Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia by Tom Cox

Author:Tom Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448103072
Publisher: Random House

Seven

No Mouth and All Trousers

THE SITUATION, AS I saw it, was very simple: the trophy was in my hands – it was just a matter of keeping my fingers from getting too sweaty to hold onto it. If I could just plonk my approach shot anywhere on the putting surface here on the par-five seventeenth, and then avoid the treacherous out-of-bounds on the eighteenth, it would probably be good enough. Two pars would clinch it. Maybe even par – bogey. Nothing fancy. Given my lowly standing on the order of merit, this was not the time for heroics.

I checked my yardage book again, took a squint at the flag, and threw a pinch of loose grass into the air: 156 to the hole. About eight yards of wind against. A medium-firm seven-iron. ‘A mere bagatelle,’ as Peter Alliss might say.

It had been a hot day, and a hotter battle – the kind of enthralling back-and-forth tussle that comes along once every eight or nine tournaments. There had been ugly moments (Jim Furyk’s unprecedented five-putt on the fifth), infuriating moments (the bit where a crowd member came out of the clubhouse and told Furyk, Fred Couples and Sergio Garcia to tuck our shirts in because ‘all the men on the veranda are talking about it’), raucous moments (Sergio Garcia’s frustrated shout of ‘Cock-knockers!’ after slicing his tee shot on the tenth) and inspired moments (the bit where Fred Couples said he was going to ‘try a new swing out’ and promptly birdied the thirteenth), but the overall result was that now, in the closing stages, the Melanoma Cup was mine to lose.

As I drew the club back, I heard the maggot in my head whisper something about the stream in front of the green. Nonetheless, the ball took off and made its way over the hazard to the front fringe: a shaky sort of strike, but serviceable.

‘Shot!’ said Sergio Garcia. ‘I was wondering … Do you think we’re a bit old for giving ourselves pretend pro names?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. But being Fred sort of makes me feel more confident,’ I said. ‘And I thought you liked being Sergio.’

‘No, no, I do,’ said Simon. ‘But I think there might be something psychologically damaging about it. There’s too much history of messing it up to carry around. It always seems to make me lose my bottle on the last few holes.’

A half-intelligible voice piped up from the trees to the right of the fairway. We looked in its direction and requested that it repeat itself.

‘I said, I don’t see why I always have to be Jim Furyk!’ shouted Scott.

‘Think of it as a service to Jim Furyk,’ I said. ‘If you’re not going to be him, who else is?’

‘Apart from Jim Furyk himself,’ said Simon. ‘And he doesn’t have much choice in the matter either.’

‘I think I’ve lost that one,’ said Scott, who had now emerged from the trees, and was rooting around in his bag. ‘OK if I drop another ball down here? I can’t be bothered going back.

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