Just when we need some magic in our lives, bestselling author James Patterson and Peter de Jonge bring us a stirring tale of life, love, and the power of miracles.
Travis McKinley is an ordinary man living an ordinary life - he has a job that he despises, a marriage that has lost its passion, children from whom he feels disconnected, and at age fifty, a sense that he has accomplished nothing of consequence with his life. But on Christmas Day, he goes out to play a round of golf, and for the first time, he finds himself in the "zone". He sees the putting line that has eluded him for years. Always a fairly good golfer, he finds himself playing like a pro and is so caught up in his excitement that he continues to play, sinking putt after putt, missing Christmas dinner with his wife and family. It is too much for his already troubled marriage.
His family collapes--but Travis is soon too busy living his dream to notice. His amazing new golf skills catapult him into the PGA Senior Open at Pebble Beach, where he advances to the final round with two of his heroes, Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd. And with his wife, children,and a live television audience watching, a miracle takes place on the 17th green that will change Travis, and his family, forever.
Release date:
May 15, 2012
Publisher:
Little, Brown and Company
Print pages:
160
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
IT WAS CHRISTMAS MORNING and a balmy 38 degrees. In other words, a perfect day for golf, and there I stood on the semifrozen mud of the 17th tee at the Creekview Country Club in Winnetka, Illinois.
My marriage was disintegrating. My three kids, whom I love more than life itself, didn’t know what to make of me lately, and I had a terrible feeling that come January, I was going to be fired from my job at Leo Burnett. Who knows, if everything went as badly as it possibly could, there was a chance I might be one of the homeless after that.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
I bent down, teed up an old scuffed Titleist, and squinted through the wind at the long tight par 5, lined on both sides by towering black leafless elms.
Now what follows is one of those mystical, largely unexplainable, out-of-body experiences, so please bear with me. Or as Vin Scully used to say at the start of his golf telecasts, pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. I admit that in sheer unlikelihood, this probably ranks right up there with Truman upsetting Dewey, It’s a Wonderful Life, and John Daly winning the British Open.
What can I say? Stuff happens to people. Tragedies befall saints. Fortune smiles on cretins. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. And this happened to me.
Since it is such a crucial number in this story, I should point out that I was starting my round on 17. Despite the unseasonable thaw, it was Christmas, the course was empty, and 17 just happened to be the tee closest to where I parked. Anyway, I knocked the cover off my drive.
Nothing unusual about that. I hit the ball farther than the pro here at Creekview. I even hit the ball farther than the current champ, Mark Duffel, who’s twenty.
I trudged down the fairway, nudged my ball away from a sprinkler head, and hit my second shot, a 185-yard, 5-iron, stiff. Suddenly, I was feeling better. To hell with my problems. Golf can have that effect.
Now, here comes the weird part. This is where everything gets a little spooky, and I took my first step on this road—either to salvation or damnation.
I stroked that putt so clean and solid.
Strange.
I put such a pure sweet roll on it, the ball traveled over the grass like a bead of mercury rolls across the floor after you break a thermometer.
The beginning of a miracle. A harbinger. A sign.
The little white ball dropped into the little white cup for eagle.
I was hooked.
I was elated.
I was doomed.
I must tell you right now, however, that this isn’t the so-called Miracle on 17. Not even close.
I hurried to the next tee.
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING. What’s the big deal about a nine-foot putt in a practice round on a deserted golf course in the dead of winter, with the only witness a skinny red squirrel who had hopped onto the green in search of an acorn or two?
Let me give you a little quick background.
Except for tap-ins and your basic no-account three-or four-footers, I don’t make putts less than twelve feet. My nickname, borrowed in a most unflattering way from the former world welterweight champion Roberto Duran, is “Hands of Stone.” In spite of that, I’ve been club champ here at the Creekview Country Club in Winnetka five out of the past twelve years.
But it wasn’t just that the putt on 17 went in. Every-body gets lucky sometime.
It was how the putt went in.
It didn’t creep in the side door, or dribble in the front, or start off-line and get corrected by a spike mark. It was dead center from the instant it touched off my blade until it rammed home with all the subtlety of a Shaquille O’Neal dunk.
But even more important was the feeling I had as I stood over the putt. I knew it was going in.
Knew it in my hands, shoulders, legs, and bones.
Knew it with a degree of certainty that was almost spooky.
It was like something that had already happened, and all I had to do was patiently wait for the present to catch up.
For the first time in forty years, I could actually see the line. My nickname notwithstanding, my putting problem was never really my touch. It was in my eyes, or somewhere behind them in the plumbing of my brain. Does it break three inches or two? Does it break at the beginning or the end? Your guess was as good as mine.
But that morning as I stood with my eyes directly over the Titleist logo, my putting dyslexia was cured. It was as if someone from the Winnetka Highway Department had painted a dotted white line between my ball and the hole. Or better yet, had laid a small stretch of track about the size of my younger son, Noah’s, train set, and all I had to do was get the ball started right and then watch it roll as if it were on rails into the center of the cup.
But, as I said before, this isn’t the miracle I’m trying to tell you about.
MY FAMILY IS not the kind that any man in his right mind stands up for Christmas dinner, or any other meal or occasion. But then whose is?
Sarah, my wife, is generous, funny, frighteningly accomplished, and stunning, and I have been hopelessly in love with her for thirty years. She is the leading obstetrician in Winnetka, and for the past eight years has been an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Medical School. She has always earned more than I have as a sort of midlevel advertising copywriter for Leo Burnett, but, at least until recently, neither one of us seemed to mind.
Our kids, to use one of Noah’s current favorite words, are “the bomb.” That’s good, by the way. They are also sensitive, caring, beautiful, and brilliant. They take after Sarah.
Elizabeth, born the year after we got married, is really only a kid to me. That she is in fact twenty-seven now is something I always have a hard time believing. It doesn’t fit with the indelible image of the first time I held her, seconds after her birth. Then again, neither did her first date, her second, her third, and her high school and college graduations. A doctor herself now, she is in her second year of a radiology internship at Yale.
Simon, a junior in high school, is probably my closest friend in the world—though we’ve been testing that relationship lately. The kid is just so alive and honest. He’s a pure flame. Although he has never been interested in golf, he’s also the family’s only other jock. One of the top high school soccer players in the state, he has been invited to travel with the National Junior Team next fall.
Last, but definitely not least, is our great philosopher-king, Noah, who arrived unexpectedly four years ago, and whose absurd verbal precociousness has been causing jaws to drop practically ever since. Statistically, I guess he’s a genius, but what really kills me about him is his ferocious loyalty to his older brother.
One day last fall, Simon surprised us at supper by arriving with three gold loops dangling from his right earlobe. His mother and I were not exactly congratulating him on his new look.
After about five minutes, Noah stood up and announced, “If you two don’t stop it, I’m eating in my room.” Then he looked at us, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Besides, what’s the big deal? He’s a teenager.” I’m not making this up. He’s four years old.
Of course, Simon feels the same way about Noah. In fact, we’re all pretty much crazy about one another, with the very possible exception lately of Sarah toward me. What’s caused her to lose affection for me? I can’t say for sure. She refuses to talk about it anymore.
If I don’t get it by now I never will, she says.
What I do understand is that I’ve been in a rut, a rut that keeps getting deeper and deeper, and she’s tired of what must seem like the Sisyphean task of pulling. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...