BOGEYBREAKERS ^TM

Standing in the pro shop doorway, he watched with morbid fascination
as Jonathan Jerico got out of his cart, teed up a ball and took a couple
of limbering-up swings with his driver. Observing that swing, any pro
alive would have sworn that its owner never had broken a hundred –
and never would. It was Jerico’s proud boast that he was a self-taught
golfer. Which was mighty decent of him, Don thought, for in his opinion
any pro who would teach a pupil that swing should be stripped of his teaching
certificate.

If there were a single principle of a sound golf swing that Jerico failed
to violate between first address and final contact, Don had yet to discover
what it was. His knees were too rigid. His weight shift was awkward. His
body swayed badly.

His head turned, his left arm collapsed, and his right elbow flew out
from his body as if planning to drive home a hara-kiri sword. So far as
the arc made by his clubhead in leaving and returning to the ball was
concerned it could only be described as somewhere between a figure eight
and an “S” curve, or the motions made by an ax-wielding woodsman
who inadvertently had stepped into a nest of snakes.

Even so, Jerico managed to play the game surprisingly well. His secret
weapon, Don knew, was confidence. Complete, utter, unshakable confidence.
From the moment he turned off his hearing aid – which he invariably
did when he played – there was not the slightest question in his
mind that the shot he was about to hit would be struck perfectly. If,
by some strange freak of fate, the ball was struck less perfectly than
he meant it to be, he immediately made a self-diagnosis of his swing,
discovered what he had done wrong, lectured himself aloud as to what measures
were needed to correct the error, and undertook his next shot as supremely
confident as he had been on the first tee. As a result, he was an extremely
tough man to beat in a money game.

Don Crowe sighed. Given that kind of confidence and the sharp tee-to-green
game he himself had possessed fifteen years ago, he could have made Palmer,
Casper, and Nicklaus weep bitter tears. Instead he had had a balky putter,
a wife, a baby seven months on the way, and a mounting pile of debts that
had made him forsake his dream of being the best of the touring pros in
exchange for a modest but regular paycheck.

* pp. 19-21 of The Country Club Caper (copyright 1971, Doubleday &
Co.) by Bill Gulick (author of Hallelujiah Trail). Printed with permission.