Written by Stephen F. Moloney
“And, boy, did the two of ‘em deliver,” said Ray, still sounding as impressed all these years later as he was witnessing it unfold right before his eyes. “I mean, straight from the opening hole, you could just tell that this was gonna be one heck of a match. It just had that … electricity, you know? With the size of the crowd and everythin’ at stake? It was just … yeah, just somethin’ else.”
“So, how did the opening hole go?” asked Maggie, her intrigue already building to dangerously-excited levels. “Was it cagily halved in pars or did someone draw first blood?”
“Skip took it,” answered Ray, nodding his head and sighing slightly as if reliving the moment he watched Skip’s ball snake across the green and drop, dead weight, into the cup. “Drained a birdie from 8-feet after Mustang lipped out from 10.”
“So, wait … that was the first time Mustang had lost a hole, right?” said Maggie, quickly working her way through the previous two matches he’d played against Kretschko and Blackridge to see if she could answer her own question. “In the whole tournament? Or have I got that wrong?”
“Naw, you got it,” confirmed Ray, stretching his left leg outside the UTV so that his boot was resting on the fairway. “In the twenty-five holes he’d played up that point, the kid had either won ‘em or halved ‘em.”
“And how did he react to that?” probed Maggie. “You know, being ‘down’ in a match for the first time?”
“Well, seein’ as I’d prepared him for just such a thing happenin’ …” replied Ray, matter-of-factly. “He was fine.”
“Really?” said Maggie, surprised. “You’d prepared him for that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” answered Ray. “Over breakfast that mornin’. It was kinda like the mission briefs we used to have in the army, actually – except instead of sittin’ inside an oven of a tent in the middle of the desert, we were sittin’ on patio furniture in the middle of a swamp eatin’ bacon and eggs …”
*
“Pass the juice, please?” asked Mustang, holding out his hand as he took a bite out of his second white roll.
As requested, Travis reached out, grabbed the bottle of orange juice Ray had bought from the Trudeaus’ store that morning, and handed it to Mustang.
“Thank you,” he replied, speaking through a mouthful of bread, as he poured a glug of juice into his near-empty glass and refocused on Ray. “So, what do you mean this match is gonna be ‘different’? Different, how?”
“Well, first thing’s first, there’s the simple fact that Skip is just an outright better player than both Kretschko and Blackridge,” said Ray, his tone now business-like and to-the-point as he finished taking a sip from his inky-black coffee.
“How much better are we talking?” asked Mustang, placing the juice back down onto the slightly wobbly, plastic table which, at one point in time, was probably white, but years of exposure to the elements had now rendered it a cloudy grey colour.
“Well, it’s hard to quantify in exact terms,” answered Ray, trying to figure out how best to explain himself. “But … well, I’ll put it this way: players like Blackridge, for example? They organize their seasons ‘round the big amateur tournaments – your U.S. Amateurs, British Amateurs – and tryna’ qualify for spots in the Majors, right?”
“Ok …” said Mustang, waiting for the incoming ‘but’ as he brought his freshly refilled glass up to his mouth.
“But Skip?” continued Ray. “He don’t play in any of them. Ok, his entire year is focused ‘round nothin’ else but these big money matches he plays in, both in the States and overseas. And when I say ‘big money matches’? I mean, big money matches – as in, ‘invite-only, droppin’ a hundred-grand just to get a tee-time’ big.”
“And you think that gives him an edge?” asked Travis, warily.
“It has to,” replied Ray, not mincing his words. “All year long he’s puttin’ himself in situations where every single shot he makes has thousands of dollars riding on ‘em and where he’s the break of a ball away from either winnin’ a small fortune or losin’ everythin’. I mean, you don’t go through that without learnin’ a thing or two ‘bout how to handle yourself in high-pressure situations, you know?”
“So, basically, he’s not gonna break like Blackridge did,” said Mustang, guessing what was being hinted at.
“No, he won’t,” warned Ray. “Because sharks don’t break.”
*
“After that, it was just a case of tellin’ the kid what to expect,” explained Ray, as he reached up and took a hold of his own grab handle. “Take away the element of surprise – or as much as I could, at any rate.”
“So, telling him he was gonna lose holes, for example?”
“That, yeah; but, mainly, it was just gettin’ across how his match with Skip was probably gonna feel different to how the ones with Kretschko and Blackridge had. See, against the two of them, Mustang was able to stamp his pace and his authority on those matches – get them playin’ his game, right? Well, the problem with Skip was that Mustang’s game was Skip’s game – he liked to play aggressively; liked to play on the front foot; and consistently forced you into matching him shot for shot just to stay within touchin’ distance of ‘im.”
“Basically, it was like Mustang was going up against himself, then,” said Maggie, attempting to summarize what Ray had just said into one neat sentence. “Just an older, more experienced version.”
“Exactly,” said Ray, taking off his hat in order to wipe away the sweat that had gathered on his brow. “So, because of that, I told Mustang that he could most certainly try and take the match to Skip ‘cause, again – like had been the case with Blackridge – he was gonna be hittin’ his approach shots first on pretty much every hole given the difference in length between the two of ‘em off-the-tee. But, at the same time, I told him we needed to be prepared for the possibility that we were gonna have to be playin’ a lot off the backfoot you know? And how, with that, would come a different kinda pressure.”
“So, essentially, you were prepping him to be reactive as opposed to relying on always being able to be proactive,” said Maggie, again trying to boil down the crux of what Ray was saying into something which might fit more neatly into a future paragraph.
“Yeah, basically,” agreed Ray, slipping his hat back onto his head. “Cause the way I looked at it, we were gettin’ ready to go into battle with Skip; a battle where – on paper, at least – we were severely outgunned. So, if the kid hadn’t been mentally prepared to be pinned down and fight with his back up against the wall? Well, I wouldn’t have been doin’ my job as his caddie.”
“And did your suspicions end up being proved right?” asked Maggie. “About how the match would go?”
“To the letter,” replied Ray, looking over at Maggie and smiling as he emphasized each word.
“Seriously? You were that accurate?” asked Maggie, once again finding herself blown away at seeing the inner workings of Ray’s tactical genius laid bare before her.
“Yep. Skip came out hot, won the 1st like I said; and from then on it was just a case of battenin’ down the hatches and weatherin’ the storm as best we could. Like, Mustang tried to counter-punch, as we’d planned, by gettin’ his approach shots in close first – as he had against Blackridge – but whatever he did, Skip had an answer for it. If the kid landed his approach to 10-feet? Skip would get his to 8. If he spun a wedge back to 6-feet? Skip would zip his to 3. And even when Mustang did manage to get his ball inside Skip’s? He’d step up and drain his putt first – no matter where he was on the green; meaning, if Mustang had only had 4-feet left for a birdie, the pressure was ramped up to such an extent that, what would have been a formality against Kretschko or Blackridge, now suddenly became a pivotal, ‘must-make’ putt. In other words, Skip was puttin’ on a ‘matchplay masterclass’ and Mustang was just tryna’ make it through the exam.”
“That must have been exhausting, no?” said Maggie, trying to put herself in Mustang’s borrowed, beaten-up shoes. “Like, mentally?”
“That it was,” replied Ray, the words coming out accompanied with a tired-sounding sigh. “I remember walkin’ off the 9th – Mustang had just made a great up and down for par out of a bunker to halve the hole – and, no word of a lie, it felt as though we’d just played a full 18 holes. I mean, the pair of us were just mentally drained – but we were still only 1DN. So, as tired as we were, we knew we were still in with a shot.”
“And how was Skip, in comparison, heading to the 10th?” asked Maggie, looking to see if the ‘Terminator-like’ image she’d built up of him in her head rang true.
“Oh, well, Skip was Skip!” laughed Ray, wafting his hand in front of his face to shoo away some gnats that had suddenly descended on the UTV.
“Meaning …?” probed Maggie, shooing away the same cloud of uninvited pests.
“Meanin’ the man looked immaculate!” said Ray, chuckling to himself at the memory. “Like, no joke, he looked the exact same as he had steppin’ onto the 1st tee as he did steppin’ onto the 10th – there was barely even a single bead of sweat on the guy! And, bear in mind, it had already been pushin’ into the high 60s, low 70s all mornin’, so it’s not like it wasn’t hot out there! The dude was just not from this planet!”
A large cloud slowly glided in front of the sun overhead – filtering its incessant, focused heat in a momentary reprieve – as the breeze began to pick up even more. It rustled the tops of the trees flanking either side of the fairway, swirling through them from, seemingly, no one direction. For a second, Maggie wondered what club Ray would pull for Mustang if he were playing a shot into the green from where they were parked. Would he get him to flight his ball down and keep it out of the wind? Or would he make a call on what he thought the wind was doing up above the trees and have him take dead aim with a high cut into the back-right pin position? She wanted to ask him, of course, but she knew she couldn’t afford to get sidetracked – no matter how interesting the topic.
“So, take me into the back 9 then,” she said, as the same cloud which had been acting as their own personal parasol continued on its way, thus allowing the sun to return to baking the course. “What happened?”
“Well, the back 9 saw more of the same, really,” sighed Ray, turning his gaze back down towards the 14th green as if the highlights of the match were being projected onto its tightly mown – almost sheening – surface. “Skip kept pushin’ the pace and puttin’ the kid under pressure. But, credit to him, with every question Skip asked of ‘im, Mustang stood up and answered ‘em. I mean, after halvin’ 10 and 11 with pars, the kid rattled off three straight birdies from 12 right the way through here for halves – and he was puttin’ second on each one of ‘em.”
Having been happily snoozing in the little area of shade that there was in the flatbed of the UTV, a now very much awake Lola suddenly popped her head in through the opening at the rear of the cab and in-between where Ray and Maggie were sitting.
“Hey there, girl,” said Ray fondly, lifting up his hand and rubbing underneath Lola’s chin. “Have I been yammerin’ on for too long? Huh? You wanna go for a swim already?”
From the excited manner in which she began to shake her tail and furiously tap her back legs like she was auditioning for a Broadway musical, it was clear the mention of the word ‘swim’ had gone down extremely well with Lola.
“You know, I’m no expert,” smiled Maggie, unable to resist reaching up and scratching behind one of Lola’s ears. “But I think that’s a ‘yes’.”
“You know what? I think it is too,” said Ray, continuing to smile warmly over at Lola. “Alright, well, you know the rules – lie down.”
As if not wanting to jeopardize Ray relenting to taking her for a swim, Lola hurriedly – and clumsily – reversed out of the space in-between their two seats and, as instructed, lay down, once again, on the floor of the flatbed.
“Good girl,” praised Ray, before turning to Maggie. “You don’t mind if we move on, right?”
“Not at all,” replied Maggie, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand.
Having gotten the go-ahead, Ray lifted his leg back into the UTV, quickly adjusted how he was sitting, and turned the key in the ignition.
“So, with Mustang still 1DN walking off 14,” said Maggie, speaking over the sound of the engine sputtering into life at Ray’s behest. “What was your mindset heading into ‘Dead Man’s Alley’?”
“Well, outwardly, I was just tellin’ the kid that we were still in a good spot,” said Ray, pausing from getting the UTV back moving in order to answer Maggie’s question. “You know, we’d four holes left, so that meant we still had four chances to try and catch Skip.”
“And inwardly?” probed Maggie, eager to hear what his answer would be.
“Inwardly …” repeated Ray, letting out a contemplative sigh as he looked down towards the 15th tee where this thought had originally run through his mind all those years ago. “Inwardly I was thinkin’ if we were to, realistically, have any chance? We were gonna need Skip to give us an ‘in’ – as unlikely as that had looked based on how he’d been playin’. So, we waited. And we hung in there. We hung in there at 15 with a 6-footer for par to seal the half. Did the same again at 16, except then it was an 8-footer for birdie. And then at 17?” Ray turned and looked at Maggie. “Well, at 17 we got what we’d been waitin’ for …” he smirked.
*
With the face opened as far as it could go, Skip swung his 60° wedge down from the top of his backswing and drove it hard into the base of the bunker.
THUD!
In the explosion of powdery sand that followed, Skip’s ball popped out over the lip of the bunker and landed on the green as softly as the generous dusting of sand which promptly followed it in covering the grass just beyond the trap. After gripping into the green thanks to the slightest hint of check he’d managed to impose on it, Skip’s ball set off down the slope lying between it and the front-right pin.
And it looked good.
Really good.
As had been the case all morning, fevered cries of “GET IN!”, “GET THERE!”, and “GET IN THE HOLE!” began to ring out from the densely-packed crowd that had managed to squeeze in around the green as Skip’s ball continued to track right for the hole.
‘No way …’ thought Ray to himself, his heart feeling as though it had just migrated upstairs into his mouth. ‘Not again …’.
Just as he began to prepare what he’d say to Mustang amid the chaos he felt was only seconds away from descending on the green, however, Ray watched as Skip’s ball, having picked up a tad too much pace on the slope, suddenly began to break off to the right – and it wasn’t coming back.
“OHHHHHH!” groaned the crowd in unison as Skip’s ball slipped agonizingly past the right edge of the hole and settled about a foot away on the opposite side. It was a ‘gimme’ par, sure. But it wasn’t a birdie. Which meant Mustang had the opening he’d been waiting for.
“That’s good,” said Mustang, moving in straightaway to replace his ball he’d marked earlier as a smiling Skip walked towards the hole shaking his head in stunned disbelief that his ball hadn’t dropped for birdie. “Take it away.”
“Thanks, man,” replied Skip, courteously, before deftly flicking his ball up into his hand with his wedge and making his way back up the green to where his caddie was waiting with his bag.
Though used to how fast a player he was, Ray could tell Mustang appeared especially eager to get in over his birdie putt sooner rather than later, and so walked briskly across the green to grab the pin for him. With the hole now free, Ray moved out of Mustang’s eye line, who had not only replaced his ball in the time it had taken him to take care of the flag but was already crouched down behind it and in the process of deciphering what the line might be across the 20 feet of green which separated it from the cup.
Ray considered walking over and giving him an encouraging word, perhaps even a reassuring clap on the shoulder. In the end, though, he decided against it, as the laser-like look of focus on Mustang’s face told him everything he needed to know about his state of mind. He knew how big this putt was. And he knew he had to make it.
A lone cry of “LET’S GO, MUSTANG!” cut through the fragile silence which had fallen back over the green after the excitement of Skip’s putt as Mustang got up off his haunches and walked straight in behind his ball. Ray really liked that about the way Mustang played. Because he’d never watched golf on TV or received formal instruction on how to play it (apart from what he’d picked up from Ray), he was completely unburdened with preconceived ideas about how you should do something. So, just like how his pre-shot routine before hitting a driver, iron, or wedge was refreshingly rapid, how Mustang had come to feel comfortable before hitting a putt was equally devoid of complication. It was just quick. Efficient. And instinctual.
With the head of the putter down behind his ball, Mustang took one more look at the hole. He saw his line. It still looked good. He dropped his eyes back over the ball. He drew his putter back and, with a smooth rock of his shoulders, sent it swinging freely into the ball. After listening to the slightly dull click of the putter face colliding with its urethane cover, Mustang turned his head and, like every single person both surrounding the green and standing on it, began to track the path of his ball.
From where his tee shot had come to a rest just right of the centre of the green on the bottom-most tier – a shot that been Ray’s call after seeing Skip fly his 8-iron into the back bunker – Mustang had known he’d need to send his ball back up the slope, ride it the majority of the way to the hole, and then hope it would work its way back down the slope to have any chance of going in. And, after 10 or so feet of the twenty it needed to cover, things were looking good as it was riding the slope and holding its speed as it needed to – a fact not lost on the crowd.
As had happened with Skip’s bunker shot, irregularly-timed hollers of “GET IN THE HOLE!”, “GET THERE!”, and “GET IN!” began to rain down on the green with every blade of grass Mustang’s ball covered en route to the hole.
It was now just 5-feet out from the cup.
It began to bleed off to the right.
4-feet out …
It began to tumble back down the slope on a beeline for the hole.
3-feet out …
The cries of “GET IN!” and “GET IN THE HOLE!” grew louder still.
2-feet out …
Ray whispered quietly to himself, “Get in! …”
1-foot out …
A wide-eyed Mustang raised his putter expectantly up into the air and …
IT WENT IN!
Upon seeing his ball plummet over the razor-sharp edge of the hole and rattle the bottom of the cup, the energy and excitement which had been building up inside the crowd released itself in the form of a deafening roar of approval – a roar so infectious even Ray, himself, couldn’t help but lend his voice to it.
Yet, amidst the pandemonium which had engulfed the green, the calmest person there was Mustang. Sure, when he’d seen his ball drop he’d allowed himself a fist-pump – and quite a vigorous one, at that. But now – as the crowd continued to cheer and clap – Mustang just walked casually across the green like he was out for a few evening holes with Ray, bent down, and plucked his ball out of the hole.
Suddenly, though, a voice sliced through the din from the opposite side of the green and caught Mustang’s attention.
Skip’s voice.
“Hey, kid?!”
Mustang stopped where he was and looked across the green. Skip, as he had been all along, was standing near the exit to the green with his caddie just off behind him and Skip’s bag already slung over his shoulder.
“Nice putt,” he smiled, giving Mustang a quick thumbs-up.
“Thanks,” replied Mustang, pairing it with a smile and thumbs-up of his own.
With his piece said, Skip popped a wink at Mustang before turning on his heels and setting off in the direction of the 18th tee with his caddie following close behind.
“Way to go, kid,” said Ray, the sound of him slipping the heavy, metal base of the flag back into the cup alerting Mustang to his presence. “How ya feelin’?”
Before he could get his answer out, the ever-familiar sound of the Scorekeeper for their match bellowing over the sound of the crowd beat Mustang to the punch.
“PEYTON WINS THE HOLE IN TWO!” he announced, pushing his voice to its utmost limits to ensure he’d be heard over the ruckus. “THE MATCH IS ALL-SQUARE!”
Once the Scorekeeper had fallen silent – and probably begun to think about where he could possibly source a throat lozenge on a golf course – Mustang turned and looked at Ray.
“Like we still got some work to do,” he smiled, confidently.