Sure Cures

"You're more accurate with a bigger stroke," Douglass says. Is putting a fine science or what?

That was when we decided our solution maybe wasn't the putter, it was our putting. We needed a putting cure. There are a million, but we ordered up the KLANGER, two aluminum rails you use to keep your putter on line during the stroke. It worked great—for about 10 minutes. Once we took the rails away, our path was as lousy as ever.

The best, though, was the PRECISION PUTTING SYSTEM, which was nothing more than three golf balls that look and roll exactly like normal golf balls, only they're bigger. The idea is that when you're finished putting these thyroid balls, the real golf ball looks tiny and the hole looks gigantic.

Unfortunately, experiments showed that we weren't getting any better. This was starting to be maddening. We were out of things to try. Did golf even have One True Secret? Had we blown all this time and money and dollops of Scotch for nothing?

Just then, at Golf House, we saw it, a U-shaped hoop with staked ends, about three feet high. Hanging from the middle of the hoop was a pendulum. It was a putter. You simply stuck the hoop into the green directly above the ball, pulled back the pendulum and let it fall in its natural arc. The pendulum can't help itself, it just has to send your little white ball directly into the hole. In 25 tries we made 24 putts. It worked from close in. It worked from far out. It worked from the coat closet. It was, indeed, the perfect putter. And since 43% of the average golfer's round is putts, it was the thing that really could take 10 to 15 strokes off your game Tomorrow. Homer Simpson could get around in 20 putts with this thing.

We were elated. Frank Thomas, the technical director of the USGA, would not let us have it, but we could easily have one built. A sixth-grader could make one. Instantly, we would be a five handicapper. With a little work, we would be scratch. Could the Open be far away? We really would one-putt Everything. Our life once again held purpose.

But Thomas had a funny look on his face. He did not seem happy for me. "Everybody wants to make the game easier," he said. "But do they really? I had a mountain climber friend of mine come in one day, and he tried this putter. He was outraged that we wouldn't approve it.

" 'Why not let the manufacturers build this?' he said. 'Golf is such a slow, tedious game. This would let people enjoy it. They'd have so much more fun.'

"So I told him, 'O.K. We'll approve this putter, but only if you let somebody erect a ladder up the side of the Matterhorn. Then everybody can enjoy climbing the Matterhorn. It will be so much more fun.' My friend immediately realized what I meant. If you sat at your desk and threw a piece of paper clear across the room and into the wastebasket, you'd feel pretty good about yourself. But if the wastebasket was as big as a garbage can, and you set it right next to your desk, the fun would be gone, wouldn't it?"

It was as if a blindfold had been lifted from our eyes. That was really the point, wasn't it? The addictive nature of golf, the lure of it, is the very thing we were trying to eliminate. What's fun is not mastering it, but trying to master it. If all of these gadgets worked and we shot 72 every single time out, we would have been bored out of our skulls and taken up Jarts years ago.