The Ancient Art of Gronkle

A soggy Masters Week Round with John Updike

My first glimpse of John Updike came at church. Every Sunday the Moliere of America’s suburbs sat near my bride and me in a middle left-hand pew at the eight o’clock service of St John’s Episcopal Church in Beverly Farms, Rabbit Angstrom in the flesh, occasionally gazing thoughtfully over at us – newlyweds and newcomers in the church where we’d just been married -- with a bemused expression on his pale, beaky face.

Updike later told me – his words – that he was simply admiring my bride’s beauty and envying our marital youth; that seeing us reminded him of the early days of his own marriage. For what it’s worth, my favorite Updike novel was Marry Me, a tender tale that evolved from those years living on the coast of Cape Ann.

We spoke for the first time at one of the coffee hours following a late-autumn morning service. Rector Jim Purdy had evidently told him I was the Senior Writer for Yankee and a new contributor to Golf. The courtly Mr. Updike sidled over and pleasantly remarked that he thought I might have the perfect job, roaming New England for a great magazine but also writing about his favorite game, which prompted me to inquire if it was true that he once played the modest Cape Ann Golf Club on the coast road between Essex and Ipswich on a regular basis, a mere driver and seven-iron combo from our cottage on Island Road. “It’s true,” he confirmed, “that’s where I played when we first moved to the North Shore. My game was pretty bad in those days, but I loved playing that little course. Sometimes I miss it.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: “You’ll have to come over and play sometime at Myopia.”

I thanked him, hoping this might happen, though I assumed he was just being polite to a fellow parishioner over coffee. Unfortunately, I didn’t see Updike at church again until the end of the following summer. That year he won the National Book Award and a second Pulitzer Prize for Literature and was reportedly traveling abroad. Though I feared golf with Rabbit Angstrom was probably a missed opportunity, I spent the summer rereading his Rabbit books, happy that I’d had a passing acquaintance with one of my literary heroes. Then one Sunday morning in late autumn, he was at coffee hour after the early morning service, reminding me that we’d never had our proposed golf date.

“Say, do you think you could play next Thursday afternoon?” he wondered. “The course is scheduled to close in a week or so but I’m sure I can rustle up a couple of my regulars, if you don’t mind the cold.”

I assured him this wouldn’t be a problem, excited at the prospect of getting to play Myopia in the bargain, a Top 100 layout designed by amateur architect Herbert Leeds in the same spirit that created Hugh Wilson’s Merion and Henry Fownes’s Oakmont. Myopia, after all, had hosted four U.S. Opens between 1898 and 1908, two of them won by Willie Anderson, a layout from America’s Golden Age of Golf.

“Very good. We’ll have lunch and then a little gronkle.”

“Gronkle?” I wondered if that might be some unique home-grown game played only by the Yankee bluebloods at Myopia.

“That’s from Shakespeare, my word for bad but enjoyable golf.”

A few days later, however, my subject phoned to let me know his mother had passed away and he needed to postpone our round. “The club is closing so let’s try again when the club re-opens in the spring,” he suggested.

When cold and rainy April appeared once more on the calendar, a postcard arrived from the Arnold Palmer of American letters, proposing that we meet at Myopia in two week’s time. By then, however, my pregnant bride and I had moved to Maine and the card had been forwarded, arriving just four days before the proposed meeting.

I showed up at Myopia just before noon, straight from a working trip to the 1990 Masters. Unfortunately, my golf clubs failed to make the flight back to Boston, putting me in something of a panic until I discovered my wife’s new (and rarely played) Spalding Lady Tiara clubs in the trunk of my car.

I hoped my host would at the least appreciate the amusing irony of this development, especially after I explained to him that my best round ever happened with a borrowed set of women’s clubs on a challenging golf course in Rhode Island not long after I moved to New England. A friend’s wife loaned me her Patty Berg model irons and woods one early spring afternoon at Quanset Point and I somehow broke 70 for the first time ever, a 68 that could easily have been a few strokes better if I’d had my trusty Zebra putter, an unexpected gift from the golf gods, proving that the game really is a riddle wrapped in a conundrum.

As I raced north from Logan Airport to horsey Hamilton, I told myself that maybe this kind of magic could happen a second time – at the very least hoping I wouldn’t embarrass myself and prompt my host to regret his invitation.

Silly me. It was even worse than that.

To begin with, the day was classic springtime in northern New England, meaning miserably cold and misty, which perhaps explained why Myopia Hunt Club was shuttered up like an estate about to be auctioned off by Christies when I splashed into the empty parking lot just before noon. Nary a human was in sight, though a lone chestnut horse hung his curious head over the paddock fence, so I walked over to commiserate with Old Dobbin, wondering if I’d managed to get the day wrong. Just then a gray Ford Taurus wheeled into the parking lot and John Updike hopped out dressed in baggy green cargo pants, camel sweater and moss green turtleneck; he opened his trunk, hoisted a small carry bag and strode toward me smiling and apologizing for being late, pulling on a white bucket-hat. He explained that the two buddies he hoped might join us were sadly a scratch. One had yet return yet from Florida and the other was down with a nasty spring head cold.

“I’m fighting off one myself,” he admitted, blowing his nose as he glanced around the vacant premises, looking surprised. “Oh my. I guess the club doesn’t open until next week. But let’s muddle along, just the two of us, shall we? There won’t be any tee markers or flags out but how bad could that be? It’s April and we’re playing golf. Let’s see how far we get.”

We hoisted our bags and set off for the first tee, wherever it was. I saw him glance at my clubs and smile.

“They belong to my wife,” I said, explaining how my fate happened to be in the hands of Lady Tiara. “My clubs are probably halfway to Bermuda by now. I didn’t want to postpone my chance to see Myopia. Besides, I’m already in the grip of Master Fever.”

“What’s Masters Fever? I thought you were just in Augusta?”

“I was indeed, on Wednesday and Thursday. But that was for work. That only made my Masters Fever worse.”

It was now Friday of Masters week, and I was in a full-blown grip of Masters Fever, a seasonal malady common to geographically displaced golf-mad Southerners accustomed to the sight of green grass and blooming dogwoods and azaleas in early April, heralding the return of golf in the bosom of one’s native land and the season’s first golf major championship. For those of us who lived in the Great Frozen North – defined as anything above Fenway Park -- Masters Fever reached its peak with the annual telecast of the Masters, characterized by a frenzied desire to hit a golf ball off green grass after the long winter layoff and enjoy the glory of mom’s bourbon-glazed Easter ham.

Teeing up a high optic yellow golf ball, my host laughed. He withdrew an old Lynx driver from his bag and began making stiff warm-up swings.

“That’s why I go to Florida for the winter,” he explained, wondering what I did for the ailment when Masters Fever struck.

I told him about a private little ritual I’d developed during my first wintry spring in New England, inspired by a made-up game I called “Ace” as a kid growing up in North Carolina. The “Yankee” version of Ace involved placing a brand-new Titleist (ideally a lucky no. 3) golf ball on anything resembling turf in front of my house and seeing if I could knock the ball safely over the roof with one cold swing using my sand wedge. In my pre-teen version, I’d always used a Whiffle ball and pretended to be playing famed No. 12 at Augusta National. Every time it cleared the roof of my parents’ house, I scored an “Ace.” In the Great Frozen North, however, the act was far more symbolic – a statement of personal meteorological defiance – with potentially grave consequences to an innocent house and domestic harmony.

Updike looked delighted by this peculiar ritual, wondering with a note of boyish glee if I’d ever shanked a ball into the house or maybe knocked out a picture window.

“Not yet,” I said. “Luckily, I’m four for four in the Northern version of Ace.”

He was also curious if I’d ever scored a hole-in-one. I admitted that I had come close so many times I’d basically given up because every 20 handicapper I’d ever met had four or five aces under their belt. I was a six handicap with no ace to show for my efforts – which was why, I added, I’d founded the Hole-in-None Society for long-suffering golfers like me.

“I wish I could join,” he said almost wistfully.

“I gather you’ve had one, eh?”

“Two, actually. But one happened when I was playing all by myself in the twilight, hitting two practice balls. So, I guess it doesn’t count.”

“We might be able to get you in under the rarely used grandfather clause that you didn’t intend to make an ace and are genuinely sorry it happened. I’ll take it up with the committee. Did you at least buy yourself a drink afterwards?”

Updike smiled. “I did indeed. A nice ginger beer. Well, maybe golf with no flags can help your Masters Fever.”

He invited me to play away, and I said it was my pleasure to follow him.

There was no flag in the distance, but my host took dead aim up the hill toward a spot where an actual green presumably lay. He made a firm cut and dribbled the ball thirty yards off to the right, throwing up a rooster’s tale of water before it vanished into thick tufted grass at the edge of the bare woods. Rabbit slid me a wry look.

“Mulligans for Masters Fever?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “This is golf’s spring training.”

His next opening shot flew a couple hundred yards up the fairway, a sweet little fade that seemed to please my host. My opening drive wound up just thirty yards below the green I never knew was there.

“Marvelous shot!” declared my companion, replacing his bucket hat with a stocking cap as he set off up the hill at a surprisingly brisk pace. I almost had to run to keep up with him, in fact, as he explained, “My wife and I only got to play twice over the winter, so I know what you mean about Masters Fever. When you live in New England, you learn to cherish any golf day you get.”

No moss grew under John Updike. He strode straight up to his ball, whipped out a mid-iron and gave the ball a solid whack before I’d finally caught up. I saw his bright yellow ball scamper on the green where there was no flag in the cup or no cup to speak of – only a ragged hole where someone perhaps had intended to place a cup or taken one out. I aimed my ball at where I guessed the cup might be, were there a cup, and pitched my ball ten yards feet over the green, chipped back and three putted for a six while my gracious partner made par.

“I’m afraid you’re seeing Myopia in her winter underwear,” said John as we stepped to the tee on the second hole, a soulful 485-yard par-five called “Lookout” whose fairway was covered with practice balls.

“Some of the members like to use this as their practice range in winter,” he explained after hooking his drive toward a clump of young saplings and I faded mine deep into the golf ball graveyard. Unlike my host in his Footjoys, I was having to wear my Topsiders, which slipped on the soggy turf about every fourth shot. Still, what a sight Myopia’s pale-yellow clubhouse presented in the greening springtime gloom, glowing peacefully in a grove of ancient just-budding oak trees, surrounded by century-old forests, white fenced pastures just beginning display sprigs of tender green, all of it framed by majestic rolling hills.

As we searched for my ball, he told me about his start in the game.

“I was in my mid-twenties. I’d just moved to New England from New York and was trying to become a freelance writer. My former wife had an Aunt Dotty who lived in Wellesley. Quite a faithful golfer, Aunt Dotty was. She took me out in the back yard and said, ‘Oh, John. What a lovely natural swing you have.’ Like a fool, I believed her. I started playing small public course like Cape Ann and got hooked. For a while I thought I might even try to become a freelance golfer instead.”

We never found my errant ball. So, I dropped a new one and took a two-stroke penalty stroke, hitting a decent three-iron shot my host praised lavishly, an ill-deserved courtesy he would keep up all afternoon. We walked over to John’s ball and he settled over it, mumbling, “So here goes another gronkle.”

Ah, there was that word again. “Remind me about gronkles,” I said. He aimed a wry eye at me.

“You remember Shakespeare’s ‘Two Gentlemen from Verona.’ Why dost thou gronkle so much! I think that was it. Or maybe it was ‘As You like it.’ In any case, a gronkle is when you hit it hard but the ball sputters miserably along the ground, the perfect name for what we’re doing today – soggy spring golf in New England.”

And with that, he struck a perfectly lovely fairway wood down the hill.

Updike’s swing featured an unconventionally deep bend of his left knee but at 58 he also exhibited the general suppleness any man my age then would envy. As a fine shot left his club, I supportively quipped and in kind: “No gronkle that – perhaps more of a Stadler, methinks.”

Rabbit grinned, clearly pleased. “I’ll show you gronkles aplenty yet, young blood!”

I frankly hadn’t expected my host to be so fun-loving and amusing, a man who clearly relished the fellowship and sweet unpredictability of the game. In other words, my kind of guy. So onward we played, our noses leaking and the light banter becoming a kind of mutual defense system and bonding element against the miserable weather, amicably chatting about a host of related subjects – wives and children, my new friendship with Glenna Vare and his old one with Herbert Warren Wind, shared hopes for a new Red Sox season and talk of our favorite golf books. He wondered if I’d ever read The Mystery of Golf by Arthur Haultain, a new Classics of Golf edition for which he’d recently written the afterwards. I admitted that I had not.

“You must get a copy. He [Haultain] analyzes and celebrates the confounding appeal of this game, quoting everybody from St Paul to La Tzu, ruminating on everything from the physiology of the golf swing to our social addiction to competition and the contradiction of the game’s solitary nature but incomparable knack for forging friendships; he dips into metaphysics and hard science, declaring that golf is not so much a simple game as it is a creed and a religion – all told in the amused, fancy, antique language of another century. Really quite extraordinary, almost as if Henry David Thoreau had taken up the game on weekends off from Walden Pond.”

Fortunately, as always, my tape recorder was running as he made this lovely speech or else I would have been forced to drop my bag and try and jot down such a dandy reflection on a soggy scorecard.

“Does he solve the mystery of golf’s appeal?”

Updike smiled. “Not in the least. Which makes it so completely wonderful. I’ll make sure you get a copy.”

Suddenly, we found ourselves standing at the ninth hole’s teeing ground, looking down upon a gorgeous postage stamp of par-three set behind a perfectly still pond that would have delighted Henry David Thoreau. Behind us lay a string of doubles and triples which made me wonder why on earth we’d kept a card – yet another beguiling mystery of the game.

“So how does your wife like Maine?” he asked out of the blue, sounding a tad more like Rabbit Angstrom than John Updike. I explained that Alison had grown up there, the middle child of Glaswegian Scots. We’d moved to a coastal town ninety minutes below their sprawling farm in the central highlands at the end of the previous summer to have our first child, a girl named Margaret after both her grandmothers. Now a second babe was on the way, due in August. We’d recently learned the baby was a boy.

My host seemed pleased by this news. “So, you’ll be able to use those Lady Tiaras for a while yet,” he gently needled the way he might have done with one of his regular golf pals.

Earlier, as we gronkled along, he’d talked about his regular golf buddies and an essay about golf companions he’d recently submitted to Golf Digest, prompting me to admit that I did not have a regular group – hadn’t really ever had one to speak of.

“I would advise you find a good group of men to play with – cheaper and far more fun than group therapy in the church basement,” he’d said with a chuckle.

We both buried shots in the bunker by the ninth green. My host made triple while I scraped out yet another thrilling double.

As we walked off the green, I feared this might be all the golf for one day. There was still no sign of humanity around Myopia’s darkened club house, so no lunch or even a friendly warm-up toddy. I totaled up our scores. The Master of Gronkle made 51; his apprentice 48.

“Shall we continue the pain?” I felt obliged to ask.

Just then the sun appeared, flooding the pretty hills around us.

“There’s a sign,” said John, peeling off his stocking cap and the all-weather jacket he’d put on several holes back. The bucket hat was back on his head. “I think you always learn something from a bad round – to keep going, if nothing else. The back nine is bound to improve us. Game?”

“Absolutely,” I said, squishing after him in my water-filled Topsiders.

John Updike’s best drive of the day came on the tenth, mysteriously nicknamed “Alps.” Perhaps in tribute to my companion’s sunny faith, he unleashed a 230-yard scorcher with the sweetest hint of a draw.

“I’m your basic left to right golfer who has been unsuccessfully trying to cultivate a reliable draw for years,” he explained after watching me drill my drive into a grassy mound on the right, scampering into a thicket of knee-high nettles. “The real mystery of golf is that sometimes things you’re trying to do really happen. The gods give you a momentary taste of heaven.”

I agreed – though given what followed, aside from the lovely setting and companionship, the only real unresolved mystery at that instant was why on earth I was fretting about my woeful game because the harder I tried, the worse it got. After foolishly trying to hack my way through the nettles, I took two more shots just to reach the fairway, then sent a fourth shot into a pot bunker, a fifth whistling over the green and a small stone fence, disappearing into a valley of handsome old trees and tangled just-budding vines.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it marked!” cried my thoughtful partner, hopping the wall and disappearing into the tangle of nature. There followed a great deal of enthusiastic cracking and thrashing about while I simply stood there like a dolt having a small out-of-body experience, hoping the Arnie of American letters didn’t injure himself on my behalf.

“Excuse me, sir,” came a polite voice from the rear. “May I ask what you are doing out here?”

I turned around to find a suntanned young man wearing a green windbreaker with the Myopia club crest on its breast standing behind me.

“I’m asking myself that very question,” I admitted with a weak smile.

“The course is officially closed until next week,” he said in a cool tone befitting the weather, obviously running my flushed mug through his mental Roll-a-Dex of members and coming up empty. The sun had disappeared and so had my hopes for at least seeing Myopia’s fabled back nine.

“Ah ha! I’ve got it!” came a triumphant cry from over the wall. “I think you might even be able to get a club on it!”

“That’s okay, John,” I called back. “I think we may be finished anyway.”

Moments later my companion climbed up from the forest primeval, winded and grinning like a man who’d found more than a golf ball in the brambles. He handed me my errant Titleist and greeted the assistant pro warmly by name and explained we were just out for a little “April exercise – spring training for golf. This is, after all, Masters week.” Still catching his breath, he added cheerfully. “Hope that’s okay. My friend here wanted to try out his wife’s new golf clubs.”

The young fellow didn’t appear amused, glacimg at me as if I might be carving beaver pelts out of his gorgeous historic turf with my lethal Lady Tiaras. But he managed a polite smile.

“Absolutely, Mr. Updike. We should have the course ready for real play by next weekend. Enjoy your exercise.”

So onward we went, into the bosom of Myopia’s fabled back nine, beautiful holes befitting their heritage of being shaped by the hand of a gifted amateur rather than machine, ingeniously simple affairs that followed the contours of the land like a gloved hand, bearing prosaic Yankee names like “Valley,” “Hill” and “Ridge,” calming my ruffled inner hacker.

After my disastrous 10 on 10, I’d basically given up chasing Old Man Parr and focused on the pleasure of getting to know my fellow golfer and church-goer even better. On “Valley” we paused to watch a squadron of hungry Robins descend on an adjacent meadow and a small boy scouting for lost balls in the rough. We talked about English weather, Renaissance popes, Boston real estate, and my favorite Updike novel, Marry Me, which he explained was written at a difficult period in his first marriage – and may have given birth to Rabbit Angstrom.

The sun bobbed out on the 16^th hole, another short and handsome par-three. Updike stroked a masterful 4-iron to the center of the green and nearly made birdie. I bunkered for another double. On 17, however, my amiable companion nailed his tee shot OB over a stone fence and issued the only swear word I heard his say all afternoon, a gentlemanly muttered “Sonofabitch.”

On the 18^th tee, he told me about his new novel, due out sometime in the autumn, Rabbit at Rest.

He hit his final drive of the day, and we watched it bounce out of bounds as well.

“Rabbit is tired,” he quipped wearily, “and so is his creator.”

Indeed, it felt like we’d slogged through four different seasons. But what an unforgettable Masters Friday – better than anything happening down in Augusta, Georgia, I decided.

The good news was, there was a light in the club bar, where we found a bald sergeant major type who gruffly greeted us as we shuffled in. He brought us a couple restorative beers. Mine was a German girl named St Pauli; John’s a ginger beer.

“Good to have one of the regulars back, Mr. Updike,” the barman declared. “Awful brave of you men to be out there today.”

My host was grimacing at the card.

“What’s your handicap?” he asked.

I had no official handicap because I had no club, no regular game or golf buddies. But I typically shot around 80.

“I’m a sixteen,” he said and showed me the untidy results of his math, smiling like an amused Borgia pope. He finished with100 to my 101.

We touched glasses. “Here’s to the good round of Gronkle,” he said cheerfully.

As we walked out to our cars, still the only ones in the members’ parking lot, he told me that he’d read somewhere that Dan Quayle, the Vice President, took the game so seriously he brooded for days after a bad round.

“Do you think we should take this game more seriously? We could just throw away the card and try again in June.”

“I’d enjoy that,” I said. “Good thing he’s not president, with a thumb on the nuke button. A round like ours could mean the end of the world.”

My companion put his clubs in his trunk, removed his bucket hat, and smiled. He offered me his hand.

“You’re right. I find that sharing the pleasure and pain with a friend is one of golf’s great compensations. No mystery about that.”

I thanked him for a delightful afternoon.

Two weeks to the day from our Myopian adventure, a post card arrived in Maine.

Dear Jim, he wrote, I played there yesterday [Myopia] with another awful head cold and got 91. So, by simple linear projection, I will get an 82 the next time, followed by 73. Since 64 is the course record, I can hardly wait for my fifth round of the year. It was a fun round, with its ups and downs, as is the way. We’ll play again sometime soon.

Best Wishes, John.

A few days after that, a new edition of Haultain’s The Mystery of Golf with an afterward by John Updike appeared in our rural Maine post box. It became one of my favorite books.

Rabbit and I never teed it up again, though we did exchange handwritten notes from time to time.

But I look back on that dreary spring afternoon of Gronkle as a highlight of my evolving Range Bucket List, proof that you never meet a stranger on a golf course.

As Rabbit himself might say, no mystery about that.