Prodigy

Prodigy,

As in:

“So, Father Stuart,” Tomas Divenchek (aka Tommy Divits) asked him, “what’s your first name?”

“Stuart’s my first name. Yatsek’s my second name. But please call me Stuart.”

“Very well, Stuart, how long have you been playing golf?”

Stuart leaned forward, using his six iron as a cane, and thought about the question. He was a bit embarrassed and inasmuch as he needed to think about his answer, he lifted his glasses up and wiped the perspiration from the bridge of his nose.

“I’ve only started this year,” he replied.

“May I ask what your handicap is?”

“Pardon?” Stuart said, not understanding the term.

“Your handicap?”

“Oh!” Stuart replied, finally misunderstanding that Tommy was trying to be humorous. “That! Hmmm. I think I get a little too, um, downward when the ball’s sitting low in the grass and I hit behind it. Father Lynch told me to try not to leave a big spread of divits, is that what you call them? So, I try to hit a few off the bare spots.”

“No, no, no,” Tommy Divits. “That wasn’t my question really. Um, when you play, what do you usually shoot?”

“I don’t sir,” Stuart said. “I’ve not actually played golf yet. I’ve only hit balls.”

“Jeesus!” Tommy gasped.

Stuart tilted is head slightly, smiled, and made full eye contact.

“Dear God,” Tommy said, catching himself, “I’m sorry! No disrespect father.”

So, in this way, the gig was up. Father Lynch’s plan to hide his prodigy was undone by the curious Tommy Divits. And now there would be this inevitable clash between Father Lynch’s school of Penick and the Book of Hogan as drilled by Tommy Divits.

It further complicated things that Tommy Divits was an atheist. But even though he did not believe in God, he did believe in sin, and he did think it a sin that Father Lynch had not actually allowed Stuart, as yet, to go out on the golf course. He would change that.

But not today. Today he just wanted to watch for a while as Stuart finished the last of the two range buckets. As a golf instructor you can just about go crazy trying to find ways to keep beginning housewives, bankers, pork belly dealers, retired lawmen, and even young athletes from hitting, repeatedly, what is known as a slice. It’s a ball that starts straight, but because of an outside-in swing path, flops like a misfired watermelon seed to the right. A 12-year-old who hits the ball correctly can hit a ball farther than the ball a beefy collegian will hit with a miserable slice. Nine out of ten beginners slice the ball.

But not Stuart. Stuart hit the ball right to left, naturally. It wasn’t going to be hard, Tommy Divits thought, to teach Stuart to hit like Hogan. This was because he was already hitting it like Hogan. Indeed, if the collar were on the other shirt, Tommy thought, he would be the one phoning the Vatican and reporting a miracle.