Weathering The Storm

Even Angry Maria Couldn’t Blow Away The Golf, The Iguanas And The Shoeless Gringos In The 51st State

- Tom Chiarella

MY SHOES HAVE BEEN been stolen. Taken from my golf bag at one airport or another on my way here. Or maybe I left them behind in the bed of my truck in Indiana. They will be snowed under then. Still, I’m playing golf, in Puerto Rico. Wearing my Oxfords. First day. I’m at Punta Borinquen Golf Club, a wild and woolly public course built on a former American airbase (and once favored with play by Dwight Eisenhower), a 6,000- yard tester perched high above the ocean on the island’s isolated, windblown western shore. Yes, the grass could be greener here, but the views could not be clearer. Punta Borinquen sits on cliffs at the confluence of the Atlantic and the Carribean, one or the other, or both, visible from every hole. It seems an ancient track, like some forgotten gem in coastal Ireland. Nothing too tough but nothing to apologize for, either. This place makes you want to play. I drove out here the night before, and it’s now too early to shop for new shoes. So the dress shoes will have to do.

At the modest clubhouse, I’m thrown in with a regular threesome, three local captains—two guys in retail, one former firefighter from New Jersey. Three affable ballbreakers who seem happy enough to take a gringo along with them. They clip their cigars for future use, call each other names in Spanish. Tell me to buy water. The wind will dry you out. When the firefighter sees my shoe situation, I cringe a little for us both. “My shoes didn’t make it,” I tell him. “These will be fine.”

He seems shaken by the thought. “What?” he says. “You can wear these!” He points to his own shoes, the very ones he’s wearing. Then he acts like a cousin of mine, amazed that I wouldn’t rely on the bottomline help of family, although I’ve never met him before. I object. And he won’t hear of it. I give him a no-no. He waves me off.