Six Strokes Under (15 page)

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He stumbled slightly and caught himself on the doorjamb. "Good luck tomorrow. Take care."

I slammed the door closed behind him.

I won't think about this, I said to myself, my body rigid with anger and shame. It's best to go on as if this hadn't happened. I hooked my bra closed, tugged tight the corners of the bedspread, straightened the faded drapes, hurled Max's beer bottle into the trash. Three-pointer. I took a hundred practice swings in the mirror with the Ben Hogan nine-iron. Then I lay awake on the bed until almost four, searching for a way to block out my feelings.

Drapes: vertical. TV: horizontal. Highboy: vertical. Hide-a-Bed: horizontal.

But the lingering humiliation was strong—too powerful even for Joe Lancaster's mental techniques. Six a.m. could not come soon enough.

 I sat with Walter Moore again at breakfast. Even his company seemed preferable to facing the thoughts swarming my own mind. I popped a couple of Advil and washed them down with orange juice.

"Look," I said. "Kaitlin's got the headline." I read aloud from the front page of the
Herald-Tribune.
"So Won Lee of Seoul, Korea, took the lead in the Sectional Qualifier at the Plantation Golf and Country Glub. In second place, shooting sixty-eight, was Kaitlin Rupert of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Asked about handling the pressure of the tournament, Rupert said: 'I just hit every shot as though this was my last day ever playing golf.' "

I smiled at Walter. "I bet she got the quote because So Won's English isn't very good. She'll be happy with the publicity."

"But not the second-place finish," said Walter. "She's not satisfied eating some other girl's dust." He shook his head in admiration. "She's really something, isn't she?"

"Looked like she was mad at you yesterday."

"She understands that I have to run a business," Walter said. "She knows that what we have going between us means a whole lot more than a Deikon logo on somebody's bag."

I wasn't altogether certain he was right on that one, but I wasn't going to argue with him either.

"You're not eating much this morning," he said. I looked down at my tray. I'd forced down a few bites of Raisin Bran and half a stale blueberry muffin. Last night's overload of beer still bloated my system.

"Nerves," I said. "I'll get something later. See you over at the club."

"You look tired," said Laura when I arrived at the range. "Sleep okay?"

"Fine." No way was I going to tell her about the visit from Max. Bad enough that it happened, that I'd allowed things to go as far as they had. How could I explain that I'd let a guy who hadn't touched me or even talked to me in over ten years practically strip me half naked? And worse yet, that I might very well have slept with him, if his
wife
hadn't beeped him from home? So far, the cost of surviving the Q-school pressure cooker seemed to be the erosion of my better judgment.

Perhaps I'd sort out the events of last night later under Dr. Baxter's careful tutelage. Or maybe I'd never bring them up at all—bury them deep in my memory's back boneyard. In any event, I was determined that none of this would interfere with my golf round today.

"Walter likes a winner, doesn't he?" said Laura. She pointed down the range, where he stood talking to So Won Lee. He had one of her clubs in his hand. I imagined he was describing all of its many shortcomings.

"He's got good business sense," I said. "She may be the next Se Ri Pak. If he gets in with her now, she could be a major Deikon cash cow."

"Uh-oh. Doppler radar shows trouble on the horizon," said Laura in a low voice. We watched Kaitlin approach the practice tee where Walter was talking with the Korean golfer. She smiled and simpered, then gave Walter a full-length, lingering body hug, completely ignoring the presence of So Won Lee.

"The old 'catch more flies with sugar' approach," said Laura, shaking her head. "Come on, girl. Today's your day. I can feel it. You're going to tear this golf course up. Let's get over to the tee."

Julie and Headier, along with Heather's entourage, were already standing outside the ropes around the tee when we pulled up. Two enormous sandhill cranes, with red caps and long, knobby knees, preened on the tee box.

"Those birds are beautiful," commented Heather's little mother.

"You know they mate for life," said Heather's fiancé. "Like us."

"They are so handsome," said Heather back. "Like you."

"Wait 'til they let out a squawk in your backswing." In my current wired state, the google-eyes were scraping on my nerves.

"Those birds would make a darned good feather duster," said Julie. Apparently the lovers were getting to her, too.

"Go on, scat! We have work to do here." Laura shooed the cranes off to the side of the tee box.

Having turned in the lowest score of our threesome yesterday, Heather took the place of honor on the tee vacated by the birds. She gazed down the fairway. "Keep an eye on this, honey," she told her caddie.

"You don't need to go for medalist," he said, winking back in our direction. "Play smart." She split the fairway with a long, screaming drive.

"Thank God," said her mother.

"That's a beauty! And you met your first goal," said the fiancé. "Hit the fairway on one."

Neither her tee shot nor her marital status have any bearing on your performance, I told myself.

Julie and I teed off in quick succession, her ball curving into the right rough, mine heading left. All three of us made par by hitting the green in regulation, followed by two putts.

"There's your second goal, par on the first," said the fiancé, as Heather plucked her ball from the cup. Julie and I rode in silence to the second tee.

I knew the best strategy today was to block the cut out of my mind. Heather's fiancé had it right. I could only play one shot at a time, and none of them would be executed well if I was thinking about the whole round, the whole tournament, or my whole life. I envied the woman who watched us from the screened-in porch around her pool as we climbed the stairs to the second tee. From where I stood, she had no stress at all.

We began to get a good idea of how fast the greens were on the second hole. Julie and Heather's drives both skidded across the green, passing the hole on their way. I dubbed my tee shot short, then chipped my ball by the hole along the same line I'd seen the others take. Two putts later, I carded my first bogey of the day.

We followed a long stretch of cart path and turned the corner into the third hole. The early morning sun hit the heavy dew on the fairway, making the grass almost indistinguishable from the lake that lined the left side.

"I'll be glad to be finished with this course," said Heather, after blasting another drive dead center down the fairway.

"Carpe diem," said her fiancé.

"I can't feel my swing," I muttered to Laura.

"Doesn't matter," she told me. "Don't worry about it. Just grind it out and it'll come."

So I ground. A scrambling par on three, a straightforward par on four, a bogey I felt lucky to manage on five, and my first birdie of the day on six. Julie, meanwhile, had begun to flail helplessly at her ball, finding bunkers, water hazards, and missed opportunities on almost every shot.

"We're being timed, girls," Heather said after I'd just missed a par putt on the seventh green. "The rules official is hanging out over there in the bushes. We're going to have to pick the pace up."

Though I knew my own play was not the culprit for our slow progress, I tightened up anyway. I swung too fast on the eighth tee and pulled my drive left. It hit the fairway hard and caromed into the pond.

"The swing wasn't all bad," said Laura. "It just took a rotten bounce."

"I'll walk," I said, waving her onto the cart with Julie. The expression on her face was grimly sympathetic. She knew better than to say anything more. Support, comfort, criticism—it would all be lighting a match to the brittle tinder of my nerves. Music wafted out from one of the condos on the right side of the fairway. Liza Minelli was joined by a chorus of yapping Spaniels from the house near where my ball had dived underwater.

"If you drop here, you can chip out past the trees. Then a wedge on, one putt, take your bogey and run," said Laura. I studied the palm trees that blocked the green. In the background, Liza invited me and her other chums to a cabaret.

"I can make it over these," I told Laura.

"It's not worth it," she said. "Just take your lumps and move on. We'll make a birdie later."

"No, it's worth a shot," I said. "I've got all the room I need."

"You're pressing too hard," she said.

"I'll be fine. I'll get my eight up fast and over."

She backed off. I swung hard. The ball soared up, nicked the last frond of the palm tree directly in line with the green, and plopped back down just twenty feet ahead of us. This time, without any further consultation, I chipped out into the open fairway, hit a wedge on, and two-putted for triple bogey.

"You'll never have to see that hole again," said Laura.

Now I felt a fierce concentration settle over me. I swore I would not make another dim-witted, bone-headed error. I was not exactly in what sportswriters call the zone, but it was a different territory compared to my jittery start. Nothing distracted me from my focus—not the endearments of Heather's fiancé, not the escalating prayers of Heather's mother, not Julie's rapidly disintegrating performance. She double-bogeyed three of the four holes of the Panther's Claw. I parred all of them, then birdied the par five sixteenth.

"Almost there, girls," said Heather's fiancé.

"It's all in God's hands anyway," said Heather's mother. "God has a plan for each of us." I thought she glanced at me and Julie with pity. As though her Heather was all set, but only God knew what our particular plans might be. Heather and I each drove safely into the fairway on seventeen. Julie pulled her shot just far enough left to catch the out-of-bounds stake marking the outside edge of the driving range.

"That's just the kind of day it's been." She sighed and teed up a second ball, which again rolled over the staked OB line and then dropped off into the pit containing the damaged irrigation pipe. She teed up and hit a third drive without comment.

"Don't even look for them," she called out to Laura, who had started over to search for the wayward balls. "I wouldn't play another stroke with those balls. Not even a shank."

I had lost count of her total score. I just recorded the scores she made on the individual holes. I hoped that avoiding her total would help keep me from thinking about mine. I knew I hovered close to where the cut line would fall. In that case, a birdie on one of the last two holes could very well mean the difference between heading home today or playing on toward a spot on the LPGA Tour.

I stood frozen over my first putt on seventeen, then, with a nervous jab, smoked it ten feet beyond the hole. I stared at the cup. Putter and I are one, I told myself while Heather and Julie putted. Then I lined up, closed my eyes, and stroked the ball toward Laura's feet. It wobbled on the edge, then dropped in for par.

"Good job back there," said Laura, handing me my three-wood on the eighteenth tee. "You had me scared for a minute." I breathed in slowly, chose a spot on the fairway to shoot for and swung.

"You made your second-to-last goal," Laura joked. "Drive in the fairway."

Though my seven-iron leaked a little right, I chipped up close to the pin, then sank a four-footer to make another par. Under other conditions, it would have been cause for celebration.

"I needed birdie. To have any chance now, the cut would have to go awfully low," I said.

"You were awesome," insisted Laura, pumping my hand and patting my back. "Let's just wait and see." I shook Heather's hand and offered Julie a consoling hug.

"It wasn't your day."

We rode over to the clubhouse in silence and watched the volunteers record our scores. Eve and Mary, whom I'd eaten dinner with at Chili's Saturday night, arrived shortly after us. Eve's total, 145, looked to be safely inside the cut. Mary's 160 looked clearly out. The Bible study leaders, Nicki and Joanne, stood to one side, waiting for their scores to be posted.

I began to understand at a gut-twisting level how hard competition was among friends. I wanted these girls to do well—I knew how much it meant to each of them. But sitting on the bubble of the cut, I knew their performances were not independent of mine. Only the low seventy scores and ties would go on to play tomorrow. Go on to try to live the dream. This exhilarating, crazy dream we all shared.

"Let's get out of here," said Laura. "We won't know anything about the cut until the afternoon threesomes come in. We can't stand around here all day. We'll lose what little is left of our minds. Let's get some lunch. Maybe we can even catch forty winks."

 
"That's the English translation for my Indian name, you know," said Laura. "Lunch and Then a Nap. Don't you have to admit you feel better?"

I laughed. The tuna on rye had gone down great, but Laura's snores and my nerves had made sleep impossible. "I'll feel better when this is all over. Whatever the outcome." I parked the car in the only shade I could find at the back of the lot and we walked over to the clubhouse. A large but subdued group of golfers had gathered at the site of the scoreboard.

"How's it look?" Laura asked one of the officials.

"Should fall somewhere between 151 and 153."

I noticed that Kaitlin's 139 for the two rounds anchored her in second place, only one stroke behind So Won Lee. My 153, on the other hand, left me twisting not so gently in the hot afternoon breeze. If the cut came through under 151, I'd have to assume Kaitlin had been right that first day at the Grandpappy driving range: I'd been out of my mind to even try Q-school. If I just missed at 152, I'd be haunted by one shot, any shot, that could have moved me into the second half of the tournament. Maybe the stupid heroics I tried on the eighth hole today. Or any of the three-putts I'd muddled through yesterday. With the cut at 151, I could choose two shots to beat myself up over. The combinations would be unlimited.

An unsmiling official approached the scoreboard with an enormous pair of cardboard scissors. She held them up in the space directly above my name with one hand and extracted a roll of Scotch tape from her pocket with the other. Just then, I heard a commotion coming from the direction of the LPGA office.

"Hold off on that," called out Alice MacPherson as she hurried toward the crowd. "We need to make an adjustment. There's been a disqualification." The golfers around me broke out into excited chatter.

Alice smoothed the piece of paper in her hand and cleared her throat. "Ms. So Won Lee of Korea has been disqualified from the LPGA Sectional Qualifying Tournament for the use of illegal equipment—a nonconform-ing driving club."

The buzz from the crowd escalated, almost obscuring one high, piercing scream that had to belong to the Korean player. The scoring official peered at the paper Alice held out, then marched over to So Won's name. She wrote across it in large red Magic Marker letters: dq. After consulting with the other officials, she picked up the cardboard scissors and taped them just below my name.

"I'll be damned," said Laura. "You made it!" She hugged me hard. "You made it, you crazy woman. We did it!" She began to perform a war dance around me.

"Excuse me, may I have your attention for another moment, ladies," said Alice MacPherson. "Members of the press are located in a tent next to the practice putting green for the Bobcat course. If they contact you, we urge you to provide an interview. While there is no penalty on tomorrow's round if you decline to speak with them, we will levy a hefty fine. This will be good practice for those of you who are playing on the Tour next year." She smiled, the first one I'd seen from her since I arrived.

I was stunned by the sudden swing from elimination to inclusion. I backed away from the other players and caddies to get some breathing space. From the fringes of the crowd, I saw So Won Lee, now alternately sobbing and screaming at Alice MacPherson. Another Korean golfer translated her despair into English.

"It's not my club," she said. "I've been set up. I've never seen this club before." She pointed to the driver Alice clutched in her hand. I moved a few steps closer. I believed I
had
seen the club before—being passed back and forth between Kaitlin Rupert and Walter Moore on the Palm Lakes driving range. The experimental Ball Hog/ Tee Warrior/Fairway Bruiser had somehow made its way into the golf bag of So Won Lee.

"This place is a madhouse," said Laura. "Let's get out of here. You need to putt. You need to work on those irons a bit—tomorrow's another big day. We want nothing but fairways and greens. We'll have time to celebrate on Friday."

We retrieved my clubs from the trunk of the car and walked over to the practice range.

"I can't believe it," I said. "How the hell did that happen?"

"You're not the only one who can't believe it," whispered Laura. "Take a look at that."

At the far end of the range, Walter Moore had taken Kaitlin by the shoulders. He shook her with a barely controlled fury. "How could you do this? How could you pull a stunt like this? You and me—we are finished. Washed up, sweetheart."

Kaitlin unfastened his hands from her arms and stepped back out of his reach. "First of all," she said in an ice cold voice, "I didn't do anything. I had nothing to do with putting that stinking club in that bitch's bag. Second"— she brushed off her shirt where his hands had gripped her shoulders. "Second, you big, dumb oaf. We certainly are finished because we never were started. I can't believe you were stupid enough to think for one minute that I was interested in anything but your equipment. No, let me rephrase that to make it quite clear—not your equipment, your
golf
clubs. Now get away from me before I call security." She gave him the same quick shove she'd given her mother that first morning back in South Carolina. Only Walter, significantly larger and more solid than Kaitlin's mother, did not lose his balance.

I had never seen anyone look as angry as Walter Moore. The twitches that I'd noticed during our two breakfasts now resulted in bulging eyes and fierce jerking movements in his lips and cheeks.

"His birdie is cooked," I said to Laura. "He's lost two endorsement deals—So Won's out of the tournament, and Kaitlin's a nightmare. Plus, you know he's got to be in hot water over the discovery of the illegal club. He nearly had heart failure when I asked him about it. He wasn't supposed to have shown it to anyone yet. He was just grandstanding for Kaitlin's benefit."

"Do you think she really put it in So Won's bag?" said Laura. "Why would it mean that much to her to be in first place, halfway through the tournament? I could understand it a little better if all the rounds were over."

"I don't understand the girl, myself," I said. "Maybe she didn't believe she could ever beat So Won fair and square." I felt the vibration of my cell phone in my back pocket, where I'd placed it after we finished the morning's play.

"Cassie, it's Joe—"

"Doc! You won't believe what's happening here. First of all, I'm in for tomorrow!" I accepted his excited congratulations, then explained about So Won Lee's disqualification. "I feel bad about how it happened," I said. "I only made the cut because someone else screwed up, or she got screwed, whatever the case may be."

"You did what you had to, that's all that matters," said Joe. "Listen, could you use another hand there?"

"Are you finally coming over? Even after what a grump I was last night? That's fantastic."

"Mike gave me the boot," said Joe. "Told me he couldn't take having me look over his shoulder for one more minute. That's just fine, I said. Cassie could use me at Q-school. I knew you'd make the cut. I just knew it."

"Joe's coming," I told Laura.

"I have one problem," said Joe. "I had a little accident and I'm in the hospital at Ocala."

"Oh, my God, are you all right? I'll come right up."

"I was hoping Laura could come and pick me up. I'm fine, but my arm's in a sling and the doctor won't let me drive. But you need to stay where you are, young lady. Let me speak to Laura." Laura took the phone and scribbled down directions for the hospital.

"I hate to leave you alone another evening," she said after she'd hung up.

"I did fine alone last night," I said. The embarrassing memory of Max Harding's visit flashed through my mind. This time, I'd stay in the motel room. Completely alone.

"He figures it'll take me three hours to get up there. Four tops, if I hit traffic," said Laura. "I'll be back snoring in the other bed by midnight."

"I'll be fine," I said. "Go. Take the car. I can catch a ride over to the motel. I'll work a couple hours here, eat a good dinner, and turn in early. We don't tee off tomorrow until later in the morning anyway."

I worked at the practice range until dusk, mostly sticking to the plan Laura and I had agreed on. No last-minute grip shifts, no new swing thoughts, just a couple hours of smooth tempo and visualization of success on the course. Ha. Okay, so there were a few negative thoughts regarding the fact that every iron I had hit today leaked right. And how the hell could I have skulled two chips when I hadn't produced a line-drive trajectory that plug-ugly since the eighth grade? Not to mention the small matter of one-third of my attempts on the short grass resulting in three-putts. I tried to push away the doubts that whispered I didn't belong in the contest tomorrow. I'd show myself and everyone else that my place here had been earned and was deserved.

One of the volunteers flagged me down on the putting green. I wasn't in the mood to talk. A pounding headache and my fragile grip on an optimistic outlook for round three took the urge for chit-chat with a stranger right out of me.

"Cassie," she said. "Aren't you Cassie Burdette? Did you hear that Kaitlin missed her interview this evening?" She had the breathless voice of someone who couldn't wait to tell you their news, because the more people she told and the more personal details she had to tell, the more important she felt. "They looked for her everywhere. Do you have any idea what happened to her?"

"I have no clue," I said. "We're not friends."

The volunteer scurried off, I assumed in search of someone who'd turn out to be a more sympathetic listener and less of a grump. I ambled over in the direction of the clubhouse to look for a ride home to the Starlight. The headache I'd woken up with this morning still pulsed uncomfortably. I couldn't wait to get back to my motel room, take a couple of Advil, and sink into the oblivion of sleep.

On the short walk back to the clubhouse, Kaitlin's missed interview began to nag at me like a paper cut on my trigger finger. I couldn't get away from it. No one missed an interview in the professional golf world unless they'd pitched a major temper tantrum. Sponsors took note of that sort of acting out and adjusted their deals downward accordingly. Fans and tournament officials knew every detail about which golfers were a pain in the butt. It added pressure to a career path that was already difficult enough.

I knew Kaitlin was aware of this. And I knew that someone as fiercely competitive and frantic for attention as she would not miss her interview for anything less than a serious emergency. Maybe she'd developed food poisoning so immobilizing she couldn't even pick up the phone to call over and alert the tournament officials.

Or maybe she got called home this afternoon for a death in the family. Nah. She'd finish the tournament, then go home, figuring the dead person wouldn't care whether she showed up that night or a couple days later.

I scolded myself for being catty and decided I'd stop by her condo to atone for my uncharitable thoughts. In the process of being a Good Samaritan, I might get lucky and catch a ride home from her more agreeable brother. I could use a little cheering up.