The Albatross
"Good morning."
I climbed down from the truck and offered Jae-hak a cheerful greeting. He, however, did not return it in kind. With impeccable formality, he bent at a full ninety degrees.
"Ah, you've arrived! Teacher Kang!"
This is a little much.
It was the weekend, so the course was busier than it had been on the quiet weekday of my last visit. And in the middle of all those people, a man who looked a good ten years my senior was bowing to me and calling me Teacher. The attention sat heavily on my shoulders.
Sure enough, the murmuring started up around us.
"Teacher? He looks way younger than that. What kind of teacher is he supposed to be?"
"Wait—isn't that Jeong Jae-hak? The pro?"
"It is. He hasn't been around much lately. Didn't expect to run into him here."
Even a player stuck in the lower ranks was still a pro, and people recognized him. Jae-hak seemed just as uncomfortable with the stares as I was; he dropped his voice.
"Haha… Teacher. Shall we head in?"
"Ah—one moment, before we do."
I had almost forgotten the most important thing. From the back of the truck I pulled out the golf bag packed with the clubs I had made for Pro Jeong and no one else.
"I nearly left without this."
Jae-hak took the bag and let out a low sound of admiration.
"Oh… wait. Even the bag is like this… Did you buy it separately?"
I shook my head.
"No. I had a little time left, so I went up to Seoul, bought cowhide, and made it myself. I will admit the design leans rather heavily toward my own taste. I am not sure it will suit you."
The governing idea behind everything I design is understated beauty. I had taken the same approach with the bag: nothing flashy, every line held in check, with small patterns I had carved by hand in just a few places.
"I love it! I don't know how you managed it, but it matches my taste exactly!"
"Then I am glad."
Whether he truly meant it or was simply being polite, I could not tell. Function is one thing; design belongs to personal taste. Someone out there would dislike it, and if the criticism ever came, I would not lose sleep over it.
Back on Mount Olympus, the one whose design sense actually lined up with mine was Poseidon, of all people.
Strange, when I thought about it. Of all the gods, he had been the one whose temperament clashed with mine the most—and yet when it came to design, we had been oddly in step.
I walked a little while lost in that old memory, and before I knew it we were out on the field.
"Hoo…"
Jae-hak stretched, then quietly teed up a ball. From the bag he drew the driver.
"First, I am going to try to send this as far as it will go."
"Try not to be too surprised."
He blinked at that. Most people, at this point, would be worrying that the clubs they had made would not do a thing. I had no such worry. I already knew exactly what was wrong with his game, and I had built these clubs to fit that problem as closely as anything could. In this world, there was not a set of clubs better suited to Pro Jeong than the ones in his hands right now.
Jae-hak drew one long breath, took his grip, and swung.
Wha—wait… what…!?
The instant he started the swing, it felt as though the club seized control of his body and set his balance for him. A moment later, clubface met ball, and a flash of light burst from the impact.
CRACK!!!
A sound like something splitting apart cracked across the tee, and the ball tore away down the fairway, climbing and climbing.
Oh. That actually went a long way.
I did not know much about golf, but I knew this much for certain: it had gone far farther than it had the last time, after I had repaired his shoes.
Behind us, the people who had been watching began to murmur.
"Choi. Did you see Pro Jeong's shot just now?"
"How far did that even go?"
"That had to be more than three hundred thirty yards."
"No kidding. Everyone's been saying he's washed up, but a pro is a pro."
That good, huh?
Listening to them, I had to admit the shot had not been ordinary.
A moment later, Jae-hak—who had been standing there in a daze—came running at me, seized both my hands, and all but shouted.
"Teacher! How on earth did you make these clubs? You didn't put a motor in them or something, did you?"
I laughed.
"Hahaha… I know that much, at least. That would be cheating, obviously. There is not a single mechanical device in them."
"I didn't feel anything when I took my grip, but the moment I swung, it was as if the club set my posture for me on its own! It felt like my first year as a pro… no. Better than that!"
"Try the rest of them as well, then."
"Ah. Yes…! I should!"
He slung the bag over his shoulder as if he were transporting gold, and started down the fairway.
When they reached the ball, Jae-hak could not help being stunned all over again.
It… it came down here? In a spot like this…?
The ball he had struck was sitting in a lie so generous it could not have been improved upon for the next shot. From here, the following stroke would put him on the green without fail. That meant the drive had been perfect not only in distance, but in direction.
I did swing this way, that's true, but…
Aiming the club in a direction and having the ball actually land where you wanted it were two different things. For years, even when he had sent the ball this way, it had always leaked off on some ugly line. That had been the slump that had tormented him. This shot, though, had been perfect in the truest sense of the word.
Cheolwoo looked at the ball without much thought and said,
"Oh, this is a fairly decent lie, isn't it?"
Jae-hak's face went serious, and the words came tumbling out of him.
"A f-fairly decent lie…!? Absolutely not. This is… this is a perfect lie! D-did I even hit this? Someone didn't move it, did they?"
Cheolwoo burst out laughing at the look on his face.
"Hahaha. Hardly. We were the first ones out here this morning, weren't we?"
"Th-that's true… Still, how does a ball end up in a spot this perfect…"
Distance, direction—there was not a single thing wrong with it.
"Go on and try another club, then."
Jae-hak nodded and started gauging the remaining distance to the green. It was not nearly as far as he had expected. He had not hit three hundred thirty yards. He had hit well beyond that.
Have I ever hit one this far in my life?
It was a shot he could barely believe he had struck himself.
From here… maybe a hundred seventy yards.
He drew the 7-iron from the bag.
"Ah. That one I took the most care with."
He had put care into every club, of course, but the 7-iron had been the first he had made, and he had poured that much more of himself into it.
"It really does feel different from the driver."
Something about it seemed to settle into the hands more deeply, as if it wanted to be held. Jae-hak drew a breath and set his stance again. Power mattered here, but what mattered more was getting the ball onto the green and nestling it as close to the cup as he could.
"Hoo…"
It's a par-5. Easy does it.
He took the iron and swung it cleanly toward the green.
CRACK!!!
Club and ball met once more, and light flashed from the impact.
The two men who had been playing their own round had, at some point, fallen in behind Jae-hak to watch him hit.
"Whoa. He flushed that one too."
"Didn't he hit it a little hot, though?"
"No—wait. I think that's on the green."
Yes!
Jae-hak clenched a fist. That was the sound of a ball that had found the putting surface.
Cheolwoo, though, felt a flicker of unease. A green, as he understood it, was a place where a ball was supposed to roll. He had not heard anything like a ball rolling after that shot.
Did it miss?
A faintly anxious feeling crept in. He followed Jae-hak—who was walking with all the confidence in the world—wearing a rather less confident expression of his own. They reached the green.
The ball was nowhere to be seen.
"Huh… It definitely landed on the green."
Jae-hak tilted his head, equally puzzled. He went to check the sand bunker behind the green, in case it had found its way in there, but the ball was not in the bunker either. Cheolwoo joined him, and together they started hunting for it.
A moment later.
"Pro Jeong. It's… it's here. The ball."
"What…??"
Jae-hak looked where Cheolwoo was pointing, and his eyes went round. They had every reason to. The place Cheolwoo was pointing at was the cup itself.
Jae-hak walked toward the hole with his eyes still wide. Then he shouted.
"YES!!!! I—I've never made an albatross in my life!!"
Yelling like that on a golf course was generally considered poor manners, but the other players who had been trailing behind them only joined in to congratulate him.
"Wow!! Congratulations, Pro Jeong!"
"I've never seen an albatross in person in my entire life!"
"They say even a career pro is lucky to make one of those once."
"Looks like he's really got his game back, doesn't he?"
From Cheolwoo's point of view, it was hard to gauge just how remarkable an albatross was supposed to be—but watching everyone lose their minds over it, he gathered it was a fairly serious record.
If I had to guess, the Soul in that iron is luck.
A record like this took skill, of course, but it also took fortune. And the reason one had appeared so suddenly was almost certainly that the Soul bound into the 7-iron sweetened his luck every time he swung it.
I fished the ball out of the cup and handed it to him.
"Congratulations, Pro Jeong."
"This is all thanks to you, Teacher Kang! That shot settled it for me! I—I think I can actually compete as a pro again!"
I smiled at that.
"I would not call it my doing. I only helped you put the skill you have been practicing all this time back to work."
It was not the whole truth, but there was truth in it. No matter how fine a set of clubs I made, if the person holding them had no game, the ceiling would still be the ceiling. The reason Jae-hak had hit the ball this well with these clubs was that the foundation of his ability was already there to support them.
A fine piece of work shows its true worth only in the hands of the one it was made for.
Not long after, Jae-hak entered a KPGA event. And today, at last, he closed out the win.
A short while later, trophy in hand, Pro Jeong took the interview.
"Jeong Jae-hak, you just captured this tournament with a breakout performance nobody saw coming. If there is one person who helped you most in getting here, who would that be?"
Jae-hak did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
I had been watching my client take the clubs I had made and win a tournament with them. It had not meant much to me one way or the other.
Then my name came out of his mouth in that interview, and I nearly sprayed coffee all over the television.
"Wait…?"
My name had just been spoken in a far bigger place than I had expected. Golf did not pull enormous ratings, but the people who did watch it were a loyal, solid audience.
And sure enough, the publicity from that interview went far beyond anything I had imagined.