On account of Stuart’s steady putter on number 6, the two priests were up three holes to nil when their match with Bert and Duke reached number 7. Seven was not the longest hole on the course, but it was the hardest. Were it not for slope on the left side of the fairway, you’d have to consider it an average par 4. But the slope tilted the whole experience left, such that you had to land your tee shot in right half of the fairway in order to avoid having your ball roll down the hill and into a thick collar of rough. From there you were pretty much doomed to make bogey, at best, because there was just no way to get the ball over the big poplars on the corner.
When Stuart first played the hole with Tommy Divits his ball actually hit right of the middle of the fairway but still bounded down into the rough, such was the power of the hooking draw he’d played. But this time, hitting first, the shot got away from him even worse. Although the ball actually landed in the fairway, it was steering forcefully left, so much so that it bounded through the rough and further down the hill, into a gully, into a place on the golf course that everybody referred to as Gopher’s Gulch. But, after today, it would also be known as Stuart’s Hollow.
He did find the ball, but it was forty yards down the hill, leaning against a twig that had stopped it from going even further into the abyss. The only way to play the shot was to route it up a narrow clearing and to hope that it got up there with enough juice to stay on the flatter part of the fairway. Father Lynch yelled encouragement from up the hill but he had no way of knowing how impossible the shot was. Stuart had to keep the shot low to get under the tree branches and yet, the way the ball was lying, he had to hit down on it. This he did, launching the Maxfli up into the limb zone. The ball actually made it a fair distance up and out before squarely striking a dry limb, shattering the branch and redirecting the ball down to where it half plugged in the wet ground near a tree root.
At that point, and in retrospect, there really was no purpose for Stuart to continue playing number 7. Father Lynch had already played his second shot well, and was in position to make bogey at worse. Stuart was in a position to where something like a 9 or 10 was a possibility. And it wouldn’t matter because only the low score of the two would count in the four ball competition. But now he was frustrated and took a quick swing at the ball with an eight iron before good advice could reach him. The club struck the root after it dislodged the ball and the vibration into hands, elbows and shoulders was painful and numbing. Father Lynch yelled back at him to pick up the ball, but Stuart thought he must have heard him wrong because he didn’t quite understand the rules of the contest.
The ball had come to rest in the rough. He swung at it even while his hands were still buzzing. And he did an awful thing. He it a shank. The ball squirted weirdly, 90 degrees to the right, without explanation, without a sensation that made any sense whatsoever. This time, Father Lynch got through to him before he played another shot. Stuart picked up. Bert and Duke won the hole.
Stuart’s confidence was now a little rattled. He didn’t know it quite yet, but now he had a full blown case of the shanks. A golfer with the shanks is as helpless as a tenor with laryngitis. It’s cruel to experience and, as Father Lynch was about to observe, it’s horrible to watch as well. Even for a man who’d twice attempted exorcism.
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