The Bogey Man by George Plimpton

Author:George Plimpton [Plimpton, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

The putter I carried in the big oxblood bag was a mallet-head type that someone had recommended, and I had cast around and bought one just before leaving on the tour. I had left my old putter, one my grandfather had given me years before, at home, and I was sorry I had. I have great affection for certain inanimate objects and cannot bear to throw them away—particularly if associated with memory or performance. My old putter, a very warped object, had not performed well for me, but it was traditional. I had always used it; it was designed exactly like Bobby Jones’s famous putter Calamity Jane; indeed, it even had the two black bands of whipping around the shaft, essential for the original since Jones had broken it on one occasion, but in the imitation models, of course, absolutely superfluous. As Darwin wryly wrote about these copies when they first appeared: “Did ever imitation pay success more flattery than that!”

Still, I missed my old putter. I was used to its vagaries and it was an easy putter to blame if one putted poorly. It was the sort of putter which in tight matches drove one’s partners to distraction. A putt of mine would die 15 feet short and off to the left. “How can you do anything with that thing. How can you hit the ball,” they would say.

My new putter hefted splendidly in the hand, and on the face it had a small gold area the size of a dime where you were supposed to hit the ball. Still, I did not feel comfortable with it. My putting had been a constant source of dismay to both Abe and Bob Bruno at the Crosby. “I wish I had my old putter,” I had said. “I’m not used to this one yet.”

“Yes, we can see that,” they had replied.

It was a question of gaining confidence in the club, being familiar enough with it so that it became an extension of one’s body rather than a separate instrument.

On the drive up to San Francisco for the Lucky International, I vowed I would do what Bruno had urged—more practicing with the putter, whenever I had the chance. Why not in one’s hotel room?

I had a reservation at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco—I had stayed there before—a great ornate building with the trolley tracks running by one side, and then down the hill, but the rooms were quiet with high ceilings and tall unwashed French windows with heavy curtains to draw across. I parked the car in the garage under the hotel, and took the putter from the golf bag in the trunk along with four or five balls and my suitcase. I rode the elevator up to the lobby on the floor above and went to the registration desk to check in.

I stood up close to the desk so the clerk would not see the putter. The golf balls were in my coat pocket. He took a card off the rack for me to sign.

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