Freddy Finishes First
Or where is Aubrey?
In October, the Magnolia Glenne Senior Men’s Golf Association (MGSMGA) was slated to hold its penultimate tournament. First prize was a three-hundred-dollar gift certificate to be spent at the pro shop. Other prizes included vouchers for meals at the club’s Lester Maddox Restaurant along with bags of tees emblazoned with the club’s logo.
Most of the members of the MGSMGA were long past sixty and a few had reached octogenarian status. As usual, foursomes were created with players rated A, B, C, and D based on their handicaps. It is worth noting that generally the handicap difference between most A and D players was a mere ten strokes.
Among the Geezers who had signed up was Freddy Felton, a resident of the neighboring active seniors living enclave of Boomerburg. Freddy was an arriviste when it came to the ancient game as he had taken up golf just a few short years before. Though he considered himself a duffer he had through diligent practice, improved a great deal during the previous year. Still, he seemed never to achieve a better than a twenty-five handicap, so in tournament play he was always the D player in any foursome.
This day’s tournament was to be scored by taking the best two results of any foursome on each hole with the proviso that at some point the C and D players’ scores must be used. There were also opportunities for winning the closest to the pin on the par-3 holes.
Such scorekeeping meant that any player with a high handicap, if he was playing well, could do the most to affect the outcome because the rules of the tournament required that the best two scores on each hole be counted, net of handicap. At a minimum, all he had to do was to play bogey golf and his foursome could sweep the field. On this day Freddy felt that his mojo was on.
The day of the tournament dawned bright and sunny. The temperature at tee time was in the low fifties but would be in the high sixties with a light breeze by the time the golfers hit the turn. Everything considered, it was a perfect day for golf.
The Magnolia Glenne greenskeepers, not generally known for their attention to detail had on this occasion, done their best to mow the fairways and trim back the rough. The bunkers had been filled with new sand and they had been raked as if this day’s round might be a PGA event. The MGSMGA even provided each registrant with a complimentary sleeve of Titleist balls each emblazoned with the Magnolia Glenne logo. It seemed that camaraderie and largess was in the wind.
Perhaps that was overstating the case as there remained a small coterie of golfers who though far from scratch players themselves did not appreciate losing any holes, let alone prize money to high handicappers.
Chief among those who looked down upon the duffers participating in the event was Aubrey Cotton, the founder of the MGSMGA. Aubrey golfed five days a week, week in and week out, and other than when the course might be closed in the expectation of a hurricane, tornado, or a freak snowstorm, he could be found whacking away with his Titleists. As a result, Aubrey Cotton had reduced his handicap to nearly a single digit. A man endowed with, or it might be better said, bewitched with, an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules of golf, he was always quick to point out the errors and infringements of his fellow players.
As with any of the MGSMGA golf events, a shotgun start was arranged. The organizing committee of which Aubrey Cotton was the unofficial czar had limited participation to thirty-six foursomes. That meant that spread out over the eighteen holes two foursomes would have a staggered start with one labeled “A” and the other “B” with six minutes separation on the tees.
With a bit of malice intended Aubrey Cotton arranged it so that Freddy Felton, the “D” player in his foursome would start with the second group at the eighteenth tee. Cotton reasoned that would force Felton and his fellow duffers to play the 15th, 16th, and 17th holes (the most challenging on the course) at the end of their round when fatigue would take its inexorable toll. That would show them that no matter what advantage a high handicap might have on the par-3s, the devilish layout of those holes would cost them.
It was a good plan, thought Cotton. Well, of course it was, hadn’t he thought of it? And it would have been had not Aubrey Cotton failed to consider where Freddy Felton had been spending nearly every day leading up to the tournament.
As it happened, each weekend, while the course was inundated with guests and those more likely to play from the tips, Freddy indulged himself in watching PGA play on TV. As he watched, he took note of the claims of a firm called Techno Golf that promised a scientific approach to improving one’s game. At first, Freddy scoffed, but then a series of testimonials from people who shared his same handicap swayed the Fredster to take action.
The following Monday Freddy made an appointment for a swing analysis. After several swings while wearing the firm’s electronic harness that tracked things like hip and shoulder rotation, the instructor made a few adjustments to Freddy’s grip and stance.
It was like magic. Instead of shanking the ball in any direction but toward the pin, he was fading his shots toward the center of the computer-generated fairway. Freddy was hooked. He bought the complete Techno Golf package that included daily lessons and practice as well as a series of on course lessons with his instructor. Soon he was parring or even birdieing the holes on the computer simulator.
He was so confident that he signed up for the MGSMGA tournament. Of course, since he had been playing on a simulator the state golf association could not adjust his handicap, so he remained at the high end of all the players. Hence, when it came to assigning “D” players Aubrey Cotton saw to it that Freddy Felton would be the last player on the team that would finish at the very end of the tournament.
And so it went. With all the players out on the course Aubrey Cotton was certain that no bunch of duffers were going to break his record of wins. In order to make sure of that, he had a squad of marshals out on the course keeping track of player progress and monitoring the scorecards that were mounted on the steering wheel of each “A” player’s cart. Knowing that things were in hand, Aubrey Cotton went out on the first hole and made par.
A bit chagrined that he had not birdied the par 5 first, he moved on determined to shave another point off his ten handicap. Busy with his own game, he gave no more thought to the last foursome in the event.
The last thing that his instructor at Techno Golf did was to fit Freddy with new clubs. Freddy was thrilled with his new Ping 425s with hyperflex senior shafts. The speed that was lacking in Freddy’s swing was augmented by the sheer flexibility of these shafts so that he was picking up twenty yards on his metals and irons. When he teed off on his first hole, the par 5 18th, he found himself on the green in three and birdied the hole with a twenty-foot putt. Now a birdie is a birdie, but with a two-stroke advantage because of his handicap it was as if he had made an Albatross two on the hole. It was an auspicious beginning, and it was only going to get better.
As Freddy was doing his best to imitate Tiger Woods, Aubrey Cotton was encountering difficulty at every hole. Shanks to the out of bounds, topping shots that plunked into the water and worse, errant putts that raced by the hole seemed his lot that day. His best hole had been the birdie at the first. With a ten handicap he was getting no relief on the holes that he was messing up. In fact, his raw score would put him at twenty-three over par if he continued in the same way.
As the defacto leader of the MGSMGA he decided to check in with his team of spies posing as marshals to see how bad the others were doing. He pulled up by the snack bar at the twelfth hole and using the radio of the marshal stationed there called around to the others. There was the usual smatterings of good and bad and it would seem that despite the drubbing the course had been giving him, he would come out near the top when the scoring was completed.
He was about to hand the radio back to the marshal when the observer on the line spoke up.
“Of course, you have to hand it to Felton, he will probably score under eighty with his current handicap. He is on fire today. He just eagled another hole.”
Perhaps fire did shoot out of Aubrey Cotton’s eyes at hearing that. Certainly, one might have smelled woodsmoke accompanying the steam rising from his ears. Aubrey Cotton was not pleased, no not pleased at all. To be beaten was one thing, but for a high handicapper to start playing like a scratch player had not been in his calculations. Flummoxed, he took off toward the next tee nearly abandoning his passenger as he stomped on the cart’s gas pedal.
On the 12th he hit the creek with his drive and saw his ball ricochet around the rocks before rolling downstream. He overshot the green with his fourth shot and walked away with a seven. The next several holes yielded a couple of pars and two bogeys. Then came the dogleg 15th where his second shot rose high up the slope to the green only to bounce high when it hit a patch of hard ground and bounded back downhill and into the depths of Copperhead Creek – another seven.
Meanwhile, equipped with his recently acquired skills, Freddy Felton was parring most of his holes. The occasional bogey was assuaged by the application of his handicap stroke advantage so that his net score still remained below par. He was on a roll, and he knew it.
It was at this point when fate stepped in. It came in the form of the exodus of the “C” player in Freddy’s foursome. Retired Air Force colonel G.R. Pounder suffered much from stomach problems and borderline incontinence, a not uncommon result of a lifetime of anal retentivity on many fronts. On this day, just after finishing the 15th hole, Colonel Pounder gave a loud gasp and sprinted from the cart and dashed into the shrubbery.
What followed were the sounds of what a casual observer might take to be the death throes of a large beast. The subsequent voiding of his bowels left the natty colonel exhausted and his legs and golfing shorts streaked with a greenish slush. Embarrassed and confused the colonel waived away any assistance and decided to walk cross country through the woods on one of the nature trails to his home. This left Freddy to continue on alone for the last two holes.
Aubrey Cotton received a report of the colonel’s withdrawal, but any relief he might feel was short-lived. With the “C” player now removed from scoring that meant that in the last group the A, B, and D players scores would count, and it appeared that each of these players was having an exceptionally good day. That left Aubrey Cotton with only one option. Somehow, he had to make it so that Freddy Felton never made it to the finish.
After bogeying the 18th, Aubrey Cotton had only one thought and that was to ensure that Freddy Felton, now riding alone in a cart never made it to the clubhouse.
The 17th hole was Freddy’s last, and he parred it and given that he got one stroke on it made it effectively a birdie. By anyone’s count, Freddy was going to be the low scorer for the day.
At the 18th, Aubrey Cotton commandeered his marshal’s cart and zoomed back up the cart path, past the 18th tee and then plunged down into the ravine where the cart path descended to a narrow bridge before rising up to the 17th green.
Aubrey pulled his cart deep into the brush just off the path and waited. A moment later down came the cart of Freddy’s A and B partners. Aubrey stayed out of sight as he watched them pass and rise up into the woods above. Now it had to be now.
Aubrey stepped from the brush and stood mid path, his Titleist driver in hand. One quick swing would do it, and Freddy would be out for the count. Above him, he heard the whine and squeak of brakes as Freddy kept the cart from careening down the steep path.
Thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet – that asshole Freddy was just about there. Aubrey took his back swing and then, suddenly he was floating in air. Before him a large hairy face with big brown eyes was pressed to his. The sharp scent of an animal filled Aubrey’s nostrils, while some distance away he heard the acceleration of a golf cart climbing up the path toward the 18th tee.
For Aubrey his last few seconds of consciousness were taken up by recognizing that it was the face of a large buck deer pushed up against his. Startled by the parade of golf carts, it had bounded out of the woods and jumped and took him upward in a long arc before he fell from between its antlers then tumbling down through the bracken and onto the rocks of the ravine.
As for Freddy, he flinched as he saw the flash of the deer coming out of the woods to his right and did his best to avoid hitting it. Then he gunned the cart up the hill toward 18. After all, he was having a great day on the course and wanted to get back to the clubhouse and see how his team stacked up.
It was sometime later that day as the cart shed crew began to clean and refuel the fleet that one of the day’s carts was apparently missing. The cart supervisor checked the number against the roster and went looking for the man whose name was on the sheet next to the cart number. When confronted, the marshal to whom it had been assigned mentioned that Aubrey Cotton had asked to use it. Well, if Aubrey had it, then it must be okay. The cart crew finished up and went home for the night. The cart would show up sometime.
Aubrey Cotton’s playing partners were not completely disturbed by his absence at the awards ceremony. After all, they figured Aubrey would not have been happy at all to see that it was Freddy Felton and his team that swept the honors. No, Aubrey would probably rather have been struck dead than experience that they thought. Well, in a way, they were right.
