Recap: At Abby’s prompting, E.J. has decided to return to school, financed by his winnings on the golf course, but he starts losing as he has developed a problem with his putting. He has just lost a match then drank heavily to settle down before he has to play bridge with Abby. The bridge doesn’t go so well, and E.J. insults one of his opponents. Abby calls him out on it, and he goes home and drinks to forget about the terrible day.

The next day he meets Eddie Phillips who helps rid him of the yips, and with his new-found confidence, E.J. challenges Jimmy Fairbanks to a match for $5,000. The night before the match, he has a sudden pang of doubt which sends him to a bar to drink with his friends. That settles him down, and he falls asleep at home.

The match begins well the next day. E.J. plays confidently with no sign of the yips yet. They are tied starting the back 9, but then E.J. falls behind after yipping two putts. After continuing to miss short putts they come to the 15th hole—a par 3 hole—and he is four holes down, needing to win every hole just to tie the match. Fairbanks knocks his tee shot to six inches from the hole. E.J. now needs a hole-in-one just to tie the hole and continue the match. As his hand brushes against the Lucky 1 in his pocket, he is reminded of the two times he had hit that ball for a hole-in-one each time and bets Fairbanks $20,000 that he will hole the shot. Fairbanks takes the bet, and E.J. hits the Lucky 1 for what looks like a perfect shot, but the wind catches it and blows it into the trees. E.J. has just lost $25,000 to Fairbanks—which is most of his college savings—leaves the ball in the trees, goes home, gets drunk, and is violently ill before crashing into bed.

 

A continuation of the chapter: E.J. Budrowski - September, 1987

Wait a minute. What? I left this in the woods yesterday. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. Right then the phone rang, and I went over to answer it. It was Abby.

She said, “I’m just calling to see how you’re doing today. About last night… um, I was thinking about it. It really would be nice if you wrote Ruth a card like you said you would or even call her and apologize again. We’ll be playing against her again in the future, so might as well mend fences.”

Last night? What was she talking about? “Don’t you mean Thursday night?”

“Of course.”

“Well, what’s today?”

“It’s Friday! What’s with you?”

“Abby, let me call you back,” and I hung up.

What was going on here? First I find the Lucky 1 sitting on top of my footlocker, then Abby tells me today is Friday? As my mind tried to reconcile these two facts with what occurred these past few days, it suddenly dawned on me what was happening here: There had been no lesson with Eddie, no drinking at Kelso’s bar with the guys, no competition with Fairbanks. I hadn’t lost the match and blown $25,000. I hadn’t lost the Lucky 1. The last few days had been a damn dream—a nightmare in fact! I just stood there as waves of relief flowed through my body.

After a few minutes of this, I walked over to the footlocker, picked up the Lucky 1, and looked at it as I held it in my hand. I took it over and sat down in my chair to think. There was a lesson here; I just had to figure out what it was. My brain, or was it the Lucky 1, was trying to tell me something. As I sat there, turning the ball over and over in my hand, pondering, everything slowly started to make sense, and it all pointed in one direction.

The Lucky 1 had not gone in the hole on that final shot against Fairbanks. Why? Because I was using it as a crutch—a way out of the predicament I had put myself in. I abused it the way I have abused myself—by drinking my way out of all the challenges I’ve faced in life. It came pounding home that for almost half my life, at least since my one year in college, I have always taken the easy way out of things. Rather than face the difficulties and realities of life, what have I done instead? I’ve retreated to the bottle. When I get back to school, is this what will happen again the first time I encounter some difficulties? In the past, it’s been too easy to just get drunk and forget about my problems. Alcohol has helped kill my motivation to even try to do anything important in my life—to work hard and to realize my potential.

All of this led to just one conclusion: I had to give up drinking—completely and permanently. I’ve never tried giving it up before, nor even reducing it—never felt that I wanted to. But the sudden insight I just had made me realize that my future depended on it. It was finally time to grow up, to meet life’s challenges head-on, and to stop relying on alcohol to get by. Just getting-by was not enough for me anymore. I had to give it up right now, or I would continue to ruin my life.

I started immediately. I got up from my chair, slipped the Lucky 1 into my pocket, and went over to the cupboard. There were two bottles of liquor in there. I took them both down, opened them up, and poured the contents down the drain in the sink. Then I tossed the empties in the garbage can. Not a moment of regret. That actually felt good!

I decided to call Abby back. I wasn’t planning to tell her about this just yet. I wanted to see if I could really follow through with it.

“E.J?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What’s going on? You sounded mighty confused before.”

“Yeah, I had just woken up, and I guess I wasn’t all the way awake yet. Sorry about that. Listen, I will go out and get a card for Ruth today and apologize again. Do you happen to have her address?”

“Yeah, just a minute. I’ve got a handout they gave us at the bridge club with many of our names, addresses and phone numbers on it. Let me get it.” She returned to the phone shortly and read me off the address.

“Thanks, Abby. I’ll really do it. Hey, thanks for calling. I’m sorry about last night. I’d had a bad round of golf yesterday afternoon, lost some money, and it really had me rattled. But I’ve got some ideas that I’m going to try out this morning to fix the problem. I’m in a pretty good mood right now. Hey, I’ll bet you are too since you’ll be seeing Kenny tonight, right?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a nice routine going now. He comes for dinner Friday nights and leaves after dinner on Saturday.”

“Well, you two have a great time together this weekend. Is there any chance you’d be able to make another duplicate game next Thursday? I’d sure like to make it up to you and to Ruth.”

“I think so. Let’s plan on it unless I call to tell you that I can’t.”

“Okay, great. I’ll see you next Thursday at the temple, hopefully.” We said goodbye then and hung up.

 

 

After a big breakfast, I drove over to the muni to practice. I putted for two hours using the phantom Eddie’s tips, and in that time, I didn’t miss a single short putt. By God, it worked! I’d have to thank Eddie when I saw him again, though he wouldn’t know what I was talking about and would probably think I was nuts. I wouldn’t mind; I was just so happy I’d found something that cured my yips. I plan to continue to practice these phantom tips over the course of the next week to prove to myself their worth before seeking another money match where the pressure of competition would really put them to the test.

After the practice session, I drove back into town and stopped at the card shop, where I picked out a nice card for Ruth. It was blank inside, which would allow me to formulate my own apology the way I wanted to say it.

From there I went to the library and spent a couple of hours browsing books in the non-fiction section on a variety of topics, mostly ones that centered around science or mathematics—always my best subjects in school. Nothing definitive yet for a direction of study in college, but I was beginning to turn a few ideas over in my mind.