Coach's Corner
By Andy "Coach" Cotton, Fri., Oct. 18, 1996
Something though, is amiss; something quite different from your local torture chamber. No mighty swings resulting in a four-foot ground ball. No ugly slices careening over the 60-foot fence, into oncoming traffic. No wickedly snapping duck hooks ripping into the parking lot. No embarrassing shanks threatening the fellow three spaces down. No whoosh of air, followed by the sick thud of a club grounding onto the hard earth.
Something is wrong with this picture. Drivers pounding balls into outer space... the long, sweet arc of a perfectly stuck long iron... the impossibly high parabola of a pitching wedge... each ball lofts, sails, or explodes into the crystal clear sky of a perfect October day. Though each soaring white orb is a once-in-a-lifetime shot for me, many of the assembled golfers are not pleased, as they strive for perfection in a game where, cruelly, there is none. These are not meat salesmen gathering for an annual golf outing, but a smattering of the pros assembled for the Texas Open at La Cantera Golf Course, on the cactus-strewn plain north of San Antonio.
Just one of the guys: Frankly, I'm terrified as I amble down the fairway, hiding between the standard bearer and walking scorer, following respectfully behind each group like the courteous entourage behind the king's carriage. I don't want a caddie to yell at me again. I'm mortified, beyond mortified really, that Mark Calcavecchia, Corey Pavin, or UT's Justin Leonard will demand I be removed (because I'm bad luck or maybe I twitched in some indiscernible way) from this off-limits view of professional golf. Leonard's caddie has already reprimanded me for "moving" while Justin was over the ball. A few holes later he shouts from 75 yards away, I'd damn well better "move when he waves at me." Though I'm too nervous to write a word, I pretend to be writing all the time. I shackle myself to these officials, hoping nobody will expose me for an imposter.
This isn't really golf, certainly not a form I recognize anyway. Examples materialize immediately. Pavin -- the weak hitter of this group -- whacks his first tee-shot a little left, 265 yards on the 635-yard first hole. The ball sits on a patch of rock-hard dirt and stone. I ponder this familiar lie (for me), wondering what I'd do. As Pavin rapidly approached with a three-wood in hand, I knew I'd take my putter and give the ball a backwards poke, hoping to get back to the fairway. Pavin quickly sets up and calmly clubs the ball 225 yards, into the middle of the fairway, maybe 60 yards from the green. Just a week before, I was lying nine at this exact same spot. Ho-hum. Another day at the office.
All three players are lying two, no more than 75 yards from the impossibly placed pin. Within seconds -- plop, plop, plop -- all three balls are docilely sitting in a tidy circle surrounding the conquered pin. The farthest ball from the hole? Maybe five feet.
Human after all: La Cantera is a big, long course. In an apparent contradiction, it smiles more upon a "short," accurate player like Pavin, over big hitters. Like helicopter shots of placid rice paddies in Southeast Asia, the big, open fairways are deceiving, filled with hidden treachery. Get just one foot off the fairway and the golf ball will sink into a long, thick tangle of Bermuda rough. It has the texture of a Brillo pad. Hitting an aggressive shot from this nest is impossible, even for these guys.
La Cantera is not John Daly's kind of course, yet as he approaches the 18th, he's three under, tied for third. The 18th (his group teed off from #10) is a difficult 426-yard par 4. Daly did what only he can do. He almost drove the green and he would have if he'd hit the ball straight. He didn't. The ball hooks left, coming to rest on a sandy road behind a temporary green building, the bleachers and the gallery, maybe 70 yards left of the green. He lofts his second shot, from a beach-like lie, into the middle of the greenside gallery.
The ball immediately disappears into the impenetrable rough. He chunks his third shot about three feet, still in the rough. He finally struggles to the green, where his playing partners had been waiting for about 20 minutes. He three-putts for a seven. He just lost three strokes. Not a happy camper, he tees off on #1, slicing a prodigious drive deep into the cedar forest. Somehow, he gets a club on the ball, it comes squirting weakly out of the woods, bouncing happily down the cart path, hops the curve, coming to rest directly behind a large oak tree. Once again, Big John is buried in the deep rough.
I recognize the look in the beleaguered Daly's eyes. It says, "Shit, do we really have eight more holes to play?"
