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you get back with him if I don’t make it?"

"That’s what he promised, but you’re going to make it…then the El Camino team will start its domination of the tour." Matt punched his fist on Scott’s and a wide grin showed a row of straight white teeth in a smile no longer inhibited by the braces of his teenage years. His long auburn hair was gathered in a ponytail. And Matt was the model of a California surfer, lean and brown. His zest for rap music now swung toward jazz.
     
    "Hey, Matt, what’s with that little gold earring hanging on your left lobe?"

"Thought you’d never ask. It’s just a token of self-expression for this golf bag toting Sherpa. Matt flicked his ear lobe with an index finger. His face turned serious when he asked, "how’s your mother, the queen of mean, doing?" He thought that question sounded too harsh. "Sorry, Scott, I shouldn’t have said that."

"That’s okay, it fits. She’s busy getting richer. We don’t communicate much…never watched me play a golf match at Pepperdine. I moved to an apartment in El Cajon after college. She divorced that tennis pro who called golf, pasture pool . But the good news is she’s seeing a shrink on a weekly basis."

"Good, maybe she’ll sort out her feelings about golf and other stuff.

How did you make it four years at Pepperdine without any dough from her?"

"Golf scholarship and working summers for Sandy got me through by the skin of my teeth."

Matt’s expression showed concern for his friend’s lack of support from his mother. "Would you believe my mom married a marine major after all that anti-war stuff she was into?"

"Things have a way of changing after five years, Matt. How did it go when you looped for that lady on the European tour?"

"That’s a long story, but the bottom line is, she’s a possessive bitch and I ended up getting fired by her."
     
    Matt obviously didn’t want to expand on the firing incident, so Scott didn’t question him further.
     
     
    Later, while Matt was busy grilling steaks, Scott moved over to the railing on the flagstone patio. He looked out at the stream of lights meandering down the hillside until they reached the pool of yellow that was the city of Santa Barbara, and he remembered a story Sandy McNair had told him about an incident during the Second World War near what’s now the Sandpiper Golf Course.
     
    "Matt, where’s the Sandpiper course?"
    Matt left the barbecue grill and ambled over to the railing beside Scott. He pointed to the western shoreline. "It’s in Goleta, right about there."
     
    "Did you know that back in the early forties a Japanese submarine lobbed a couple of shells into a refinery next to the course?"
    "No, that’s news. Who told you?"
     
    "Sandy did."
     
    "I guess Sandy filled you in on a lot of things besides golf stuff, Scott."
    Scott thought about how Sandy would sprinkle history and even mathematics into golf talk and lessons. "Yeah, he’d teach me the history and geographical features about an interesting thing near where he’d visited a golf course. When he talked about course ratings and slopes he’d give me examples of the math to determine them. Then he’d make me work out a few hypothetical ratings."
     
    "That’s probably why you made scholar/athlete status at Pepperdine."
     
    "How did you know about that?"
     
    "When I worked the tournament at Torrey Pines in the San Diego area I visited Sandy, Hard Ass Harry Gladstone and Billy McGinnis. Sandy told me how well you were doing at Pepperdine. You’re his pride and joy, dude."
    "We’ve both come a long way up from when we started with Sandy and Hard Ass. Harry and Billy really helped you turn it around."

"I did show some attitude then, but…" Matt pointed to his cap that had the visor in the front and they both laughed. "Yeah, even though I didn’t do the college bit like you, Sandy shared some things about caddying on tour passed on to him by those PGA players whose golf swings he tweaked. Both Harry and