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slippers because I’d been so eager to get out the day I arrived, I’d forgotten to change out of the thick wool socks I wore on the plane over. By the time I finished the last hole, I had bloody blisters on both heels.
    “You’re remembered here for that,” he told me.
    “To be remembered,” I said happily.
    On we went, having the time of our lives. With the wind in our faces on the way out, the best I could do was make bogeys and double bogeys, but Jack was attacking each hole, turning golf into an easy game by hitting nothing but fairways and greens. Because the novel I’d written here had required me to know the ground well, Jack was counting on me to remember the locations of the 113 pothole bunkers, many of which were so deep and treacherous you could ruin your score for a round if you landed in them. It didn’t really matterwhere the bunkers were; Jack just swung as hard as he could, flying over them and reaching safe landing areas that most golfers were never able to reach even on a calm day. It was amazing to watch. On number 4, Ginger Beer, the 419-yard par-4, Jack chose the dangerous alley down the right side bordered by rough and bunkers, rather than play it safe to the left. When we reached his ball, it was sitting up on a mound as if we’d placed it there, only 120 yards from the green. In all that wind, I said to myself as I aimed the movie camera at him. He hit a knockdown nine-iron low through the wind as if he’d been playing these conditions all his life.
    I couldn’t make a par on the way out to save my life, but the way I was playing bore no resemblance to how I felt inside. Some men take their children to church hoping to point the way for them toward a light they might follow through the darkness of the world. I had brought my son here for the same reason.
    Jack was two over par when we made the turn to the 10th tee. I was ten over. The rain had stopped, and we rested for a few minutes before we hit our tee shots. In the sky over the Eden Estuary, fighter planes from Leuchars Air Force Base climbed through the clouds. I told Jack the story of how the Germans had tried all through the war to bomb the base but it was so well camouflaged they could never find it. Finally, out of frustration, near the end of the war they bombed all the schools instead, killing many of the children in the town.
    “Do you think it could really happen again?” he asked me. “Another big war, a world war?”
    “I don’t know, Jack,” I said. “If there is, though, I think they should send all of my generation. The baby boomers. And I don’t mean the guys who had to fight in Vietnam, but the rest of us who’ve had things pretty much our way all these years. Instead of gated retirement communities, we get boot camp.”
    “You notice how the people who start wars are never the ones whohave to do the fighting,” he said. “Someone makes a decision, and then the little guys get screwed. Guys like your father.”
    “I think he wanted to get in that war,” I said.
    “I don’t mean the war,” he said.
    I turned and looked at him. “What then?”
    “Hit your drive,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
    Standing on the tee to number 12, Heathery In, a 316-yard par-4, I told him I was going to hit one shot for the highlight reel. “With all this wind behind us now, watch this drive.” I nailed it right to the edge of the green, chipped it close, and made an easy birdie. That started a good run for me, and I finished with a back-nine 40 to post an 86, respectable under the conditions. Jack shot three over par, 75. Before we walked to the 18th green, I made him stand on the Swilcan Bridge for the movie camera, in the spot where Jack Nicklaus had stood two summers before, when he played his last Open.
    The whole round I had been looking forward to a few beers in the Chariots pub, the point of origin for this journey, but the place was closed. Four years earlier, inside that pub late one winter