The Dynasty Lacoste

Relaxing at her home in the land of the Basques, Catherine Lacoste shows no resentment over her experiences in the New World. "How can I be angry?" she says. "I won, didn't I? To be angry, you have to take something very, very seriously, and I don't take golf that way at all. I'd never turn pro, and I'd rather have acute appendicitis than get involved in something like the tour. I have a lot of fun here. I enjoy going to the interpreters' school at the Sorbonne, and I enjoy working in my three languages—French and English and Spanish—and I enjoy playing the guitar and painting and playing golf with my friends whenever the notion strikes me. But toward the end of each golf season I begin to get a strong feeling of wanting to put my clubs away and saying to hell with it. After that I hardly have a golf club in my hand for five months. To tell you the truth, I'll probably chuck the whole thing in two or three more years and get married."

Her father, the old Crocodile himself, comes silently into the room and sits next to his daughter. "We are different, Catherine and I," he says to no one in particular. "I played to improve myself, to play well, not just to beat the other person. But one cannot deny it is a pleasure to win."

"Yes, we are different," Catherine says, after her father wanders off to another part of the house. "In fact, we are opposites when it comes to sport. I play to win. I want to win. But I'm also cabotine. You can't translate that exactly, but it means you can do well when you want to. You can rise to an occasion. That's me: cabotine, a bit of a show-off. But I'd never do what my father did against Tilden, win a big match and go off the court angry at my play. Never! I'd feel quite happy. Next year in the U.S. Open I would be satisfied to shoot a 390 if I won. Yes, indeed. That would suit my personality exactly. But miracles don't happen two years in a row. Do they?"