Written by Stephen F. Moloney
With the same boundless energy, Lola – who was already soaking wet – sprinted back towards the edge of the lake and leapt into the water in pursuit of her ball which Ray had, once again, flung in there for her to fetch.
“Wow, so it went down to the final hole, huh?” said Maggie, lifting up her hand and shielding her eyes from the sun. “How was that to try and manage?”
“Well, luckily for me, Mustang had already shown that his head was in the right place back at 17,” answered Ray, watching Lola paddle her way out to where her ball was bobbing up and down in the current. “You know, gettin’ the match back to all-square was one thing, but he knew that as much as he wanted to win? Skip wanted it just as bad – so, he wasn’t gonna just roll over and hand it to ‘im. If the kid wanted that spot in the final, he knew steppin’ onto the 18th tee he’d have to try and produce somethin’ special – ‘cause everythin’ was set up in Skip’s favour.”
“How do you mean it was set up in his favour?” asked Maggie, taking to now shielding her eyes from the glare coming off the water as she watched Lola safely retrieve her ball and begin to make the return journey back to the shoreline at the rear of the 15th tee-box.
“Well, on the Saturday of the Memorial the pins and tee-boxes stayed the same for both rounds, right?” began Ray. “As in, for the ‘Round of 16’ and the ‘Quarter-Finals’.”
“Alright …” replied Maggie, focusing in on what Ray was saying as opposed to looking at Lola.
“Well, on Sunday,” he continued, getting further into his explanation. “The ‘Semi-Final’ and ‘Final’ each got their own set of pins and tee-boxes – you know, for an extra challenge for the players and, most importantly, to keep things interestin’ for the spectators.”
“Ok …” said Maggie, feeling tired at merely imagining how much work that must have been for Mr. Duggart and his greenkeeping crew to facilitate. “So, where does the benefit to Skip come in?”
“Well, normally, the tee-box used on 18 for the semi-finals was usually the back tee, right? Like, ‘from the tips’, stretched out to the absolute max,” answered Ray, as Lola finally got her paws back on dry land and plopped her ball down onto the grass. “And then, for the final, they’d go the exact opposite – the forward-most tee would be used, shortening the hole right down, thus providin’ the opportunity for more … ‘drama’ or whatever.”
After waiting a second for Lola to violently shake herself in order to wring, what seemed like, half of the lake out of her fur, Ray continued.
“Well, as it turned out, the Tournament Committee that year had decided – for whatever reason – that they wanted to switch things up. So, all of a sudden, the traditional ‘Final Tee-Box’ was now the ‘Semi-Final Tee-Box’, and vice versa.”
“But, wait a minute …” said Maggie, taking a second to try and unravel the knotted collection of thoughts that had just popped into her head. “If the tee-box was pushed up, though, wouldn’t that have benefited Mustang as well?”
“That’s very true,” agreed Ray, wiping the last bit of water off of his forearm that Lola had kindly shaken onto him. “And, given when he stepped up to take his tee-shot he smoked a perfect draw right down the middle to leave himself a neat 130 to the flag, you’d have to say he made the most of that benefit. Where the difference comes in, though, is that if that’s the yardage Mustang was left with after hittin’ driver, then our thinkin’ was that if Skip were to pull the big stick he could be left with 100 … 110 yards, tops? Either way, just a flick with a wedge, right? I mean, that’s a big advantage if you can get it.”
“So, I’m assuming he did hit driver, right?”
“Oddly enough, no,” replied Ray, still sounding as puzzled by that decision as he was when he saw it happening right in front of him twenty-plus years ago. “Skip talked over what their play was gonna be with his caddie – probably the longest conversation they’d had all day up to that point – and come the end of it, Skip wound up pullin’ his 2-iron outta the bag and hit that.”
“He laid up?!” exclaimed Maggie, each word dripping in shock as they fell from her mouth.
“Yep,” said Ray, smiling at how similar Maggie’s reaction was to how his had been at seeing the headcover remain on Skip’s driver. “Hit this low, piercing stinger with just the faintest hint of cut on it – it was a beautiful shot, actually.”
“But … but …” stuttered Maggie, her mind racing so much it was preventing her from getting the rest of her sentence out.
“Why?” suggested Ray, guessing at what word Maggie was trying to find her way to.
“Yeah!” she replied, pointing animatedly at Ray as if they were playing charades. “Like, I don’t get it! It’s matchplay, you’re all-square going up 18 and you have a distinct advantage in terms of length off-the-tee – I just don’t see how you end up deciding to lay up off the back of all that? I mean, was he just … I dunno … trying to guard against finding the water with his tee-shot?”
“That thought crossed my mind as well,” admitted Ray, letting his eyes fall onto Lola, who had taken to happily rolling around in the grass following her swim. “But given how well he’d been hittin’ the driver all day, I just couldn’t see him suddenly worryin’ ‘bout losin’ one into the water, you know? Then I was thinkin’ that maybe he wanted to finish short of where Mustang was in the fairway so that he’d be hittin’ into the green first – you know, dial up the pressure on the kid by gettin’ his ball in close? In the end, though, after thinkin’ ‘bout it on our way up the fairway, the most realistic conclusion I came to was that he’d laid up ‘cause of where the pin was.”
“And that was …?”
“Perched way up in the back-right corner of the green.”
“Oh! Well that makes sense then,” said Maggie, the direction Ray was heading in revealing itself to her as she slotted the pin-placement he’d mentioned into the mental schematic she had in her head of the 18th. “With that ridge running through the middle of the green he didn’t want to get too close because the more lofted the club he’d have in his hand, the higher the risk there’d be of possibly spinning his second back down to the front of the green and that’d leave a tricky two-putt, nevermind trying to make birdie.”
“That’s exactly why, yeah,” replied Ray, genuinely impressed with Maggie’s depth of knowledge. “Nice work.”
“Well, there’s a reason I was voted the ‘Pelham Country Club Rookie Caddie of the Year’ in my first summer looping, Ray,” replied Maggie, humorously bragging. “I mean, they weren’t just handing those $20 Starbucks gift cards out to just anyone, you know?!”
“Oh, well, please forgive me!” laughed Ray, adopting a faux-grovelling tone. “If I’d known I was in the presence of such ‘caddyin’ royalty’ I would not have acted so foolishly!”
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” sighed Maggie, jokingly, as Lola ambled over towards her to see what all the commotion was about. “That’s why I try not to bring it up in front of people – I find it just intimidates them.”
After chuckling away to themselves for a few seconds, Maggie – with the pungent smell of ‘wet dog’ now wafting up into her nostrils – got herself back on track, “So, after all that, what kinda shot did Skip end up playing for his second?”
“The only shot he really could play,” replied Ray, just banishing the last of the chuckles from his lungs. “I mean, he’d left himself 134 to the flag – so, he was probably in-between clubs. Throw in on top of that, then, that he was probably, like you said, conscious of gettin’ too much spin – therefore rulin’ out a hard gap wedge – and, pretty quickly, you see his choices were whittled down to really just takin’ a pitchin’ wedge, puttin’ a three-quarter length swing on it, and then sawin’ off the finish to try and stun the ball on impact, one-hop it and then get it to grab.”
“And is that what he ended up doing?”
“That it was,” answered Ray, turning his attention off across the lake to where Skip had hit said shot from in the 18th fairway. It was like he could still see him doing it. His silky smooth takeaway. His soft, quiet hands delivering the clubface back down into the ball. The crisp sound that denoted it was, unsurprisingly, a perfect strike. It was all still there – locked away in Ray’s memory like a bunch of old photographs tucked inside a shoebox.
“And?” probed Maggie, eager to hear the end result of Skip’s sawn-off pitching wedge. “How did it turn out?”
“He stiffed it,” answered Ray, flatly. “Exactly as he would have drawn it up too: pitched his ball just beyond the top of the ridge, it took one big hop, and then skidded to a halt 3-feet short of the pin – it was like he had it on a string.”
“Man …” groaned Maggie, feeling her stomach drop. “That must have been pretty jarring to see, right?”
“Yeah, I ain’t gonna lie, seein’ Skip pull off a shot like that? Given the circumstances? It was a bit of a body blow,” admitted Ray. “But, at the same time, I still felt really confident ‘bout our chances.”
“Can you remember why that was?” asked Maggie, again needing to shield her eyes from the sun in order to properly see Ray.
“Because as good a shot as Skip’s had been, we still had one too. And as long as Mustang had a club in his hand?” said Ray, shifting his gaze from the ghosts across the lake and turning it back onto Maggie. “There was always hope.”
*
With the sound of cheering and applauding still loudly ringing back down the fairway from the crowd gathered above the 18th, Ray turned to Mustang.
“Now, that don’t change a thing, alright?” he said, endeavouring to project a sense of calm when everything around them was the exact opposite. “Even if he makes that, a birdie of our own makes it a playoff just the same. So, if you ask me? I still think our original play is the one to go for: choke down on an 8 and stun it in there just like Skip did – what d’ya think?”
Mustang remained silent as he continued to stare off at the green. The crowd was just beginning to die back down into silence in anticipation of him making his move. He could see the shot Ray had drafted up for him – the flight, the check after the second bounce – and it was a good play.
But the longer he stood there looking at Skip’s ball nestled all nice and cosy up by the pin, the more the appeal of Ray’s shot began to lessen. Skip had just laid down the gauntlet – and in impressive fashion, to boot. So, as far as Mustang was concerned, it was only right that his response to that challenge be as impressive – if not more so.
“What gets me landing at the flag?” he asked, looking at Ray.
“Uh … well, it’s 130 on the nose,” replied Ray, already sounding a touch wary at where Mustang’s mind was heading. “So, probably a pure 9. But, remember, if you pitch it at the flag and don’t get enough bite on it? You’ll end up in the thick stuff off the back and … well, you don’t need me to tell you it’ll be a whole lot harder to try and get a three from down there.”
Mustang turned his head and looked back down at the green. He zeroed in on the flag. What Ray was saying was correct, there really wasn’t a lot of room beyond the hole, maybe two paces – three, max – before you hit the narrow collar of fringe that separated the green from the cabbage off the back. So, anything less than perfect contact would see his ball hop, skip and nosedive right down into the roots of aforementioned ‘cabbage’ and then, while it wouldn’t be ‘game over’, it would certainly make getting another chance by way of a playoff fifty times harder.
And, yet, as true as all that, undoubtedly, was, there was still that feeling in the pit of Mustang’s stomach telling him what it thought he should do.
And he was going to go with it.
“I can get it to bite …” he said, flatly, before looking back up at Ray. “I wanna go for it.”
Seeing he had that same look of determination plastered across his face as he had on the 1st tee the previous morning before his match with Kretschko, Ray simply nodded his head and reached into Mustang’s bag.
“Then, in that case …” he said, pulling the 9-iron out of the bag and holding it out towards Mustang. “I got your back, kid.”
Mustang looked at the 9-iron and then back up at Ray. He looked for any signs of doubt in his face; any crack in the veneer that might betray the fact he was only humouring him and that he actually thought he was making a huge mistake.
But there was none.
There was only a smile and a reassuring nod of the head.
And that’s all Mustang needed.
Taking the club out of his hand, Mustang turned and looked back down at the green. The crowd was still eagerly waiting to see what he’d do, but he quickly blocked each and every one of them from his mind as he felt what little breeze there’d been all morning fall completely flat. He had his window.
Mustang quickly stepped in and addressed his ball. Once comfortably in his stance, he set the head of the club gently down behind his ball – feeling how firm the turf was in the process – and looked back down at his target. The flag on the pin was lying completely limp, meaning the breeze was still down – for now, at least. Not wanting to miss his chance, Mustang looked back down at his ball. He took a breath in … let it slowly back out … and then instinct took over.
A second later, without even thinking about it, he’d swung the 9-iron through his ball and sent it rifling off into the air with just the faintest hint of fade on it. The strike had felt good, with the sound to match, but the ball – as good a line as it was on – had come off a little hotter than what he’d have liked.
“Sit … sit!” he began to mutter, as he let the shaft of his club rest against the nape of his neck – the steel it was made from now feeling welcomingly cool.
Having reached its apex high above the ground in a matter of seconds, Mustang and Ray watched on with bated breath as his ball began to make its final descent towards the green. It had to bite as soon as it pitched. Mustang knew that; Ray knew that; even Skip knew that, hence why he was watching on with the same level of intensity as they both were.
With nowhere else left to go, Mustang’s ball crashed into the green 2-feet left of the pin like an asteroid, leaving a crater to match.
“Sit!” barked Mustang as Ray furiously snapped his fingers to get it to do likewise.
But it didn’t listen.
Bouncing up out of its pitch mark, Mustang’s ball leapt forward beyond the pin. Despite desperately scrambling for any semblance of traction it could find once it hit the green for a second time, the ball skidded forward like an out-of-control airplane making an emergency landing in a field and headed straight for the fringe at the back of the green.
“SIT!” shouted Mustang, desperately, who was now practically doubled over with the height of anxiety, but with his eyes still firmly fixed on his runaway ball.
It hit the fringe, its third time coming into contact with the ground since being struck back down the fairway … but this time it listened to Mustang!
As if suddenly sprouting hooks, Mustang’s ball not only dug into the fringe – avoiding the deep rough which lay just inches beyond it – but once it found its footing … it began to spin. And spin hard.
Like a car streaking out of an intersection after burning out its tyres, Mustang’s ball zipped backwards out of the fringe and set off rolling back down the green towards the pin.
Immediately, the crowd up on the hill sensed what was happening and a rumble of excited electricity began to course through them like the beginnings of a thunderstorm.
Mustang’s ball was now just 2-feet out from the hole, carrying a lot of speed but on a fantastic line.
The volume around the green began to dial up even further as excited cries of “GET IN!” cascaded down the bank like a torrent of whitewater.
It was now just a foot out – and it wasn’t slowing down!
It clattered hard into the pin …
*
“And then … it dropped,” smiled Ray gently, almost hearing the thunderous roar from the crowd carrying on the breeze across the lake from 18.
“That is just … just …” stammered Maggie, her vocabulary, once again, deserting her.
“Insane?” said Ray, looking across at her.
“Yeah, I think ‘insane’ should just about cover it,” replied Maggie, smiling in stunned disbelief. “How did Skip react to seeing that?”
“As you’d expect – just ever the gentleman,” replied Ray, lifting off his hat and running his hand quickly through his, ever-so-slightly, damp hair. “I mean, once me and the kid had stopped jumpin’ round like our numbers had just come up in the Powerball, Skip came over to where we were, shook the kid’s hand, and – after saying that had been the craziest endin’ to any match he’d ever been in – congratulated him, sayin’ the best man had won. After that, he just wished us luck in the final, and … yeah, that was it. Funnily enough, though, with all the commotion of how the match had ended, it wasn’t until Skip mentioned it that me and the kid actually realized we were gonna be playin’ in the final that afternoon ‘cause of what had just happened.”
“And, at that point, did you know who you were gonna be playing in the final?” asked Maggie, herself still trying to comprehend the insanity of Mustang holing a walk-off eagle to beat Skip.
“Naw, not at that point …” answered Ray, slipping his hat back on and casting his attention off across the lake, once more, towards the clubhouse. “Truth be told, there was a lot we didn’t know yet …”