John D. MacDonald

Loser Take All

At the end of the second day of the Crest Club Open, he stretched out on the bed in the small room they had assigned to him, the ache of fatigue bitter within him.

He was a smallish man, spare and leathery, his face impassive with the habit of the long years of tournament play, the crow’s-foot wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes so deep as to look as if cut by a knife.

The crumpled newspapers lay beside the bed. The sportswriters, he thought, would have ignored him, had not Al Werton of the Globe, written that item at the end of the first day.

Among the names on the roster is that of Jock Drew. Remember him? When I saw that name, I thought it must be the son of that man who, years ago, won steadily, back in the days when the purses were small.

But no! It was Old Jock himself. He teed up for the first hole, playing against a laughing blond giant from Toledo named Wallen. Wallen outdrove Old Jock by fifty yards. But there is still magic in the touch of Jock’s irons. Wallen was all through laughing by the sixth hole, where he was two down.

I asked around and found that when Jock retired from tournament play eleven years ago, he became pro at a little Vermont golf club. Four years ago Jock became assistant pro when the club hired Hiran LaMont. The word is that Jock has been little better than a greens keeper these last few years.

Folks, he’s an echo out of the past. Thirty-one years ago, Jock played in his first tournament. I, for one, am pulling for him to grab a slice of the prize money here at the Crest Club.

Jock thought of those early tournaments. In those days that wiry body never felt the heavy drag of exhaustion. Molly had traveled with him, after the first two years. Some seasons had been bad, but they had laughed together and lived cheaply.

After Al Werton had given them the lead, the others writers had picked it up, and gotten themselves into a bitter argument, some contending that modern golf was more expert than that played in the days gone by. As evidence they pointed to Jock’s last two years of tournament golf, when he had totaled eleven hundred dollars for the two years combined.

Others said that golf was a matter of hands and heart, and thus was a young man’s game.

Jock looked up at the ceiling and felt the thud of his heart. It was as though a small hammer was tapping steadily and too fast on the inside of his chest. A tired heart trying to restore exhausted muscles with oxygen.

He smiled, his lips a thin hard line. At least none of them had checked back and found out about Molly. That would have given them a field day. A hearts and flowers motif. The poor old man trying to win the money to buy the needed operations. What did the youngsters call that kind of a plot? Corny. That was it. Pure corn. And yet life, with impassive cruelty, could thrust a corny situation upon you. Foreclosure of the mortgage — only this was a mortgage on life. Molly’s life. Molly of the eyes which had never ceased laughing.

He remembered her face pale against the pillow when he had left. Her hand, weak on his. “Jock, you’re a stubborn old man. You know that, don’t you?”

He had grinned. “Maybe I can show the children something.”

“Ah, Jock, while you’re stitching out pars, they’ll be dropping birdies and eagles all around you.”

“A man can try,” he said.

When he had bent to kiss her cheek, she had put her arms around his neck, held him close for a moment. “Remember what I used to tell you in the old days, darling?” she had whispered. “Good luck, and a long roll, and magic on the greens.”

Though they had not mentioned it, he read the fear in her eyes. The fear that he would lose, and then, having lost, appeal to charity. She knew that for him, a prideful man, to take a gift of money would be like another form of death.

And so he was glad that the newspapers had not found out about Molly. Nor did they know that he, Jock Drew, one-time winner of the National Open, had spent many hours of this golf season driving the motorized mower across the sleek fairways, the sun hot on his wrinkled neck, the stench of the blue exhaust in his nostrils.

Time enough to let them find out when he lost. If he lost. Then he would endure the small death of charity because there would be no other out.

It had seemed certain enough in Vermont, when his heart had said, “Go out and win. This time you must.”

The reality was that golf had changed. A man could not win by playing the game the way he had learned it. They did not make carefully placed drives out to the bend of the dogleg, and then pitch onto the green for a careful par, as in the old days. They did not pitch short of the creek, then drop the third close to the hole for a second careful par. Not any more.

Nowadays they boomed high over the trees with a tremendous, controlled slice, and with great luck they were close enough to sink the approach for an eagle two. With less luck, you could collect a birdie. But with no luck, you were deep in the woods and out of the tournament. And you did not pitch short of the creek. You played it hole high with all the strength of wrist and shoulders.

A new kind of golf. A young man’s game. It made Jock think of driving down a city street at fifty miles an hour, foolhardy and young and daring.

The answer was obvious. To play his own game meant that he would play out of the money. Thus the caution of age must be forgotten. He was playing their game. And, stretched out on the bed, he felt the effects of it. It was an incredible strain to push his drives to the limit of tolerance, cocking his backswing deeper than ever before, playing for the pin when experience said to play safe.

Time to eat. He stood up, and swayed weariness. The others would be down in the dining room, laughing and joking, waving casually to him when he came in. More of them would notice Jock Drew. Though marked for early elimination, be had managed to cling close enough to the leader so that he would go into the last day’s play.

After dinner there would be a few mild parties for the big names who had gone off their game and had been crowded out of the last day’s play.

The first two days had sapped most of his reserve strength, yet he knew that the final day, the final thirty-six holes, would be incalculably rougher. Only one stroke separated Don Jeryde, the leader, and Finn Makinson, in second place. Jock Drew was six strokes behind the leader.

Six strokes to pick up in thirty-six. holes — one extra one to win. He fought down the tide of panic and helplessness, and when at last he had mastered himself he knew that he had done so at the cost of a bit more of his strength.

First place money was ten thousand — worth three times that in subsidiary contracts. Second place money was fifteen hundred — worth very little in subsidiary contracts. And the grave man from the clinic had said, “The chance is very slight, Mr. Drew. Fowler is the only one who had any success in this sort of thing through surgery. He’s — very expensive.”

“Without Fowler, she’ll die within the year. Is that right?” he had asked in a voice so rough that it concealed his feeling.

The grave man had nodded.

C. K. Arden, the man who ran the little golf dub in Vermont, had sought him out the day he left. Arden was a stout, brassy man with an air of great self-confidence.

“What’s this I hear, Jocko? Somebody told me that you’re going to try your luck in the Crest Club Open. What are they doing? Letting you in for old times’ sake?”

“I’m paying the usual entrance fees,” Jock had said stiffly. He saw Arden’s resentment at the absence of the usual “sir”. Arden felt that club employees should know their places.

“Then you’re throwing your money away, man.”

“And it’s my money to throw.”

“You needn’t think, Drew, that you can go down there and make a laughing stock of this club, and then come creeping back to your job, you know.”

Jock had taken the bitten stem of the briar out from between his teeth and had looked at it steadily. Then he had spat over the railing of the caddie house, and said mildly, “Good day to you.”

Arden’s stocky back had been stiff with anger as he had walked away. And that was another door closed tightly.

No matter. Arden liked to have a man crawl on his knees. Crawling might be necessary.

He went down to the dining room, and ate sparingly; then he returned to his room, undressed and went to bed.

His body yearned for sleep, and yet his tired mind, chained tightly to worry, revolved in a tight spiral that made sleep impossible. When, many hours later, he slept, it was to dream that he was in the bottom of an enormous sandtrap. Each stinging, blasting stroke sent the ball high up the steep face of the trap, only to have it stop, roll back and lodge exactly where it had been before. Sweat stung his eyes, and he sobbed as he swung...

His caddie was a solemn youth of fifteen, with the shy awkwardness of adolescence. The vast crowds of gay, hurrying people, the men with the radio packs, the solemn officials, the carnival atmosphere — all gave Jock Drew a feeling of taunt nervousness. The big course was faultlessly clipped and tailored. Jock saw on the big board that he was matched with a man named Kelly. He noticed that Kelly was seven strokes behind the leader. That was good. It meant that they would travel with a slim gallery. He hadn’t met Kelly before and they shook hands on the first tee.

Kelly was a slim, dark boy, with smiling lips, nervous eyes, and good strong wrists and hands. “How’s it going, pops?” he asked.

“Fair, lad. Just fair.”

The nervousness clung, but when he stood by the teed ball, the familiar grip of the club in his hands, a certain amount of confidence returned. After all, this was the tool of a trade that he had followed for over thirty years. Other men called it a game. To him it had been a livelihood, and a hard and bitter one at that.

The first hole was a 335 yard par four, straight out, with a high trapped green. There was knowledge in Jock’s muscles. Knowledge of the breaking point. You can push just so hard, and so far — and then your game comes apart like wet cardboard. His swing was as grooved as though the throat of the club traveled in a narrow steel track. At the last instant came the snap of sinewed wrists, and the white ball, cleanly and sharply hit, sped out over the deep green of the fairway, striking the ground a little more than two hundred yards out, rolling long with the little tail he put on. Two fifty to sixty, thereabouts, he judged. Respectable. And straight.

Kelly smashed out with the resiliency of young muscles, the whipcord of young wrists. It sped low, then began to rise, floated, soared, dropped near Jock’s ball, and rolled far beyond it.

Jock began mechanically to trudge toward the ball. This was the last day. These steps would be retraced only once more. His legs were like dull wood, and there was a glowing pain under his heart.

With 85 yards to go, he asked for the seven iron, lofted one that was white against the morning sky, seeming to hang for a moment before it arrowed down to disappear beyond the high leading edge of the green. Kelly had a chip shot to the green. Jock sunk his eight foot putt, while Kelly ringed the cup for a heartbreaking miss.

Walk, stop, judge, take the club, swing, and walk again. Jock moved like a mechanical doll in a weirdly complicated game, moving in green infinity, lulled almost to apathy by the constant drain on his strength.

And yet, as he walked, all the training of thirty years was at his call. A flicker of wind, a grain of the grass, the subtle trickery of a slope — he knew them well, and each shot played to take advantage of the enormous number of variables. Because that is all golf is. Man against variables. Variables of swing, of impact, of green and fairway and rough. In tournament play there are other variables — courage, tension, and fatigue.

On the seventh — that incredible par three at the Crest Club, a two hundred and thirty-eight yard hole, where the drive must carry a full two hundred and fifteen yards, or else fall into the raw gully that cuts across the deep green of the fairway — he thought for a long time, and discarded the long iron in favor of the number four wood. He teed the ball well back toward his right foot, and hit it explosively. It went out on a direct line, and he didn’t breathe until it began to rise, and he knew that it was floating dead in the air.

As they watched, it struck against the side of the green, bounded high, bounced once on the green, trickled in a line that curved slightly to the right and disappeared into the hole. The caddie let out a wild yelp of glee, and then covered his mouth with his hand and looked ashamed of his outburst.

Kelly used a three iron. Jock saw that the muscles were tight ovals at the corners of Kelly’s jaw. In his eagerness to birdie the hole and thus lose only one stroke, Kelly cut viciously at the ball, cutting a shade too far under it. The ball towered to an incredible height, fell short, missing the brink of the gulley by inches, losing itself down in the clumps of shrubbery. The rules permit another ball to be driven, plus the one-stroke penalty. Kelly put the second ball on the green, missed his putt and took a five.

Four strokes dropped on one hole.

Word of the hole in one got back to the gallery. By the time they had reached the fourteenth, the crowd was over a hundred. And many who saw the posting of Jock’s score on the big board joined the gallery because they sensed drama.

The eighteenth at the Crest Club is a hole to break the hearts of men. In kindlier days it was a par five. For the last four years it has been a par four. You stand on the tee fifty feet above the fairway level, and for three hundred and ten yards the fairway stretches but, straight and true. But it narrows as it goes. Three hundred and ten yards from the tee, there is a spot as big as a wide green. But it isn’t the green — the green is down a slope off to the right, two hundred and twenty yards further. The green itself tilts back away from the fairway, and beyond it is a wide creek.

The theory of the hole is that you drive three hundred and ten yards straight out. Next you find some miraculous club in your bag that will enable you to put the ball onto a sloping green two hundred and twenty yards further. Then you take two putts.

If your drive is short, then you must play over a line of pines, playing a controlled slice that will send you bounding down the slope to be gobbled up by the deep traps in front of the green — if go that far.

Each time be played the hole, Jock Drew forced himself closer to the limits of control. A man cannot hit a golf ball with all his strength and know where it will go. That tiny bit of reserve strength must be used for the type of control which causes a variation of an eighth of an inch in the angle of the clubhead, to result in thirty yards of angle by the time the ball is two hundred yards away.

He had learned one thing. He had learned that even with the deceptive height, to drive the full three hundred and ten yards brought him dangerously close to the limits of control. He knew that he had a choice. He could either play a short drive to the left of the fairway to give him clearance to go over the trees, or he could take a chance and play far to the right, getting close enough to the trees so that he could play low between the shaggy trunks.

He played to the right. And when he got to the ball he found that a huge tree completely masked the green. All or nothing. In the old days he would have pitched cautiously out of danger, played for a five on the hole. But that sort of golf was not the kind that wins. Not today.

The caddie’s eyes widened as he asked for the number three wood. He set himself carefully, and when he swung, he pulled the club head across the ball, from the outside toward the inside. The ball, struck fairly, whistled close to the trunk of the tree. Jock did not have the strength to run to where he could see its flight. He stood, his eyes half closed, listening to the gallery. If he heard that descending sigh, he would know he was in trouble. He heard a full-throated roar of approval.

When he walked down to the green, he heard a man saying, “Sliced like it had a string on it. Looked like it was going over into the road over there and then it came back. See, it bounced just short of this trap, rolled across the green and barely stuck on the far edge. What luck that old guy’s got!”

It was a wandering, uphill putt. He stopped and took a long look at it. Two sideways slopes to watch. That one will pull it to the right and then that other one will pull it back to the left. Try it dead on the cup. They both look the same size.

He stood very still, and felt the sweat make his grip on the putter uncertain. He put the club down, calmly wiped his hands, stuffed the handkerchief away. Then he stroked the ball crisply. It swung to the right, then back to the left, seemed to be going too fast for the uphill slope. But it hit against the far side of the cup, bounced a few inches into the air, and fell in.

The silent gallery exploded into sound. He heard the low tone of an announcer and wondered why they had put a in the gallery.

It was only when he walked back to the big board that he saw why. The deadly tournament play had shaken the leaders. Don Jeryde had taken a 70. Finn Makinson had taken 71 to put him two strokes behind Jeryde’s total. And Jock Drew’s 66 had tied the course record and had tied him with Makinson for second place. Both of them were just two strokes behind Jeryde.

Kelly had been eliminated along with many others in the Crest Club Open rule that the leading eight men go into the final round on the afternoon of the third day of play.

It was after a very light lunch and an hour of rest that Jock Drew found he was matched with Jeryde for the final round.

Jeryde was a man who, from a distance, gave a deceptive impression of youth. His tan face, slim body, and corn-yellow hair made him the delight of the amateur color photographers.

Yet, from close by, the tan skin was covered with a network of fine wrinkles, and there was a jaded look about his grey eyes. He looked as brittle as a dried twig. But the law of his life was competition. It just happened that he had learned golf. It could have been billiards, tennis, bowling — almost anything where it is man against man, skill against skill. Time had put a veneer over his ugly wrath at losing, and he could smile and shake a friendly hand with the best of them. Time had mellowed his ecstatic glee at winning. But nothing would ever mellow the tight, hard competitive quality of his play — the give-nothing, take-everything style of play that made respected and feared in the field.

The vast crowds in the afternoon made the morning crowds look slim. They came in their sleek cars, and. by bus and even on foot from the city. They paid the fee and swarmed over the course, and the mark of their passing was a rash of gum wrappers, cigarette butts, crumpled cigarette packages and heel prints.

When Jock stood on the first tee, they stretched in an unbroken line on both sides of the fairway. The officials pushed them back with bamboo poles, but still the aisle they left was not over fifty feet wide from tee to green.

Jeryde was treating Jock with an exaggerated courtesy, an eager-young-man manner in which there was nothing objectionable, and yet Jock knew that Jeryde, though he would deny it even to himself, sought in that way to anger Jock Drew and thus crack his game.

Jock’s drive was crisp and average in length. Jeryde was thirty yards beyond him. As they walked down toward the two balls glistening against the green grass, Jock felt that he was past exhaustion, that some strange numb nerves taken over his limp body and were forcing it to go through the motions of play.

He pitched on, missed his putt, saw Jeryde smugly confident as he increased the lead to three strokes.

The second hole was even, as was the third, the fourth and the fifth. The ache in Jock’s shoulder muscles made him want to cry out with each swing. Jeryde played tough, daring, competent golf, and Jock knew that the burden of proof was on himself, not on Don Jeryde. If he played Jeryde even, he couldn’t be sure of second place, not knowing how well Makinson might be doing. So he had to play better than even. He had to outplay Jeryde, using a body that was tired and old, but using golf knowledge that had been painfully gathered while Donald Jeryde was pedaling a tricycle.

On the eighth hole, Jock was given his first break. A silly woman tried to run across to the other side of the fairway while the crisp sound of Jeryde’s drive still resounded in the air.

The ball bounded, hit her in the face and knocked her down. She scrambled up, screaming, and they took her away, blood dotting her handkerchief. Jeryde’s bounded into the rough, into an almost unplayable lie.

His recovery was almost good enough, but faded off into a trap, and his explosion dropped him inches from the pin. Jock picked up one stroke.

On the ninth, a five hundred and twenty yard hole, Jock got a second break. Jeryde had a downhill lie for his second shot. He used a number two wood. A fraction of a second before the club head hit the ball, the ball moved slightly down the slope. As a result the ball was semi-topped, and it bounded off with a great deal of over-spin, coming to rest a bare hundred and fifty yards away, still a good eighty yards from the green. Jock saw his chance and changed clubs, pushing himself dangerously, and managed to put one on the edge of the green. It was a lovely shot.

Jeryde put this third shot on, five feet from the pin for a certain par four. Jock could feel himself tightening up. He stroked the ball crisply and it came to almost a dead stop just shy of the hole, but turned, ever so slowly, and plopped in. Jeryde threw a look of annoyance at the crowd, and the officials made threatening sounds to quiet them.

He holed his putt firmly, and Jock Drew was one stroke down — and ten to go. It was on the fourteenth, still one down, that Jock, out of pure weariness, pulled a beginner’s trick, something he hadn’t done for more years than he could remember.

Faced with a forty foot pitch onto the green, he looked up like any dub. The edge of the seven iron cut into the ball and it scampered off at an angle. The gallery tried to surge out of the way, but it hit somebody’s heel, glancing off, running up the brink of the green, trickling nicely down toward the hole to stop not more than nine inches from the pin.

Jeryde’s lips were white, and the grin he gave Jock Drew was so forced as to appear more of a grimace. Jeryde’s ball was ten feet from the pin, as he had leaned a bit too much on his own approach. His careful putt stopped dead a bare two inches to the left of the cup. Jock putted his own in, and the match and the tournament were even.

The gallery was almost unmanageable. The fifteenth was halved, and the sixteenth, and the seventeenth.

Jock stood for a long time on the eighteenth tee, looking down to the small patch three hundred and ten yards away where the dogleg curve began.

He glanced down at the ball and it took his tired eyes several seconds to focus properly. The sun was dropping, and it slanted across the course. He thought of Molly and thought of the radio at her bedside.

What were they saying about Jock Drew? Were they wondering how long it could last? How long the old man from the past could keep up his challenge? How soon he would break?

He addressed the ball. What had Molly’s words always been? Of course! Good luck, and a long roll, and magic on the greens.

But that patch of green was so far. So far.

The clubhead went back into that smooth backswing, looping smoothly at the top of it, slashing down with a dean, whip-like sound. When the club head was six inches from the ball, he uncocked his wrists with a sure, hard snap. The impact like a pistol shot. Never had he hit a ball harder. Or truer.

It made a line of white fire against the green distance and with his far-sighted vision he saw it bound and roll, fading off to the left slightly, coming at last to rest beyond the border of pine.

He looked back, saw Jeryde give him a strange, unbelieving glance as he teed up his own ball, waggled his arms to loosen up. This could be the payoff hole, or it could mean extra holes. Jock was afraid of extra holes. He even dreaded the five hundred yard march ahead of him. But Molly had heard the radio. Molly had heard the announcer describe the drive. She would know what it meant, and what was behind it. She knew his limitations as well as he did.

Jeryde’s drive was a money ball. He had that look on his face as he hit it. Jock knew that the hole and the tournament depended on his taking the heart out of Jock Drew. Jock watched the drive. Jeryde cut it dangerously close to the trees, and with his greater power, he could afford the roll limitations of a slice. The ball disappeared around the corner, rolling slowly; but Jock knew that it was going fast enough to catch the slope, to be carried well down toward the green, shortening Jeryde’s second shot appreciably.

At last he arrived, spent and weary, at his own ball, and he could see the green at the foot of the slope, the creek glowing behind it where the sun sparkled off the cool water.

The perfect shot would land on the green, an iron shot with sufficient back-spin to enable it to cling. And yet the distance was so great that backspin would be largely spent by the time the ball arrived.

He stood so long inspecting the terrain that he heard somebody behind him mutter, “What’s the matter with him?”

The caddie was biting his underlip. Jock called for a four iron. One more swing with all his heart in it. Just one more. Magic on the green, Molly had said. And magic was what he would need. Magic and strength.

He dug at the ball with a full swing, and the pain that ran up his arm was like a blazing knife. It clouded his vision so that he couldn’t follow the flight of the ball. He bent over and tried to still the pain in his wrist by holding it clenched in the fingers of his right hand.

The great cheer that went up made him look up and he saw his ball, clean and true on the green about ten feet from the pin.

He held his wrist and looked at it, saw the puffiness coming, knew that he had pulled tendons loose.

“What’s the matter?” the caddie asked breathlessly.

“A small hurt. Nothing. I can putt.”

He watched Jeryde. The blonde man settled his feet firmly. Jock saw the deep pitch on the club, guessed that it was a seven, or even an eight. All the breaks had gone against Jeryde. He was the better golfer, Jock knew.

So it was without a great deal of surprise, with a feeling almost of inevitability that he saw the ball drop, hit the green a foot short of the hole, bounce almost straight up, land, and trickle in for an eagle two. An eagle two, the tournament and the failure of Jock Drew.

He walked stiffly down the slope, and he knew that no man could better the scores that he and Don Jeryde had hung up on that day.

So with warmth in his blue eyes, he caught up with Jeryde, put this thin brown hand out and said, “Ah, you did well, lad. Well.”

“I lucked out on you, Mr. Drew. You should have had it,” Jeryde said quietly, but behind the calm of his gray eyes, his glee was huge and bright.

Jock took a long time over his putt. The fingers of his left hand felt numb, and the slighest pressure was like a vise on his wrist. But he putted straight and true and well for the birdie three.

The congratulations were surprisingly warm for a second place winner. He felt them press close behind him to pat his shoulders, and he kept an empty smile on his lips. The group around Jeryde was only a bit larger, and Jock, his heart heavy, gradually forced his way through to the clubhouse, gave the caddie the five wrinkled ten-dollar bills that were his just share, and carried his clubs into the elevator to take them up to his room with him. He was too sick at heart to brave the tumult of the locker room.

The doctor came within a few minutes, pronounced it a torn tendon and strapped his wrist tightly.

Jock sat on the bed, his face in his hands. He was treasuring his last few minutes of pride. Soon, before it was too late, he would tell the story of Molly to the newspaper men, of how she was listening, and why the money was needed.

Oh, the American public would love it. There would be vicarious tears and the money would come in. But it was for Molly.

When the knock came at the door, he called, “Come in.”

The man who came in was vaguely familiar. He was a tanned and stocky man with streaks of grey at his temples.

“Jock Drew? I’m Tony Brayton. The Jordon Company.”

Jock knew the company. Years before he had used their line, had given his name to their products.

“Come in, Mr. Brayton. Sit down. I know your company.”

Brayton sat by the window. His brown eyes were shining. “Jock, I watched you all day. I’ve never seen better golf.”

“It’s kind of you to say it.”

Brayton shook his head. “What I can’t understand, and forgive me for asking, is why you should come out of retirement and take on a whole smear of the best pros in the country.”

Jock held a match to his pipe. “I... I had a great need for the money.”

“I suppose you signed up with somebody?”

“No, lad. They offered me pennies. I knew that if I failed, all I would have would be the pennies, and if I won, they would have to offer much more.”

Brayton jumped up, began to pace back and forth, his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Who buys the expensive clubs in this country? Men in your age bracket. Men from forty to seventy. For years they have been plugging tournament golf as a young man’s game. And along you come and almost take one of the fattest tournaments of the year. Why, every duffer in the country was identifying himself with you. He was saying to himself that if Jock Drew can do it, so can he.”

“You’re building it up, lad.”

“Nonsense! Don Jeryde won the tournament, but you won the hearts of the people.” He stopped suddenly, smiled.

“I noticed you used Jordon clubs.”

“I’ve used Jordon dubs for twenty years. They have honest workmanship. At our little — I mean, at the little club I used to work for up in Vermont, I sold your products, changed a little.”

Jock walked over and took a club out of his bag. He held it out to Brayton. “See? I took the factory grip off. I cut the handle thinner, coated it with putty, held it properly for a moment and then let the putty set. Afterwards I cut it off, and a little plastics company in Montpelier makes the finished grips which I fasten to the clubs. With that grip, you can’t hold a club wrong. I did it for the customers up there. Showed them how to hold the club properly while the putty was on the handle, then had their own handles made.”

Brayton said softly, “Let Jock Drew personalize your new Jordon clubs! Jock Drew and the Jordon workshop will be at your golf club next Saturday. A limited number of customers can be served. With a personalized set of Jordon clubs, your hand can’t slip, your grip will always be right! Take strokes off your score!”

“Are you dreaming, lad?” Jock asked gently.

“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s up to the big shots in the company to tell me if I am. Can I phone right here? Good. First, what’s your minimum for a three year contract?”

Jock thought of his second place winnings. He thought of the grave, unsmiling man who had examined Molly.

“This may seem a shade stiff, lad. Ten thousand flat to use the method. And ten thousand a year to me.”

“Stiff?” Brayton said, laughing. “You haven’t been around lately.”

Jock Drew sat on the bed and Brayton’s eager conversation on the phone was only a background to his thoughts.

Molly’s face, pale against the pillow. Her arms around his neck. Good luck, a long roll, and magic on the greens.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Loser Take All