I claim that my second shot wasn't half bad—for a ten-handicap man. I used a brassy and reached the green about thirty feet from the pin, but the demon Wally pulled a mid-iron out of his bag, waggled it once or twice, and then made my brassy look sick. When we reached the top of the hill, there was his ball ten feet from the cup. I ran up, playing it safe for a par four, but Wally studied the roll of the green for about ten seconds—and dropped a very fat three. He was decent enough to apologise.
"I'm playing over my head," said he.
I couldn't dispute it—two threes on par fours might well be over anybody's head. One down and fourteen to go; it had all the earmarks of a massacre.
We had quite an audience at the fifth tee—two foursomes were piled up there, cursing. "What's the matter, gentlemen?" asked Wally. "Can't you get through?"
"Nobody can get through," said Billy Williams. "It's the Big Four."
"But they'll respect the red flags, won't they?"
It was a perfectly natural question for a stranger to ask—and Wally was practically a stranger, though most of the men knew who he was. It brought all sorts of answers.
"You think they will? I'll bet you a little two to one, no limit, that they're all colour-blind!"
"Oh, yes, they'll let you through!"
"They'll ask you to come through—won't they, Billy? They'll insist on it, what?"