Mustang had vague recollections of having a lot of bad chest infections when he was really young; ones that would leave him with these gratingly-loud, bark-like coughs that made him sound as though he’d inadvertently swallowed a beat-up car engine somewhere in-between his steady diet of PB&J sandwiches and off-brand Capri-Suns.
Among those various chest infections, however – the majority of which had all become harder to distinguish from one another as they’d descended deeper and deeper into the mists of time – there was one in particular that, no matter the years that passed, had always remained forever burned in Mustang’s memory.
He was about 5-years old, maybe just about to turn 6, and having been coughing and spluttering since two nights prior, he’d woken up in the middle of the third night feeling … odd. And for whatever reason – to this day he still didn’t know what exactly had made him do it – Mustang had crept into the tiny bathroom of the apartment where he and his mom had been staying at the time and climbed up onto the bathtub so that he could see himself in the reflection of the small, mirrored cabinet up over the sink. And through the moonlight seeping in through the window of the bathroom – with the chipped porcelain covering the bathtub cold beneath his bare feet – Mustang could see that his lips were after turning blue, something which, even though he was only 5, he had guessed probably wasn’t a good thing.
Having noticed in the interim that he was no longer sleeping alongside her, Mustang’s mom – looking understandably bleary-eyed after a long day at work – had then staggered out into the bathroom to see what he was doing. Once she saw the colour of his lips, however, and heard how laboured his breathing was? Well, the bleariness wasn’t long disappearing from Lori’s eyes as she quickly realized just how badly he needed help.
And from there? That’s when Mustang remembered how things had begun to just kind of happen around him.
His mom scooping him up into her arms, running out of their apartment in her bare feet, and desperately banging on the door of their neighbours’ apartment – one belonging to an elderly couple by the name of the Antanoffs who’d been incredibly sweet to them since they’d moved in.
Mrs Antanoff wrapping Mustang in a blanket, before her husband, Mr Antanoff, had belied his 80-years by plucking him from his mom’s arms and rushing him down the seven flights of stairs needed to reach their old station wagon parked outside.
All four of them racing across town to the nearest hospital as Mrs Antanoff kept telling him to stay awake while his mom anxiously rubbed his hair in the backseat.
Mr Antanoff then grabbing him once again when they reached the hospital and hurriedly lugging him through the cool night air into the emergency room, demanding he be seen immediately.
And all of that was before Mustang had even begun to be treated by the doctors and nurses who’d quickly sprung into action by slapping a mask over his face and getting some much-needed oxygen into him as he lay helpless in his mother’s arms.
It was just one of those nights where Mustang knew something serious was going on – the most serious thing that, up until that point in his life, he could actually remember happening to him – but it had almost felt as though he was weirdly detached from it; like he was just watching it happen to himself as opposed to truly experiencing it.
Now, realistically, was that more than likely because he was in a mild version of shock? Maybe throw in the fact he hadn’t been getting as much oxygen as he should’ve? Probably, yes. But the way he’d felt that night? That feeling of being ‘mentally present’ but not necessarily tethered to his body? It was one so bizarre and so memorable that in those rare moments when he’d been reminded of that night in the ten-plus years that had gone by since it happened, Mustang, without fail, would always wonder what it would be like to have that feeling again. To see how would he handle it. To see would it be as strange as he remembered it being or, like so many things we remember from our childhoods, would it not quite have the same impact?
Well, once that volunteer had informed him – and everybody else gathered inside the locker room – that he was going to be in a playoff to decide who’d be winning that year’s Open? After nearly eleven long years, Mustang had finally gotten the opportunity to get the answers to those very questions.
Because from the second the cold, hard reality that he was going to be in a straight shootout for the Claret Jug actually sunk in for everyone? Things, once again, had just started to happen around Mustang. And whilst he was aware that they were, indeed, happening to him – just like had been the case that night when his throat had begun to swell shut on him – Mustang felt as though he was merely watching it all unfold, like some helpless onlooker seeing his own body being washed out to sea with the tide.
He’d no time to react. No time to process. He barely had time to think. It was as though someone had set a fire somewhere inside his head and the smoke was now swallowing up his brain, jamming any and all signals from getting out apart from one single thought: ‘I’m in a playoff …’
Those same four words. Repeating over and over again as if on some neverending, torturous loop. They were all Mustang could remember as he’d been shepherded out of the clubhouse, rushed past the television cameras that had been waiting for him outside, and then put into a waiting club car that had quickly sped off in the direction of the course.
‘I’m in a playoff …’
‘I’m in a playoff …’
‘I’m in a playoff …’
And, unfortunately, things didn’t improve as they’d made their way further out into the course – if anything, they began to degrade even further. Mustang’s concentration? His ability to take in his surroundings? They all began to fail, and catastrophically so at that. It was like a computer system shutting down, and what Mustang was left with? It may as well have been some kind of backup mode when there’s a blackout; this bare-bones operation that just about keeps the screen lit up.
Because for however long they were actually in that club car, as opposed to processing what hole they were headed out to or listening to Ray hurriedly explaining to him how the four-hole aggregate playoff was going to work, Mustang was only physically capable of taking in the most basic of inputs; like his brain was just taking random polaroids of their journey and that’s all it was leaving him with. Particular faces of passing strangers in the crowd. The spray flicking off the tyres of the club car as it zipped through the still soaking wet grass. Mere snapshots. Pulses of memory that seemed to blur the lines of reality, making him legitimately question whether or not he might, in fact, be dreaming.
And once they actually reached the tee-box of the par-4 2nd? What would be the first of the four-hole loop the R&A had decided upon should a playoff be required to find their champion? That feeling that he was caught somewhere in that in-between state where you’re not quite asleep, but not yet fully awake either, was only exacerbated further for Mustang by finding himself faced with the three other players who’d be vying for the Claret Jug over the next four holes in the shape of Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, and Jon Rahm.
A trio of the world’s very best players.
Countless tour wins between them, five of which were Major Championships – with Rahm, the fiery Spaniard, having only just gotten off the mark the previous month by claiming the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.
And then Mustang.
Sure, he had become somewhat desensitized to seeing these guys and the rest of golf’s bonafide ‘blue-chip stars’ over the duration of the week, be it through passing them on the range en route to warm-up or catching a glimpse of them out on the actual course itself.
But this? This was … different.
For, whilst Mustang had known that he’d been technically competing against these guys since he’d hit his opening tee-shot on Thursday, in reality, it had never truly felt like that. Because, all week, beating Fletcher to the Silver Medal had been the only tournament Mustang had cared about. From the moment he’d stepped on that plane back in New York to fly to the UK, that had been his one and only focus. As in, the idea that he was flying all the way across the Atlantic to win the Silver Medal and take a run at the Claret Jug? That was something that, honestly, Mustang had never contemplated for one solitary second – not even in a passing moment of quiet, wishful thinking when lying in bed at night. The notion that, come Sunday, he might somehow beat out the very best players in the world and claim the storied Claret Jug for himself? It was one just so outlandish and ridiculous in nature that, as far as Mustang was concerned, it didn’t even warrant thinking about – not even in a light-hearted or fanciful way.
Yet, standing on that 2nd tee-box, with the wind continuing to whip and snap angrily around them, that ‘outlandish notion’ hadn’t felt so crazy anymore. Because the fact of the matter was that the Claret Jug was now very much within Mustang’s grasp – agonizingly so. Of all the players who’d set out at the beginning of the week, all one-hundred-plus of them, just four remained. And, thanks to Caesar, Mustang was now one-quarter of that quartet … and he had no idea whatsoever how to handle that. Who could? To not only be an amateur, but a 16-year-old one at that, on the cusp of going toe-to-toe against Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, and Jon Rahm on one of the biggest stages in golf? With one of the biggest prizes in the game on the line? It was something far more than what anyone in his brand-new Nike shoes should be expected to deal with.
And, yet, like it or not, it was happening.
With the world watching, Mustang was going to have to step up and, regardless of how daunting a challenge it was, directly compete with these guys in the playoff for a Major. This was their hunting ground. The cut-throat arena that they had been moulded for; where they’d trained themselves for years to perform at the upper-most reaches of their limitless talent in search of green jackets or the rarest of silverware.
And now Mustang had to step in there as well and try to survive.
So, he did the only logical thing that he could think of to do … go into survival mode.
If this was going to be his reality for the next four holes, then – given the state he was in – the only way Mustang could think that he was going to even possibly get through it was to shut everything else out. All the noise. All the cameras. Everything. If it wasn’t Ray speaking to him; his ball; or a target to aim it at, Mustang was just going to try and separate himself from it as best he could.
So, drawing the bits of paper out of a hat to see what order they’d tee-off in? Shaking hands with Collin, Jordan, and Jon? Exchanging wishes of good luck with these superstars and telling them to “play well”? Whilst Mustang did, indeed, do all of those things, they’d all gone by in such a blur that, as he’d moved back over to the side of the tee-box where Ray was standing in order to wait on his turn to hit, he didn’t really have any recollection of doing them.
And the exact same could be said for the tee-shots of his playing partners. He’d, of course, seen them all step up to the tee and lash their opening efforts down the significantly shortened 2nd-hole – with Rahm and Morikawa both opting for 3-woods, Spieth a driving iron – but as for where their balls had actually ended up? Mustang had no clue; but going on the fact he hadn’t heard any of them desperately shouting ‘FORE!’ after they’d hit them, he reckoned they’d all been pretty happy with their respective results.
Once it was then his turn to go, however, everything had just seemed as though it had suddenly begun to move incredibly quickly for Mustang. One second he was having Ray put his driver in his hand, telling him to peel a fade off the bunker on the left-hand side of the fairway; next thing he knew he was taking the steps necessary to get in behind his already teed-up ball. It was as though someone had decided to turn on a strobe light over Royal St. George’s, where, with every disorientating flash, Mustang had found himself further and further along in the process of actually hitting his tee-shot, but certain key parts had been lost in those moments of darkness.
And the really strange thing was, it hadn’t even felt like he was consciously making the decisions to have all of these things happen. The simple act of walking? Gripping his driver? Lining himself up? It was all happening purely on instinct; that same survival mode just taking the wheel and using the experience of the thousands of shots Mustang had hit in his lifetime to guide whatever was going to happen next.
Again, there was just no time to think about what he was doing.
Nor, apparently, to even be nervous.
So, much like the large, hardy bush situated in the right-hand rough about thirty or so yards from the 2nd-fairway, itself bowing and yielding under the strength of the wind, that feeling Mustang was having? That urge to kick into auto-pilot? He just went with it.
And oddly enough … it actually worked – and not just for his opening tee-shot either, which he safely found the fairway with. Every time he stepped up to his ball over the next three and a quarter holes, be it a tee-shot, approach shot, or grinding on the greens, Mustang was striking that razor-thin balance between thinking and not thinking at all. And with each of those shots that took him closer to getting back to the 18th, Mustang found himself only growing more and more comfortable with this ad hoc rhythm he and Ray had just naturally fallen into in order to handle the extreme pressure of the circumstances they found themselves in. There had been no small-talk between them. No attempts to relax in-between shots. They had just been all business. There hadn’t even been any worrying about what the other three were doing – though, Mustang was sure Ray was more than likely keeping a sneaky tab on their scores.
It had just been a textbook case of ‘next shot’, ‘next shot’, ‘next shot’. If Mustang hit a drive, as he’d needed to down holes 9 and 17 – the 2nd and 3rd holes of the playoff loop – they would just find his ball; Ray would give him a yardage and the type of shot he wanted him to hit; then Mustang would just focus on the flag and do his utmost to pull off the shot. And it was the same story on the greens. Whilst he may have been more on his own for what he did on the short grass, the same no-nonsense approach didn’t change for Mustang. There was no extra agonizing over what a putt was going to do nor overly obsessing over grain changes and the like. He just kept to his usual routine, picked the first line he saw, and, for better or worse, pulled the trigger.
Truthfully, it was a state of consciousness that he’d never experienced before. It was almost hypnotic in a way; existing in this peculiar bubble where the idea of time and context had, seemingly, all but ceased to exist. Every time he stepped up to his ball, it was like he was seeing it again for the very first time, with no idea of how it had gotten there or what number stroke it was now for. Instead, all Mustang saw was a ball that needed to be hit – whether that was a full-bore launch with a driver, finessed strike with an iron, or a winding putt across some windswept green. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t question it. He just simply reacted to it.
And from the perspective of actually allowing him to physically keep going and performing like he wasn’t smack-bang in the middle of the most extraordinary set of circumstances he’d ever been in before? This approach had worked for Mustang– even if it wasn’t necessarily showing on his scorecard.
Because as well-oiled as this hastily-built playoff machine had been performing across the first three holes of it, from about the second hole onwards, Caesar had been looking to throw one more final spanner into the works. And courtesy of a rather vicious wind that had far outstripped what it had been like since play had restarted earlier in the afternoon … he’d been succeeding in doing just that.
Now, had it been an unplayable wind? An unfair one? There was an argument to be made that, yes, it possibly had been. But after already calling a halt to play earlier in the day, the R&A were always going to be reluctant to call another one – and, especially so, with the light fading as unusually quickly as it was. So, if getting the tournament finished on time meant Mustang and the others were going to have to play a course teetering on the edge? Then that’s what they were going to do – even if it meant the viewers at home and those spectators literally on the course itself were going to be treated to more bogeys than they were birdies.
As a result, it was little wonder then that as Mustang had marched back down the home hole – all the while doing his best to continue to ignore the crowd and focus purely on finding where his tee-shot had ended up – he was sitting on +2 for the playoff … but, luckily for him, he wasn’t the only one in arrears.
For, just as Mustang had suspected that he’d been doing since the playoff had begun, Ray had, indeed, been keeping track of everyone else’s scores. And whilst they probably weren’t making for the prettiest of reading for the neutral, for Ray? They couldn’t have read more perfectly. Because as he popped his bag down alongside where Mustang’s ball had just about clung on to the right-hand-most edge of the 18th-fairway, and pulled out his yardage book, not only did Ray know that Mustang was still most definitely in the running for the Claret Jug … he knew he was the goddamn one to catch!
Spieth? Rahm? Morikawa? Those three future Hall of Famers just a mere toss of a ball away from them further up the fairway? They were all +3. Meaning, after all the chaos of finding out that they were actually in the playoff in the first place, and then feeling as though it had, all at once, both flown by in an instant yet somehow also been dragging on for several harrowing hours, Ray was now having to try and process the fact that Mustang was, maybe, just one more good swing and two solid putts away from possibly winning the Open Championship. Because a par could be enough to clinch it. With the wind howling the way that it was? Blowing at an awkward angle that was neither straight from the right nor fully behind? Ray knew it would make getting a birdie tricky for Spieth, Rahm, and Morikawa. Not impossible, mind – nothing ever really is with players as talented as those three were. But it would definitely make it harder.
So, from where he was standing? Given Mustang was going to be hitting his approach shot first – as he had done on every hole of the playoff – the only thought in Ray’s mind was just getting his ball on the green. Mustang didn’t have to go knocking down the flag, he didn’t even need to look at the pin. Just anywhere in the middle of the green would do; even a little close to the back edge would be acceptable. As long as he had his putter in hand for his third shot, Ray was going to consider that a job well done.
“Alright, kid …” Ray said, keeping the same cadence in his voice he’d been using since the playoff had started. “We’re lookin’ at 172 middle. So, give me a little holdoff fade with a 7; start it just left of the right-hand bunker and let the wind do the rest. Got it?”
As opposed to immediately answering with the same confirmatory ‘Got it’ he had done over the previous three holes, Mustang, instead, remained perfectly silent; staring off at the green with an intense look of concentration on his face as he pulled on his glove and closed the tab.
“Kid?” said Ray, reckoning – and hoping – that Mustang just must not have heard him. “Did ya get that?”
“What gets me landing just beyond the bunker?” Mustang asked curiously, his eyes still not leaving the green.
Knowing straightaway what Mustang was asking, Ray’s stomach immediately dropped – he’d been afraid of this.
“Kid, listen to me, you do not need to take this pin on,” said Ray, his tone firming noticeably as he lowered the volume of his voice in order to avoid it being picked up by the approaching mic operator and cameraman. “Ok, now is not the time to be gettin’ ‘Grandstand Fever’ on me. Just take the shot that I told you. There’s nothin’ wrong with the middle of the green here.”
Mustang, though, just continued to look off at the green; his eyes flicking back and forth between the bunker on the right and the flags up on top of the grandstands. He was calculating. Plotting. Because after three holes of successfully not seeing what the scores had been, a single glimpse at one of the large, yellow leaderboards towering up over the 18th-green had told Mustang everything he needed to know. He was one clear. Him. Not Spieth. Not Rahm. Not Morikawa. Him. And should he birdie the last? That would be it. Game over. All three of them could make birdie and it wouldn’t make a difference. Because he’d be a Major Champion – the first amateur to do such a thing since Johnny Goodman took the U.S. Open in 1933. A record that had stood for 88-years … and, yet, it could now be Mustang’s. He’d be literally rewriting the history books. So, how could he not take this shot on? Not take a chance to pull up the ladder on the others?
Opportunity was knocking at the door. And Mustang was damned if he wasn’t going to answer it.
“I need to do this, Ray …” he said, before turning his head and looking determinedly up at him. “I have to. So, please … what’s the number?”
Ray let out a heavy sigh. He didn’t agree with this. Not even slightly. But given the look on Mustang’s face, he knew he’d only be wasting his breath trying to talk him out of it. His mind was made up. The die had been cast. So, Ray knew he really only had one option left.
“166 …” he sighed. “8-iron. Everythin’ you got.”
Having gotten the intel he needed, Mustang made a move towards pulling the, as specified, 8-iron out from his bag. Just as he got it halfway out, however, Ray stuck out his hand and subtly grabbed the shaft, temporarily stopping Mustang from fully releasing it. “I just hope you know what you’re doin’ here, kid …” he warned, an almost defeated-looking expression on his face as the words fell hopelessly from his mouth.
With his piece said, Ray then let go of the 8-iron, pulling his hand back out of the way. Now unencumbered by Ray’s grip on it, a still-determined Mustang finally freed his 8-iron and brought it down to his side, leaving Ray to wearily grab his bag and take a step into the first cut of rough that was just off to their right.
This was a difficult situation for Mustang. Whilst disagreements between himself and Ray weren’t exactly a new thing when it came to how to play a certain shot or what shot to hit, whenever it actually came time for him to literally pull the trigger, though? Whether it was himself who’d yielded or the other way around, Mustang would always feel as though he’d have Ray’s full backing. But to have seen the look on Ray’s face just now? To have heard the worry in his voice? As Mustang stepped in behind his ball and got into his address, he knew deep down that he didn’t have Ray’s backing on this play.
He knew he’d be wanting him to pull it off, of course … but that wasn’t quite the same.
If he really was as hellbent on doing this as he thought he was, Mustang now realized that he was going to be doing it very much on his own.
Because he was the one making the decision to live by the sword … so, he’d have to risk dying by it too.
Alone.
THWWWIIIPPPPP!!!!
From the outside looking in, everything would’ve appeared just fine with Mustang’s ball. It had set off like a rocket. Climbed nice and high, as one would expect to happen with an 8-iron. And it had even begun to draw back to the left on a perfect line to see it pitch, exactly as planned, just beyond the bunker.
But looks can be deceiving.
Because what no one else on the planet knew at the moment, however, was what Mustang had felt at impact – and that was that the strike hadn’t been what he’d needed it to be. And with each passing millisecond that his ball was in the air? The fact that Mustang hadn’t quite gotten all of it began to become more and more apparent.
Because it was starting to drop.
Far sooner than what it should be.
Meaning, it needed to go. And needed to go badly.
“GO!” roared Mustang, now instinctively leaning off to his left as if trying to magically eke out an extra few yards of carry for his ball. “GO!”
Now desperately switching his attention back and forth between his ball and the bunker, the lightning-quick calculations his brain was conjuring up from studying its speed and trajectory were now tentatively telling Mustang that it might just make it to the ‘promised land’ that was that patch of grass beyond the bunker after all.
It was going to be tight – much tighter than what he’d envisioned not even 30-seconds earlier – but it could still make it.
“GOOOO!” cried Mustang loudly, his inhibitions now completely gone as his ball entered its final descent, itself now almost falling in excruciating slow-motion.
Dropping …
It was now directly over the bunker.
Dropping …
Its trajectory was getting worryingly shallow.
Dropping …
Mustang began to get a sinking feeling.
Dropping …
A feeling that perhaps his calculations were out.
THUD!
Clattering into the steep, ridged wall that formed the very back of it, a distraught Mustang could only look on helplessly as his ball disappeared into the greenside bunker.
With the agonizing groan from the crowd now carrying back down the fairway towards him after seeing his ball take a potentially fatal trip straight into the sand, a sick-feeling Mustang could only hang his head in despair and despondently glare at the turf beneath his feet, wishing it would just open up and swallow him whole.
Because he should’ve listened to Ray.
He knew that now.
What he didn’t know, however, was whether or not it was already too late for him to try and fix it.
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Photo by Anna Groniecka.