong breeze. Yet when Neumann struck a towering drive, his ball was quickly snatched by the gale and deposited into thick rough on the right-hand side of the fairway.

  As Loopy prepared to drive, an excited buzz and not a few loud chuckles came from spectators at the sight of his driver. He overheard someone remark, “Christ, look at his driver. It must have come out of the Ark.”

  Another could not keep the incredulity out of his voice: “Look at his grip! He’s holding the club like a ruddy hockey stick!”

  Setting himself up to hit the ball, Loopy blotted out the voices from his mind and concentrated his entire being on swinging Weeshy’s driver as slowly and smoothly as possible. As he did so, he could just catch the unmistakable growl of O’Hara from somewhere in the crowd: “That’s the grip of a hurler, you fool. And a bloody good one at that! Now keep quiet and don’t put him off his stroke.”

  He caught the driver short, halfway down its shiny leather grip. As Weeshy had told him, he swung much more slowly than usual while aiming far to the left. The ball was heading straight for an evil-looking patch of rough that lay between two sand dunes. As it did so, it struck a violent jet stream cascading out between the two hills, which radically altered its flight pattern. The ball veered sharply to the right and came to a halt on the fairway, to a smattering of polite applause, some 180 yards from the pin.

  The green was perched on plateau, high up in the hills. Only a fluttering red triangle indicated its presence in an otherwise forbidding moonscape of dune grass and heather. Putting yesterday’s disaster at this hole out of his mind, Loopy cast his mind back instead to his game with Tim Porter months before when Weeshy had handed him a seven iron. At the time he had thought it was not nearly enough club, but the caddy was right.

  This time Weeshy handed him a six iron. “Y’see the path to the left? Aim for the stone to the left of it.”

  “The white one?”

  “Aye, that’s the one. A nice low shot is all you need.”

  Loopy did as he was bid, and the wind again obliged and blew his approach far to the right and toward the flag. With the green out of sight, he could not be sure if his ball was on the putting surface, but more applause from the onlookers suggested that it was not far off it.

  In the meantime, Al and his caddy had been looking for his ball. Only then did Loopy notice that Neumann senior was caddying for his son. When they eventually found it, the ball must have been buried deep in the wiry dune grass, for Neumann’s most powerful slashing blow was barely enough to send it scuttling along the fairway, still some hundred yards short of the hole. From there he struck an elegant pitching wedge, allowing not quite enough for the wind, if Weeshy’s grunt of satisfaction was any indication.

  When they reached the summit, both balls were just feet apart, on the fringe. Neumann putted first to within six inches, and Loopy gave him the putt for a one-over-par five. With two putts for a win, Loopy was taking no chances. After consulting his caddie, he stroked the first putt to within a foot, then tapped the next one in without waiting for his opponent to concede it to him.

  “Mr. Lynch goes one up after one hole,” the referee announced in a calm voice that could not quell the buzz of excitement among the spectators, who had by now grown more numerous.

  The second hole was the two-hundred-yard par three off an elevated tee. The hole played in the opposite direction so that the gale was now from right to left, bringing the out-of-bounds area to the left of the green very much into play. Having won the first hole, Loopy had the honor off the tee.

  Weeshy handed him the same six iron. “Same shot as the last one. Aim for the biggest bunker on the right.”

  Had Loopy not decided to put himself completely into Weeshy’s hands and follow his advice to the letter, he would have laid off another twenty yards at least to the right of the evil-looking bunker. Instead he did as he was told, fully expecting the gale to blow him out of bounds and give his opponent a chance to draw level after two holes. However the laws of nature appeared to be suspended for the duration of his six-iron shot. The ball hung in the air over the cavernous bunker for what seemed like an eternity, barely missing it as it dropped to earth onto the outer rim of the closely mown apron that surrounded the saucer-shaped second green. It bounded past the flag-stick, skidded to a halt against the steep slope of the saucer, then rolled back down again to stop some ten feet below the hole.

  So great was his surprise—and relief—that he barely noticed the excited clapping and cries of “Bloody fine shot!” and “Well done, young fella!” that assailed his ears. As for Weeshy, he merely grunted and watched intently as the Neumanns debated on what club to play and where to aim it.

  “Seven iron—twenty to the right!”

  “You reckon? I’d figure it to be an eight. And mebbe not that much to the right, either. That ball didn’t move all that much, did it?”

  Al was referring to Loopy’s ball, now staring back at them mockingly across two hundred yards of nothing but grief and unplayable lies. Eventually Al played the eight iron. Perhaps mindful of his father’s suggestion that it mightn’t be enough club, he overhit it. The ball climbed steeply and was headed safely to the right, into the crosswind. Then, unlike Loopy’s lower-trajectory six iron, it was grabbed by the wind and slammed to the left. It was lucky not to end up out of bounds. It struck the wire-mesh fence that separated the hole from the public road and took a lucky rebound off a fence post, leaving about six inches of clearance between it and the wire mesh.

  Weeshy was moved to speech as he shouldered the bag and made for the green far below them: “That’s Old Moll for you.”

  He did not explain this cryptic comment, so Loopy decided that his caddy had taken to talking to himsel
f. It would be revealed to him later that Old Moll was the name of the sand dune that guarded the second green from the sea. Out of sight from the tee, she shielded a low shot like Loopy’s from the wind. The American’s forced eight iron, however, had soared high above her, and his ball was lucky to catch the fence rather than be swept clean over it.

  When he saw his lie and realized that he had no room for a proper backswing, Al appealed to the referee. Quite what grounds there were for his appeal, Loopy did not know. He had just spotted Edward Linhurst and Amy among the spectators and suddenly felt a surge of confidence as he watched the anxious discussion between the referee and the Americans. The sensation he was now beginning to feel was the same as he had got from the standing stones that surrounded the old fort. He felt drowsy, yet relaxed with his mind empty of every distraction except the task that lay before him, the sinking of an uphill putt not more than ten feet. The excitement and bustle of those around him seemed to be part of another world that had nothing to do with him. He was lost in an oasis of calm like the eye of the hurricane. He knew with an absolute certainty that if he could maintain this mental state, no task was too difficult, no golf shot too demanding, for him to achieve. As Al Neumann might have put it, Loopy was now well and truly “in the zone.”

  “The bastard is looking for a free drop. Will he get it?” O’Hara’s panic-stricken question, though directed at Weeshy, momentarily dragged Loopy out of the trance and back to reality.

  The caddy seemed unconcerned and merely shrugged his shoulders as he muttered out of the side of his mouth, “Dinna matter whether or which. Our man’s got the measure of him anyways.”

  The American did get a free drop. It was in a designated dropping area circled with a white line painted on the turf. Between it and the green lay a big mound. Neumann could either pitch his ball over the mound or putt it along the ground with enough force to climb over it and trickle down onto the green. In the end after another lengthy discussion with his caddy, he elected to fly it. A demanding shot, it had to clear the mound, yet land softly if it was to finish anywhere near the hole. To make matters worse, the green sloped away from him. The ball would have to drop like a butterfly on a downhill slope that had been dried out to a granite hardness by today’s wind and yesterday’s sun. If he caught it heavy, the ball would catch the mound and trickle back down to his feet. Were he to overhit the shot, it would scamper off the green and almost certainly end in one of the surrounding deep pot bunkers.

  Neumann produced a creditable effort, a delicate, floating chip that earned a sprinkling of applause even though it scurried fifteen feet past the hole. With no way of applying backspin to such a short shot, he could hope for no better. Being farthest from the hole, he was first to putt. He looked as startled as everyone else when it rattled into the cup for a par three.

  Again Weeshy merely grunted at this cruel setback. However, he did spend noticeably longer than usual lining up Loopy’s putt. Cocking his head this way and that, he sank to one knee to get a better view of the terrain that lay between the ball and the cup. Eventually he rose to his feet and whispered, “No break. Hit it hard to the back of the cup.”

  With a ten-foot putt to win the hole and go two up on the defending champion, Loopy might have been forgiven for feeling nervous. But he wasn’t. Not in the least. The trancelike feeling remained with him, as it was to do for the rest of the match. It had arrived as he’d watched his opponent bring off the two minor miracles in one hole that had rewarded him with the luckiest of pars. Miracle number one was that Neumann’s ball had stayed in bounds after his errant tee shot, and then, when it was obviously unplayable, the American was awarded a free drop. Miracle number two was the sizzling putt that might so easily have skidded off the green had it not struck the back of the cup and dropped into the hole.

  None of this troubled Loopy. It did not even enter his consciousness. All he could see was the ball and the hole ten feet away. Hovering over the putt, he could think of nothing else but the inside of the white-painted cup. Even before he struck the putt, in his mind’s eye he could see the ball roll smoothly up the slope, check for the briefest of moments, then disappear into the hole. In reality, he struck the ball harder than he had intended. It hit the back of the cup quite hard and jumped up a few heart-stopping inches into the air before dropping back, exhausted, into the hole for a birdie two.

  Two up after two. Life did not get any better than this. Complete strangers were walking up to him and slapping him on the back as he made his way to the third tee. Edward Linhurst sidled over with Amy on his arm. She gave Loopy a hug and just smiled at him as her father murmured, “Keep up the good work,” before drifting off into the gaggle of spectators that was growing with every minute that passed. News was spreading across the course that the defending champion was in trouble against an unknown wild card. Other matches were being deserted by spectators eager to witness what just might be a sensational upset.

  The third hole was a par five that almost, but not quite, paralleled the first. The public road that Neumann was so lucky not to have ended up on, even though he still lost the hole, ran the entire length of the par five. At 590 yards it was the longest hole by far of the eighteen. Sports-writers had christened it Neumann’s Favorite after last year’s championship. In the unseasonable heat wave with not even a breath of wind, the American had played it impeccably. He had birdied it every time he played it, but had saved his best for the final round of The Atlantic.

  On the green in two mighty blows, he was one down to Villiers-Stewart, who was well short in two. Even though the American just failed with his attempt at an eagle, leaving a tap-in for his birdie four, the older man could manage no better than a par five. The match was now even, and although his lordship would rally several times to level the score, he never again led the beefy young American. It was generally agreed in the postmortems conducted in the Members Bar late into the night that those two monstrous blows to the third green had demoralized the older man even though he was ahead up till then.

  Today, however, conditions could not have been more different at “Eternity”—so christened by the members because it seemed to go on forever. The wind continued to barrel through gaps in the dunes, creating pools of turbulence and calm within a few yards of each other along the winding fairway. As if these variations were not enough for the players to cope with, heavy rough bordered each side of the narrow fairway. To the right lay the road and out of bounds. To the left, an assortment of deep pot bunkers waited to trap a wayward shot. With the wind coming from the left but now also slightly into the players’ faces, it made the hole a true test of nerve and skill.

  One thing was certain. No one was going to make the third green in two today. Those watching from behind the tee could feel the full force of the quartering wind and agreed among themselves that reaching the green in three full-blooded shots would be the best that either player could hope for. This both players signally failed to do. Having had a close encounter with the out of bounds on the previous hole, Neumann naturally aimed well to the left, hoping that his huge drive would be blown back onto the fairway. He was unlucky, for it nearly did. Instead, however, it bounded into one of the deep fairway bunkers.

  Loopy’s drive was also caught by a sudden gust that even Weeshy had not allowed for and ended in the deep rough on the right of the fairway, but safely within bounds. He hacked out with the eight iron handed to him wordlessly by Weeshy. Left to himself he would probably have opted for the pitching wedge despite his bad experience with it in similar circumstances the previous day. He was pleasantly surprised at the distance the ball skipped along the hard fairway after nothing more than an average recovery. Weeshy’s demeanor was as impassive as ever as he slammed the eight iron back in the bag and marched off on his own, his long, black overcoat trailing along the fairway.

  It was now Neumann’s turn to get out of jail, and he did so with a mighty explosion shot from the deep bunker that threatened to empty it of sand. Both ball
s were on the fairway about equidistant from the elevated green with the best part of three hundred yards still to go. Loopy was surprised to be handed a three iron. He had in mind a three wood, or spoon, as Weeshy would have called it, which would have chased up to the base of the green with any luck.

  “Hit it well to the left and don’t worry about the rough.”

  With some misgivings Loopy did exactly as he was told and finished up off the fairway and about seventy yards from the green. The spectators, most of whom were members of Ballykissane, nudged each other and winked knowingly. Neumann, sensing a chance at last of reducing the deficit, took his driver to a near-perfect lie on the smooth turf. Like Loopy, he had aimed to the left, and this time the perfectly struck ball flew as low as the three iron. It hit the fairway ten yards in front of the green, a monster of a shot that drew thunderous applause from one and all. To hit a driver off the deck into a quartering wind in a dead straight line is the kind of shot most golfers only dream about.

  Neumann’s dream was short-lived. His ball, instead of skipping up the slope like a frolicsome puppy and finishing on the putting surface, took an unlucky bounce and ended up in a bunker even deeper than the one from which he had but recently escaped.

  Loopy used his pitching wedge for the first and last time that round and floated a nice safe shot onto the green from a perfect lie in the rough, just as Weeshy had predicted when he’d muttered don’t worry about the rough. From that distance Loopy had been able to load the ball with backspin, making it skid to a halt some twelve feet from the pin.

  The face of the bunker Neumann had found was at least six feet high, and its sides were lined with turf sods, built like bricks into its vertical face. To get out of the bunker and leave the ball anywhere near the pin, Neumann would have to blast his ball upward with a delicate splash shot out of powdery sand. To threaten Loopy’s lead, he would have to get the ball to rise in an almost vertical trajectory, barely clear the top of the bunker, then trickle down toward the pin. To do so would require the delicate touch of a surgeon and the nerves of a steeplejack.