This is what Mustang had wanted. He was sure of it. Him and Finn? The fate of the Walker Cup coming down to the result of their match? Had he known at lunchtime that this was how things were going to work out, Mustang would have thought that it couldn’t have been scripted any better.
Yet, as he’d walked down the 18th fairway – a walk that had felt noticeably shorter than what it had done in the foursomes – he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he’d wanted this. Any of it.
Yes, he’d experienced pressure before, but this was something else entirely. This was how he’d felt on the 1st-tee before the foursomes session, except now, not only was it a hundred times worse than what it had been before hitting that opening drive against the Riggs Brothers, but this time it wasn’t even waiting for him to get a club in his hand before wrapping its icy grip around his throat. It was like, all of a sudden, it wasn’t even a golf match anymore. It was something else. Something primal. Something that was causing Mustang’s senses to sharpen to such an intense degree that it almost began to feel overwhelming just to be awake; like a dome had descended over Seminole, trapping every sound, every conversation, every roar, and it was now amplifying them through a speaker that felt as though it was sitting right next to Mustang’s head.
And, yet, as Mustang looked further up the fairway at Finn, he was showing no such discomfort. Sure, he looked a touch more focused – perhaps not as hyper or playing up to the crowd as he had been previously. But, going on appearances alone, the fiery Irishman seemed fine. He was standing a few paces back from his ball, casually sipping from a bottle of water in-between taking bites from a half-eaten banana. He was watching his caddie, Bucks, already going through the process of getting a yardage for his second shot; a process which – as it had done all afternoon – involved him pacing back and forth as if he were tracking a wild animal, and then mumbling quietly to himself as he scribbled inside a battered leather yardage book. And, every now and then, Finn would even look off to the side of the fairway and fire a thumbs-up at those Great Britain & Ireland supporters dotted amongst the crowd who were using the break in play to shout words of encouragement in his direction.
Basically, Finn just looked as though he was about to hit any other shot. It was as if the scale and sheer magnitude of the moment he found himself in had gone completely over his head, leaving him so content, and so utterly relaxed within his own skin, that he felt comfortable enough to just sit back and chill out until it was his turn to play.
“188,” said Ray, his voice causing Mustang to jump ever so slightly as he finally arrived back to where he’d left him next to his bag.
“Huh?” mumbled Mustang, tearing his eyes away from Finn and looking up at Ray.
“188,” said Ray, repeating the number he’d mentioned, albeit a tad louder. “That’s what we have left to the pin.”
“Oh, yeah …” replied Mustang, still sounding a touch distracted. “So, uh … what are you thinking? 4? Arnie, maybe?”
Ray drew a torn breath in through his teeth, punctuating it with a contemplative tut. “Well, if the wind stays as flat as it is right now?” he said, weighing up his suggestions as he was detailing them aloud. “I’d say Arnie. One of those full-bore, high, towerin’ fades of yours? Could be perfect. That bein’ said, though, the only drawback is that you’d have to hit it perfectly – I mean, catchin’ every bit of it and then some. If you go with the 4, though? There’s a little more room for error. You can choke down on it; saw it off; get it runnin’ up the front of the green, and still end up pretty close. It just comes down to whichever one you’re feelin’ more confident you can pull off. Though, if I can make just one more suggestion on top of all that?”
“Sure,” replied Mustang, finding it strange that Ray felt the need to ask.
“Whichever one you do choose?” continued Ray, allowing himself the smallest of smiles. “Might I suggest wearin’ your glove when you hit it?”
Having seen him gesture down at it, Mustang looked sleepily down at his left hand and realized that Ray was right – he’d been so distracted with everything since leaving the tee-box that he’d forgotten to put on his glove.
“Sorry …” said Mustang, sounding genuinely apologetic as he hurriedly pulled his glove from the back pocket of his trousers and went about putting it on. “I should have known.”
“Hey, kid, don’t worry …” said Ray, looking to reassure Mustang that it really was no big deal. “I was only kiddin’ around!”
“Yeah, but still …” Mustang grumbled, sounding annoyed with himself as he tore open the velcro on his glove. “I should’ve had it on already.”
Right as he began to squeeze his hand inside the glove, however – smoothing out the wrinkles that had formed there over the course of the day – Mustang suddenly noticed something troubling.
Something he thought he’d left behind him on the 1st-tee against the Riggs Brothers.
His hand … it was shaking.
“Not again …” he thought, heart sinking, as he squeezed his hand shut to stop the tremor.
“You alright?” Ray asked, looking back down at Mustang after taking a quick second to check that his math for the yardage was, indeed, correct. “Somethin’ wrong with your glove?”
“No, it’s fine,” said Mustang, moving quickly to squash the topic for fear it would lead to Ray noticing his hands. “Just making sure it’s on right.”
After taking a second to pull the tab across his glove, the feeling of the leather stretching taut around his fingers actually helping to temporarily alleviate the tremor he was trying so desperately to hide, Mustang couldn’t help himself from stealing another look in Finn’s direction. Like Ray, Bucks had clearly come up with the required number for their second shot, as Finn was now leaning on, what appeared to be, a 7-iron. The longer Mustang looked at him, though, the worse his own nerves began to get. He just couldn’t fathom how Finn was looking so relaxed. Did he not care as much as Mustang did? Was that his trick? Or was it something else?
Either way, with his hands beginning to quiver once again, Mustang knew he had to try and get his nerves under control. Somehow. Some way. Because having already experienced what it was like to stand over a ball and find himself unable to pull the trigger, Mustang was going to be damned if he was going to go through that again – and especially not now that he was in a straight-up shootout.
The problem, though, was that the one thing he felt that might actually help him corral his rapidly fleeing nerves was the one thing that was impossible for him to get – a moment alone. Just a few minutes where he could be completely on his own. No noise. No people. No anything. Just him, his thoughts, and some time to wade through them. But given he was currently surrounded by a few thousand people and an army of television cameras – never mind the fact he could spy some of the match officials beginning to cast impatient glances in his direction – Mustang knew, from top to bottom, that idea was just a non-runner.
Right as he began to lament the lack of nearby port-a-johns for him to abscond to like he had at the Memorial, however, that thought, suddenly, sparked another idea in Mustang’s head. An idea he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of already. In the final of the Memorial, when he was struggling to get a read on the putt he had to win the match and beat Byron, Ray had told Mustang to close his eyes, take three deep breaths, and imagine it was just the two of them on the green, just like it had been when Ray had given him his first taste of proper golf by bringing him out to play Dead Man’s Alley late in the evenings after he’d finished caddying for the day. And, despite Mustang’s reservations about the idea, it had worked. He’d closed his eyes. Taken three deep breaths as instructed. And when he’d reopened his eyes? Everyone was gone. All of the crowd surrounding the green and those gathered on the fairway in front of it. Byron and his caddie. Even all the noise had disappeared. And, as it turned out, those few moments of peace in, what he’d later describe to Ray as ‘The Void’, wound up being exactly what Mustang had needed.
So, figuring he’d nothing to lose by, at least, trying to see if it would work again, Mustang closed his eyes and set about taking those same three deep breaths.
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
Upon exhaling on the third breath, though reluctant to open them, Mustang began to gradually break the seal between his eyelids. And as the sight of the fairway came slowly back into view, Mustang quickly realized that his plan had worked … because it was completely empty! Finn? Gone. The match officials? Gone. The cameramen? Gone. Ray? Gone. Even as Mustang turned his head and looked off in the direction of the green, there wasn’t a soul in sight – it was as though he’d snuck onto the course during those summer months when Seminole shuts down to escape the worst of the oppressive Floridian heat.
“I can’t believe it actually worked …” thought Mustang, gently shaking his head in disbelief as he took in the sight of the Void for the first time in months.
“That’s a hell of a trick, Oscar …” said Fletcher.
Mustang whipped around, immediately looking off behind him with widened, fearful eyes. He’d heard Fletcher’s voice. He knew he had. And it had come from right behind him. Yet, like everywhere else, the fairway, stretching all the way back towards the tee-box, was completely deserted. Knowing this was nothing more than his own mind playing tricks on him – the anxiety he was feeling throwing a tantrum that he was trying, and succeeding, to ignore it – Mustang attempted to refocus. With one more wary look over his shoulder to make sure that there was, indeed, no one there, Mustang turned his attention back towards the green.
As soon as he did this, however, that’s when he saw him.
Fletcher.
Standing no more than 4-feet away from him.
“Pity it ain’t gonna do a damn thing to help ya, though …” he grinned, a malicious glint in his eye.
“Mustang!”
Shaking his head as if waking from a nightmare, Mustang’s eyes sprung open. Having been his voice that pulled him from the Void, Mustang – who was still trying to gather himself – turned and looked at Ray, who was now staring directly at him, concern etched across his heavily tanned face.
“You alright?!” Ray asked, trying his best to not draw any further attention to Mustang than what there already was from the nearby television cameras who, like a pack of bloodhounds, had sniffed out that there may be some potential drama unfolding.
Mustang, however, was in another world entirely. He still knew that he’d only imagined seeing Fletcher – he knew that. It wasn’t like he was going crazy or anything. It was just that, even though he’d been nothing more than a figment of his imagination, Fletcher had seemed so painfully real. The way he’d stared a hole straight through him. The subtle look of contempt in his eyes hiding behind the always ‘picture-ready’ smile. It had all been there. And, yet, as Mustang had to keep telling himself, it hadn’t been. Because Fletcher wasn’t at Seminole. He wasn’t. He was holed up somewhere in South Carolina. No doubt watching all of this unfold before his very eyes and loving every second.
The trouble, though, was that ever since he’d called him – as much as he’d been trying to convince himself otherwise – Fletcher had gotten so far under Mustang’s skin, so deeply entrenched inside his head, that from the moment he’d teed-off in the singles, Mustang hadn’t just been playing against Finn … he’d been playing against Fletcher as well. Carrying him around the course like a weight around his neck. Every step. Every shot. Every putt. And the worst thing is that Mustang had no idea how to get rid of him.
“Uh … yeah, sorry …” said Mustang, scrambling to try and remember how exactly to act like a functioning human being. “I just got, uh … a little distracted.”
Looking to shift the focus off of how peculiar he was acting, Mustang began to rummage through his irons. “So, uh …” he said, still trying to compose himself. “You said you think Arnie can get me there, right?”
“Yeah …” answered Ray, reluctantly moving with Mustang changing the subject despite his reservations about how he was really doing. “The wind’s still down, so if you think you can get the strike? It should get you close.”
Answering with just a simple nod of the head as the act of speaking was still feeling somewhat challenging, Mustang pulled Arnie clumsily from his bag, took up his usual position a few paces back from his ball, and focused his attention off down the fairway. Unlike how it had been a few moments earlier in the Void, the crowd had now returned. Lining the right-hand side of the fairway all the way up to the green. Their long shadows and those of the palm trees behind them streaking the fairway. Each of them vying for the best possible vantage point. Yet, oddly enough, with all of his energy focused on trying to not think about Fletcher, the crowd may as well have not been there for the amount of attention Mustang was actually paying them. In fact, such was his eagerness to keep the idea of Fletcher’s grinning, goading face as far from his mind as possible that, before he really knew what he was doing, Mustang had stepped in behind his ball and addressed it.
And from there?
He just went on pure instinct.
THWWWIIIPPPPP!!!!
Though not getting the perfect strike Ray had asked for, Mustang could feel that he’d caught enough of Arnie’s sweet spot to automatically know where to look as soon he turned his head skyward to see where his ball was flying. And, sure enough, in the exact window he’d pictured, standing out against the hazy blue sky, Mustang spied his ball. It was heading for the left-hand side of the green, perhaps a little further left than what he would’ve planned, but, luckily, it was fading steadily back to the right on a beautiful line. Even when the wind Ray had been worried about began to pick back up just as it hit the airspace directly above the green there was no need to worry, as the salty breeze actually caused Mustang’s ball to balloon just enough that it lost some of the harmful speed it was carrying and saw it begin to drop like it had just been shot out of the sky.
And when it eventually pitched on the green some 12-feet left of the pin? A mighty roar went up from the crowd surrounding the green. Because, yes, Mustang’s ball was by no means dead. Not by a longshot. And having seen all the other matches come through before his, and watched other people try and fail to sink putts from a similar position as that to where his ball had just come to a stop, they knew how difficult a putt it really was. But at least his ball was on the green. Which meant he was still in with a chance to give them the fairytale ending they were so desperate to see.
Not that Mustang was thinking about any of this, of course.
Instead, as soon as he knew his ball had landed on the green, Mustang had just handed Arnie back to Ray and set about taking off his glove. And it’s not that he wasn’t happy with where his ball had finished – given he couldn’t even remember really hitting it, all things considered, they’d worked out far better than how he’d imagined they would before stepping in to address it.
No, the reason for Mustang’s lack of reaction was simply down to the fact that he knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Far from it. Yes, he’d managed to find the green with his second shot, but in spite of that, Mustang could still feel Fletcher’s shadow looming over him. It was like he was a virus that was after infecting him. Causing him to doubt himself at every turn. Question things about himself that he had always just taken for granted.
And the mere act of trying to fight Fletcher off? To stop his poison from spreading and making him feel worse than what he already did? It was taking every ounce of concentration and what little energy Mustang had left to give. In fact, so intense was the level of focus he was putting into keeping at bay any thoughts about Fletcher or what he’d said to him on the range, that Mustang didn’t even notice when Finn hit his approach shot into 18. He’d heard the crowd, obviously, their reaction telling him that Finn hadn’t exactly knocked down the flag – after all, he didn’t necessarily need to. But, frankly, Mustang couldn’t have cared less. If a thought or action wasn’t going to help him stay focused on the task at hand, he wasn’t going to entertain it. Because, at his core, he knew that if he could just hold it together for the next ten minutes? Then maybe – just maybe – he could drum up one more moment of magic.
So, from the moment he and Ray walked onto the green, and after he’d promptly fixed his pitch mark and thrown a coin down behind his ball – leaving the stage clear for Finn who had finished 3-feet further back from where his effort had settled – Mustang’s sole aim had been to keep himself as mentally cut-off from everything that was happening around him as possible. The warm reception they’d been greeted with? The crowd sealing off the exits by filling in the fairway in front of the green? The camera operators busily trying to get those perfect, ‘oh-so-tense’ shots of Dallas and Desmond as they waited to see the result? Mustang’s and Finn’s respective teammates squeezing their way through the crowd and taking up positions greenside, eagerly waiting to see which one of them would get to sprint out onto the green to begin deliriously celebrating? Mustang didn’t notice any of it.
Instead, as all that had been happening, he’d just been standing off to the side of the green, leaning on his putter, and looking down at his ball. Rolling it around between his fingers. Carefully examining the writing on it – paying particular attention, of course, to the number ‘16’ Bill had gotten specially printed underneath the Bridgestone logo. He even took to counting the actual dimples on the ball, such was his determination to keep his mind from wandering. And, to his credit, Mustang’s plan worked. In the entire time it had taken Finn and Bucks to carefully examine his putt, plotting out every break and minor undulation until they were confident with the picture he had in his mind for what it was going to do, Mustang hadn’t lifted his head once to see what they were doing.
When he noticed a tense, stony silence fall over the green, however – the kind of silence that could really only mean Finn was getting ready to putt – Mustang couldn’t help himself from taking off the blinkers and getting a look at the scene in front of him. Just as he’d suspected, Finn was, indeed, just moving in behind his ball, a horde of television cameras and photographers tracking his every move from the side of the green like they were a bunch of tourists on safari. As Finn went about carefully working his way through his pre-shot routine, though – one which, while undoubtedly methodical, was usually carried out in a suitably brisk fashion – after depriving it of even an inch of room to stretch its legs in the preceding few minutes, Mustang’s mind began to see how much slack it had to work with.
“If he makes this …” he thought, watching as Finn began to gently swat the head of his putter back and forth as he entered the ‘practice strokes’ portion of his routine. “Then it’s all over. No matter what I do, we can’t win.”
And to Mustang’s horror, the more that thought turned into a realization, the more a warm, soothing sensation of relief began to spread throughout his chest. The idea that Finn could end all of this with just one simple stroke of his putter? Completely remove any and all possible influence over the result from Mustang’s hands? It seemed like such a tempting proposition. No one could blame him. No one could say he should have done this or should have done that. He’d be off the hook. Free as a bird.
“That’s enough!” thought Mustang, saying the words sharply in his head as he quickly put the leash back on his runaway mind – clearly, it couldn’t be trusted.
Mustang looked back over at Finn just in time to see him settle the head of his putter down behind his ball. He was finally ready. He took one more look at the hole, then dropped his eyes back down over his ball. He drew the blade of his putter back … rocked his shoulders … and hit the putt. All Mustang could hear was the quiet whirr of the shutters on the photographers’ cameras and the excited, combined intake of breath from the crowd as all eyes turned to watching Finn’s ball rolling across the green. And straightaway Mustang could tell that it was looking good. The pace. The line. They were both perfect. And he wasn’t the only one to recognize it.
Having seen it glide across the first 10-feet that stood between it and the hole exactly as he’d hoped it would, Finn raised his putter high up over his head and began to walk backwards across the green, eyes never leaving his ball. Because as far as he was concerned, this was a done deal. And to look at his ball as it got to within 4-feet, Mustang couldn’t blame Finn for feeling so confident.
Because 3-feet out?
It was still looking good.
2-feet out?
It was looking even better.
A foot out?
A nailed-on certainty.
Finn pulled back his arm in preparation to deliver his biggest fist-pump of the afternoon.
Mustang held his breath.
Whatever came next? He was ready for it.
Finn’s ball grabbed a piece of the left edge …
Ran around the back of the hole …
BUT THEN LIPPED OUT!
“OOOOOOHHHHHHH!” groaned the crowd, unable to fully believe what they’d just witnessed.
Their disbelief, however, was nothing compared to that which had just hit Finn. After looking in from the moment it had left the face of his putter, to have seen his ball, somehow, not drop, Finn could only turn away and walk to the opposite side of the green, his hands and putter thrown despairingly up over his head as he stared out at the ocean, a bewildered shake of his head his only comfort.
As shocking as it had been for the crowd to see Finn’s putt lip-out, however, that shock soon began to transform into feverish excitement as the realization of what this actually meant began to dawn on them: Mustang now had a putt to win the Walker Cup.
This, though, had not been lost on Mustang himself. In fact, as soon as he’d seen Finn’s ball swoop around the back edge of the hole and lip-out, Mustang had set about getting ready for his putt so quickly that, by the time Finn had turned back around from looking out at the ocean, he’d already conceded his par putt, replaced his own ball on the green, and was already in the process of getting his initial read on what the line was.
As confident as this outward display of efficiency may have made him appear to those gathered around the green, however, Mustang was feeling anything but. Because this was it. The hopes of Dallas and the rest of the American team? The expectations of everyone watching at home? Those of his grandfather? Of Fr. Breen and the Pirates? Not to mention Ray’s, who had gotten so used to seeing him deliver in times just like these? The weight of it all just made Mustang feel as though he was caught in a hydraulic press, just being slowly and unrelentingly crushed on all sides. And the only thing he could think of to try and possibly alleviate that pressure? Was to do the exact thing that had seen him wind up in this position in the first place: play golf.
So, Mustang studied his putt. He traced his eyes back and forth between his ball and the hole. Picked apart the subtle cambers in the tightly mown surface. Dissected the various changes in grain. And in the end … wound up with nothing. He’d looked at the green like he usually would on any other putt. Done everything the exact same. Yet, as Mustang now stood back up and stared off at the hole, he was drawing a complete blank as to what his ball was going to do.
Which meant, in reality, he really only had one option left. The one silver bullet that could even possibly pull this dire situation out of the fire and see him secure the Walker Cup for the United States – even if he knew what the potential consequences could be.
So, Mustang pulled the trigger and closed his eyes. Then, just three deep breaths later? He was back in the same deserted Void – well, almost deserted.
“Look who’s back!” said Fletcher, right on cue, as he strode into Mustang’s eye line from somewhere off behind him. “I was thinkin’ I wasn’t done seein’ you!”
“You’re not real …” said Mustang, trying his best to ignore Fletcher and just concentrate on getting the line he needed. “I’m just imagining you.”
“That may well be true, Oscar,” replied Fletcher, now walking around the back of the hole, his hands casually placed inside the pockets on his trousers. “But have you thought to ask yourself why you’re imaginin’ me? I mean, this is your imagination, right? So, by that logic, if you don’t want me here … you can just make me disappear, no?”
Forgetting about the line for a second, Mustang quickly squeezed his eyes shut and began to will with all his might for Fletcher to be gone when he opened them back up. And when he did, indeed, tentatively reopen them? Mustang was relieved to see that it had actually worked … or, at least, that’s what he’d thought.
“See?!” spat Fletcher, now suddenly standing right alongside Mustang. “You can’t do it! And you wanna know why?! It ain’t ‘cause you didn’t like what I said about there bein’ a break in you – which is probably what you’ve been tellin’ yourself. Naw. It’s ‘cause deep down, Oscar? You know that I’m right.”
“No, I don’t …” growled Mustang, his brow now furrowing in concentration as he glared at the hole, desperately willing himself to see the same illuminated line projected onto the green that he had when he’d done this at the Memorial.
“Yes, you do!” snapped Fletcher, now standing on the other side of Mustang. “There’s a break in you, Oscar! It’s why you wanted Finn to make his putt, and why you still can’t see the line on this one! You’re looking for a way out because you know you aren’t built for this!”
Mustang shook his head sharply. Going back into the Void was a mistake. He’d known that going in, but now it had been hammered home. Hearing the crowd beginning to get antsy with how long he was taking, Mustang moved hurriedly in behind his ball and addressed it, even though he was still completely clueless as to what the actual line was.
He looked off at the hole, hoping against hope that this time he’d see something, anything, that would tell him where to aim.
Instead, all he saw was Fletcher.
“Stop trying to fight it, Oscar!” he barked, now standing directly in the way of the hole, the crowd and everybody else, once more, no longer in sight.
“No!” snarled Mustang, shaking his head once again.
The crowd was back, and they weren’t sounding any less impatient. Mustang quickly dropped his eyes back over his ball. It began to move in and out of focus, going from clear to blurry with every other blink as he felt a prominent pulsing sensation building in intensity behind each of his eyes.
“You want to miss …” said Fletcher, his voice pulling Mustang’s attention away from his ball and back out towards the hole where he was still standing. “So, just do it! And this will all be over!”
Mustang looked back down at his ball. His hands were trembling on the grip, and he could feel his muscles beginning to lock up. It was happening again. The same thing that had happened on the 1st-tee in the foursomes. He was running out of time.
“Just do it, Oscar!” barked Fletcher again, each word now landing like a physical blow. “Do it!”
Mustang forced his putter in behind his ball.
“DO IT!” shouted Fletcher, his voice now so loud Mustang swore he could almost feel his breath on his neck. “MISS! DO IT!”
With a pained, stiff turn of his head, Mustang took one more look at the hole. The crowd now looked as though they were glitching in and out; like the boundaries between reality and the Void were colliding, causing the two of them to splice together in a disorientating, chaotic swirl.
“DO IT!” yelled Fletcher angrily, suddenly appearing just millimetres away from Mustang’s face.
Needing desperately for this to be over, Mustang dropped his eyes back down over his ball.
Nothing was worth this torture.
Nothing.
So, he hit the putt.
And then … silence.
Peaceful, untainted silence. No more Fletcher. No more crowd. Not even the mighty Atlantic could infiltrate Mustang’s head. It was like time itself had slowed down, cocooning him in a bubble of blissful isolation.
One that allowed him to think again.
To breathe again.
And, for a moment, Mustang actually forgot where he was … until he looked over at Ray that is.
Because as soon as he did? And he saw the dejected look on his face? Where Mustang was came rushing back like a devastating tsunami.
With wide, horrified eyes, he turned and looked at the hole.
And that’s when he saw it.
Sitting about a foot to the right of the hole. His ball. Now at a complete standstill as the Great Britain & Ireland team swarmed the green to begin celebrating with an ecstatic-looking Finn.
Mustang had missed.
Worst of all, though, as he glanced at Dallas and the rest of the American team, each of them looking as though they’d just been punched straight into the stomach, all Mustang could think was the one thing he’d been trying to deny all afternoon.
Perhaps Fletcher was right after all.
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