Steven Pressfield - The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life

HAVE YOU EVER had blackjack tea, Michael?

IT SEEMS ODD NOW, but in the Twenties, business people

I WAS PRESENT for the next scene in this saga,

THE AERIE, JUNAHS PLANTATION, lay four miles down the Skidaway

I ADVANCED TENTATIVELY INTO THE GLOOM. Three or four colored

I HAVE PUZZLED FOR YEARS and lain awake many nights,

JUNAH WAS IN.

TO UNDERSTAND BOBBY JONES STATURE in the South at that

THAT AFTERNOON PASSED as the most excruciating hell I had

IT WAS PAST ONE OCLOCK and by no means warm.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN identical twins take up golf? Their

I WOKE UP LYING IN THE BACK SEAT of the

THE CHALMERS PULLED UP ON A SAND RIDGE beyond the

MORE THAN SIXTY YEARS HAVE PASSED since that day, yet

AN ATHLETE OF YOUR CALIBER, Michael, can well imagine Junahs

JUNAH BIRDIED TEN, eleven and twelve. I cant overstate the

IN THE TWENTIES AND THIRTIES, gallery ropes were rarely in

THE STORM HAD BROKEN, wind was lashing the medical tent;

AT THIS POINT in the telling of the story, Michael

JUNAH AND VANCE headed for the first tee again.

VANCE UTTERED NO WORD. He simply motioned to me to

IN THE DOZENS OF ACCOUNTS that appeared in the press

IN AN INSTANT Vance had vanished, stepping into the gallery,

I FINISHED THE TALE. The clock on Irenes mantel read

WE WERE ON OUR WAY to Krewe Island.

WHEN JUNAH WAS KILLED I was nineteen, in my second

YEAH SURE, PAL. Michael paced angrily along the truck rail.

I N MAY OF 1931 an exhibition match was held over 36 holes between the two greatest golfers of their day, Walter Hagen and Robert Tyre Bobby Jones, Jr. The match was the second and last between the two immortals (Hagen shelled Jones, 12 and 11 over 72 holes, at the first in Sarasota, Florida, in 1926). This second match was held at what was, at the time, the most costly and ambitious golf layout ever built in America, the Links at Krewe Island, Georgia.

Much has been written about the rather odd events of that long day. We have Grantland Rices dispatches to the New York Tribune , which were published at that time. The notes and diaries of O. B. Keeler devote several quite absorbing pages to the match. And of course the reports from the dozens of newspapers and sporting journals that covered the event.

One aspect of that day, however, has been largely overlooked, or rather treated as a footnote, an oddity or sideshow. I refer to the inclusion in the competition, at the insistence of the citizens of Savannah, of a local champion, who in fact held his own quite honorably with the two golfing titans.

I was fortunate enough to witness that match, aged ten, from the privileged and intimate vantage of assisting the local champions caddie. I was present for many of the events leading up to the day, for the match itself, as well as certain previously unrecorded adventures in its aftermath.

For many years, it has been my intention to commit my memory of these events to paper. However, a long and crowded career as a physician, husband and father of six has prevented me from finding the time I felt the effort deserved.

In candor, another factor has made me reluctant to make public these recollections. That is the rather fantastical aspect of a number of the events of that day. I was afraid that a true accounting would be misinterpreted or, worse, disbelieved. The facts, I feared, would either be discounted as the product of a ten-year-olds overactive imagination or, when perceived as the recollections of a man past seventy, be dismissed as burnished and embellished reminiscences whose truth has been lost over time in the telling and retelling.

The fact is, I have never told this story. Portions I have recounted to my wife in private; fragments have been imparted on specific occasion to my children. But I have never retold the story, to others or even to myself, in its entirety.

Until recently, that is. Attempting to counsel a troubled young friend, for whom I felt the tale might have significance, I passed an entire night, till sunrise, recounting the story verbally. It made such a profound impression on my young friend that I decided at last to try my hand at putting it down in written form.

This volume is that attempt.

I have chosen, for reasons which will become apparent, to tell the tale much as I recounted it that night. It is a story of a type of golfer, and a type of golf, which I fear have long since vanished from the scene. But I intend this record not merely as an exercise in reminiscence or nostalgia. For the events of that day had profound and far-reaching consequences on me and on others who participated, particularly the local champion referred to above.

His name was Rannulph Junah, and Bagger Vance was his caddie.

H ARDISON L. G REAVES , M.D.
Savannah, Georgia
March 1995

H AVE YOU EVER had blackjack tea, Michael?

The real stuff, I mean. One of my patients gave me these, cured sassafras root from Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana. Something mysterious and potent about it. Clears the head. You can stay up all night with your brain so lucid it almost feels transparent. Smell the earth in it? Something about tea from roots, as opposed to leaves. Something deeper, more connected to the source. I remember that rooty, woodsy smell from winter mornings as a boy. My mother said only a Yankee or a fool sweetened blackjack tea with sugar. It had to be molasses. And no milk. The farthest afield shed stray was to serve it au citron , like the Creoles. But Im wandering already, and youve barely even sat down.

How are you, young man? No doubt youre expecting a lecture, but I promise thats the last thing I intend. Your decision to leave medical school is your own entirely. I can even understand and sympathize. Around the third year, when exhaustion and nausea have taken up permanent residence in your bones, the healing profession seems less like a calling and more like an exercise in expedience and venality. I understand that brand of despair better than I wish. But its a different decision youve made that troubles me more deeply.

I mean your choice to give up golf.

When I heard, Michael, I knew something was wrong. Seriously wrong. Thats why Ive asked you here tonight.

Will you stay and listen to an old man?

You see, I know you better than you think. Not just from those forlorn interviews you endured once a year with the Scholarship Committee. In fact I made up my mind about you years earlier.

Do you remember when you used to caddie for me, in your rabbit days, when you were ten or eleven? You used to swing clubs on the tee like the other boys, but there was something that struck me particularly about you. You had an instinct. You saw through to the soul of the game.

Frank the caddiemaster told me once how, at ten years old, you asked to be sent out only with the best players, just so you could watch and learn. Frank showed me the list you gave him. Do you remember? The list of your approved players. I was flattered to find my own name on it.

I used to watch you sometimes when you werent looking. What struck me particularly was your interest in the grip. You knew, like every real expert, that a true player can be recognized by his grip alone. The way a man sets his hands on a club will inform you infallibly as to how deeply hes thought about the game, how profoundly hes entered into its mysteries.