THE OLD MAN AND THE TEE: How I Took Ten Strokes Off My Game and Learned to Love Golf All Over Again
Turk Pipkin
St. Martin's Press
Sports
ISBN: 0312320841
CHAPTER 16
Semi-Drunk
"I see myself as a monstrous, manned colossus poised high over the golf ball, a spheroid barely discernible fourteen stories down on its tee." - George Plimpton, "The Bogey Man"
Despite a couple of remarkable holes, the main thing I learned at Sand Hills was that I didn't have the shot-making ability needed for a true links course. The obvious solution was for me to play courses that require the widest variety of shots. That meant I absolutely had to go to Scotland - at least that's what I told Christy, who'd begun responding to my ever-increasing travel plans with a rueful shrug.
On the way to Scotland, I stopped in New York to see some pals from my acting stint as Janice's narcoleptic boyfriend on "The Sopranos." ("Have you heard the good news?") Despite the fact that Tony Soprano tees it up occasionally on screen, James Gandolfini has never played the game. The show's number-one linkster is Steven Van Zandt, who plays club owner Silvio Dante and is also, of course, the lead guitar player in Springsteen's E Street Band. Over dinner at the set one evening, Steven told me about taking up the game a few years earlier in order to spend more time with his father. With his dad having since passed away from Alzheimer's, the father-and-son rounds they shared are no doubt more special to Steven than ever.
Yet another great thing about the game of golf is that, even though Steven and I hardly know each other, we share an important bond, and it has nothing to do with "The Sopranos." What we share is the good fortune to love the same game our fathers loved. Whether it be golf, baseball, or ice fishing, everyone should be so lucky.
Wishing more than ever that I could tell Pip about my lessons and travels, I began at this point to write in earnest about my golf odyssey, and had the opportunity in New York to seek advice from a master of the game - the writing game, that is.
In a small bar on the Upper East Side, I joined my onetime tournament partner, author and actor George Plimpton, who had turned much of his life into art in his books about playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions, flying on a trapeze for the Clyde Beatty Circus, and playing percussion with the New York Philharmonic, where he inadvertently banged the bells so loudly that Leonard Bernstein stopped the concert to applaud him. Another of Plimpton's books, "The Bogey Man," chronicled his woeful attempt to compete in the PGA.
Trying to find some method in the madness of my ten-stroke quest, and hoping to write a book that might cover some of my mounting debts, I asked Plimpton if he had any advice for me on the subject of participatory journalism.
"Don't be afraid to come across like a dumb ass," he told me in his genteel Harvard accent. "I lost thirty yards in five plays for the Lions and was certain I'd ruined my book. It wasn't till much later that I discovered my ineptness made the pros seem all that more powerful and skilled. My failure turned out to be a success."
"But I'm essentially competing against myself," I told him.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "in that case, you could be in trouble."
