Anger Management

The young man entering the patio bar, his nose white with zinc oxide, was limping. He had, he explained, kicked a golf cart. He did not elaborate on the circumstances, but his face clearly told that they had been extenuating. He suspected he had broken something in his foot.

“You should see a doctor,” said The Oldest Member.

“I am a doctor,” said the young man.

“Then you should see a doctor who is not you,” said The Oldest Member, “because a man who kicks a golf cart is not in a condition to diagnose anything, least of all himself. And if you think a broken toe is the worst thing a man can do to himself in a fit of golf-related ire, let me tell you about Bob Machiette, who almost lost his golf clubs to a tomato garden in Alabama.”

The young man opened his mouth, closed it, and pulled his chair closer. Whatever connected golf clubs to a tomato garden in Alabama, he needed to hear it.

Bob Machiette (said The Oldest Member) was an orthopedic surgeon of great technical reputation and negligible patience. He was brilliant in the operating room — this was acknowledged by everyone who had ever worked with him and by most of the people who had been dissected by him — but his brilliance came packaged with a temperament that was, to put it charitably, volcanic. He did not suffer fools. He did not suffer instruments that were not precisely where he expected them to be. He did not suffer nurses who handed him the wrong scalpel, and on at least two occasions he had expressed his displeasure by hurling the offending instrument across the operating room, which is not the sort of conduct that inspires confidence, however accurate the throw.

Where other surgeons deliberated, Machiette cut. Where other surgeons consulted, Machiette was already closing. He was fast, aggressive, and impatient, and these qualities, which made him difficult at a dinner party, gave him a mastery in an operating room that his colleagues described as extraordinary.

There was an incident in which another surgeon had begun wrist surgery on a former Masters champion when he should not have begun it at all — the scans had suggested complications that a more cautious surgeon would have referred out — and had discovered, upon opening, that the situation was exactly as complicated as the scans had warned. He had to telephone Machiette while the patient was still on the table.

Machiette took over, finished in an hour, and the results were perfect. The other surgeon never mentioned it. Machiette, however, mentioned it to a select few, and I was one of them. It spread, as these things do, to a small cadre of doctors at the local clubs, where it was discussed in low voices and with the professional discretion of men who understood exactly what had happened and what it meant. The patient never knew. The rest of the membership never knew. But the doctors knew.

He had been a sprinter at Stanford — and he had carried this competitive impulse into every aspect of his adult life. After a member-guest tournament at La Cucaracha, fueled by the recklessness that attends a day of competitive golf followed by an open bar, he had challenged Chip Wetherbee to a footrace from the first tee to the first green, a distance of over four hundred yards — a distance that punishes men who start too fast, which Machiette always did. Machiette was thirty years past Stanford. His body had opinions about this dare that his brain had not consulted. He cramped up after a hundred yards and had to be helped to the clubhouse by Wetherbee, who had won the race at a gentle jog and who had the good graces not to mention it again, though Bernie Sasso did not extend the same courtesy.

Machiette’s wife was Brenda. She had been a Miss America finalist from Alabama — second runner-up — and she now ran a modeling agency in Santa Barbara that was, by all accounts, a great success. Brenda Machiette was liked by everyone in the community. She was warm, gracious, Southern in the fashion that involves sweet tea and good manners rather than political opinions, and she possessed the rare ability to make every person she spoke to feel as if they were the only person in the room. How she had ended up married to a man who threw scalpels was one of the enduring mysteries of the club, right up there with how Spivey kept his membership.

Machiette’s relationship with inanimate objects was, to say the least, adversarial. He broke things. He broke them with a regularity and a thoroughness that announced he suspected the physical world to be a personal affront. He had broken his first Scotty Cameron RedX putter over his knee on the practice putting green after missing three consecutive four-footers. He had purchased a second RedX the following week and thrown it high into a eucalyptus tree on the sixth hole after three-putting for par, where it remained, lodged in the upper branches, a monument to weaponized temper visible from the seventh tee and the adjacent retirement community. He had broken his mobile phone by hurling his sand wedge at his golf bag after a skulled chip shot, the phone being in the side pocket and the sand wedge arriving at substantial velocity. He also had caused himself personal injury, having broken three toes by kicking the wall in the men’s grill after losing a Nassau three ways to Pengerson.

The Oldest Member glanced at the young man’s foot, and continued.

He was a surgeon. He would never punch a wall — the hands were sacred — but the feet, it seems, were expendable. He performed surgery the following Monday with the toes taped and his foot in a surgical boot, which he did, because Machiette did not cancel surgeries for anything short of death, and even then it would depend on whose.

He was not, I should emphasize, a violent man in the traditional sense. He never struck a person. He never threatened a person. His fury, when it expressed itself physically, was directed exclusively at objects that had, in his estimation, let him down: clubs that did not perform as advertised, phones that rang at the wrong moment, and walls that were in the wrong place. On one memorable occasion, he ripped a ball washer from its post on the fourteenth hole and deposited it on Arroyo Drive after it failed to clean his ball to his expectations. The club replaced the ball washer. Martin Hill, whose growing portfolio of golf-related claims would have impressed Lloyd’s of London, processed the claim without comment.

His language during these episodes was not, as one might expect, elaborate. McClag could produce invective of Shakespearean complexity and duration. Machiette could not. Machiette’s outbursts were short, percussive, and monosyllabic — a single word, expelled at the moment of impact, like a bark. The word varied. The volume did not. It was always loud enough to be heard two fairways over — Big Tully Olmstead, playing the eighteenth one afternoon, reported hearing a single, explosive syllable from somewhere near the fourteenth and knowing exactly from whom it emanated. Brenda, who happened to be on the patio bar that afternoon, closed her eyes and counted to ten.

The trouble that concerns us began, as trouble often does at La Cucaracha, in a car.

Machiette was driving home from the club on a Wednesday evening, having shot an eighty-nine, which was twelve strokes higher than his expectations and which had put him in the frame of mind that Brenda, who had learned to read these moods the way a sailor reads weather, would later describe as “category four.” A man in a Lexus cut him off on the 101 on-ramp. Machiette honked. The man in the Lexus did not honk back, because Lexus drivers do not honk — they merely accelerate with the quiet disapproval of the comfortably retired. Machiette accelerated harder, pulled alongside the Lexus, and deposited, through his open window, a critique of the man’s driving that was brief, loud, and anatomically specific. The man in the Lexus, who turned out to be a retired district attorney with a dashcam and a profound sense of civic duty, recorded the entire exchange and submitted it to his former office.

There were, as it developed, additional factors. Machiette had, according to the dashcam footage, tailgated the Lexus for perhaps a quarter mile, pulled alongside it to deliver his critique, and then cut back in front of the Lexus and brake-checked it — a maneuver that was as clearly detectable on the dashcam as a confession written in skywriting. The retired district attorney’s complaint, combined with the footage, resulted in a citation, a court date, and, ultimately, a judicial order requiring Dr. Robert Machiette to complete a twelve-session anger management course, failing which his license would be suspended — not his medical license, which was governed by a different body, but his driver’s license, which was governed by the State of California, and which Machiette needed to get to the club, St. Francis Hospital, and everywhere else that mattered.

Brenda was, in her quiet Alabama way, livid.

“Robert,” she said, in the tone that Southern women use when they are about to say something brutal but want you to know that it is being said with love, “bless your heart, but you are going to that class. You are going to sit in that chair. You are going to listen to that instructor. And you are going to get that certificate. Because if you do not, I am going to pack up your golf clubs, every last one of them, and I am going to ship them to my mother in Alabama. And my mother will use your four-hundred-dollar putter to stake tomatoes in the garden, and she will do it with a smile.”

Machiette went to the class.

The class was held on Tuesday evenings at a private practice in Montecito, run by the eminent Dr. Ian Collins, a specialist in high-functioning professionals who could not stop breaking things or shouting at people. Dr. Collins was not yet forty, calm, and not at all impressed by Machiette’s credentials, his reputation, or his deep sigh every time the group was asked to share. He also played tennis with Bernie Sasso.

“The goal,” said Dr. Collins, during the first session, “is not to eliminate anger. Anger is natural. The goal is to create space between the feeling and the action. When you feel the anger, you pause. You breathe. You count to four. And then you choose a response that does not involve your feet, your car, or any object that can be thrown, broken, or ripped from a post.”

He looked at Machiette when he said this. Machiette did not know how Dr. Collins knew about the ball washer. He suspected Brenda.

He endured four sessions. He learned the breathing technique. He learned the counting technique. He learned to identify his “triggers,” which Dr. Collins wrote on a whiteboard and which included, in Machiette’s case, “slow play,” “missed putts,” “other drivers,” and “objects that do not perform as expected.” The whiteboard was completely full. Dr. Collins needed a second whiteboard.

It was after the fourth session, on a Wednesday morning at La Cucaracha, that the bet was proposed.

The foursome that day was Machiette, Pengerson, McClag, and Bernie Sasso, playing a round robin — six holes with each partner, throwing golf balls into the air to determine the pairings for each six-hole set. Machiette drew Pengerson first, then Sasso, then McClag. This was, if you were designing an experiment to test a man’s ability to control his temper on a golf course, the perfect laboratory. Pengerson would win. McClag would lose and swear about it. Sasso would provide commentary. And Machiette would be Machiette, which was the problem.

It was Sasso who proposed it.

“I’ll bet you,” said Sasso on the first tee, as if the idea had just occurred to him and not been refined over the course of a week, “that you cannot play eighteen holes without breaking, throwing, slamming, kicking, or otherwise physically assaulting any object on this golf course. Clubs, bags, ball washers, tee markers, rakes, carts, phones, trees, and the earth itself are all included. Verbal abuse of inanimate objects is permitted, because we are not savages. But the moment you make physical contact with any object in any way inconsistent with the normal playing of golf, you lose.”

“What are the stakes?” said Machiette.

“If you lose,” said Sasso, “you climb the eucalyptus on six and retrieve your putter.”

Machiette looked at him. The putter — the second RedX, the one he had launched high into the eucalyptus — was lodged a full forty feet up, in a fork between two branches, where it had been for three months. Members pointed it out to guests. It had become a landmark, a flag on a conquered peak, except that what it commemorated was not triumph but a tantrum.

“In front of everyone,” added Sasso. “The full gallery. We’ll make an event of it. I’ll rent you some utility lineman gear.”

“And if I win?”

“If you win,” said Sasso, “I’ll write you a letter certifying that you have completed anger management, on my personal stationery, suitable for framing. I know Ian Collins. He’ll accept it.”

“That’s worth something,” said Machiette, who had eight sessions remaining and did not relish the prospect.

Pengerson and McClag put in a hundred dollars each, riding on Machiette’s failure, because Pengerson and McClag always bet and because neither of them believed for a moment that Machiette could do it.

Machiette took the bet without a moment’s hesitation, which was, if you think about it, how he always got into trouble.

The first six holes, Machiette was paired with Pengerson. The first hole passed without incident. Machiette hit a reasonable drive, a reasonable approach, and two-putted for par. He exhaled. Dr. Collins’s voice echoed in his head: pause, breathe, count to four.

The second hole was more difficult. His tee shot found the left rough, and his approach came up short of the green, and he chipped to six feet and missed the putt. A bogey. His grip tightened on the putter. His jaw clenched. Sasso watched from the cart as would a valet watching a teapot that has not yet boiled but that is showing promising signs of steam.

“One, two, three, four,” muttered Machiette, and walked to the third tee.

He parred the third. He parred the fourth. On the fifth, a par three, he hit his tee shot into the bunker, blasted out to four feet, and drained the putt for par. He permitted himself a small nod.

The sixth. Par five. The eucalyptus hole. The tree was stationed next to the green, and there, glinting in the afternoon sun like a metallic bird that had found the best seat in the house, was the second RedX. Machiette looked at the putter. The putter looked back. He parred the hole and walked past the tree without comment, though his jaw was working in a way that told of a man counting to a very high number.

The middle six. Machiette and Sasso.

The seventh. Par three. Barranca to the right. Machiette hit what he believed to be a perfect tee shot, only to watch it catch the edge of the green and trickle into the barranca. He stared at the ball’s last known position. He counted to four. He counted to four again. He counted to eight, which was not in Dr. Collins’s curriculum but which the situation demanded.

“That’s a lot of counting,” observed Sasso.

“Shut up, Bernie.”

He double-bogeyed the seventh. He double-bogeyed the eighth after his approach shot hit a sprinkler head and ricocheted over the green and into the barranca. He stood over his divot, holding his eight-iron, and every fiber of his being wanted to tomahawk this viper into the turf. He could feel it. The arm wanted to throw. The shoulder was already rotating. The club was light in his hands, aerodynamic, purpose-built for flight.

“One,” said Machiette.

“Two,” he said.

“Three,” he said.

He put the club back in the bag. His hand was shaking. McClag, who had been watching with the rapt attention of a bettor who has a hundred dollars riding on the outcome, exhaled audibly.

He ground through the rest of the middle six. Par, par, bogey, bogey. Sasso, to his credit, had stopped providing commentary. He recognized that what was happening was better than anything he could write, and that his job, for once, was to watch.

The final six would be the worst.

On the fourteenth — where the ball washer had not yet been replaced — his approach shot hit an oak tree and ricocheted into a yellow lantana bush. Double-bogey.

On the fifteenth, he three-putted from fifteen feet. On the sixteenth, he topped his drive and it scuttled a hundred and forty yards down the fairway like a coot fleeing the scene of a crime.

The seventeenth. Par three. Machiette hit a good tee shot. The ball landed on the green, twenty feet from the flagstick. He had a putt for birdie. A birdie would not save the round — nothing could save the round — but a birdie would be a sign. A signal. Proof that the universe had not wholly abandoned him.

He read the putt. He lined it up. He drew the putter back and stroked the ball.

It broke left, caught the edge of the cup, lipped out, and rolled three feet past.

The silence on the seventeenth green was complete. Pengerson looked at his shoes. McClag looked at the sky. Sasso looked at Machiette with the eyes of one who has a hundred dollars riding on the ending and cannot decide which ending he wants.

Machiette stood over the ball. The putter was in his hands. The putter — an old, only-slightly-damaged Scotty Cameron Platinum he had been forced to use since Brenda confiscated his third RedX as collateral against his completing the anger management course — was, at this moment, the most hateful object in the known universe. His knuckles were white. His jaw was set. A vein in his temple had taken up the samba.

He counted to four.

He missed the three-footer coming back.

He counted to one hundred and fifty-five.

“Who are you, Count Von Count?” inquired Sasso.

He picked the ball out of the cup — where it had finally come to rest after a third putt that he would never speak of again — and walked to the eighteenth tee without a word.

The eighteenth. The last hole. Par four. Four hundred and ten yards between him and the clubhouse, between him and a beer, between him and the knowledge that he could, for the first time in his adult life, play an entire round of golf without destroying a single thing.

He pushed his drive into the ancient oaks on the right.

Sasso said nothing. Machiette stood on the tee, watching the ball clatter about and disappear into the rough underneath. He picked up his tee, put it in his pocket, and walked to his ball.

Blocked out entirely from the green, he punched out sideways. His approach caught the front bunker. His blast found the green but left him forty feet from the hole. He three-putted. Eighty-six.

He did not throw the putter. He did not spike the ball. He did not kick the flagstick, or slam his bag, or rip any course fixtures from the ground. He simply stood there, breathing, while the afternoon sun fell across the green and the sprinklers clicked on somewhere behind the ninth tee and the world, for once, remained intact.

The Machete remained sheathed.

“Well,” said Sasso. “I’ll be damned.”

Pengerson paid his hundred with quiet grace, knowing that his competitor’s victory was well-earned. McClag paid his hundred, with the sour disbelief of one who had bet against the impossible and watched it happen. Sasso shook Machiette’s hand and promised the letter. It arrived three days later, addressed to Dr. Ian Collins, on Sasso’s personal stationery, with a copy to Machiette. It read, in its entirety: “To whom it may concern: Dr. Robert Machiette played eighteen holes of golf on Wednesday without breaking anything. This was the most impressive act of self-control I have witnessed in forty years, and I once watched a man sit through an entire dinner with his ex-wife and her new and richer husband. Respectfully, Bernard Sasso.”

Machiette framed his copy. It hangs in his office, next to his medical degree from Stanford, and he regards it, I am told, with considerably more pride.

Dr. Collins, who knew Sasso and who trusted his judgment in matters of human behavior, accepted the letter as evidence of progress and without further comment reduced the remaining sessions from eight to three. Machiette completed them in substantially better spirits, and Dr. Collins gave him his certificate. Brenda, satisfied, returned his ransomed RedX putter. His backup Platinum returned to the garage, albeit somewhat wistfully.

He shot an eighty-two the following Saturday. On the sixth hole, his approach shot hit the eucalyptus tree. He looked up. The RedX looked down. He counted to four.

And then he walked on.

Machiette never did get that putter back.

The Oldest Member set down his gin and tonic and looked at the young man, who was still favoring his injured foot.

“The moral,” he said, “is not that anger is wrong. The moral is that anger is expensive. It costs you putters. It costs you phones. It costs you ball washers that the club will charge you to replace. And if you are not careful, it costs you the one thing you cannot replace, which is the good opinion of the woman who agreed to marry you despite abundant evidence that you are not entirely civilized.”

The young man considered this. He looked at his foot. “I should probably get an X-ray,” he said.

“Yes,” said The Oldest Member. “You probably should. But not from Machiette. He’ll tell you next time you should count to four.”