"Why don't we forget about the ball," the young woman said.
      "Why don't you just take a drop?"
      The man, considerably older, was in the short rough just off the seventh fairway. He was walking carefully, looking down, swinging the head of a two-iron across the tops of wild flowers.
      "It's a Titleist," he said.
      "It's not as if you couldn't afford a new one."
      "You just want to add a stroke to my score."
      "You won't break forty anyway," she said. "Take a drop."
      "I can maybe break eighty if we play a second nine." He rested the club on his shoulder and looked broodingly into the scrub pine that separated the seventh fairway from the sixth. "You suppose it's in there?"
      "I haven't a clue. You hooked it so badly I couldn't follow it."
      "I sliced it," he said. "After all this time I should think you'd know the difference."
      "There isn't any difference," she said. "Either way, you can't find the ball."
      "You should learn to tell a hook from a slice," he said.
      "Maybe you ought to play one of those new orange balls," the young woman said. "It might be easier to find."
      "I couldn't," he said. "It would be like knocking a tangerine around the course." He came back toward her, still carrying the club on his shoulder. "Maybe I'd better take a drop," he said. "I don't suppose there's any point in hanging around here all day."

#

The seventh green was at the top of a broad hill, trapped on both sides and at the back. From the foot of the hill where the man's fourth shot had landed, the flag was hidden, and he stood for a long time pondering. His golf bag -- plaid, its leather trim badly scuffed -- lay on the fairway behind him.
      "What do you think?" he said.
      "I think it's to the left and toward the back of the green." She sat on the grass nearby, pulling her crossed ankles under her. "If I were the pin, that's where I'd be."
      "I mean do you think a seven-iron or what?"
      "Seven or eight."
      He stooped to haul the iron out of the bag. "Seven," he said. "I don't think I can reach with an eight."
      "Not unless you hit it squarely," she said.
      He addressed the ball, which lay in a dark green patch of clover. After a few moments of settling his feet, dancing the club head behind the ball, assessing the long sweep of the hill, he straightened up and stepped back.
      "I think I'll go take a look," he said.
      He trudged up the slope, the club in his right hand. The grass was green to the eye, but down near the soil it had a brownish cast and felt brittle underfoot. He climbed until he could see the flagstick, the flag made of stiff red plastic with a white numeral; it was set in the back left corner of the green, about ten feet in from the froghair. He stood, leaning on the club, and looked back down the hill to his ball. The young woman waved; she wore bright yellow shorts and a white blouse, and her hair was held back from her face with a narrow yellow headband. The ball was a white dot not far from her bare legs. It looked like an eight-iron shot after all.

#

When the ball dropped over the rim of the hole, it rattled in the cup with a sound like crockery in a dishwasher. The woman fished it out and tossed it back to him. Then she reset the flag and followed him off the green.
      "Double bogey," he said. "I'll be lucky to come in with a fifty."
      "Think of the fresh air you're getting," she said. "Think of the dew on the greens and the nice exercise."
      He hitched the bag onto his shoulder. "You really don't like this game, do you?"
      She shrugged.
      "Next time why don't you rent some clubs and try it yourself? If you started to enjoy it, I could buy you a set of your own."
      "Maybe," she said. She held out her hand to him. "Here, this is for you."
      "What is it?"
      "A four-leaf clover. I found it down the hill."
      He took it, looked at it, put it carefully in the pocket of his shirt.
      "Thank you," he said. He reached out to draw her against him and kissed her on the forehead. "Let's just do the nine holes and call it a day."

#

The eighth hole was a par three, a hundred-and-ten yards from the high tee to a green nested in a natural bowl. The hole was trapped all around. There was scarcely any fairway; instead the steep hill was sandy and rocky, as if in a permanent state of disrepair. Because the green was invisible from the tee, the young woman had been sent down the hill, and now she stood at a halfway point so that if the ball caromed, or buried itself, or went far off-line, she could keep it in view. She positioned herself beside a dead oak and waited. The man appeared above her, standing at the lip of the hill, shielding his eyes against the sun.
      "You ready?" he called.
      "Ready," she answered.
      He stepped out of sight. After a short time she heard him call out "Fore," and heard the whack of the club head. In the same instant she saw the ball; it was hit short, and landed in the rough just above her, but it was moving at great speed and bounced past her toward the green. A little further downhill it struck something solid -- a large rock, an old stump, she could not tell -- and took renewed flight. It landed just at the edge of the green, danced toward the hole, and struck the flagstick straight on. She watched the ball vanish into the cup.
      "Did you see where it landed?" The man had found a path from the back of the tee, down through the trees to where she stood. "Am I in trouble?"
      "It landed about there," she said, pointing at the hillside.
      "In all those damned rocks," he said. "Wouldn't you know it. Did it ricochet?"
      "Straight toward the green."
      "Thank God for small favors," he said. He started downward, lugging the bag like a valise. "Tell me how far."
      She followed after. "You'll be surprised," she said.
      "I'll bet." He stood at the front of the green, looking down into the trap. "Where is it?"
      "In the hole," she said.
      "Don't tease me."
      "No, really."
      He laid the bag down and walked to the hole. He reached in alongside the pin and took out the ball.
      "You put it there," he said.
      "How could I?"
      He studied the ball. "It actually went in? It's actually a hole-in-one?"
      "Actually," she said. "It wasn't the most wonderful shot I ever saw -- it must have hit every rock on the hill coming down -- but it did the job."
      "What do you know," he said. Abruptly, he turned away from the young woman and flung the ball with all his might at the tops of the trees behind the green. She took this to be an expression of joy.

#

"When I started playing golf, I had to use my father's clubs," he said.
      They were sitting over drinks in the clubhouse. The decision to stop at nine holes was sound; he had gone over the last green with a clumsy pitch, then three-putted, and he took his failure at the ninth as an evil portent. With a decent pitch, he would certainly have made par.
      "The clubs had funny names: mashie, niblick, brassie. You didn't call them by number. It was as if they had distinct personalities. And they were wooden-shafted. The heads were held on to the shafts with this heavy winding of gutta percha twine, and the whole club was varnished to a fare-thee-well."
      "What kind of wood?"
      "I don't know," he said. "Something resilient. Hickory? You could feel the wood sing when the club head made contact. And the shafts weren't really true; they all had a bow in them. You felt like W.C.Fields playing billiards."
      The young woman smiled. "And did you wear knickers?" she said.
      "No," he said. "But I went in for argyle socks and sweaters." He pondered the scorecard open beside his Collins glass. "Forty-six, even with the eagle on eight," he said. "Can you imagine it?"
      "Did your father teach you the game?"
      "After a fashion. He wasn't much of a golfer, I'm afraid -- though it took me a while to realize just how bad he was. I think he learned his swing from watching sandlot baseball."
      "You're quite a good golfer," the young woman said. "In spite of him."
      "How one generation resists the faults of another," he said. "Anyway, it's an old man's game."
      "Nonsense."
      He took a last wistful look at his scorecard.
      "Who'd believe this thing?" he said. He put his arm around the young woman and gently kissed her. "Would you?"

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