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golfers too cheap to pay for new ones.
    The changing room was worlds apart from the corrugated-iron lean-to used by the Trabane Gaels. It had a carpet, wall-to-wall clothes lockers, and hot showers with individual cubicles. The hurlers had to make do with a communal outdoor water trough to wash off the mud.
    O’Hara, having changed into a pair of shoes with spiked soles, opened a wooden locker with his name on it and took out a bag of clubs. He hung his jacket on a hook beside the locker, pulled a heavy pullover over his head, and a had quick pee in the nearby toilet before announcing, “We’re about ready. The priest wasn’t sure if he could make it. We’ll give him five minutes more, and if he doesn’t show up, we’ll head off on our own.”
    They went out to the first tee, where O’Hara embarked on a series of loosening-up exercises. Larry had difficulty in keeping a straight face at the ridiculous contortions of someone who had ten minutes earlier been expounding on the theorems of Euclid. O’Hara abandoned his gyrations in favor of swishing a golf club at a daisy in much the same way as Larry swung a hurley stick. The way the hands gripped the club looked the same to Larry even if the actual swing was different, being much slower and, in O’Hara’s case, more labored. Hitting the ball with a hurley came naturally to Larry, but the teacher seemed to be putting as much concentration into his practice swing as he did in solving a theorem on the blackboard.
    When the priest failed to appear, they set off on their own. O’Hara stood poised over the ball for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly, without warning, he unleashed a sudden, vicious swipe at the tiny white sphere perched daintily on a small wooden peg, as if hoping to catch it unawares.
    â€œDid you see that?”
    Larry nodded, though he didn’t think much of what he had seen. Thus far golf seemed to consist of complicated gyrations that resulted in sending a small white ball to God knows where.
    â€œWhat I mean is, did you see where it landed? ”
    O’Hara’s face was still flushed with the effort as Larry, taken aback by the sharpness of the questioning, could only stammer, “I—I—I think it went over there.”
    He pointed toward a sand dune to the left of a long green pathway ending at a distant flag fluttering in the breeze. Looping the strap of the bag over his shoulder, he was surprised at its heaviness. He set off at a trot, keeping his eye glued on the spot where the ball had disappeared into the side of the sand dune. It was easier to find than he had imagined. As O’Hara was still some distance away, he picked it out of the thick grass and waved it above his head.
    â€œHere it is, sir. I found it!”
    As he struggled up the steep incline, O’Hara complained, “I should have warned you before we started. You see, you’re not supposed to move the ball. In future, just find the bloody thing, but don’t touch it.”
    This did not make sense. “How am I to know if it’s your ball so? Couldn’t it be someone else’s?”
    By now O’Hara had joined him on the flank of the sand dune, but he was much too breathless to reply there and then. When he eventually got his breath back, a note of exasperation was in his voice.
    â€œBy any chance, did you see what kind of golf ball I was playing?”
    Larry shook his head. He felt that to answer “small and white” would only make matters worse.
    â€œI was playing a Dunlop Maxfli. I suppose you didn’t get its number either?”
    This time Larry merely shrugged his shoulders. He had expected praise for finding O’Hara’s ball in the long dune grass, instead of which he was getting a lecture.
    â€œWell, luckily I did! It was a number two. So if that ball you found is a Maxfli number two, we’ll put it back where it was and we can carry on. Always, of course,