PERSONALITIES

On the links with writer Carl Hiaasen

Latest book chronicles his return to golf after 32 years.

BY CHARLES McGRATH

New York Times News Service

TIM CHAPMAN / MIAMI HERALD FILE

Carl Hiaasen can play -- he just can't score, says one of the caddies at Quail Valley in Vero Beach.

Quail Valley, the Florida golf club where Miami Herald columnist and author Carl Hiaasen plays, looks like the kind of place where some of the creeps who populate his novels -- the environmental despoilers, glad-handing lobbyists and politicians on the take -- might belong.

It's in the middle of nowhere, a former citrus grove outside Vero Beach, and the entrance is guarded by a remote-control gate. BMWs and Mercedes SUVs gleam in the parking lot. In the clubhouse the heads of a moose, an elk and some African-looking ungulate gaze down on the dining room, and the men's locker room is graced with a stuffed lion and a reared-up bear. You can imagine that Palmer Stoat, from the Hiaasen novel Sick Puppy, who tries to arrange a big-game hunt in the Florida wilds, might feel right at home here.

Hiaasen said recently, however, that he didn't think Quail Valley was lavish enough for the Palmer Stoats and Chaz Perrones of this world. (Perrone is the guy who, in the first chapter of Skinny Dip, throws his wife off the deck of a cruise ship.) He imagined that people like that would want the kind of club where oversize condos line the fairways. He also suggested that Quail Valley didn't admit just anyone.

''I don't know why they took me,'' he said. ``I wouldn't take me.''

MOVED FROM KEYS

Hiaasen moved to Vero Beach from the Florida Keys in the summer of 2005, partly because the area reminded him of Fort Lauderdale, where he grew up. He lives there now with his second wife, Fenia, an 8-year-old son and a 17-year-old stepson.

Another thing that argues against a sleazeball membership is that Quail Valley -- known as Gale Valley to the regulars -- is no place for hackers. It's unusually hard and intimidating. Water comes into play on 16 of the 18 holes (Hiaasen says he has splashed down in all these hazards), and to fly over the various lakes and lagoons frequently requires a tee shot of 200 yards or so. The fairways are splashed and pocked with bunkers and the greens are hard, fast and confounding.

This purgatorial track is the scene of most of Hiaasen's new book, The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport, which, as the title suggests, is an account of how he took up golf again after what he calls ''a much-needed layoff of 32 years.'' It's part memoir -- with reminiscences about his father, who originally taught Hiaasen, now 55, how to play and whose untimely death at 50 helped occasion his son's decision to give up the game -- and part golf diary, with entries like these:

``Day 126: I shoot 51 on the front side, which is the same score that Jack Nicklaus shot on the first nine holes he ever played. He was, however, only 10 years old at the time.''

``Day 262: Sure enough: A swift descent into the bowels of hell. I lose seven balls in nine holes, which is the only score I keep.''

The book also has a confessional aspect. Hiaasen reveals that he accidentally sank a golf cart once, that in desperation he has purchased dubious golf remedies like the Q-Link, a pendant worn round the golfer's neck, with a ''resonating cell'' designed to ''eliminate stress and improve focus,'' and Mind Drive, an herbal capsule that supposedly does the same thing. On two occasions he has used golf clubs for a purpose other than that for which they were designed: once to attack poisonous toads and once in combat with rats that were eating the wiring of his car.

In one respect The Downhill Lie is slightly disingenuous, because Hiaasen is not nearly as bad a golfer as he makes himself out to be. He suffers, it's true, from occasional, unpredictable bouts of the ailment golfers dare not name: the shanks. But he has a not-bad-looking swing with a nice finish, and he hits the ball a long way.

His weakness, like that of most casual golfers, is his short game and his putting. As one of the caddies at Quail Valley pointed out, he can play -- he just can't score. Quail Valley also has a way of bringing out the worst in him. ''You're a good person trapped in an abusive relationship,'' a golf buddy once said.

EXISTENTIAL ANGST

Golfers in general tend to be self-critical, but Hiaasen is a self-lacerator. He doesn't curse or throw his clubs, but he sighs a lot and asks existential questions like ''Why do we do this?'' and ''Why are we out here?'' He plays the way you imagine Samuel Beckett might have played. He can't go on, but he goes on.

An environmentalist who, both in his books and in his column for The Miami Herald, has complained a lot about uncontrolled development in Florida, Hiaasen does take pleasure in the surroundings. He poked for snakes in the rocks, hoping to spot a water moccasin, and pointed out the ibises strolling the fairway; the carp, catfish and tilapia lolling in the lakes.

''The great irony is that golf courses are becoming the last bit of wildlife refuge we have,'' he said. ``I saw a bobcat on a golf course once, and I don't know that there's anyplace else you could do that now.''

Hiaasen is also a generous partner, quick with praise and alert to the suffering of others. ''Listen to that poor guy,'' he said after a long moan issued from a neighboring fairway. ``He sounds like he's having a catheter pulled.''

When the round was over, Hiaasen decompressed over a hot dog in the clubhouse. ''I could never get comfortable out there today. I felt like I was in someone else's body, and it wasn't Trevor Immelman,'' he said, naming the winner of this year's Masters. Once again he asked, ''Why do I do this?'' and then he answered his own question: ``I don't know, but I sometimes think it's important for writers to have an unhealthy obsession. Besides writing, that is. You need to get out of your own head. And I was never cut out to be a drunk or a drug addict.''