Mash by Richard Hooker

team, and judged by the disdain evident on his face when he eyed the Swampmen he was not in favor of any Papa-Sans sharing the golf course with him.
    “Damn this get-up,” Hawkeye was saying to Trapper. “It doesn’t do much for my backswing.”
    “Good,” Trapper said, increasing the awkwardness of his own efforts.
    “What do you mean, good?” Hawkeye said.
    “Keep your voice down,” Trapper said, “because I think we’re about to hook a live one.”
    “See here, you two!” the British colonel bleated, walking up to them at that moment. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I think …”
    “Think again,” Trapper said.
    “I want you to know I’m Colonel Cornwall …”
    “Cornwallis?” Hawkeye said. “I thought we fixed your wagon at Yorktown.”
    “I said Cornwall.”
    “Lovely there in the spring,” Trapper said. “Rhododendrons and all that.”
    “Now see here!” the colonel said, red in the face now. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but rather than make an issue of it, if you’ll just step aside and allow us to tee off …”
    “Look, Corny,” Hawkeye said. “You just calm down, or well tee off on you.”
    “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Colonel,” Trapper said. “You look like a sporting chap, so to settle this little difficulty in a sporting way, we’ll both play you a ten pound Nassau.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “You heard him,” Hawkeye said.
    “Excuse me a moment,” the colonel said, and he turned and rejoined his companions to get their opinion of the proposition.
    “What do you think?” Hawkeye said.
    “We got him,” Trapper said, manufacturing as awkward a swing as he could without making it too obvious.
    “Here he comes now,” Hawkeye said.
    “All right,” the colonel said. “You’re on, and we’ll be watching every shot you hit.”
    The Swampmen hit drives designed to get the ball in play, with no attempt at distance, and they were down the middle about 225 yards. Trapper reached the green in two and got his par four. Hawkeye hit a nice five-iron but misjudged the distance and was long, hit a wedge back but missed a five-footer and took a bogey.
    The second hole was a short par three that gave them no trouble. Both bogied three and four, however, as it became clear that driving range experience at the Double Natural had sharpened their hitting ability but done little for their judgment of distance or their putting. Nevertheless, the girl caddies were quite impressed, particularly by Trapper John, whose every move they watched with rapt fascination.
    Approaching the seventh, a par five, they were both three over par, and as the day was getting warmer, Trapper took off the long, flowing top of his Papa-San suit and his hat. This left him with long hair, a beard, a bare torso, and long, flowing trousers, and seemed to move him up another notch in the eyes of the girls.
    On the seventh, he was down the middle a good 260, with Hawkeye not far behind him. Hawkeye’s second shot wasn’t much, however, and he had a full five-iron left. Then Trapper cranked out an awesome two-wood with a slight tail-end hook which hit the hard fairway, bounced over a trap, and came to rest within two feet of the pin.
    “Jesus!” exclaimed Hawkeye. The paddies, hearing this, looked knowingly at each other, and it dawned on the Swampmen what their mounting excitement was all about. Happily, Hawkeye had several of the autographed pictures in his wallet and, with a grand gesture, he bestowed complimentary copies upon the girls who, their suspicions confirmed, were overcome. Hawkeye had to lead them aside to calm them down, explaining as best he could that the Master’s game was a little rusty and that He wanted to get in at least eighteen holes before making His comeback generally known.
    “These bimboes,” he explained to Trapper, approaching the eighth tee, “are on a real Christian kick, so don’t disappoint them.”
    Trapper grabbed his driver, winced