Goofy golf

The national championship, a $20,000 event capping the season, is held in September. It pays $3,000 to the winner.

Jeffery Smith talks about this "next level" as he prowls his dwarfish golf course, showing a visitor how the big boys play. Dressed in a Putt-Putt shirt, with a folded towel and PPA tag dangling from his belt, he looks, well, professional.

He'd play and practice even more, he says, but spring is termite season, and he is busy on his job.

Smith bounces his ball twice off the rubber tee mat before he places it in one of seven indentations, then seeks his aiming mark. "I have to know where I'm aiming. I just don't feel my way around like some of these guys," he says.

Smith becomes so absorbed in his target that when an 8-year-old named Zeke runs up and stands only a foot behind him, breathing hard and talking, he doesn't move a millimeter from his shoulder-square stance.

He is thinking more about such things as wind--which pushes a ball down the carpet more quickly at Hole 3, the one that runs under the concrete mountain and past the waterfall. Temperature, too, enters the calculus. A ball will bounce a bit more off a hot side rail than a cold one.

In a round that takes less than a half hour, Smith aces nine holes with a repertoire of straight shots, elaborate triple-banks, and "touch" putts that pass the hole, bounce off the back rail, and drop in "the back door."

Hole 12 he conquers with a screaming shot that hits a concrete wedge, squirts straight left, bounces off a rail, hits another concrete wedge, and dives into the hole.

Even the sinister Hole 13 yields an ace--one bounce off the right rail. He gets 2's on the rest, for a round of 27.

"The key for me is concentration. I need to improve my mental game," Smith explains after the 18th hole, which he stuffs with his towel so his white PPA ball doesn't get gobbled up like everyone else's.

"I made nine in a row the year I won here," he says. "You get on a roll. You're feeling like you can't miss. You hear basketball players or other athletes getting in a zone. A Putt-Putt putter can too." Facing back toward his Zen garden of a golf course, club in hand, he concludes, "I'm looking for my zone.