Every year at the PGA merchandise Show in Orlando, the big guns of the industry unveil their latest offerings of giant-headed drivers and futuristic golf balls and gleaming alloy shafts that look—and cost—like they sprang from a NASA testing lab. There are big booths staffed by Callaway and Cleveland and MacGregor and Mizuno. But on the fringes of the floor are more modest spaces occupied by dreamers hoping to strike it rich with a unique product: a ball retriever/folding seat, yet another pitching wedge offering "breakthrough" backspin. Such is the allure of golf, that one helpless optimist after another will founder on its rocky shores. It is a side of the sport that doesn't show up on Sunday TV coverage or appear on the covers of the glossy magazines.
At the far end of the showroom, near the shelves of gimmicks to cure your slice, there is a small booth manned by Kevin Compare/Divot the Clown. He meets and greets the crowd while circus music plays from his small loudspeaker. In this buttoned-down setting, the sight of a clown seems even more comical than usual, but Kevin/Divot is a survivor, having sold his shtick at the PGA show for some ten years running.
He's married now, with a schoolteacher wife and two kids to support. Which isn't getting easier. In a good year, Divot might put on forty shows. But that pace has slowed in the recent economic downturn. Plus, Compare says the suits at the PGA believe he's fine-tuned his trick shots on PGA time and have taken cuts of Divot's pay.
Still he soldiers on. Back in Indiana, he smacks a beauty with a twelve-foot-long driver as a swell calls out, "You da clown!" Loud clucks of approval. The audience, cool at first, has warmed to the clown.
Divot closes the show with his grand finale—knocking shots from his rotating, multi-pronged motorized tee. Then he heads to the course, where he plants himself at a par three and plays a shot with each group that passes through. Divot is a lefty, but he borrows a right-handed club and hits his shots with the toe turned over. The contest is closest to the pin. Anyone who beats Divot wins a sleeve of balls. In the first nine groups, not a single person beats him.
Finally, in the tenth group, a pregnant-looking man, seemingly in his third trimester, sticks a pitching wedge tight. Divot slaps his back and hands him his prize.
"Don't feel bad," the man says proudly. "I compete in long-drive competitions."
He doesn't make a living at it. But put him in a gorilla suit and who knows what the guy could do?
Back in Florida it's six o'clock, and thunderclaps sound off on the horizon as Kevin Compare wraps up his final lesson of the day. Just as the session ends, the dark skies open. The practice range clears, and Compare hunches toward the parking lot. Through a biblical rain, he drives his Mitsubishi truck—its license plate reads 1 Divot—fifteen minutes south to a peach-colored stucco house in a fast-growing development in the town of Palm City. A room is given over to his side business and holds a computer, a stack of promotional videos he distributes in his spare time, and a closet full of clown clothing that his wife has sewn for him.
Compare believes he's worthy of a crack at the senior circuit. Like all good golfers in their forties, he entertains visions of the Champions Tour. He keeps a placard in his home office with a rah-rah slogan: "Those who say it can't be done are often interrupted by those doing it." He will never be Tiger. He learned that in 1997 when he and the wunderkind hit together at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, exhibition. But after more than twenty years of giving to golf, he's thinking that it's about time that he tried taking something back from the game. If he were to quit his day job, he'd have the time he needs to get ready for the big money on the senior circuit.
As it turns out, two weeks after that thunderstorm, the rumors come true. Compare is called in to headquarters and told that his job is no more. Nothing personal, mind you. Cost-saving measure. Leaving the meeting, the teaching-pro-turned-clown feels little but relief.
His plan is simple. He will spend time with his family. He will spend time as Divot. He will spend time on the practice range getting ready for his time in the sun, a real-life Roy McAvoy, gripped by a game that he can never let go.
Whatever happens, Kevin Compare will keep golfing.
And painted-on smile or no, he will be a happy man.
