Written by Stephen F. Moloney
“So, you’re saying they’re not here yet … because of a ‘bathroom-related emergency’?” asked Stan, sounding more than a little suspicious.
“That is correct,” replied Bill, doubling-down on his ‘half-truth’.
“Ok …” said Stan, not sounding any more convinced. “And does that mean Mustang’s sick or … what are we talking about?”
“No, no, he’s not sick,” interjected Jeanie, rushing to make sure Stan didn’t jump to the conclusion that Mustang might be somehow physically incapable of playing. “I mean, he’s feeling fine – great, even. It’s just a … different kind of bathroom-related emergency.”
“Alright, so what exactly does this ‘different kind of bathroom-related emergency’ actually entail?” probed Stan, now starting to lose his patience. “Because we are rapidly running out of daylight here and I’ve already been more-than-generous with the time I’ve afforded the pair of them in which to get here. However, unless I start hearing a compelling reason for why they are still not here, then that same generosity will very quickly cease to exist and I’ll be left with no alternative but to award the hole – and, therefore, the match – to Mr. Ballas.”
“He got locked into one of the port-a-johns!” said Bill, blurting out the first semi-decent excuse his mind could generate.
“He what?!” said Stan, his attention now very much garnered.
“He got locked into one of the port-a-johns …” repeated Bill, somewhat sheepishly, as he now realized he had given himself, Travis, and Jeanie no other alternative but to try and make his excuse work.
“Yeah, ya see, Stan …” said Travis, cooly jumping in and inserting some much-needed calmness into the situation. “What happened was, my grandson went into one of the port-a-johns after he teed off to … well, you know … but when he went to reopen the lock, wouldn’t ya know it, the gosh darn thing wouldn’t open for him – hence, the delay in them gettin’ here.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed Stan, a visibly concerned expression now spreading across his face as he began to make a move towards walking off past Travis and the others. “Well, we need to do something to help him then! Come on, we can take your cart!”
“NO!” cried Bill, Jeanie, and Travis in panicked unison.
“What do you mean ‘no’?!” asked a confused Stan. “You just said Mustang is trapped in a port-a-john, right?!”
“Yes, we did say that,” answered Jeanie, trying desperately to think on her feet. “But, no, we shouldn’t go down there to help because … uh …”
“Because Ray is there!” said Bill, chiming in as he saw Jeanie’s response was fast running out of steam. “And he was in the army, so … I mean, you know the saying.”
“No, I don’t – what saying?” answered Stan, his confusion now gradually turning into utter bewilderment at what was happening.
“You know …” replied Bill, trying to buy some time for himself as his brain scrambled to come up with a response. “You can lead a locksmith to a locked door, but if there’s a soldier there already, then … that’s just … fine as well.”
After holding his tongue since being mildly reprimanded earlier for talking too much, Bill’s attempt at coming up with a believable saying was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Byron and he couldn’t help but insert his frustrated self back into the conversation.
“Ok, you’re, honestly, not buying this, right?!” he spat, gesturing impatiently at Travis and the others. “I mean, clearly, they’re trying to cover something up, and they’re even going so far as to make up terrible sayings that don’t make any sense to do it!”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it didn’t make any sense …” mumbled Bill, not appreciating having his first effort at creating a saying ridiculed so bluntly.
“Now, as you can plainly see,” snapped Byron, having, luckily, not heard Bill. “In the time that we have been waiting for them to show up, I – in the interest of keeping up the speed of play – have not only taken my second shot, but I have safely found the green. Ok, so if you aren’t going to do the right thing here and just straight-up award me the hole right now?! Then if ‘Horse Boy’ shows up, I, at least, demand you penalize him one stroke for delaying the match!”
“Oh, come now!” argued Travis, now fully serious.“I mean, is there really a need for that?!”
“Well, whilst I don’t agree with the tone in which Mr. Ballas delivered his point,” said Stan, looking as though he’d visibly aged well beyond his 60-years since the beginning of this exchange. “I’m afraid he does have one. So, whatever is going on with your grandson, Mr. Peyton? Be he really trapped in a port-a-john or … whatever the heck else might be going on; but if he and Ray ain’t here in the next two minutes? Then, I’m afraid, I’ll have no alternative but to start issuing penalt-…”
Just before he could finish his sentence, a smattering of applause and some excited-sounding hollers coming from the crowd lining the top of the bank off to their right was enough to cause Stan and everybody else to turn and see what was, suddenly, causing all the commotion. And, as if they’d somehow overheard Stan discussing the topic of penalties, who did they see running up the fairway towards them – parting the sea of gnats being made to glow orange by the low-hanging evening sun now washing over the 18th – but Ray and Mustang.
“It’s them!” cried Jeanie, excitedly, as a disgusted Byron turned away in a huff and began to walk back over to where his caddie was standing with his bag, gesticulating off back down the fairway at Ray and Mustang as if he couldn’t believe they’d, actually, shown up when they had – and, especially, when he’d been so close to having Mustang penalized a stroke.
“Hey! … Sorry!” apologized Ray, breathlessly, as he and a not-so-breathless Mustang came to a stop in front of Stan and the others.
“Yeah, sorry!” added Mustang, his cheeks slightly flushed from their impromptu evening jog.
“Well, how good of you gentlemen to finally join us,” said Stan, wryly, himself, too, amazed that Ray and Mustang had shown up just as he was contemplating handing out a penalty.
“Yeah …” replied Ray, having to fly somewhat blind as to how he should reply given he had no idea how Bill, Jeanie, and Travis had been covering for him. “It was just, uh … you know …”
“A ‘bathroom-related’ emergency?” offered Stan, dryly.
Though sensing his somewhat relaxed tone, Ray glanced over at Travis and the others to try and verify whether or not he should go along with what Stan was saying.
“Uh, yeah … exactly,” he answered, after being greeted with nothing but wide-eyed stares and subtle nods urging him to just roll with it.
“Yeah, well, given I was about two minutes away from issuing young Mr. Peyton here with a penalty for holding up the match,” said Stan, gently warning the pair of them. “Might I suggest that now the two of you are here, you go take your shot, and go take it quickly – am I making myself clear?”
“Crystal,” replied Ray, fully understanding what was being said. “Thanks, Stan.”
Not wanting to say anything else that might throw his role as referee into disrepute, Stan merely nodded his head in response before moving away to where the Scorekeeper was patiently waiting by th edge of the fairway.
“Alright, kid, see that steward over there?” said Ray, immediately flicking the switch into ‘caddie mode’ as he pointed off towards the bank on their right where the steward in question was, clearly, waiting for the pair of them. “She’s gonna show you where your ball is, alright? So, what I want you to do is run over, follow her to your ball, and start havin’ a think about what kinda shot you’re feelin’, ok? And I’ll be up in a second – I just need to get your bag.”
“Ok, got it,” replied Mustang with a firm nod of his head before turning and jogging across the fairway in the direction of the steward.
With Mustang now far enough away – and seeing his arrival being warmly applauded by the crowd as he began to scale the bank to go about laying eyes on where his ball was – Ray turned hurriedly to Travis and the others.
“Ok, so what did I miss?” he asked, a definitive sense of urgency in his voice as he knew he was on the clock.
“Not much, really,” answered Bill, pulling Mustang’s bag out of the backseat of the cart and placing it down in front of Ray, the clubs clattering noisily off one another in the process. “Other than us doin’ a spectacularly bad job of lyin’ to Stan ‘bout why you guys weren’t here, the only thing that happened was Byron takin’ his second shot.”
Having not paid any attention to it previously – as he’d been preoccupied with running up the fairway like he and Mustang were trying to make it to an airport gate before it closed – Ray quickly turned his focus towards the 18th green. And, sure enough, sitting a good 15-feet right of the pin – which had been switched from that of the one in the back-right corner used for the semi-finals to now over on the most extreme left-hand side of the green – there was Byron’s ball gleaming in the sunlight.
It didn’t surprise Ray to see Byron had drawn up the shot that he had with his second, because if their positions were reversed and Mustang had been hitting from where Byron was and vice versa, then Ray would have been having Mustang execute the exact same play. He’d have given him enough club to cover the front-left bunker, then told him to just bleed in a nice little fade right over the top of it so that his ball would always be working away from the lake. And if it ended up coming to a stop 15 or even 20-feet right of the pin? So be it. Because where the pin was now? With no more than 8-feet-worth of green separating the flag from the drop down into the water? To try and take that on when, statistically, you didn’t need to would just be a fool’s errand – and, of all the things Byron was, a fool was most definitely not one of them.
“Alright,” said Ray, taking one last mental note of where Byron’s ball was as he grabbed up Mustang’s bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Any chance you had a look at where the kid’s ball is?”
Travis, Jeanie, and Bill all looked at one another, each of them exchanging the same awkward glance as they seemed to try and telepathically draw straws for who’d be the one to break the bad news.
“That bad, huh?” said Ray, reading in-between the lines.
“Well, let’s just say …” replied Travis, almost grimacing as he took it upon himself to speak up. “It could be a whole better.”
*
In all the studying she’d done in preparation for her trip to Crescent Creek – including the last-minute work she’d done the previous night in her motel room – the name ‘Old Abe’ was one that had cropped up consistently in Maggie’s reading. And though his place in Crescent Creek’s history was primarily confined to the very early stages of the club’s existence – from when it first opened in 1905 to about 1920 – such was the impact Old Abe managed to have in that 15-year spell, that to speak about Crescent Creek without mentioning him would be akin to not mentioning François LaFleur.
Where the two figures differed, however, was where François had been the charismatic – if not even a little eccentric – Frenchman who had won the land where Crescent Creek sits in a game of poker and then decided to turn it into a golf course, Old Abe was … well, he was a tree – specifically, a monster of an ancient Southern Live Oak. And, yet, despite their obvious differences, the relationship between François and Old Abe was one forged before even a single sod of dirt had been turned in the effort to transform Crescent Creek into a golf course.
In his first few trips to explore the full 200 acres of Crescent Creek after deciding he was, indeed, going to turn it into a golf course, François’ main aim had been to plot out a rough route the actual course could follow through the maze of trees and swampy ground he’d won, using the spot he’d already chosen for the 9th hole on his very first visit as a fulcrum of sorts to guide his decision-making.
And, as it transpired, one of the very first holes he ended up mapping out on those trips was that of the 18th, mainly because after accidentally stumbling across the pristine meadow where Old Abe was residing – like this regal, elegant behemoth among a tapestry of delicately-coloured wildflowers – François fell instantly in love and just knew that was where he wanted his finishing hole to lie.
Where the problems began, however, was once François and his crew had finished the laborious task of lovingly carving Crescent Creek out of the swamp three years later and the club’s small – but enthusiastic – membership could grab their hickory clubs and actually go out and play, it became blatantly apparent from day one that Old Abe hated golfers.
Possessed with a seemingly uncanny ability to snaffle up golf balls, whether it be from tee shots or even just regular approach shots, Old Abe soon became the bane of the memberships’ lives, as his sheer dominating presence ruined countless scorecards on a weekly basis and, on average, cost at least one person a tournament every year – and that was if it was a particularly good year at that.
Things even got so bad that, in and around 1910, some members had grown so weary and so disheartened at their inability to navigate the 18th hole without ending up in Old Abe’s clutches, they began to make ‘offerings’ to him on New Year’s Day every year by throwing a golf ball up into his branches in a desperate attempt to somehow ‘appease’ him and bring them good luck for the coming year – a ploy which, unsurprisingly, never worked.
In the end, though, after 15-years of fending off a constant stream of complaints demanding something be done about him – from trimming back his far-reaching branches to even going so far as to commit the atrocity that would have been chopping him down – François decided the only way to please everyone and ensure nothing happened to Old Abe would be to move the entire 18th hole – green and all – 80-yards to the left and have it run along the area by the lake which, in the original plans for the course, he’d just earmarked to be used as an emergency drainage plain if needed.
And, from that moment on, that’s how the 18th at Crescent Creek became the one Maggie had just driven down and how Old Abe regained the peace he’d enjoyed for the centuries before François LaFleur ever laid eyes on him, only being called into action thereafter to pose for pictures or provide some cool shade for those who’d been lucky enough to balm out beneath his expansive canopy when the course was still open.
As Ray led her along what she recognized as being the “old” 18th fairway, however, and the pair of them began to be slowly drawn into his orbit, Maggie began to get the impression that, when it came to the 2020 Matchplay Memorial, Old Abe had made something of an unprecedented return to the spotlight.
“And here we are …” said Ray, coming to a stop beneath Old Abe’s branches and giving himself a moment to take in the sight of Crescent Creek’s oldest resident in full bloom. “Where Mustang’s drive, eventually, ended up finishin’.” He turned and looked at Maggie, herself just taking a second to drink in the real-life version of Old Abe after only ever seeing him in photographs. “Now, I’m gonna go out on a limb here – pun, most definitely, intended – and say you already know all about Old Abe here?”
“Yeah, I know a thing or two about him,” replied Maggie, smiling dryly. “You know, from leafing through a few books.”
“Nice!” laughed Ray, appreciating Maggie’s own punny effort before getting back down to business. “Well, in that case, do you wanna just get right into the ‘nuts and bolts’ of what Mustang was facin’ for his second shot?”
“The floor is yours,” said Maggie, gesturing graciously towards the area of exposed soil surrounding the base of Old Abe that had been baked hard by the sun like clay pots in a kiln.
“Alright; well, after hearin’ what Travis had to say,” began Ray, stepping over some of Old Abe’s large, exposed roots which had breached through the earth. “And factorin’ in the direction where I’d seen it flyin’, I’d already figured that chances were Mustang’s ball was gonna be in and around where Old Abe here was, right? What I didn’t figure, though …”. Ray, suddenly, came to a stop in-between two roots off to Maggie’s right and began to really concentrate on making sure his feet were properly orientated in the direction of the 18th green which, from where they were, was completely out of sight. “Was that it was gonna be this close to him,” he continued, once happy he’d found the exact spot where Mustang’s ball had been lying that Sunday evening.
“No way!” cried Maggie, so utterly stunned that she, immediately, moved around to where Ray was standing to go about seeing things from his perspective. “From there?!”
“Yep,” smiled Ray, promptly stepping to the side in order to allow Maggie to take his spot. “That’s where his ball was – and, as you can probably tell, Travis had somewhat undersold just how bad it really was.”
And Maggie couldn’t help but agree.
She tried to conjure up some kind of line from where she was standing to whereabouts she thought the green was – because, again, it was completely invisible from where they were – but no matter what way she drew it up in her mind, she just couldn’t see any path through which one could reasonably expect to find the putting surface. Because if it weren’t enough that the trunk would have been partly blocking out any direct line to the green, Old Abe’s tentacle-like limbs were so long and swooping down so low to the ground that if this was pretty much the same view Mustang would have been facing all those years ago, then Maggie figured the only way he could’ve even possibly navigated his ball in the direction of the green would have been to hit it through this, at most, 3-foot tall gap between two intersecting limbs that formed this eye-shaped window right through the leaves and out into the open air beyond.
In other words, the conclusion Maggie came to was that Mustang hadn’t just wound up in a ‘bad’ spot, he’d wound up in a nigh-on impossible one.
“Yeah, you could say that,” she sighed, getting slightly stressed out at even imagining what it must have been like for Ray and Mustang to have found themselves faced with such a lie at that stage of the match. “I mean, were you able to even get a yardage from here?”
“Well, with all the problems endin’ up here presented us with – which, as you can see, was quite a lot,” replied Ray, quietly enjoying the shade Old Abe was providing them with as the gentlest of breezes blew across his sunburnt neck. “The one good thing about it was that I already knew what the yardages were. So, from here to the path is 30-yards, then from there back down to the fairway is, give or take, another 50-yards – you know, on account of the elevation change from the top of the bank.”
“And from here to the pin that day?” asked Maggie, still too busy trying to come up with a possible route to the green to fully enjoy the respite from the late afternoon sun.
“As the crow flies?” answered Ray, taking a moment to ponder over the exact number. “I think I worked out that it was 190 pin, and somethin’ like 180 or 181 to the very front edge of the green – as in, the part in-between the two front bunkers.”
“Yikes,” said Maggie, cringing. “Not exactly the friendliest of yardages.”
“No, they weren’t,” agreed Ray, flicking away a small, loose pebble with the toe of his boot. “But they, at least, gave me somethin’ to work with, you know? Like, knowin’ we were as under the gun with Stan as we were, to have those numbers already in mind before I’d even got here and set the bag down was a big plus.”
“And how did that actually look?” queried Maggie, curiously, as she lightly scuffed the ground with the sole of her trainer in order to get a read on just how hard it was. “As in, arriving up here and taking in the scene? Was there a crowd?”
“Oh, was there ever!” laughed Ray, the memory flashing before his eyes as if he was right back there in the moment. “I mean, no joke, there was a semi-circle of people, ‘bout ten deep, gathered right behind where Mustang was standin’ by his ball – so, right about here …” Ray moved his arm back and forth in a semi-circular motion at the area just behind where he and Maggie were standing to illustrate his point. “And then all the way up here,” he continued, now gesturing towards the 30-yard space between Old Abe and the path. “There was even more of ‘em all crammed in tryna’ get a look at what the kid was gonna do.”
“And how about Mustang himself?” probed Maggie, a hint of wariness in her voice given how, not that long before this point in the story, Mustang had locked himself in a port-a-john and refused to come out. “How was he doing?”
“Oddly enough?” said Ray, recognizing what Maggie was thinking. “He seemed … fine. I mean, from the moment I came up over the top of the bank and looked over here, he was just standin’ behind his ball, hands in his pockets, and starin’ up into the tree – it was like he was completely oblivious to the fact he was surrounded by God knows how many people.”
“Ok, and what about when you actually got over here and started talking to him?” asked Maggie, eager to see if Mustang’s outward demeanour of someone who sounded as though they were out for a casual Sunday evening stroll was just all for show. “Did he seem as … ‘relaxed’, I guess?”
“Well, to be honest, when I first got here?” answered Ray, bending down and grabbing a small twig from up off the ground. “Cause of the time constraint, I was more concerned with what I needed to do than gettin’ a deep read on how the kid was doin’, you know? So, once I actually had boots on the ground, I was, you know, checkin’ how the ball was lyin’ – which, apart from maybe a hair more debris around it, was pretty much the same as it is now; I was checkin’ if the kid’s swing was gonna be impeded by any branches up above ‘im or any of these roots here – which, in both cases, was a very fortunate ‘no’; and, like you were just doin’, I was checkin’ to see if there was any possible line we could take to get to the green – which, obviously, was a very unfortunate ‘no’. And once I had all that done – at most 30 seconds-worth of work – well, then I was, at least, in a position to decide what I thought the play should be.”
“Which was?” said Maggie, even though she already had a sneaking suspicion she knew what the answer was going to be given her prior knowledge about Ray’s style as a caddie.
“Well, for me, it had to be a pitch out,” replied Ray, confirming Maggie’s hunch. “Like, choke way down on a 7; punch it out to just before this side of the path – you know, to where we could, at least, see the flag; and then just try to get up and down for par in the hope Byron would miss his birdie putt, and then we could reset for a playoff – which is, obviously, never an ideal way to have to approach the final hole in matchplay but I thought it was our best chance of stayin’ alive.”
“And is that what you told Mustang?”
“Word for word,” confirmed Ray, nodding his head as he deftly moved the twig he’d picked up in-between his fingers. “Even gave him the rough yardage he’d have for his third if he pitched out like I was suggestin’ – somethin’ like 170, I think it was. So, still, quite a distance to try and get up and down from, sure, but if anyone had even a chance at doin’ it, I figured it was Mustang.”
“Oh, so you gave him the full ‘hard sell’ then,” noted Maggie, smiling as she thought back on how she used to do the exact same thing when she was caddying.
“Yep, gave it the whole nine yards,” said Ray, sounding pleased with the memory of his efforts that evening. “And from how he was noddin’ his head and listenin’ to every word I said? Man, I was sure I had him brought ‘round to my way of thinkin’, you know? Like, just take Old Abe out of the equation as much as we could …”
“But …?” probed Maggie, once again, seeing it lurking off in the long grass.
“But, as it turned out …” said Ray, now casually tossing the twig back down to the ground and looking over at Maggie. “Mustang wanted to go one-on-one with the old-timer.”
*
“You want to do what?!” whispered Ray, sharply, as he didn’t want the crowd to overhear what he was saying.
“I want to go for the green,” answered Mustang, repeating what he’d just said.
“But … how?!” said Ray, so bewildered at what he was hearing that he lowered himself down to Mustang’s level and peered down the line of his ball to see if there was something he’d missed during his own inspection.
“See that gap?” replied Mustang, calmly pointing at this narrowest of narrow windows between two of Old Abe’s limbs. “Through there.”
“There?!” hissed Ray, as he had, indeed, registered said gap during his initial sweep but then instantly disregarded it for being way too small to do anything with.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?” asked Mustang, not seeing what the problem was.
“Oh, not much,” replied Ray, dryly, still staring off at the gap as if hoping it would somehow grow larger under his manic gaze. “Just the fact you’d probably have an easier time gettin’ a camel through the eye of a needle is all!”
With some of the people gathered behind them, suddenly, beginning to laugh, Ray – realizing he’d allowed the volume of his voice to get away from him – pulled Mustang and his bag around to the other side of Old Abe’s trunk.
“Listen, kid, I know I said to go out shootin’,” said Ray, once they were as far from the reach of prying eyes and ears as he could muster given their close quarters. “But you don’t have to take this shot on. Ok, a par can still be good enough here. And the best chance of gettin’ that? Is by pitchin’ out – you just gotta trust me on this.”
“Yeah, and I’m just asking you to trust me!” pleaded Mustang. “Ok, you told me to come up here and think about what kinda shot I was feelin’, right?”
“Right …” agreed Ray, reluctantly, annoyed that his own words were coming back to haunt him.
“Well, this is the shot I’m feeling,” continued Mustang, firmly standing his ground and pointing off at the opposite side of Old Abe. “Alright, and I know it’s high-risk, and I know you’re probably wondering where my head’s at ‘cause of how I freaked out, but … well, I know I can pull this off, Ray – I know I can. So, what d’ya say?”
Ray fell silent as he took a deep breath in and tilted his head back so that he was looking directly up into Old Abe’s canopy. What little breath of wind remained in the air was gently swaying the leaves as the evening sun filtered through every available space it could find, turning up the brightness of everything it touched and making the colours appear all the more vivid in the process. And, yet, as he looked up into the very upper reaches of Old Abe’s crown of leaves, Ray wasn’t thinking about the shot Mustang was looking to play. In fact, he wasn’t even thinking about the match at all. Instead, all he could think about was how much the evening reminded him of the one when he first came across a barefoot Mustang hitting balls up at the range. How he’d just stood there and watched him put on this display of ball-striking so masterful it had left him completely awe-struck. And how, in that moment, he knew he was looking at someone incredibly special.
And, just like that, Ray knew what his answer to Mustang’s question was going to be.
“I say …” he began, reaching into Mustang’s bag and pulling out one of his irons. “It’s 185 to get over the front-left bunker …” He handed the iron to Mustang. “So, you’ll be needin’ him.”
Mustang looked down at the club Ray had just given him. It was his own 5-iron. The one he’d brought from Florida when he ran away. The 1964 Arnold Palmer Tru-Matic. With a smile on his face, Mustang looked back up at Ray.
“You’ve got this, kid,” said Ray, smiling encouragingly.
Knowing he had his blessing to take the shot on, Mustang – still unable to wipe the smile from his face – nodded his head and walked back around the other side of Old Abe’s trunk until he was, once again, directly in-line behind his ball.
It was go-time.
Seeing Mustang look as though he was, finally, getting ready to hit, an excited hush descended on the crowd surrounding Old Abe and those lined up back towards the top of the bank. Even the stewards, whose job it was to keep an eye on the crowd, couldn’t help themselves from stealing a glance in Mustang’s direction. After moving around the back of him to get into position, Ray slung Mustang’s bag over his shoulder, rested his hand on top of the irons to stop them from accidentally clanging together, and looked over at Mustang. Though he seemed to be taking a little more time than usual to eye up his shot, Ray wasn’t overly concerned – after all, this wasn’t exactly a normal shot he was about to try and play.
Once he had run his eyes back and forth along the line extending from his ball to the gap he was looking to hit it through, however, Mustang – in a rather unexpected move – suddenly, spoke.
“Hey, Ray?” he said, his eyes never leaving the gap.
“Yeah?” replied Ray, the tiniest pang of worry twinging in his stomach that something might be wrong.
With that, Mustang turned his head and looked over at Ray. “No matter what, right?” he asked.
Ray smiled. “Yeah, kid …” he said. “No matter what.”
Having heard all he needed to, a smiling Mustang turned his head back around and refocused every ounce of concentration he had on the gap.
This was it.
He brought his 5-iron up from his side and assumed his grip as he stepped forward to address his ball. He got into his stance – wiggling the soles of his shoes as he did so to ensure the spikes had as much grip as they could get on the uneven, somewhat slippy, baked earth which made up the ground around Old Abe’s base – and set his club carefully down behind the ball.
Where everything up until then had been a touch ‘outside the norm’ for how his pre-shot routine usually went, once happy with how he was positioned, however, things, all of a sudden, began to look a lot more like Mustang’s normal routine – which meant things were about to start moving very quickly.
Mustang looked over at the gap. What leaves were in his eye line, right on cue, fell completely still as if even the wind itself was holding its breath in anticipation for what was about to come next.
Now was the time.
Mustang dropped his eyes back over his ball. A breath later he drew back his club – lifting it just a hair higher than normal to ensure he missed the exposed root lying in his path – turned his shoulders as far as they could go, and got his 5-iron all the way up to parallel.
And then, for Ray, everything felt as though time was, suddenly, moving in slow motion.
He watched Mustang drag his club down from the top of his backswing, keeping it slightly outside the line he’d taken it back on to encourage the left-to-right ball flight he had to get, otherwise, he’d just blow his ball straight into the lake. He watched him slam his elbow hard into his right side as he whipped the club back through its final stint at parallel whilst making sure he kept the face as open as he could. And then he watched him make contact.
And then? Well, everything wasn’t going so slow anymore.
THHHHWWWIIIPPP!!!
A cloud of dust billowed up into the air as Mustang launched himself through his ball and performed a full-on ‘helicopter follow-through’ akin to that which Seve Ballesteros or the man whose name adorned the club he had just swung around his head like a sword, Arnold Palmer, would have conjured up in order to get as much left-to-right spin on his ball as humanly possible. Before it could even begin to try and use that spin, however, Mustang’s ball needed to clear the not-so-tiny hurdle of making it safely through the gap untouched – and everyone standing around Old Abe knew it.
So, they watched.
They watched Mustang’s ball rip through the air like a fighter jet doing a fly-by.
They watched it hurtle towards the gap, chewing up the distance with all the speed of a bullet train running behind schedule.
And then, just as it began to look as though it were climbing a little too high, the crowd watched in stunned silence as Mustang’s ball slid right through the gap with all the agility of a swallow.
It had escaped Old Abe’s clutches. It was free – and it fully intended to make the most of its newfound freedom.
Having started off its flight no more than 6-feet off the ground, Mustang’s ball now turned on the afterburners and began to climb exponentially higher and higher up into the dusky evening sky sitting over the Creek – and Mustang and Ray fully intended to watch it fly. So, they set off running.
With the crowd hollering and whooping in disbelief that he’d actually managed to extricate his ball from where it had been, Mustang and Ray burst out from underneath Old Abe’s branches and sprinted in the direction of the path, their eyes glued to the sky in search of Mustang’s ball.
But then they saw it. And it looked good. Really good.
Using every single last revolution of spin he’d exerted on it, Mustang’s ball was fading right with everything it had, and doing so right towards the green. The only problem, though, was that those same afterburners which had propelled it up into the stratosphere were now looking as if they’d run out of gas, leaving Mustang’s ball nowhere to go but down. So, it began to plummet. And plummet fast.
To further complicate matters, however, though Ray had said Mustang’s 5-iron would get him the necessary 185 yards he needed to get beyond the front-left bunker, from the path it seemed to be falling on, Mustang’s ball looked to be on a collision course headed directly for the bunker as opposed to landing just beyond it. And at the height and angle it would be crashing in there at, it wasn’t out of the question that it could plug.
So, Mustang and Ray thought some emergency encouragement was needed – and lots of it.
“GO!” shouted Mustang, instinctively crouching down as he tracked every millimetre of his ball’s descent. “GO!”
“GO ON, BALL!” urged Ray, not even noticing the fact the crowd had brushed past the stewards and were now all gathered right up behind where he and Mustang were standing. “FLY! FLY!”
With the crowd taking it in turns to erratically shout variations of “GO!” and “FLY!” covering the next 10-feet of its fall, Mustang’s ball reached the pivotal point where, in the next two seconds, it was either going to pitch on the green with a hollow-sounding thump or slam into the white, powdery sand of the front-left bunker with a solid pwfft.
One or the other.
1 …
All or nothing.
2 …
THUMP!
With barely an inch to spare, Mustangs’ ball landed just beyond the top of the bunker, causing the crowd gathered up around the 18th – who’d only had the roughest of ideas as to where Mustang had been actually hitting from – to erupt in the loudest cheer the Creek had heard all weekend. What they didn’t realize, however, was that as far as Mustang’s ball was concerned, the show wasn’t over. Not yet.
Because with all the speed and momentum it had picked up during its fall, that energy had to go somewhere – and that ‘somewhere’ was forward.
Leaping out of the shallow crater of a pitch mark its impact had created, Mustang’s ball released forward like it had just been shot out of a circus cannon and started to roll across the green.
It rolled until it scaled the ridge running right the way across the spine of the green.
It rolled until it hit the part of the green which would see any ball begin to fall to the left in the direction of the lake.
And then, with the very last ounce of energy it had at its disposal, Mustang’s ball rolled right past Byron’s and came to a stop 2-feet beyond it.
Though a wall of sound had narrated the entirety of its journey from the second it had hit the green, the crowd, on seeing Mustang’s ball finish inside Byron’s approach, now somehow managed to crank up the volume another few notches to a level where they had to be no more than but a few decibels away from making the windows in the clubhouse rattle.
In the midst of the pandemonium now surrounding them, however, Ray – with a stunned smile plastered across his face – could only look off down the fairway in sheer amazement and take in the sight of Mustang’s ball sitting inside Byron’s. It was almost as if he was waiting to wake up from whatever dream he thought he must be having because there was no way what he was seeing could possibly be real.
“Well …” he sighed, shaking his head in amused disbelief as the realization dawned on him that he really was, indeed, awake. “I did say to go out shootin’!”
“Told ya I could pull it off,” said a cheekily grinning Mustang, now walking backwards past Ray so that he could look at him as he spoke. “And you wanna know what the funny thing is?” He ripped back the velcro tab keeping his glove closed. “I still have one bullet left!”