Fore! Part 39

Off a sc.r.a.p pile or something?"

"Right out of MacLeish's shop! Brand-new stuff, selected from the regular stock. And I'll go against you even, just to prove that you don't know it all, even if you have been playin' golf for twenty years!"

It was a flat, out-and-out challenge. Cupid looked Windy up and down with a pitying smile--the same smile he uses when an 18-handicap man asks to be raised to 24.

"I'd be ashamed to rob you, Wilkins," said he.

Windy didn't say anything, but he went into his locker and brought out a roll of bills about the size of a young grindstone. He counted fifty dollars off it, and you couldn't have told the difference. It looked just as big as before. He handed the fifty to me.

"It would be stealing it," said Cupid, but there was a hungry look in his eye.

"If you get away with it," said Windy, "I won't complain to the police.

Put up or shut up."

Well, it looked like finding the money. We knew that Windy couldn't break a 90 to save his life, and Cupid had done the course in an 84, using nothing but a putting cleek.

"How many clubs can I have?" asked Cupid with his usual caution in the matter of bets.

"Oh, six or eight," answered Windy. "Makes no difference to me."

"I'll take eight," said Cupid briskly. "And if you don't mind, I'll post a check. I'm not in the habit of carrying the entire cash balance in my jeans."

"Fair enough!" said Windy. "You boys are all witnesses to the terms of this bet. I'm to pick out eight clubs--eight new ones--and Cutts here is to play with 'em. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly!" grinned Cupid. "It'll just cost you fifty fish to find out that a mechanical golfer can lick you with strange weapons."

Windy went out and Cupid promised us all a dinner on the proceeds of the match.

"I don't want the fellow's money," said he, "but Windy's entirely too fresh for a new member. A beating will do him good and make him humble.

Eight clubs. If he brings me only two or three that I can use--a driver, a mid-iron, and a putter--I'll hang his hide on the fence too easy. He's made a bad bet."

But it wasn't such a bad bet after all. Windy came back with eight clubs in the crook of his arm, and when Cupid caught a glimpse of the collection he howled himself purple in the face, and no wonder. Eight nice, new, s.h.i.+ny, mas.h.i.+e niblicks!

You see, nothing was said about the _sort_ of clubs Windy was to pick out, and he had selected eight of the same pattern, no good on earth except for digging out of bunkers or popping the ball straight up in the air! Harry Vardon himself can't _drive_ with a mas.h.i.+e niblick!

"What are you beefin' about?" asked Windy. "Eight clubs, you said, and here they are. Play or pay."

"Pay! Why, man alive, it's a catch bet--a cinch bet! It's not being done this year at all! It's like stealing the money!"

"And you thought you could steal mine," was the cool reply. "You thought you had a cinch bet, didn't you? Be honest now. Eight clubs, by the terms of the agreement, and you'll play with 'em or forfeit the fifty."

Cupid looked at the mas.h.i.+e niblicks and then he looked at Windy. I looked at him too and began to understand how he got his money. His face was as hard as granite. "You'd collect that sort of a bet--from a friend?" It was Cupid's last shot.

"Just as quick as you would," said Windy.

"I'll write you a check," and Cupid turned on his heel and started for the office.

Windy tried to turn it into a joke--after he got the check--but n.o.body seemed to know where to laugh, and following that little incident he found it a bit hard to get games. Whenever Windy was hunting a match the foursomes were full and there was nothing doing. A sensitive man would have suffered tortures, but Windy, with about as much delicacy as a rhinoceros, continued to infest the course morning, noon, and night.

When he couldn't find any one weak-minded enough to play with him he played with himself, and somehow managed to make just as much noise as ever with only a caddie to talk to.

This was the state of affairs when Adolphus Kitts returned from the East, barely in time to shoot a 91 in the qualifying round of the Annual Handicap. We had hoped that he would miss this tournament, but no; there he was, large as life--which is pretty large--and ugly as ever. Grim and silent and nasty, he stepped out on No. 1 tee, and Cupid Cutts groaned as he watched him drive off.

"That fellow," said Cupid, "would hang his harp on the walls of the New Jerusalem and come back from the golden sh.o.r.e just to get into a handicap event, where n.o.body wants him, n.o.body will speak to him, and every one wishes him an ulcerated tooth! Why didn't he stay in the East?"

There were about four hundred and seventy-six reasons why Adolphus was unpopular with us; a few will suffice. In the first place, he was a cup hunter. He had an unholy pa.s.sion for silver goblets and trophies with the club emblem on them, and he preferred a small silver vase--worth not to exceed three dollars, wholesale--to the respect and admiration of his fellow golfers. Heaven knows why he wanted trophies! They are never any good unless a man has friends to show them to!

In the second place, Adolphus didn't care how he won a cup, and, as Cupid used to say, the best club in his bag was the book of rules.

If you don't know it already, I must tell you that golf is the most strictly governed game in the world, and also the most ceremonious. It is as full of "thou shalt nots" as the commandments. There are rules for everything and everybody on the course, and the breaking of a rule carries a penalty with it--the loss of a stroke or the loss of a hole, as the case may be. Very few golfers play absolutely to the letter of the law; even those who know the rules incur penalties through carelessness, and in such a case it is not considered sporting to demand the pound of flesh; but there was nothing sporting about Adolphus Kitts.

He knew every obscure rule and insisted on every penalty. Question him, and he fished out the book. That book of rules stiffened his match play tremendously, besides making his opponents want to murder him. It was rather a rotten system, but Kitts hadn't a drop of sporting blood in his whole big body, and the element of sportsmans.h.i.+p didn't enter into his calculations at all. He claimed strokes and holes even when not in compet.i.tion, and because of this he found it difficult to obtain partners or opponents.

"He's a golf lawyer, that's what he is--a technical lawyer!" said Cupid one day. "And I wouldn't even play the nineteenth hole with him--I wouldn't, on a bet!"

Come to think of it, that is about the bitterest thing you can say of a golfer.

II

Our Annual Handicap is the blue-ribbon event of the year so far as most of us are concerned. The star players turn up their noses at it a bit, but that is only because they realise that they have a mighty slim chance to carry off the cup. The high-handicap men usually eliminate the crack performers, which is the way it should be. What's the good of a handicap event if a scratch man is to win it every year?

Sixty-four members qualify and are paired off into individual matches, which are played on handicaps, the losers dropping out. The man who "comes through" in the top half of the drawing meets the survivor of the lower half in the final match for the cup, which is always a very handsome and valuable trophy, calculated to rouse all the cupidity in a cup hunter's nature.

When the pairings were posted on the bulletin board Kitts was in the upper half and Windy in the lower one. Kitts had a handicap of 8 strokes, and was really ent.i.tled to 12, but Cupid wouldn't listen to his wails of anguish. Windy was a 12 man, and n.o.body figured the two renegades as dangerous until the sixty-four entrants had narrowed down to eight survivors. Kitts had won his matches by close margins, but Windy had simply smothered his opponents by lopsided scores, and there they were, in the running and too close to the finals for comfort.

We began to sit up and take notice. Cupid read the riot act to Dawson, who was Windy's next opponent, and also had a talk with Aubrey, who was to meet Kitts. "Wilkins and Kitts must be stopped!" raved Cupid. "We don't want 'em to get as far as the semi-finals, and it's up to you chaps to play your heads off and beat these rotters!"

Dawson and Aubrey saw their duty to the club, but that was as far as they got with it. Windy talked from one end of his match to the other and made Dawson so nervous that any one could have beaten him, and Kitts pulled the book of rules on Aubrey and literally read him out of the contest.

After this the interest in the tournament grew almost painful.

Overholzer and Watts were the other semifinalists, and we told them plainly that they might as well resign from the club if they did not win their matches. Overholzer spent a solid week practicing on his approach shots, and Watts carried his putter home with him nights, but it wasn't the slightest use. Windy tossed an 83 at Overholzer, along with a lot of noisy conversation, and an 83 will beat Overholzer every time he starts.

Poor Watts went off his drive entirely and gave such a pitiful exhibition that Kitts didn't need the rule book at all.

And there we were, down to the finals for the beautiful handicap cup, sixty-two good men and true eliminated, and a pair of bounders lined up against each other for the trophy!

"This," said Cupid Cutts, "is a most unfortunate situation. I can't root for a sure-thing gambler and daylight highwayman like Wilkins, and as for the other fellow I hope he falls into a bunker and breaks both his hind legs off short! Think of one of those fellows carrying home that lovely cup! Ain't it enough to make you sick?"

It made us all sick, nevertheless quite a respectable gallery a.s.sembled to watch Wilkins and Kitts play their match.

"Looks like we're goin' to have a crowd for the main event!" said Windy, who had put in the entire morning practicing tee shots. "In that case I'll buy everybody a little drink, or sign a lunch card--whatever's customary. Don't be bashful, boys. Might as well drink with the winner before as well as after, you know!"

At this point Adolphus came in from the locker room and there was an embarra.s.sed silence, broken at last by Windy. "Somebody introduce me to my victim," said he. "We've never met."

"You don't tell me!" exclaimed Cupid. "Of all the men in this club, I'd think you fellows ought to know each other! Kitts, this is Wilkins--shake hands and get together!"

Among the other reasons for not liking him, Adolphus had a face. I'm aware that a man cannot help his face, but he can make it easier to look at by wearing a pleasant expression now and then. Kitts seldom used his face to smile with. As he turned to shake hands with Windy I noticed that his left hip pocket bulged a trifle, and I knew that Adolphus was taking no chances. That's where he carries the book of rules.

"How do," said Kitts, looking hard at Windy. "I'm ready if you are, sir."