The Garner Files by James Garner & Jon Winokur

Author:James Garner & Jon Winokur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Golf

The first time I played golf was in Texas, in the snow, while on tour in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Playing town after town on our way across the country, we did a lot of short hops in the bus. During the day, we’d go out and play the local muni course, sometimes in deep snow, with a red ball. We were just goofing around.

I didn’t start playing seriously (only a golfer would put those two words together) until the late 1950s, after I’d signed with Warner Bros. I played every day I wasn’t shooting a picture or making a Maverick episode, usually at Griffith Park, one of LA’s busy public courses.

I didn’t take lessons; I learned to play by observation. When my brother Jack moved to California, he helped me with this and the other, and I got better because of him. Years later John Cook gave me some pointers as well, and Gary Player once gave me a great putting tip. That’s about the only real instruction I’ve ever had. Of course, like most golfers, I always kept my ears open for tips about the golf swing, what Bel-Air pro Eddie Merrins calls “bootleg lessons.”

Golf is the most competitive game I know. You’re playing against yourself as well as your opponents. It’s an endless quest for perfection that you’ll never achieve. It can be a punishing game, especially for a pessimist like me.

Mac Davis loved to kid me about it, and I admit my attitude wasn’t the best. Whenever I’d hit a shot that looked like it might be out of bounds, I was always certain it was, and I’d say, “Shit, it’s OB!”

“Be positive!” Mac would say.

“Okay, I’m positive it’s out of bounds!”

Mac and I started playing golf together at the Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Both of us were five or six handicappers, and we got to be pretty much a pair around the club. We played four or five days a week in a regular match with a bunch of other guys. We’d square off into foursomes, so Mac and I would be opponents one day, partners the next.

Mac’s wife, Lisë, a former nurse, is one of the nicest people I know. I didn’t meet her through Mac, though; she and I met when they took me to Cedars-Sinai with twelve broken ribs. I’d been filming a scene on a mechanical horse for an episode of Bret Maverick. The guy who was running it hadn’t done it before and he threw me fifteen feet. I managed to duck my head before I hit, but landed on my left rib cage and broke ’em all.

In addition to being sweet, Lisë is gorgeous. When I woke up in the hospital, the first thing I saw was her radiant face, this beautiful angel looking down at me. I literally thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

One of the great things about golf is the camaraderie. In addition to my friendship with

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