Zany Golf
I don't mean to brag, but I can play golf better than anyone. I can play a seventy at Pebble Beach using a tree branch for a club. I can crush Vijay at Pinehurst with a large dog strapped to my back. As for Torrey Pines, I could keep under par even if the course sat at the bottom of a lake. I am simply unmatched. And, believe it or not, it's all thanks to my time spent at one amazing golf course.
I vividly remember the day I met my golf instructor. It was July of 1992, and I had just finished performing a coin trick on a sweet bikini-clad girl at Salt Creek in San Juan Capistrano. I saw her almost every time I went, and she relished my sleight of hand. Anyway, a pudgy blond guy came up to me and told me I had the most supple wrists he'd ever seen. He asked me if I had ever played golf and if not he said I should really consider it. Then he gave me his business card. His name was Jacko Nickie.
We were to travel together to a course he designed himself, one he said would surely give me a newfound appreciation for the game. I didn't know until after I boarded his speedboat that the course was located on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. I also didn't know at the time I wouldn't be returning to America. Not that I miss it all that much, although when Jacko and I go riding along on the golf cart, I sometimes look out over the ocean and think about that girl at Salt Creek, and how much I'd love for her to be here with me.
Picture in your mind a cloudless emerald-green sky. That's the first thing I noticed as soon as we stepped out of the clubhouse and onto the first tee. As I surveyed the horizon, I beheld an impressive sight: the silhouette of a giant horned demon, nearly as tall as a mountain, which presided silently over the links with its enormous pitchfork. And then the course itself — I swear this marvel to be true — the entire course had been paved with asphalt. The fairways, the bunkers, the greens, every slope and crest throughout, were one vast and wildly uneven parking lot.
You might guess the trouble I had chasing my ball as it bounded over seemingly limitless reaches of pavement. Now try to imagine that pavement cluttered with giant galvanized replicas of common household items! Just about any object you might find around your house had its place on this course — only a much bigger place. Hole six, for instance, had a twenty-foot Swingline stapler blocking the green from the fairway. Hole twelve had a prescription medicine bottle big enough to fit my car in; and hole fourteen had its entire fairway lined with oversized egg timers, all of them curiously displaying the same characters "DP9" on their LED displays.
Being from a turbulent childhood, I adjusted well to all of this. I even got used to diving for cover after every shot to avoid being struck by ricocheting balls. One thing, though, I could never understand. All these household objects scattered throughout the course had a most unusual property: No matter where I stood in relation to any of them, they always appeared to me from the same angles, like those staring statues you see at a fun house. Thus, I could only ever see the bristled side of the hairbrush planted on the green at the third hole, or the engraved "Irish Spring" side of the bar soap staked at the creek, no matter how fast I scurried to get behind them.
I didn't have much time to worry about it. The next morning, Jacko approached me holding an elaborate remote control. He said, "Watch carefully, son," and pushed a button. Instantly the vibrant green sky turned dark and ominous. He pushed a second button, and every one of the grandiose household objects, immutable as it had seemed, simply vanished. Another button and the vast stretches of asphalt suddenly became rolling banks of windswept sand. By the time the towering husks of barley materialized and began scampering around by themselves, my astonishment had been exhausted. Jacko had transformed his course from zany blacktop wonderland into demented Arabian barley festival.
"I have unlimited power," Jacko chuckled. I had a feeling then that it would be quite some time before I ever left this island. He pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured a glass, and proffered it; I drank. For the rest of the afternoon, I played his sprawling sand dune course with the dedication of a Persian warrior. Over the next several weeks I played every course imaginable — and unimaginable: I practiced my chipping from the inside of an asteroid crater, I improved my driving game while being chased by a pack of garbage trucks, I even learned the finer points of putting underwater. In and out of months I became a golf master.
I'm pretty sure the girl at Salt Creek stopped thinking about me long ago. But, like the good Jacko always says, the horned demon never stops thinking about me. In fact every time I gaze out at it, I swear I can feel the beast's eyes bearing down on me, even though from here they just look like little orange specks. And every so often, a strange breathy voice comes to me on the wind from its direction, saying, "Come to Papa..."
I vividly remember the day I met my golf instructor. It was July of 1992, and I had just finished performing a coin trick on a sweet bikini-clad girl at Salt Creek in San Juan Capistrano. I saw her almost every time I went, and she relished my sleight of hand. Anyway, a pudgy blond guy came up to me and told me I had the most supple wrists he'd ever seen. He asked me if I had ever played golf and if not he said I should really consider it. Then he gave me his business card. His name was Jacko Nickie.
We were to travel together to a course he designed himself, one he said would surely give me a newfound appreciation for the game. I didn't know until after I boarded his speedboat that the course was located on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. I also didn't know at the time I wouldn't be returning to America. Not that I miss it all that much, although when Jacko and I go riding along on the golf cart, I sometimes look out over the ocean and think about that girl at Salt Creek, and how much I'd love for her to be here with me.
Picture in your mind a cloudless emerald-green sky. That's the first thing I noticed as soon as we stepped out of the clubhouse and onto the first tee. As I surveyed the horizon, I beheld an impressive sight: the silhouette of a giant horned demon, nearly as tall as a mountain, which presided silently over the links with its enormous pitchfork. And then the course itself — I swear this marvel to be true — the entire course had been paved with asphalt. The fairways, the bunkers, the greens, every slope and crest throughout, were one vast and wildly uneven parking lot.
You might guess the trouble I had chasing my ball as it bounded over seemingly limitless reaches of pavement. Now try to imagine that pavement cluttered with giant galvanized replicas of common household items! Just about any object you might find around your house had its place on this course — only a much bigger place. Hole six, for instance, had a twenty-foot Swingline stapler blocking the green from the fairway. Hole twelve had a prescription medicine bottle big enough to fit my car in; and hole fourteen had its entire fairway lined with oversized egg timers, all of them curiously displaying the same characters "DP9" on their LED displays.
Being from a turbulent childhood, I adjusted well to all of this. I even got used to diving for cover after every shot to avoid being struck by ricocheting balls. One thing, though, I could never understand. All these household objects scattered throughout the course had a most unusual property: No matter where I stood in relation to any of them, they always appeared to me from the same angles, like those staring statues you see at a fun house. Thus, I could only ever see the bristled side of the hairbrush planted on the green at the third hole, or the engraved "Irish Spring" side of the bar soap staked at the creek, no matter how fast I scurried to get behind them.
I didn't have much time to worry about it. The next morning, Jacko approached me holding an elaborate remote control. He said, "Watch carefully, son," and pushed a button. Instantly the vibrant green sky turned dark and ominous. He pushed a second button, and every one of the grandiose household objects, immutable as it had seemed, simply vanished. Another button and the vast stretches of asphalt suddenly became rolling banks of windswept sand. By the time the towering husks of barley materialized and began scampering around by themselves, my astonishment had been exhausted. Jacko had transformed his course from zany blacktop wonderland into demented Arabian barley festival.
"I have unlimited power," Jacko chuckled. I had a feeling then that it would be quite some time before I ever left this island. He pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured a glass, and proffered it; I drank. For the rest of the afternoon, I played his sprawling sand dune course with the dedication of a Persian warrior. Over the next several weeks I played every course imaginable — and unimaginable: I practiced my chipping from the inside of an asteroid crater, I improved my driving game while being chased by a pack of garbage trucks, I even learned the finer points of putting underwater. In and out of months I became a golf master.
I'm pretty sure the girl at Salt Creek stopped thinking about me long ago. But, like the good Jacko always says, the horned demon never stops thinking about me. In fact every time I gaze out at it, I swear I can feel the beast's eyes bearing down on me, even though from here they just look like little orange specks. And every so often, a strange breathy voice comes to me on the wind from its direction, saying, "Come to Papa..."
posted by Row of Streetlights at 8:55 PM
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