"Hit it down the middle, Boom," Bobby Rydell said.
Boom?
"Yeah, 'Boom,' like a cannon goes boom," Rydell said. "So Don Cannon became 'Boom Boom' Cannon, but I just call him 'Boom.'"
Oh, it all makes sense to Rydell, the onetime teenage heartthrob from South Philadelphia who made an entire nation of bobby-soxers swoon.
Cannon - quiet, please, he's on the tee - backs away from his shot at the mention of this "Boom Boom" business, looks over and grins.
"He's never sounded better," he said, nodding toward Rydell. "Really."
These two - Rydell and Cannon, the Oldies 98 morning guy - have been friends "forever." They hang together. They reminisce together. Cannon spins Rydell's records on the radio in the morning and makes no bones about the fact that he's one of his best friends. "Robert Ridarelli," Cannon (nee Dominic Canzano) will say when he introduces one of the singer's hits from the late '50s or early '60s, dragging out his real name, almost caressing it.
They're also growing old together. Rydell is 58, Cannon 60. But they're still chasing life together - last year, Rydell was the best man at Cannon's wedding - and they are not averse to throwing down a couple of bucks to take the edge off a man's thirst, especially after a round of golf.
Ah, golf. Naturally, they also play a little golf together. Always have, always will.
On a recent day, we were all at Blue Bell Country Club in, well, Blue Bell, where it was so hot, we were sweating like Mississippi field hands in August, with our tongues hanging out, and wondering if those were buzzards overhead. But we weren't complaining, because we were playing golf in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, wondering why more people hadn't worked out scams like this of their own.
And so, we were playing along, chatting about life and golf, and how golf contributes to the greater good in life. Rydell, who is about to embark on a monthlong engagement in Australia, was also shagging occasional calls on his cell phone to work out last-minute details.
"No, it should go 'dum-dum, de-dum, dum-dum,' " Rydell crooned into his phone at one point, standing in the middle of the fairway with a 5-iron in his hand. "Well, if he can't play it, we'll have the sax player play it."
After he hung up and hit his shot, Rydell climbed back into the cart. "To be honest, what I like best about golf is the camaraderie, spending time with friends," he said.
"Thank you," said Cannon, who had just pulled up in his cart.
"Not you," Rydell said.
When Rydell's in town - he still works Atlantic City, Las Vegas, tons of corporate events, and entire countries like Australia - he and Cannon play golf at least once a week, usually at Cedarbrook Country Club in Blue Bell, where they have been members for years, and occasionally at Blue Bell, where Rydell is a new honorary member.
Rydell certainly enjoys golf. His handicap at Cedarbrook hovers around 18. He was never really exposed to the game growing up in South Philly, but when he had his first hit as a 17-year-old heartthrob, "Kissing Time" in 1959, his manager bought him a set of clubs. Rydell wondered, of course, "What the hell am I going to do with these?"
But those were heady years for Rydell, who soon found himself making frequent trips to the "Coast," so he began to pack his sticks. One thing led to another, and he was soon addicted. In the late '70s and '80s, when he was playing fewer gigs and more golf, Rydell whittled his handicap down to the 6-7-8 range. But with the oldies revival of recent years, his career has picked up, meaning he has less time to play. Anyway, deep down, it is the camaraderie, the outdoors, the activity that he likes best about golf.
"If I could have been able to play more, I could have been a decent player," Rydell said.
As it is, he doesn't have a bad swing. It's a little mechanical, the kind of swing that suggests he's worried more about doing something wrong than about doing something right. But it's not a bad swing. Rydell laced a few down the middle, drained a putt here and there.
Cannon is a different story. He's got game. His legs weren't much to look at in those shorts, but his swing was. It's fluid, natural and athletic, the swing of a man who has aged well and has entirely too much leisure time on his hands. Cannon maintains a 13 handicap at Cedarbrook, but it has been lower - single-digit lower - and he still pulls off the occasional shot that is beyond the grasp of a 13-handicapper.
Cannon's problem, in as much as a man as happy with his life as Cannon is can have a problem, is that into each round he sprinkles a few chunks, tops, chilly-dips, foozles and flame-outs, which cost him big-time.
That recent day at Blue Bell, for example, Cannon opened with birdie-par-birdie-bogey, before stone-cold topping one into a festering pit of nastiness at the fifth, setting the stage for a dreaded double-bogey.
"Man, I had it for the few first holes," Cannon moaned in frustration.
Rydell, good friend and sage counsel that he is, looked at Cannon with pity. "Remember," he said, "you never own it, you only rent it."
Cannon nodded at the grim reality and drove on.
Cannon actually comes with a certain golf pedigree. When he was growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., when dinosaurs still roamed the planet, he caddied at Elmwood Country Club. But he had actually started playing the game in third grade with a couple of neighborhood buddies, Wes and Jon Voight, who were pretty serious about the game because their father was a club pro. Jon Voight, you may know, would later have some success as an actor.
Now, with this free ride on WOGL-FM (98.1), Cannon rolls out of bed at an inhuman hour but leaves the office about the time you're having your second cup of coffee and settling in for another day of torture as a wage-earner. Often, he heads for the golf course.
Cannon's big thing has become putting - he can putt like a bandit. He uses this old fossil of a putter and swaggers around a green as if it were a stage and he a Chippendale dancer. He takes pride and joy in staring you in the eyes and grinning like a crazed maniac, never looking at the ball, while he drains a 15-footer for birdie.
You just want to walk over and slap him.
"He's a complete pain," Rydell said.
But these guys are buddies like guys need buddies. They've got more history together than a couple of biblical figures, they're always there for each other, and they are well-aware that they drew long straws in life.
Besides, when you get right down to it, they like each other.
"I was his biggest fan, even before I knew him," said Cannon, while Rydell was on the other side of the fairway, running down an errant tee shot. "His song 'We Got Love' was our song, me and Barbara, back in 1958."
What ever happened to Barbara?
Cannon shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "We probably ought to leave her out of this."
About then, Rydell pulled up in the cart.
He had a story. It was about the time they were playing at Seaview at the Shore. Big match. Rydell tees it up on a par 5 and uncorks one - except the ball flies off his club dead sideways, hits the tee marker, and bounces straight up in the air, whereupon Cannon catches it.
"What do I do now?" Rydell asked.
Cannon dropped the ball where he stood. "Play it from right here."
Rydell grinned. "Best 5 I ever made."