Produced by Al Haines
by
Donald McGibeny
Frontispiece by
[Transcriber's note: frontispiece missing from book]
I was in the locker-room of the country-club, getting dressed after thebest afternoon of golf I had ever had. I had just beaten Paisley"one-up" in eighteen holes of the hardest kind of sledding.
If you knew Paisley you'd understand just why I was so glad to beathim. He is a most insufferably conceited ass about his golf, for a manwho plays as badly as he does; in addition to which he usually beatsme. It's not that Paisley plays a better game, but he has a way ofmaking me pull my drive or over-approach just by his confounded mannerof looking at me when I am getting ready to play.
We usually trot along about even until we come to the seventh hole—infact, I'm usually ahead at the seventh—and then conversation does mein. You see, the seventh hole can be played two ways. There's a smallclay bank that abuts the green and you can either play around or overit to the hole, which lies directly behind. The real golfers play overwith a good mashie shot that lands them dead on the green, but dubs,like Paisley, play around with two easy mid-iron shots. When we get tothe place where the choice must be made, Paisley suggests that I goaround, which makes me grip my mashie firmly, recall all the things Ihave read in the little book about how to play a mashie shot, and letdrive with all my force, which usually lands me somewhere near the topof the clay bank, where it would take a mountain goat to play the nextshot. After that, Paisley and I exchange a few hectic observations andmy temperature and score mount to the highest known altitude.
Of course, every now and then, I forget my stance and Paisley longenough to send the ball in a beautiful parabola right on to the green,and when I do—oh, brother!—the things I say to Paisley put him insuch a frame of mind that I could play the rest of the course with apaddle and a basket-ball and still beat him. This particular afternoonhe had tried to play the seventh hole as it should be played, andthough we had both foozled, I had won the hole and romped triumphantlyhome with the side of pig.
I was gaily humming to myself as I put on my clothes when JamesFelderson came in. His face was drawn and his mouth was set in a waythat was utterly foreign to Jim, whose smile has done more to keeppeace in committee meetings and to placate irate members than all otherharmonizing agencies in the club put together. There was somethingunnatural, too, about