Redemption on the greens

Commentary

By Clay Horning

It is early evening Saturday at Westwood Park Golf Course and it is the calm before the storm, literally, so everybody believes, outside near the scoreboard and inside where Anthony Kim and Tiger Woods, on television, duel for the lead at Congressional Country Club.

Rain may be coming.

Lightning, perhaps, too.

The kids who run the grill are running a tournament within a tournament on the chalkboard that typically promotes the day’s special. Instead, it is a leaderboard charting the progress of four other grill employees playing the Westwood Invitational in real time.

Ah, technology.

Eleven over through 27 holes, somebody named Sean leads somebody named Josh, who is 17 over through 31.

Meanwhile, I’ve learned that I, myself, have been a topic on the second day of the tournament and not because, flipping my club to the ground after chipping across and over the fifth green, my sand wedge caught the hardpan just perfect and snapped.

Because if I’d wanted to break a club, it would have happened 5, 20 and 30 minutes later when I missed less than six feet of putts, combined, in the space of four holes.

The yips were back on the front nine Saturday, but what everybody wanted to know was how I’d managed to catch up to my second-round playing partners 275 yards off the first tee rather than on the tee box.

Thinking my time was 8:50 a.m., I didn’t respond when they called my name at 8:35 and continued eating breakfast, a fanstastic burrito with all the works. Upon finishing breakfast, and after spending about a minute in the bathroom, I walked outside at 8:45, only to learn I had an 8:40 time.

There you go.

If the Westwood Invitational wasn’t run by a bunch of great people and was instead run by guardians of the game intent on killing the spirit of the game, I might have been disqualified.

As stories get around the grounds of Norman’s venerable municipal track, mine got around, too. For the record, I was in the bathroom about 60 seconds. Not 15 minutes.

That aside, looking forward to one more round of golf, one more date with five hours in searing heat and one more chance to prove to myself and the scoreboard watchers I know something about this stupid, crazy, dumb and unforgiving game, I know not what to think.

Because the game is also redemptive and for a change, that was the story I finally lived on the golf course again.

Imagine, if you can, forgetting how to walk. Or how to lift a drink to your mouth, because that’s what happened to my putting about five years ago. Once I thought myself a fine putter, one who made the short ones and sometimes the long ones; one capable of getting hot with the blade.

Since, I’ve been through three or four putters, putted with the toe in the air and the blade flat to the ground, with my eyes closed, while looking at the cup instead of the ball, with the first three fingers of my right hand disengaged from the grip, with my left hand resting at my side, talking my way through the stroke or trying to be so quiet with my mouth, body and mind, hoping only the shoulders might move.

I’ve talked about it until David Lisle, Bobby Florer and Rick Parish want to throw me out of the pro shop.

I shot a Friday 73 and failed to see my putter strike one ball into the hole. Because closing my eyes kept the demons at bay.

Saturday it was a 75, but only after a front-nine 41 in which eyes-closed quit working and had me wanting to quit the game after eight holes, because what’s the point when four birdie putts, ranging from 8 to 20 feet, all become bogeys before leaving the green.

Really, why even play?

Then I made a tester for par on No. 9 and another to avoid a fifth three-putt on No. 10. I kept the glove on for the first time and that seemed to help. Somehow. I fought back the fear of seeing the putter hit the ball. Still afraid where it might go, I watched nonetheless.

I did not putt well, but I ceased being the worst putter in the history of bad putting. I’ve written too many chapters in that book already.

Now, apparently, though many strokes back, I’m on the First Flight leaderboard, pleased not to have been DQ’d, wondering how I’ll respond and wishing it hardly mattered.

But it does.

There you go.

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com