Free The Amateurs by John Niven Page B

with abandoned golf balls, which would have to be fished out by Auld Basil, the long-suffering head greenkeeper.
    No, it is safe to say that Ravenscroft Golf Club was not a world-class facility. It is unlikely that the walnut-panelled walls of the locker room at, for instance, Augusta National, ever bore witness to an exchange like this:
    ‘Fucking gyppo stuck ma baw up his erse at the tenth!’
    ‘Black bastard! Ah hope ye played it.’
    ‘Did ah fuck. Dropped wan. Gyppo Rule.’
    ‘Ya fucking wide-o ye…’
    Not a world-class course, but it was Gary’s course.
    It had been since 1980, when, as a besotted five-year-old, he first scampered down its fairways after his dad, too small to carry his clubs yet, but eagerly holding the flagstick while they putted (his dad showed him how to hold it so that the flag didn’t flap in the breeze and put people off their putting stroke) and joining in the hunt for lost balls. His dad liked Gary to hold his clubs for him between shots, because his wee hands were sweaty and his dad liked the stickiness this imparted to the rubber grips. So Gary held the clubs and watched as his father smashed the ball distances that were incredible, inconceivable to a child, the ball seeming to vanish into the next county, his father’s five-foot-seven frame looking to him like a rippling powerhouse of muscle. He held the clubs and listened as the men talked about things he didn’t understand, feeling privileged to be there with the grown-ups, among the talk of football and work and wives and the smell of aftershave and cigarettes and foosty sweaters pulled from golf bags when the wind got up. Gary knew every blade of grass on this course (thanks to his errant driving he knew some of its more obscure byways better than most players) and–despite his shanking, despite never having won a medal, despite his maddening inability to progress at the game at all–he loved it here.
    He shouldered his bag and headed towards the locker room, to see who his playing partners for the Monthly Medal would be.
     
    Meanwhile, Billy Douglas moved quickly along the aisles of Oklahoma Dan’s Discount Golf World, past the racks of putters, golf bags, woods and irons. (A cardboard cut-out behind the irons section featured a grinning, thumbs-up Oklahoma Dan–six foot three of furious Republican–with a speech bubble saying ‘I LOVE IRONS’. Some of his advisers had considered telling the great man that this expression might not play in the UK due to confusion with something called cockney rhyming slang, but they decided against it. It would have meant discussing homosexuality, something the boss refused to believe existed.)
    Billy surveyed the stacks of gleaming cartons: Titelists, Top Flites, Callaway, Nike. 5.99 for a sleeve of three brand-new Spaxons? They were 7.99 at the Ravenscroft pro shop! Billy picked up three cartons and made his way to the tills, feeling in his inside jacket pocket for the voucher as he went.
    The number 3 ball was in the first tube he picked up.
    ‘Anything else for you today, sir?’ The beaming wee lassie in the baseball cap behind the till was asking him.
    ‘Naw, jist these thanks, hen. Jist the balls.’
    They would be enough.
     
    The first tee: a fresh start with all previous sins absolved. Every time a golfer steps onto the first tee they are stepping into opportunity; the opportunity to commence a new love affair, this one not like all the other ones, free from bickering and squabbling. This one holy and sacred and…well, not perfect, perfection would be stretching it a little in Gary’s case, but there was always the hope of improvement.
    The first tee at Ravenscroft held particular meaning for Gary as it was along this fairway, the fairway he now looked down as the match ahead began to move out of range, thatthey had scattered his father’s ashes. Thirteen summers ago now, Gary and Lee, both a little drunk, running down the hill, throwing handfuls of the man who had made