18 Holes of Golf in Pursuit of the Round of a Lifetime
A Perfect Lie - The Hole Truth presents a light comic first-person fictional approach to the age-old story of a character who will either achieve or fail to achieve a long and difficult quest, however possibly trivial that quest might actually be.
It is a story of a round of golf as Walter Mitty might have daydreamed it with a cast of characters ripped right off of a golf course.
Excerpt
“Gouf, gouf, gouf yer bawl,
verily toward the green.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
par is but a dream.”
Scottish nursery rhyme *
* Well, it should have been...
==================
Five Hours From Now
I’M STANDING ON the 18th tee not believing I'm five hundred yards from a miracle.
This is the round of my life. Better than the round of my life: with one more good hole, I’ll pop the champagne cork, shake the bottle, spray my companions and be carried off the green in triumph.
Trust my swing for a few more shots. But can I?
A “pro” at the Ventura County Fair once gave me a “5-minute Lesson for $5.”
He saw me swing a 7-iron twice on his green Astroturf tee box, heard what I’d shot that day at Verde Greens, shook his head, picked up his cheap microphone and announced through his crackly P.A. system to the passers-by: “Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and meet… the man who must be, the WORLD’S!… GREATEST!!… PUTTER!!!”
THE RELENTLESS SUN is beating down on the baked out desert grass; it’s at least 100 degrees now.
The three-club wind is whining in my ears, tearing at my hat, swirling through the palms; ready to knock my drive offline. My hands are twitching, my legs are shaking, my nerves are shot and I need to take a piss.
I wonder if this is the day I’ll be recalling in forty years when the nurse at the old age home says, "Mr. Reynolds needs his meds. He's off on that golf talk again."
Professional Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
"A story of 18 holes that many Sunday golfers would be proud to call their own.
Hill’s tale of Don Reynolds having one of those magical days on the links has the immediacy of a memoir. Don and his friend Pablo (a red herring of a character, since we never learn why he urinates so much) are playing a game of skins with two strangers, Kenny (the hacker neophyte) and Philip (the wisenheimer), and the foursome in front. The course is a breezy, scorching Southern California desert landscape, which Hill draws intimately—“the color scheme touches all phases of the palette from beige to brown, yellow to orange, and silver to green.” As Philip razzingly coaches his brother Kenny along—“Get back on your right side. Get over your right testicle. It’s all on the right testicle, dude”—Don slowly gathers his game. He’s no duffer, nor is he a scratch shooter, but he is headed that way. He keeps racking up the pars, a birdie now and a bogey then. Don is a likably familiar guy, self-deprecating and carefree in his honesty—he admits to smoking Salem Lights, heaven help him—then gets a little tetchy as the pressure mounts. Don’s mind hops all over, from Camus to the fake boulders on the golf course to Usain Bolt to the unhinged (“I’ve never finished even par for 18 holes; that’s...better than my best sexual fantasy come true”). Debut author Hill occasionally overwrites (“It disappears into the sand like Absolut into orange juice”), so when Don slips into the zone—a place where many a sportswriter has gone to die—during his final three holes, it’s no gimme. But Hill nails it square, feeling that out-of-body state of dazed awareness when everything is lit from within and time slows to a saunter.
It’s a salute to Hill to say he is no Herbert Warren Wind or Michael Murphy; this golfing saga is all his own."
