The Sand Trap (6 page)

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“Ok. Let’s go,” Rebecca announced. “Coach
says it’s fine.” People around Clapshorn just called him Coach and
most of the players did not even know he had a name. “We can meet
the team there. But he says that you have to drive.”

It was well known that Rebecca was a terror
on every drivable road within a hundred miles of Clapshorn College.
She had more speeding tickets in her "Beemer" than the whole
student body combined, as well as three accidents, all minor
fortunately, and one DUI. While the erratic driving quirks were
mostly tolerated by Coach, the college officials and her parents,
the DUI was not and she had received a strong sanction from all of
them after getting picked up by the state police while drag
stripping some local cowboys on a Montana back road. Those
sanctions had included a loss of her license for three months. Most
galling at the time to Rebecca was the suspension from the golf
team for two of the ten regional tournaments.

That was over a year ago, and while she had
not stopped driving fast or had not stopped drinking, she had at
least stopped doing them at the same time. And the suspension from
playing had changed her life.

“How did you ever get Coach to agree to let
two innocents such as us drive a thousand miles on our own to
California in…”Melanie paused and then pretended to gag. “No,
you’re not … give me a break! He’s married!”

“All the better. They tend to keep it to
themselves.”

“Keep what to themselves?” Melanie
admonished. “That you will fuck anything on two legs. That’s hardly
a secret around campus.”

“Oh! You hurt!” Rebecca exclaimed with a
mock pained expression. “Not ‘anything’ my dear sweet, naïve,
virginal friend, just those who will give me either some special
pleasure or some special advantage. I assure you that Coach can do
the former and the permission to drive proves the latter. So get
your bags and you can thank me for it later.”

The naïve and virginal comments were a
good-natured tease, but the truth of the comments often cut.
Melanie had indeed never been out of Saskatchewan before she came
to Clapshorn as a walk on try out for the golf team. While she had
spent her high school living with her grandmother, she always made
it clear she was from Bumstead, Saskatchewan. When asked the name
of her home Country Club she would proudly announce that she
actually lived at the North Saskatchewan Golf and Country Club and
that her Dad was the head professional. The truth was that there
was far more country than golf where she lived, and her Dad was
really a professional farmer. She learned that you had to be from
somewhere, so while this little white lie served its purpose, it
also contributed to the naive, country hick persona. However, she
was indeed a virgin, though not from a lack of normal teenage
hormonal urges. She had dated occasionally in both Bumstead and in
Regina, and she remembered being in love at least twice. What most
boys initially mistook for shy and willing was, in fact, shy and
resolute. At high school she did not talk a lot, and the more
aggressive boys thought this was the kind of confidence lack they
could exploit. What it was, in fact, was a purposeful effort to
simply not stand out. She fell in love with Robbie Wilson in grade
six but he lost interest in her after he discovered she could both
beat him up and hit a baseball better than he could. She thought
Norman Patterson really liked her when he visited the Folly with
his parents in the summer after grade nine, but he lost interest
after she trounced him at golf.

She quite simply had yet to meet a guy that
liked to be beaten at soccer, golf, baseball and most other sports
by his girlfriend. So she left the dating scene pretty much alone
in high school.

She and Rebecca had worked out this mutually
agreeable arrangement. Rebecca would caddy for Melanie on the golf
course. Melanie would “caddy” Rebecca through the other parts of
her rambunctious life. While Rebecca helped Melanie avoid the odd
bogie, Melanie helped Rebecca avoid college suspension, expulsion
or county jail, whichever came first. They had been together with
this arrangement for over a year now; ever since Melanie showed up
at the first year golf try outs, and Rebecca began her DUI
punishment.

It was not love at first sight for sure.

Rebecca was royally pissed that she had been
suspended and as part of her suspension had been assigned to help
out the rookies trying out for the team. Each of the rookies was
given an upper year “buddy” to help out. Show them the practice
routine. Take them to the club house of the local golf course that
was the “home’ of the Clapshorn Gophers golf team and make sure the
new girls to town did not get lost. As she described it later to a
reporter, when she had randomly been assigned Melanie, “I pissed my
pants laughing and crying. Laughing as this gangly kid dressed like
a young Hale Irwin walked up to the practice range and pulled out a
5-iron that I figured Ben Hogan had made in his garage as a
teenager. There was a new driver in the canvas bag that still had a
Canadian Tire sale sticker on it! The crying part was that I was
feeling pretty sorry for myself that I had to be her golf
buddy."

In fact the attention of everyone was on
Melanie that day as she stepped up to the practice range that first
time. Most knew least a little about her. Bob Philips had convinced
Coach to give her what was called a provisional athletic
scholarship, a fancy description of a scholarship that was
conditional both upon making the team and upon subsequent
performance. Philips was not worried she would make the team. He
knew her talent first hand. A broken leg or some such dramatic
injury was not likely from golf. Although she was an outstanding
goalie in her hometown, he had made her promise not to play hockey.
But he was worried her ability to socially adapt might be a problem
and that is why he had asked Coach to assign a good mentor or buddy
to help her out.

Coach had no such confidence in her
potential to make the team. He and Bob had been teammates at
Clapshorn, and he remembered Bob as competent at the game but by
any means not of the pro caliber that Bob envisioned. And Coach was
not used to taking the advice of Physics teachers in Canada when it
came to offering scholarships, but the College President thought it
might be a good idea to get some more Canadian girls coming down to
Clapshorn for athletics. There were no private universities in
Canada that could offer big scholarships and some teams were able
to raid the Canadian high schools with abandon. The Clapshorn
hockey team was mostly Canadians. In addition, the governing board
and the NCAA athletic commission were giving him a little grief
about gender inequality. So Coach relented, offered Melanie a try
out and killed two birds with one stone. He managed to get both the
President and Philips off his back.

When he saw her walk out onto the practice
range his stomach turned over.

“What the fuck is that?” he exclaimed to his
assistant coach, as they watched all the girls walk to the tee
boxes.

“That is Bob Philip’s Canadian prodigy,”
Stan Smith sarcastically pointed out.

“Yeah, well this is going to be
embarrassing,” Coach suggested as they both moved closer to the
range so that they could watch the spectacle.

For her part Melanie was oblivious to the
chatter, the twitters and the attention that she had at the range
that day. A shy and taciturn young girl without a golf club
magically transformed into a focused and warmly comfortable
individual with her old canvas bag over her shoulder. She knew she
was dressed just the way good golfers dressed in her magazines and
she knew she was good at the game. No one had beaten her in the
last six years at the Folly. Bob had tried to give her new clubs
and Helen had tried to get her into some new female golf attire,
but Melanie would have none of it. None of the spectators could see
it, but she was grinning inside from ear to ear. Without a warm up
or a waggle she hit her first 5-iron. The swing was the same as the
first time that Bob saw it several years ago and the ball took that
same elegant draw as it climbed and descended to hit the five-foot
square sign that indicated 200 yards.

Rebecca was standing behind her and was
still a little awestruck by the swing she had just seen. “Too bad –
you hit the sign.”

Melanie turned and saw Rebecca for the first
time and with not the slightest indication of guile or cynicism
quietly announced, “I was aiming for it.”

“Can you do it again?” Rebecca asked with
raised eyebrows.

“I can try if you want me to?”

“Please do,” Rebecca requested with not a
little sarcasm in her voice.

Out of the twenty-five balls that Melanie
hit in rapid succession, as fast as she could tee them up, she hit
the sign fourteen times and barely missed it on the other
eleven.

“Can you do that without a tee?” This time
Coach was right behind her.

So she hit twenty-five more balls from the
manicured ground of the Clapshorn Golf and Country Club, ground
that to Melanie was just like a tee box back home. Sunbaked prairie
turf rarely let you take a divot. This time she hit the sign
fifteen times.

“Wherever did you learn that swing, Melanie?
“ Coach asked.

“Hale, Andy, and Moe,” She replied in a
quiet deadpan.

The two coaches looked with disbelief and
awe. One by one, each girl on the driving range went to their bag
and pulled out a favourite club. There were 3-irons and some had
the new metal woods. A few had some old Persimmon 5 woods and some
even tried to match Melanie’s 5-iron. And the 200-yard sign became
the target for thirty or so teenage girls all trying to make the
Clapshorn Women’s golf squad. The odd shot hit the sign and when
this happened big cheers went up from the crowd of parents and
other interested onlookers. But most missed and many did not even
come close.

Coach realized that he was losing control of
his carefully scripted golf try out session. People were crowding
around Melanie looking at her clubs and asking her where she was
from and who inspired her original clothing. Melanie was clearly
bewildered by this attention and flustered only a few replies that
no one understood. Rebecca realized that this young girl really did
not know what was going on.

“Grab your clubs and come with me,” she
insisted as she grabbed Melanie gently by the arm and led her off
the range and toward the parking lot.

“Where are we going?”

“We're going to have a drink and a chat."
Rebecca insisted. "Now."

On their way to the parking lot they passed
a group of boys coming into the clubhouse with their clubs.

“Hey, Rebecca! Who is this? Another new
member of the hole in one club?”

“Fuck off Chad. This one isn’t for you to
play with,” Rebecca spat back.

The other boys oohed and awed and guffawed
at Chad, their obvious leader.

“Looks to me that the only playing she would
be good for is on Halloween night. Where did she get those
clothes?” That elicited more laughter as Rebecca hustled Melanie to
her car and they drove away.

Melanie was clearly bewildered by what
happened at the range and on the way to the car. “What just
happened and why didn’t we stay at the range?”

“Well, that …as you refer to it…was Chad
Willigen, the captain of the men’s golf team and the NCGA state
champion. He is our strongest hope for Clapshorn to win a place at
the NCGA nationals in California next year. “

“He’s very good looking.”

“He’s an asshole. Thinks he is king shit on
the golf course. Acts like it.”

“Is he good?”

“Yeah, he is good. He has been state junior
champion a number of times. He even played in the US Amateur last
year based upon his performance in the NCGA tournaments.”

“If he is so good why is he at Clapshorn?”
Even Melanie had picked up that Clapshorn was not the top ranked
school in the News Magazine national ranking of U.S. colleges and
universities.

“You’re not as dumb as you look little girl.
Two reasons.” Rebecca announced holding up a finger, “One. He is
dumber than one of those Saskatchewan fence posts that you have.
His SAT scores would not get him into any place that had any
academic conscience at all. Two,” she added a second finger, “his
mother is a Clapshorn.”

“He is cute though isn’t he?” Melanie
mused.

Life changed dramatically for Melanie over
the next few months. She received both a full scholarship and
Rebecca as a constant companion. Rebecca was suspended from
playing, but she could help Melanie. Despite Melanie’s obvious
talent Rebecca discovered that there were holes in her playing
form. She had no course management sense. She just “went for it”
with every shot. She had never heard of the concept of laying up.
She shot for the pin no matter how dangerously it was placed.
Rebecca also discovered that Melanie had no short game at all. She
was a disaster with any shot within twenty yards of the green. She
was hopeless from the sand. While her ball striking was
inexplicably brilliant, her putting was simply ordinary. She putted
with this crazy two-foot stick with a piece of plastic on the end
that most mini putts would have thrown out long ago. Coach had to
do some research to see if it was in fact legal. It was, and he
continued to let her use it. Rebecca was well aware of the abuse
that Melanie took behind her back for the putter, and in fact the
other entire oddball clubs in her bag. Even early in their
relationship Rebecca was smart enough to know that Melanie had some
special attributes. While others started to call her freak, and
Coach continued to simply shake his head and ignore her, Rebecca
knew something unusual was going on.