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    The Year... in which Bob Howard never missed a putt
    The Year... in which Bob Howard never missed a putt
    The Year... in which Bob Howard never missed a putt
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    The Year... in which Bob Howard never missed a putt

    By William Dick

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    About this ebook

    Bob Howard is driving home from work one winter day when, due to a good deed he does, winds up having a personal one-on-one conversation with God.

    The first chapter is devoted to Bob actually convincing himself that he actually is conversing with God and that this is not some elaborate prank initiated by some of his friends. Bob is given a gift from God for his good deed and that gift is that he, Bob, who is a semi-serious amateur golfer, will not miss a single putt for the next twelve months. The only real rule is Bob cannot tell anyone about this gift or the gift goes away.

    Bob sets out the next day to test this gift even though all the golf courses are closed and, sure enough, he one putts every green he plays.

    There is a segment as he convinces his friend, a local club pro, what he can do and requests his help. They make a trip to Florida, it’s cold where this story starts in Texas, and play golf to prove what he can do.

    Another segment pertains to their recruitment of a caddy to help Bob in the upcoming year; a segment in Hawaii in which they convince a tournament official to give Bob a waiver to play if, for no other reason, the TV and press reactions his putting will bring.

    The next few chapters involve Bob trying to figure out best how to capitalize on this gift which includes wrangling some invitations to play on the PGA tour.

    Bob plays in a few other professional events, finishes well and, true to form, one putts every green.

    One chapter takes place during a rain-day at the Humana Challenge in Palm Springs and involves a rather interesting poker game.

    The ending comes when the year expires. Bob has decided to “get away from it all” for a few weeks to determine what he should do next and is in Fiji when he comes across another very interesting person... The story ends pretty well up in the air with the reader allowed to draw their own conclusions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Dick
    Release dateJun 8, 2013
    ISBN9781301115389
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      Book preview

      The Year... in which Bob Howard never missed a putt - William Dick

      THE YEAR

      …in which Bob Howard

      never missed a putt

      William B. Dick

      Smashwords Edition

      The Year in which Bob Howard never missed a putt

      Copyright © 2013 William B. Dick

      All rights reserved

      Cover Design by Laura Shinn

      Smashwords Licensing Notes

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book without purchasing it and it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

      Forward

      Bob Howard played golf at least once and often twice a week when the weather permitted. Usually, he played with the same group of 4 or 5 different guys in various combinations. They knew each other well, all played at about the same level and, if anyone asked, they would have said they were friends.

      Golf itself seems to generate certain sayings and catch phrases that seem to be almost universal. Stand adjacent to any set of woods along the side of any fairway in the country a hundred yards or so off the tee and wait until someone on the tee drives a ball into the trees. Sooner or later, one ball will hit a tree dead center and rebound to the middle of the fairway. If you are close enough to the players to hear, sooner or later you’ll hear one say: Did you see that monkey that threw that ball back in the fairway? For Bob and his group of regulars the phrase they often used when this sort of miraculous thing occurred was: Wow! Did you see that? Bruce, the God of golf, is sure looking out for you today. They’d politely laugh at this and head down for their second shots.

      It was joke of course; none of them were even slightly religious. Bob was one of those people on the planet, as were his golfing companions, who believed in the theory that life will be more pleasant for everyone if you met could keep talk of politics and religion at, if not, zero, very close to it.

      If you had the poor taste to ask him, outright, if he was religious he would have danced around the question and avoided answering it for as long as he could. He hadn’t been to church in some 25 years, the last time when he was about 14 and a few very attractive girls from his neighborhood were regular attendees and he thought, unsuccessfully as it turned out, that seeing them there might give him a leg up with them.

      It was not that he did or did not believe in God. Truth be told, he really didn’t care one way or the other. He just lived life one day at a time and really never considered all the ramifications of life that the more pious people around him worried about all the time; and Bob thought that was a good thing.

      All that changed on a cold Friday in November when God actually talked to him and The Year began.

      Chapter One

      It was cold in North Texas, even for November, it was Friday the 14th, and there was sure no golf to be played. Bob was driving home from his office in Arlington, a suburb midway between Dallas and Fort Worth, on the same route he took every day and thinking about the upcoming playoffs. As he passed the park, which he had driven by hundreds of times but didn’t know the name of, he noticed that the lake was frozen. You get used to not seeing any green grass in Texas during the winter, except on some of the golf courses that overseed, but it was a bit unusual to see even smaller lakes frozen.

      Then he noticed some birds, probably Canada geese, ‘cause they were big, out on the lake. Then he noticed they were not on the lake but frozen in the lake and a major case of déjà vu kicked in.

      About 10 years ago Bobby had been driving by this very lake with his youngest daughter, then about five. The lake was frozen and just like today, there were some birds frozen in it about 30 yards offshore. They were trying to fly and he could see them struggling to get free. Bob stopped and tried to figure out what to do. Since it was morning, he knew that no one was going to go to the park on a day when it was not going to get above freezing; if something was going to be done he had to do it. There were no boats around that he could have used to break through the ice to get to the birds. The only thing he could logically think of was to wade out there, the water couldn’t be deep, and free them by hand. This was really an easy decision, he and his family were pretty serious animal people although cats were the animals of choice, and he couldn’t have possibly just driven away. Then, his daughter looked up at him with those big eyes and said: Daddy, what are we going to do? and the decision was made.

      Bob said: I’m going to go in there and get those birds out of that ice. They are really close to shore so it’s not dangerous at all but you have to promise me not to tell your mom about this.

      His wife would have applauded his actions on principal but she would not be so happy about him doing so in his new pants which she had shamed him into going shopping for a few weeks ago.

      So into the cold water he went breaking through the ice that was less than an inch think, got wet up to his thighs, and the rest was almost an anticlimax. There were four birds that day, he released them all and they flew away, albeit slowly, without as much as a thank you. He managed to sneak the pants to the cleaner and, as far as he knew, his wife was never the wiser.

      Today there were 5 or 6 birds, he couldn’t tell for sure, and they were a bit further offshore. At least today Bob was dressed in an old pair of blue jeans; he took casual Friday pretty seriously.

      So in he went, about six inches deeper than last time, broke the ice away, he was wearing an

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