Lucky Eddie - Chapter 12

by Jim Wile

Background
Two young men meet as opponents during the finals of the golf club championship and soon become lifelong best friends. It is their great friendship that helps them navigate many of life's challenges.

(See the Author Notes for a description of the main characters.)

Recap of the previous few chapters: On a visit to Kenny’s house to plan a new golfing trip, Eddie prevents a tragic accident to Kenny and Abby’s 5-year-old granddaughter, Emily, who is charging across the street to greet him. He throws his body in front of an advancing car to push Emily out of the way and is struck instead, while Emily bumps her head on the curb. Both are rushed to the hospital. Emily has only suffered a minor concussion while Eddie’s pelvis and leg were severely damaged in the accident. The family visits him in the hospital the next day.

After months of rehab, Eddie is recovered and goes over to Kenny’s house to plan another golf trip. He doesn’t look quite right, and it’s revealed that he has pancreatic cancer, and this will be his last trip. They plan to go to Scotland together to play the Old Course at St. Andrews.

The first day there, they visit the “Himalayas Putting Course” adjacent to the Old Course where they play a round with two young boys. Eddie breaks the both the course record and the ace record with his superior putting.

(A continuation of the chapter The Trip)

Our tee time the next day was at 1:00 pm. Though quite rare at The Old Course, Eddie was allowed to take a cart, or “buggy” as they are known in Scotland, because he had faxed a doctor’s note explaining his condition beforehand. The rules were that it had to be driven by a caddie, so I did not accompany him in the cart. I had my own caddie, which was a necessity because the course has so many hidden bunkers and other hazards that you could never hope to negotiate by yourself on your first trip there. We were paired with two local fellows who were happy to give us additional advice on how to play the holes.

As everyone who has ever seen a tournament played at The Old Course knows, the first hole is a short par-4 with a hundred-yard-wide fairway shared with the 18th hole. A nice, wide fairway to ease the first tee jitters and get us off to a good start. We all hit good drives, though Eddie’s was quite short. The accident, as well as his illness, had taken quite a toll on his game. Never particularly long to begin with, he needed all of his dwindling strength to hit his drives about 160 yards now. He needed a hybrid to reach the green and just managed to fly the Swilcan Burn—the narrow creek that fronts the first green. We all managed par on the first hole and headed over to the second tee.

There is no need to describe all the details of that round at The Old Course. I played pretty well, shooting a 38 on the front 9, but that was with the wind. On the back 9, it was directly in our face, which added greatly to the difficulty. Eddie did not have an official score, because he'd picked up his ball several times when the many challenges of the bunkers and the heather got to be a bit too much for him. By the 12th hole, he had pretty much run out of steam, so we decided to combine our efforts, much as we had against those two hustlers years before at Brentwood. I would hit to the greens, and he would putt. Our goal was to break 80 on my card, meaning we needed at most a 41 on the back 9 to go with my front nine 38.

The wind was howling, as it so often does at St. Andrews, and by the time we reached the 17th hole—the Road Hole—Eddie and I were already five over par for the back 9. That meant we needed to play the last two holes even par for 79. I hit a good drive over the corner of The Old Course Hotel (what other golf course in the world requires you to hit your drive over a hotel?) and landed in the fairway of the 17th. The second shot is the tough one, though, because the long, narrow green is guarded on the left by the infamous Road Hole bunker and on the right by a road and a stone wall. It’s one of the most difficult second shots in golf. I hit a beautiful 4-iron approach, but the wind grabbed it at the end, and knocked it down into the Road Hole bunker.

When we got there, our hearts sank. The ball lay very near the front edge of the steep, sod-walled bunker, and it would take a miracle shot to get the ball up and out. I did the best I could by laying the face of my sand wedge wide open, but the ball just clipped the top of the sod wall and kicked back down into the bunker. I had to scramble out of the way so the ball wouldn’t hit me.

“Eddie, I don’t think I can get it out if I aim at the flag. I think I’m going to have to hit it down front where the face of the bunker is not so steep. That’s going to leave you with a mammoth putt, though.”

“That’s okay, Sport. That just adds to the excitement.”

I again took my stance, this time aiming well right of the flagstick and lofted a high shot that cleared the lip but caught the slope and rolled down and just off the front of the green. Eddie was now left with a 90-foot putt up a severe slope and with perhaps 10 feet of break. This would tax even his abilities.

Eddie walked the entire length of the putt, inspecting it from all angles. He was treating this as if it were for a major championship. I loved that about him. He finally settled over the putt after taking two practice strokes, then looked up twice at the hole, took his putter back almost to waist height, and really whacked it. Up, up it climbed, over the top of the slope and headed well right of the flagstick. As it began to slow, it took the break and began falling toward the hole. It looked like it would miss on the high side, but just as it ran out of steam, it caught the lip, curled 270 degrees around the hole and dropped! An incredible putt! We all gave him a high-five as he slowly made his way to the hole to remove the ball. Eddie had saved bogey, and we still had a chance for a 79 if we could just birdie the final hole.

Number 18 at The Old Course is a fairly benign finishing hole, much like the first hole whose fairway it shares. It’s a short par-4, drivable by longer hitters when the wind is behind. Its only difficulty is the Valley of Sin—a deep valley at the front left of the green that has a tendency to gobble up balls hit a little short to a left-hand pin, which, unfortunately, was where it was located today.

I hit a decent enough drive that left us with 100 yards to the middle of the green. I lofted my gap wedge into the air, but it was a mistake to play the ball that way, for a strong gust of wind caught the ball and knocked it down into the middle of the slope up to the pin, sending it right down into the Valley of Sin. I was not making this easy for Eddie. He was now faced with the same putt that Jordan Spieth missed for birdie to get into the playoff for the Open Championship of 2015. Could Eddie make the putt that the PGA Tour’s best putter could not? Constantino Rocca had made a similar putt 20 years earlier to get into a playoff with John Daly, so it wasn’t impossible.

This might be the last round of golf Eddie and I would ever play together. Wouldn’t it be great to go out on a high note? In reality, the putt meant nothing, but Eddie treated it as if his life depended on it. Just like he did on 17, he walked the length of the putt and read the break from in front of and behind the hole. He felt the slope with his feet and even gauged the strength of the wind. He settled himself beside the ball, took his two standard practice strokes, stepped into the putt, looked twice at the hole like he always did, then let it go. The ball rolled smartly up the slope, headed right for the hole and, just like Rocca’s putt in 1995, it hit the back of the cup dead-center and dropped. He had done it! We had broken 80 together at The Old Course on a blustery August afternoon on our first (and last) trip to St. Andrews!

Eddie hobbled up the slope to the hole, and I helped him jump into my arms with his legs around my waist as he had so often done in the past. We clapped each other on the back, and I carried him off the green and into his cart. Our playing companions were thrilled for us and shared in the merriment of the moment. They had never seen the likes of those last two putts—each one by itself, maybe, but not two in a row like that.

Later, after paying our caddies and taking care of the post-round tasks, we all walked over to a nearby pub together and celebrated our round with several pints of ale. Our playing companions took great delight in telling all their friends at the pub of Eddie’s final two putts. Eddie was beaming. It was perhaps the last momentous time he would ever have, and he was making the most of it.

(1 more chapter to go)

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Kenny Payne: The narrator of the story. He is a mechanical engineer who recently graduated from college and joined Brentwood Country Club where he meets Eddie in the finals of the Club Championship. He and Eddie become best friends.

Eddie Phillips: Described by Kenny as the loudest, most flamboyant, often obnoxious person and the kind you either loved or hated, who he had ever met. He is known for his phenomenal luck and his extreme prowess in putting.

Abby St. Claire: Introduced to Kenny by Eddie, she works at the snack bar and as a waitress at the club for a summer job while she finishes college. She is a smart and beautiful redhead who Kenny falls in love with and eventually marries.

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The Old Course at St. Andrews

A chapter in the book Lucky Eddie

Lucky Eddie - Chapter 12

by Jim Wile

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