Monday dawned misty and threatening rain; that left the tee wide open as we brought our weekend rivalry back to Bardmoor. We’d suffered nearly seventy two hours of anticipation, needling, bragging and rescripting the ground rules for our second and final familial round of golf of the vacation. More than the threat of rain would be needed to postpone this blood match. After all, it might well be two years before our respective schedules allow us time for another face off.
We were still a bit wound up from the chaos of my father’s 90th birthday celebration. Eight of nine siblings has attended with various spouses, grandchildren, fiancés and significant others in tow. Only the two of us, number five child, my brother (her Sunday child, my mother says of her oh-so-prefect son), and number eight child (that being me) play golf. This was our swan song of the long weekend and had been loudly discussed, even by the non-golfers, for days.
We were paired with a couple from Vermont of like age and handicap, a nice surprise. An even greater surprise was my quick discovery that the woman with whom I would share the tees for eighteen holes was also an eighth child! What better omen could there be? Hooray for the eighth child! I thought, at first, this couple, knowing the dynamics of a large family, might better weather our intensity on the course than our previous playing partners. Not so, I don’t think, looking back. They must have played a bit nicer in the sandbox in her family - something about private schools and country clubs - a world apart from my brother and me. We are more about sandlots and monkey bars, rough and tumble and schoolyard bravado. And you can be sure this competition brought me right back in time, every bit of decorum I’d learned as a serious, competitive golfer gone with the wind. And so our match progressed…
This day we had agreed there could be no taking a hole with a double bogie and everything was junk. That made for some interesting carryovers and quite a few greenies for me. I started out hot. The skies opened up but that didn’t dampen our spirits. Both the beer cart (for my brother) and the sun (for me) came out at just the right time and, though we’d considered calling the match at nine holes, we made the turn, slightly soggy but determined to crown a winner.
The match seesawed back and forth and the presses mounted. I eventually missed a greenie worth $7 and must have reeked of fear. I circled the wagons and prepared for a renewed attack. Calling on my serious, conservative golf persona, knowing my brother doesn’t have one, I managed to pull it together and crept ahead, up a few bucks and breathing easy, despite the $24 holes we were now playing. What I’d planned as an easy punch to the 15th green found water instead, the dreaded shank. But a win on sixteen found me with a comfortable lead. It wasn’t all that hot but beads of sweat were forming on my brother’s forehead. The engineer’s brain in him was calculating and recalculating. He was well aware he needed to win a hole, and fast. And that he did, you know, being Sunday’s child, perfect and all. The man can’t lose; or at least, not often. But he was still down.
So once again we stood at the final tee, the last hole of our long awaited show down, and it was double or nothing. But this time it was my brother on the short end of the stick.
Golf in Florida is always filled with the site of various flora and fauna, some familiar, some not, but all fascinating to me, born and bread on Cape Cod as I am. Just these past two rounds I’d seen glorious flowers and shrubs in full regalia, species still dormant at home; great blue herons wading in canals, snowy egrets stalking along side. We’d even seen some unnamed bird swoop just barely above our heads with a shiny, flapping, just caught fish gleaming in its talons. But what I heard as I stood on the eighteenth tee was of a different breed altogether. It sounded its ragged cry, the haunting sound of the “uh-oh” bird.
Double or nothing, my brother repeated. He managed a slight pull, not a bad drive, into the left rough. “Uh-oh, uh-oh” I heard as I set up. I would-a, could-a, should-a, backed off. “Uh-oh, oh-oh,” it sounded again like an unrelenting cuckoo clock. My swing thought was filled with its call. My ball hooked left into a fairway bunker. Uh-oh.
I would never, in an official, sanctioned match, play head games with my opponent. But this was life or death, and involved bragging rights for a very long time. Not to mention the entire family waited back at the condo for the final results and who knows what further wagers rested on the news. I had to say it. “Do you guys hear that? Can you hear that bird? I couldn’t help my swing… ‘uh-oh, uh-oh’….” And sure enough, there went my brother’s next shot, scumming across the fairway. He’d heard it. But I could too, still, from deep in the trap. Damn bird. So much for the head games; that bird followed us both up the fairway, screeching from tree to tree… “Uh-oh, uh-oh.”
Official rules: you can’t win with a double. That left both of us out of the hole by the time we scraped our way to the green. Since it was double or nothing, I emerged the victor in spite of my desperate, evil tactics having come back to haunt me. $33 of my brother’s cash lined my pockets, but not for long. Winners buy. No drink ever tasted sweeter.
