After booking his ticket to Seminole, the next few days wound up passing in something of a blur for Mustang. Understandably, there was the initial delight in the hours immediately following the successfully struck 3-wood which had sealed his position as Dallas’s alternate, with calling Travis to tell him the good news being a particularly memorable highlight.
“Are you serious?!” he’d yelled so loudly through the phone that Mustang and Ray had almost heard his voice carrying on the wind all the way from Texas. “You’re going to represent the U.S.?! Oh, kiddo, I’m so proud of you! I gotta go tell everyone!”.
Once he’d then left his positively giddy grandfather to go tell his friends, Eddie Dercksen and the Willis’, what had happened, and, of course, taken in the rather bizarre sight of watching Dallas use the 18th fairway as a runway and his plane disappearing off over the horizon – a noon tee-time at Augusta National his ultimate destination – Mustang joined Ray and Beau inside the LaFleur Suite for a celebratory breakfast as, in the latter’s own words, there was no better way to toast some good news than actually with some toast.
Still in the mood for celebrating even after they’d finished breakfast, though, once that morning rolled into that afternoon, Mustang’s and Ray’s planned trip to New Malo to pick up his school supplies with Jeanie promptly turned into an all-day party where, after quickly getting the mundanity of grabbing his school uniform and everything else he’d be needing out of the way thanks to Jeanie breezing through his list, the three of them proceeded to spend the entire day eating junk food and taking in the sights of New Malo – which, primarily, boiled down to going to see a movie and getting far too competitive with each other at ‘Tuffin’s Bowling Alley & Arcade’.
When they finally got home that night after dropping Jeanie back at her place, though, Mustang and Ray – despite feeling a little sick around the gills after everything they’d eaten – sat down at the kitchen table and, between them, came up with a plan. Because on the way back from Jeanie’s they came to the rather sobering realization that they were only eighteen days out from the week of the Walker Cup. Just two and a half short weeks away from rolling into Seminole as part of Team U.S.A. and going to war with the formidable Great Britain & Ireland team Dallas had told them about. And, even if the chances of them getting out between the ropes and actually competing in the match were beyond slim, Mustang and Ray both agreed that, should the call from Dallas to tee-it-up, they owed it to him and themselves to be as prepared as possible.
So, that very night, step one of their master plan saw the pair of them sit down and, just like Dallas had done, they watched back the final of the U.S. Amateur against Fletcher. And as well as seeing everything that Dallas had pointed out about how their strategy for the match had, ultimately, backfired on them, Mustang and Ray were both fastidiously taking notes on things they needed to work on and improve – whether it be club and shot selection on Ray’s part or, in Mustang’s case, the particular shots in his arsenal that needed to be sharpened up. With the results of their postmortem then appropriately collated, the next day saw Mustang move on to step two.
And that meant an early start.
With him starting at his new school the following Monday, Mustang knew he wasn’t going to have as much free time to practice anymore – which, given the deadline they had, was less-than-ideal. But after his suggestion to just wait to start school until after the Walker Cup had been soundly rejected by Ray, Mustang knew he had to make the most of the time he had left before his days became filled with trudging from class to class as opposed to skipping from hole to hole up at the Creek. So, as a result, when Ray’s alarm clock pulled him from his sleep just before dawn the following morning to signal it was time for him to go back to work, Mustang – despite his eyelids initial refusal to stay open – got up as well, grabbed his clubs, and joined him in heading to the course. And from the moment the sun poked enough of its head up over the horizon to sufficiently lighten the sky over the Creek? Mustang got down to work.
Armed with three buckets of balls and a glove, Mustang set up shop in his favourite hitting bay on the range and began working his way through his bag. Dialling in his wedges. Honing the extensive repertoire of shots he had at his disposal with his mid and long irons. Polishing up his work with the driver and, as the previous night’s examination had shown a particular need for, his woods. Mustang went through them all until, spent and sweating, he sent the very last ball from the third and final bucket sailing out into the range after crushing the exact kind of ‘bullet fade’ he’d tried – and failed – to pull off for his second shot on 18 against Fletcher at the U.S. Amateur.
Now, for most people, a two-hour-long range session wherein you wear a hole through your glove and leave the towel you wipe your clubs with sodden and filthy would probably have been enough for the day, if not even the week. But not for Mustang. He was on a mission.
So, after filling in the several rows of neatly-taken divots he’d stripped away during his session with divot mix – for to not do so would risk Bill doing what he did the last time he forgot to fill his divots, and, frankly, he didn’t want to have to go to the trouble of emptying a whole load of divot mix out of his golf shoes again – Mustang grabbed his bag and made his way down to the workshop. Once he’d then eaten the second breakfast that Ray had left for him in his locker (a bacon roll that, after two hours up at the range, tasted like heaven on earth) Mustang switched out his glove and towel for a fresh pair, mustered his legs back into action and, with the clock just hitting 8:30, made his way to the 1st tee to begin step three in the plan he and Ray had devised the previous night – ‘match practice’.
Whilst all the one-on-one matchplay he’d played since coming to Marais des Voleurs had given him more than enough experience to, as he and Ray felt, sufficiently handle the ‘Afternoon Singles’ portion of the Walker Cup should he be called into the fray come the second week of September, the proposition of playing in the ‘Morning Foursomes’ didn’t leave Mustang feeling quite as confident. So, to try and demystify the unknown proposition of playing ‘Foursomes’ and what it might be like to play a round where you’re hitting every other shot with a partner, Mustang and Ray, as per their plan, had called in the cavalry.
“Ah, there he is!” Beau had said, sounding his usual bright and cheerful self as Mustang had walked onto the 1st tee. “Now, I sincerely hope you’ve brought your ‘A’ game, young man, because the most I’ll be bringing to the table here is a ‘C’ game – and even then that’s a questionable ‘C’!”
And, so, with Beau dressed in his plus fours; long, argyle-patterned socks; and white leather golf shoes with old-school metal spikes on the soles and fringed leather panels covering the laces on top because … of course, he would be … he and Mustang set out and played a round of Foursomes: finishing, it must be said, a very respectable level par for their round – which, when factoring in that Beau hit his driver less than 200-yards and had a penchant for finding the rough, felt as satisfying for Mustang as a bogey-free round filled with birdies.
After then grabbing some lunch with Beau inside the clubhouse – his treat, obviously – the rest of Mustang’s day, save for a quick ‘power nap’ he stole underneath Old Abe for forty minutes, looked pretty similar to how his morning had gone. Because he was off grinding on his game. Out on the practice putting green behind the clubhouse. Back up at the range with another few baskets of balls, this time focusing on his short game. He even went so far as to go back out and play another 18-holes in the late afternoon, hitting two balls off-the-tee and playing whichever one was in the worst shape. In fact, so engrossed was he in his practice and what he was doing that, come seven o’clock, Ray actually had to come up from the workshop when he was finished work and tell Mustang it was time to go home because he’d lost track of time hitting shots out of one of the greenside bunkers at 18.
And, yet, whilst such an intense day of practice would have probably seen your regular weekend warrior crying ‘Uncle’ and not wanting to set foot on a golf course for, at least, a good fortnight, the next two mornings in a row when Ray’s alarm, once again, went off just before dawn and he dragged himself wearily down the hall to go about getting a much-needed cup of coffee, Mustang was already dressed and waiting in the kitchen with his clubs and shoes, all set to go off and repeat what he’d done the day before. And he did exactly that. A two-hour range session first thing. 18-holes of foursomes with Beau. An hour of putting practice. A one-hour range session focusing on his short game. A second 18-holes. Then bunker work until it was time to go home.
Three hard days-in-a-row of grinding. That’s what Mustang subjected himself to. Three straight days of hitting hundreds of balls, rolling countless putts, and burning through golf gloves like they were made of tissue paper.
And if he’d let him, Ray knew full well that Mustang would have gone out and happily made it four days-in-a-row by heading back to the Creek on Sunday morning. After seeing the painful-looking blisters which had formed on his hands when he collected him at the 18th green Saturday evening, though – coupled with the fact he was then practically falling asleep during their dinner at ‘Renée’s’ – Ray put his foot down and added a new point to their master plan: ‘Mandatory rest days’.
Though such a decision was vehemently protested by Mustang, with him stating he felt perfectly fine and that his hands weren’t as sore as they looked, come the next morning when Ray got up to head to work for the Sunday rush, whilst he did, as expected, find Mustang, again, waiting in the kitchen with his clubs and golf shoes, the defiance of his stance against being forced to rest had been somewhat dulled by the fact he’d dozed off at the kitchen table. After rousing him from his sleep and forcing him to go back to bed – a move which, this time around, didn’t see much in the way of protest on his behalf – Ray then cleared away the bowl of cereal Mustang had been eating before succumbing to his exhaustion and left for the Creek.
Now waking up a few hours later, however, such was the quality and depth of sleep he’d had that, for a moment, Mustang found himself in one of those heavy-eyed stupors where he wasn’t quite sure if he’d only been asleep for an hour or an entire week had passed. After throwing his arm over towards the dresser alongside his bed and grabbing his phone, though, one look at the screen promptly told him that it was, indeed, still Sunday and it had just gone noon. Though annoyed he’d allowed himself to miss a day of practice, once Mustang pulled the covers back and threw his legs out over the side of his bed, the overall aching sensation he felt radiating out from every muscle in his body –including muscles he’d yet to even formally make the acquaintance of – told him that perhaps Ray had been right to make him sit the day out.
Feeling a lot better in himself after grabbing a shower, Mustang shuffled into the living room with a bowl of cereal – one he had every intention of actually eating this time around – and turned on the T.V. After a fruitless trawl through the few local cable channels they had left him with a choice of either watching reruns of a soap opera or some guy walking you through how best to use your own arm as bait to snag a catfish, Mustang suddenly remembered an idea he’d had the night before. Though he and Ray were all set to sit down later and watch the official announcement of the U.S. Team that was going to be happening during the broadcast of the final round of the Northern Trust – a prestigious slot that only someone like Dallas Rugger could command – Mustang figured the best way he could fill the two or so hours before Ray would be back from the Creek and Dallas would be telling Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo the names of the eleven players he’d be bringing to Seminole, would be to do a little scouting on the team they’d be looking to topple once they got there.
So, after syncing up his phone with the T.V. – as he figured the chances of him ever actually needing to know how to catch a catfish on the end of his arm were quite low – Mustang settled in to watch the highlights from the last two Walker Cups. And it made for sobering viewing. Because Mustang knew that this Great Britain & Ireland team were good, the fact they’d won the last two matches was testament enough to that. But now that he was actually seeing them in action for the first time, it quickly became apparent just how good they really were – and one didn’t have to look all that hard to see what, or, more accurately, ‘who’, was the driving force behind their recent dominance. That core of players Dallas had mentioned at the Creek – the Riggs Twins, the Campbell Cousins, Maddox Breckon, Finn Hennessy – those six individuals that made Great Britain and Ireland run like a well-oiled machine and who consistently kept the leaderboard ticking over, Mustang could see now that they were just as formidable as they’d been described. And after pulling out Ray’s laptop to do some extra digging in order to find out a little more about them as he watched them play, that idea was only hammered home further for Mustang.
Charlie and Reggie Riggs, the 23-year old identical twins from London, though their individual records in the singles made for pretty middling reading, their record as a foursomes pair was where they’d made their legacy as integral parts of the Great Britain & Ireland team. Because of the six foursomes matches they’d played in across the last three Walker Cups – their first coming at Royal Lytham back in 2014 – not only had the Riggs Twins never been beaten, but in all six of those matches they’d never needed anything more than 16 holes to put a blue point up on the board.
When the Walker Cup descended on the Los Angeles Country Club for the 46th edition of the match back in 2018, however, Reggie and Charlie were no longer the only players on the Great Britain & Ireland team with a familial connection, as that was the year the fiery Campbell Cousins made their debut. Growing up on the north coast of Scotland where their skills were honed and iron wills forged on wind-blown, rainswept links courses, the Campbell Cousins, Hamish and Fraser, burst onto the scene in LA where, despite only being 17 and 16 at the time, they each amassed a perfect record, winning both of the foursomes matches they played and their two singles matches; a feat they would, impressively, then go on to repeat two years later at Royal Liverpool when they helped Great Britain & Ireland to their second win-in-a-row.
The one quirk with the Campbells, though, is that, unlike the Riggs Twins who always played together in foursomes, Hamish and Fraser were always split up in the order and paired with other players on the team because, according to reports, they tended “to clash” when they played with one another – as evidenced by the fact that the week of that same Walker Cup in Los Angeles the pair of them almost came to blows when the idea of them being a potential foursomes pair was trialed during an infamously hot-tempered practice round.
Then, of course, there was Finn Hennessy and Maddox Breckon. Hailing from Ireland and Wales respectively, Finn and Maddox, in just their two appearances at the Walker Cup, had fast become, quite possibly, the most important two members of the six-strong core. Each armed with a razor-sharp wit and unyielding confidence in themselves, Finn’s and Maddox’s brash demeanours and on-course antics had, all at once, made them ‘must see’ viewing for those watching at home, but had also helped cultivate this infectious aura of invincibility amongst the Great Britain & Ireland team that had seen them capture the Walker Cup four years previously and keep it east of the Atlantic ever since.
In the course of his digging into ‘The Six’ and the impact they’d had on turning around Great Britain & Ireland’s fortunes in the Walker Cup, however, Mustang came across another just-as-important factor in their recent success – their Captain.
Following Great Britain & Ireland’s crushing defeat in 2014 at Royal Lytham, their third such loss in a row at the hands of the Americans, the R&A realized they’d reached a point where drastic changes were needed if they were to have any chance at reclaiming the Walker Cup. So, the search for the answer to their problem began. And where that search ended up finishing was at the feet of one Desmond Finch. Though part of the victorious Great Britain & Ireland side who toppled the States in 1994 when the Walker Cup was hosted at Royal Porthcawl in Wales, the enigmatic Desmond was seen by many outside – and, even, inside – the R&A as a risky choice to hand over the captaincy to. He was quite young in comparison to their recent choices for captain, having just turned 40 at the time. After his one and only appearance at the ‘94 Walker Cup, he disappeared off the elite amateur map, ceasing to compete in any high-level tournaments. And whilst his quiet, methodical disposition may have been useful in helping him make his fortune in the tech industry, for many, they felt it may not exactly be the best fit to deliver the motivation needed for Great Britain & Ireland to challenge the Americans.
Two years later when they were watching the Walker Cup trophy being hoisted by the Great Britain & Ireland team on the 18th green of the Los Angeles Country Club, however – after, it must be said, a dominating performance masterminded by Desmond and his just-as-mysterious backroom team – those very same doubters quickly changed their tunes and were the ones calling for him to be instated as captain right the way through until the 2022 match at St. Andrews.
“HEY, KID! I’M BACK!”
Pausing the interview he’d been watching of Desmond Finch from two years previously, Mustang looked up from the screen of the laptop like he’d just woken from a trance and cast his attention off towards the door of the living room just as a flustered-looking Ray walked in through it.
“Oh, so you’re in here,” said Ray, sounding a touch apologetic as he took in the sight of where Mustang had set up mission control on the sofa, his long-since finished bowl of cereal still discarded on the floor. “Sorry, I’m late – the place was crazy today.”
Having felt as though he’d done enough research for the afternoon, Mustang closed down the laptop and popped it down alongside where he was sitting. “Yeah, it’s cool, don’t worry …” he said, taking a moment to stretch out his arms and back. “You’re just in time for the announcement anyway, it should be starting soon.”
“Starting soon?” repeated Ray, his apologetic tone now replaced with one of confusion as he watched Mustang lift up each of the sofa cushions in search of the remote. “Kid … Dallas already announced the team.”
“What?!” snapped Mustang, now taking his turn to sound confused as he, momentarily, called off the search for the missing remote. “But he wasn’t supposed to be announcing it until three, right?! Did he do it early or something?!”
Ray peeled off his signature baseball cap, the sides of which were stained with sweat after a long day out in the sun, and held it in his hands, flexing the already heavily curved visor as he did so. “Kid, it’s 4:30,” Ray said, explaining the mix-up. “You must have lost track of time.”
“Are you serious?!” groaned Mustang, irritated with himself that he’d made such a stupid mistake.
“Yeah, that’s what I was apoligizin’ for,” answered Ray, watching as a frustrated Mustang just shook his head back and forth in annoyance with himself. “Cause I thought I’d missed watchin’ it with you – and, especially so, given what happened.”
With all irritation with himself now instantly dissipating upon hearing that, a suddenly worried-looking Mustang turned and looked at Ray. “What does that mean?! What happened?!” he asked, his concern levels growing exponentially with each passing second as if someone had just thrown a canister of gas on a bonfire. “Did Dallas not announce me as the alternate or something?!”
“No, no, it’s nothin’ like that!” replied Ray, moving quickly to reassure Mustang and dampen down the fire before it could spread. “Dallas announced you as the alternate, don’t worry …”
“But …” said Mustang, sensing it coming by the tone of Ray’s voice.
“Well, just before he announced that you were gonna be the alternate …” explained Ray, choosing his words carefully whilst, at the same time, internally cursing his bad luck that he had to be the one to break the news. “Dallas had worked his way down through slots one to nine on the team, right? Like, callin’ out each person’s name and sayin’ where they were from and such.”
“Ok …” Mustang said, now suspicious of what was, obviously, still to come.
“Well, when he announced who the tenth player was gonna be …” Ray continued, forcing the words out of his mouth as part of the ‘rip the band-aid’ approach he’d decided to take. “Let’s just say, I didn’t need Dallas to tell me where he was from …”
“Because?” said Mustang, asking the question even though his gut was already hinting it may have an idea who Ray was talking about.
“Cause it was Byron, kid,” said Ray, confirming Mustang’s gut reaction. “Byron Ballas.”
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