The Sand Trap (18 page)

Melanie’s nine had been as weird as her
swing and by the turn even the gallery knew there was something
wrong. Chad and his caddie asked Rebecca to join them as they
approached the tournament chair. “The girl is behaving like she is
on a different planet. She is nuts,” he exclaimed to the official.
“You can't let her go on. This is mockery. Declare her unfit and
declare me the default winner.”

Rebecca was instantly on him. “You can't be
serious Chad. As soon as someone matches you stroke for stroke you
want them disqualified?” She was so angry she was spitting her
words.

The chair seemed to be considering the issue
carefully. It was true that this whole thing had not gone the way
the board had envisioned. Not only had Melanie won, but she was
also becoming a crowd and a press favourite. After watching Melanie
on the front nine he actually agreed with Chad. She was off her
rocker but the public fallout from a disqualification would be
immense.

“Let the match continue,” he decided. “If
she is as unbalanced as you say I’m sure her golf will fall apart
and there won’t be an issue.”

Rebecca gave Chad a murderous look and
walked back to Melanie. Melanie in the meantime was entertaining
Texas, New Hampshire and Florida and a gathering crowd with stories
about golfing at the Folly. She arrived just as the crowd roared at
her description of one golfer chasing a raven through a cornfield
after the bird had stolen his bag of potato chips. She was just
starting to tell the guys to watch her play seven, since it was the
most challenging hole at the Folly, when Rebecca took her by the
arm and walked her away to a quiet place near the tenth tee box.
Rebecca was about to say something to her when Melanie announced.
“Rebecca I am having such a wonderful day. I cannot tell you how
much it means for you and this wonderful crowd to be here today
with me. I wish Bob and Helen could be here and it would be fun to
let Moe see how I’ve remembered what he taught me. But today is
perfect,” she gushed.

Rebecca cautiously asked her what she
thought her strategy should be on the tenth hole and Melanie
wondrously described a hole that Rebecca had never seen before and
only resembled the tenth at Cedar Grove in that they were both
apparently par fours. “And isn’t Chad a real gentleman? I can
hardly wait to have Dad and Gran meet him.”

Rebecca did not question her description,
just reached up and put her arm around her shoulders. “I’m glad you
are enjoying this Melanie. So let’s go bust their balls!”

While Melanie walked to the tee box and
continued the chatter with the followers, Rebecca sought out Coach
who had been talking to Chad. “He’s really pissed, Rebecca,” Coach
offered. “He and his parents did not want to play her in the first
place and now with her behaviour they think she should be
disqualified. They may appeal later.”

“Do you think she has lost it?” Rebecca
reticently asked. “I mean do you think playing the back nine will
be bad for her?”

“I know you are closer to her than I am, but
while she seems in a different reality or world, she looks pretty
happy to me. I would think stopping her from playing and shocking
her out of whatever world she is in might be tricky right now.”

“I agree. But help me to watch her over the
back nine. As the coach you are the only one who can legitimately
throw in the towel.”

The back nine was mostly a repeat of the
front nine. Rebecca never knew what club Melanie was going to ask
for since she did not have a clue what kind of hole that Melanie
was playing. By this time she realized that Melanie thought she was
back in Saskatchewan and they were all playing the course that
Melanie had been brought up on. She resolved to go there someday to
have a look for herself, but at this moment the circumstance made
for some bizarre playing. Once Melanie took out her driver on the
165-yard fourteenth hole and to the delight of the crowd hit a
little punch shot that rolled to the middle of the green. But
Melanie never stopped smiling and never stopped shooting whatever
shot was needed to par or birdie and Chad was clearly getting
increasingly frustrated. He was playing superb golf and despite her
antics, she kept matching him hole by hole. The crowds secretly
distracted him. He was used to them being on his side. He knew how
to behave on the course, and even today he had been careful not to
show any frustration, congratulating Melanie after she made a good
shot and smiling cheerfully as they moved from hole to hole. But
the crowd had definitely shifted to her on this day and he did not
like it. Sooner or later he was sure she would blow one of those
‘Hail Mary’ save shots and he would get a lead that he would never
let go.

That had not happened by the end of the
eighteen. To Chad’s and the NCGA's surprise, the match was all
square after eighteen holes of regulation match play. The golfers
had matched each other birdie for birdie and par for par and while
the score did not matter in match play they had each shot a
remarkable seven under, a pair of sixty-fives. The match would now
go to sudden death extra holes. The extra hole was number nine,
chosen because it was the number one handicap hole and they would
play it over and over again until one player won the hole. It was a
par-five that stretched as a dogleg to the left around the pond so
that water ran the complete left side of the fairway. The smart
shot was a long iron or fairway wood to the middle and two approach
shots to the green for a possible birdie putt. That was how Chad
had played it earlier in the day. Melanie had hit a beautiful
drawing driver down the left side that set up an easy approach to
the green. They both birdied, but Melanie had taken the more
spectacular and risky route.

Melanie and Rebecca walked together down the
fairway to the ninth tee box. Melanie had not paid much attention
to the discussion between the caddies and Coach after the
eighteenth was over. “Which hole are we going to Rebecca?”

“The water one Melanie!” she joked. “Your
favourite.”

“Alright!” she enthusiastically responded.
“I love this hole. Although it cost my dad a bundle to buy a right
of way from the County to allow golfers to walk across the bridge
over the North Saskatchewan.”

“That’s too bad.” Rebecca had played along
with Melanie and her fantasy for most of the back nine. Whatever
she was doing or wherever she was, it was working for her golf
game.

Chad hit first and hit a long iron to the
middle of the fairway and Melanie told him, “Not bad Chad. A good
shot but not long enough.” And she stood up to the tee with her
driver and looked over the North Saskatchewan River as it ran west
to the sun that was staring to push the horizon. She knew the shot
on this tee box well. The seventh hole at the Folly was a sharp
dogleg left with the first 200 yards being all river and the
fairway running 300 yards left along the riverbank. A safe iron
certainly put you in the middle of the fairway, but a long way from
the hole. To have any chance of making the green in two, and all
the golfers at the Folly tried it, you had to hit a very long draw
that had to land perfectly on the fairway over the river and roll
straight down the fairway to the left. She had hit it many times.
The risk was an ‘over cooked’ draw that would land the ball on the
fairway but roll into the river. She had hit that many times too,
she laughed to herself as she went to the tee box.

In her usual fashion she put in her tee,
took one look over the river and her shot started out low and
piercing into the slight breeze. Every eye in the gallery followed
her ball flight and there were ooohs and aaahs as it took a rising
trajectory straight down the fairway and started a gentle draw
straight left towards the hole. Melanie immediately knew she was in
trouble. She had felt the western breeze on her cheek that rolled
off the Rockies this time of year and she knew that wind would
amplify her draw. She watched as the her ball landed on the fairway
and rolled and rolled and rolled right into the rough on the edge
of the fairway, just short of the North Saskatchewan.

There were loud groans from the gallery and
a way too loud “shit!” from Rebecca standing behind her. Chad’s
caddie gave a fist pump and he and Chad shared a high five.

Melanie just nonchalantly gave Rebecca her
driver and said as seriously as she had done all day. “Hey, don’t
worry. I’ve been there many times!”

Chad moved quickly to his ball and waited
while Melanie, Rebecca and the tournament Marshal moved over to
where her ball had rolled to the edge of the water. The water was a
lateral hazard and the point of entry to the water was on the
fairway side, so if the ball had gone in the water Melanie could
take a stroke and drop the ball from shoulder height, any place on
a line from the point where it went into the water, to the tee box.
In this case she had come up short of the water and her ball was
only two feet from the edge of the water in three-inch rough. She
did have places to stand, but they were either very close to the
ball or standing at the water edge and below the ball in some
mixture of mud and sand.

“Can I have my driver please Rebecca?”
Melanie asked in a very serious and quiet voice as she looked down
at the ball.

“What the hell and are doing Melanie? You
are 250 yards from the green. Take an iron. Take a lay up and go
for the one putt birdie. Chad will likely hit it in three. Get the
birdie maybe. You can be on in three, one putt and maybe save the
hole.”

“It’s OK Rebecca. Moe taught me this one,”
Melanie offered as she put out her hand for the driver. Rebecca
looked down at the ball and saw what no one else could see and she
realized what Melanie had been looking at. Her ball was sitting up
on a one-foot square tuft of rough like it had been placed on a
tee. The result was a perfect lie and this time when Rebecca looked
at Melanie there was no sign of a vacant or distant mind.

“OK. But hit a 5 wood. It will come up short
and give you an easy chip to a birdie. Trust me on this one
Melanie.”

Melanie paused for a moment and then took
the 5 wood from Rebecca. She walked carefully over the lip of the
grass to the edge of the water, took a quick look down the fairway
and swung harder than Rebecca had ever seen her swing. There was no
doubt there was a solid connection between the club head and
ball.

The gallery around the green could see from
a distance as she carefully looked at her ball and took a club from
Rebecca, but no one expected the shot to come anywhere near the
green. They had all been subdued when her drive went into the thick
rough since she was the crowd favourite. When she hit the ball and
they all realized it was coming towards the green the buzz grew
louder. When the ball came up short and landed in the deep bunker
on the right side of the green there was a spontaneous groan from
the loud gallery on the left side of the green where Texas, New
Hampshire, Florida and the other Melanie fans were watching.
Rebecca looked over at Chad and saw him laugh as he exchanged the
iron he had in his hand for a fairway wood. If she could go for it,
so could he. She looked over at a smug looking Melanie. “Don’t tell
me you did that on purpose?”

“Actually I was trying to hole it. I
missed,” she laughed as they walked to the green.

Chad hit his second shot into the bunker at
the back of the green and they all walked to the green to see what
kind of lies they each had in the sand. When they arrived at the
green, Chad’s ball was clearly evident in a good lie in the trap.
They could not see Melanie’s ball. Rebecca went into the trap and
started to rake where the ball appeared to land, but there was no
ball. Rebecca turned to the small crowd on that side of the
green.

“Did anyone see where it went in?” There was
no response and she noticed that the crowd on that side of the
green consisted of Chad’s friends and relatives.

“Come on! One of you must have seen where
the ball went.”

The crowd just looked at each other and
shrugged their shoulders.

Melanie grabbed a rake and jumped into the
trap with Rebecca and started to dig in the sand. It did not matter
if they hit or moved the ball since the rule was that they could
simply put the ball back in its original position with no penalty
if they found it and moved it with their rakes.

But neither of them turned up the ball.

The Marshal walked across the green and
called to Rebecca. “You have three minutes left.” A player only has
five minutes to find a missing ball. Coach, Texas, New Hampshire
and Florida ran out of the crowd, jumped into the trap and joined
Melanie and Rebecca in the search by kicking the sand with their
feet. By this time Chad and his Caddie friend had come over and
were standing on the green over the trap, silently looking
alternately at the excavation going on in the bunker and their
watches.

“Someone took the ball!” claimed Rebecca to
the Marshal in desperation. “One of those guys over there went into
the trap and took the ball before we got here!”

“That’s possible,” Texas agreed. “We
couldn’t see the bunker from the other side of the raised
green.”

“Thirty seconds,” the Marshal ignored her
and announced as he looked at his watch. All four resumed their
furious digging and raking.

“Done,” he announced. “Time’s up. That’s a
lost ball.”

They all stopped their digging and raking
except Rebecca who kept shoving her rake furiously into the corners
of the trap. Melanie walked over to her and touched her on the
shoulder and calmly announced: “It’s OK Rebecca. It’s over.” Texas
and New Hampshire helped Melanie and Rebecca out of the deep bunker
and no one said anything until the tournament Marshal came
over.

“So that ball is now declared lost. That
will be stroke and distance. Young lady,” he looked at Melanie,
“come with me and we’ll go back to where you hit the shot and do it
again.”