The Sand Trap (8 page)

“He wouldn’t like me if I beat him. I know
that.”

“So let me get this straight,” replied an
astonished Rebecca, “as a woman, you lost the men’s state regional
because you have a crush on a boy.”

“I don’t care about winning, just
playing.”

“But why do you beat everyone?”

“I don’t try and beat anyone; I just try and
beat the course. If someone else does better or worse than me I
really don’t care,” Melanie responded. “Except for today with Chad.
Today I cared.”

Rebecca now realized several important
things that altered forever her relationship with Melanie. Firstly,
Melanie was still very much a little girl from the country. Maybe
the taunts were right and she was just a hick. But whatever, there
was a naivety that Rebecca was not sure she wanted to change.
Secondly, despite her prodigious talent, she was totally non
competitive, at least against people, not the golf course. As
Rebecca reflected upon the wins so far she could see that the focus
Melanie had was not a competitive focus but an intense focus upon
only the golf course; its curve, anomalies and how the wind and
local environment changed the way her ball would fly. It had
nothing to do with beating anybody. Thirdly, Melanie did not see
herself as a woman, or a man or anything in between. She was just a
golfer. Any reference to representing the progress of womanhood in
the battle of the sexes was totally lost on Melanie.

Rebecca gathered her thoughts and realized
she would have to be the competitor in their relationship and she
would have to look out for the interests of womanhood. It burned at
her that the press, Chad and the others like him would be saying
that women could never compete with men and she wished she had
Melanie’s talent so she could shove their drivers up their
asses.

“Ok Melanie,” Rebecca paused. “Look at me,"
she ordered. “Here’s the thing. I can understand more than most the
urge to mate with the opposite sex, but you and I are going to have
to come to an agreement if you want me to keep caddying for you.
You do want me to keep caddying with you don’t you?”

That perked Melanie’s attention.

“What? You mean because I didn’t win you
would quit on me?”

“No. Not because you lost. But because you
purposely lost. I won’t work with you, help you, advise you, do
whatever I think necessary on the golf course to help you get
better, if the next time your hormones surge you throw the
game.”

There was no response from Melanie and
Rebecca suddenly thought of something.

“Have you ever done this before?”

“I used to do it all the time at hockey and
baseball. Otherwise no one would have played with me.”

“No. I mean have you ever done this at golf?
While here at Clapshorn?”

“Well I never threw a match, but I often
didn’t win as much as I could have because it would have made some
of the other girls look bad.”

Rebecca was incredulous and kicked herself
for not seeing this before.

“Well, Melanie. My rule is this. If you
can't live with it you and I will part our golfing ways. You can
play any kind of game you want with your shots; put shots in traps
or into the water, hit a putter off the tee box, putt with your
driver. I don’t fucking care. Just three things. Don’t ever think I
don’t know what you are doing. I knew you hit it into the sand on
purpose on eighteen. Don’t ever do it to make some guy feel better.
Their egos rarely need your help. And most of all Melanie, and this
is the most important-- never, never play like this and lose a
match.” She added a final “Never!” for emphasis.

“Are we agreed on this Melanie?” Rebecca put
out her hand for a handshake.

Melanie smiled and took her hand.

“Agreed,” Melanie exclaimed, greatly
relieved that after over ten years of golf, she now had a friend
she did not have to keep things from or try and fool on the golf
course or anywhere else. “Do we need to spit on our palms, or jab
our fingers to mix our blood or something like that?”

Rebecca laughed. “No. Stupid, macho men do
that. Women go off and seal their bond with a chocolate sundae!
Start the car and let’s go!”

That was all a year ago now and Melanie had
lived up to her part of the agreement and Rebecca to hers. As a
team they had become a sensation on the NCGA women's golf circuit,
each flamboyant in their own way and each doing what they did best.
Melanie played golf courses and Rebecca played the crowds and the
press. By the time that they had won the state women’s NCGA
championship and were off to the NCGA national championships they
both had national reputations. Rebecca was in her final year at
Clapshorn and had already been admitted to grad school at Harvard.
Melanie was much less an academic but after her third year she knew
she would have her pick of Ivy League schools to continue her
collegiate golf. A golf club manufacturer had approached her for
sponsorship to turn professional, but even she knew she was not
ready for that step.

Their infamy had had other side effects.

Bumstead, Saskatchewan was now known as the
home of Melanie McDougal and there was a sign on the county road
into town that said so. The Folly was suddenly getting golf
visitors from all across North America as all tried their hand at
the golf course that was intended to piss them off. Melanie’s Dad
quit farming and leased his land out to neighbours in order to
devote his full attention to the course. He was even planning to
build an even tougher second nine holes.

One golf magazine interviewed both Hale
Irwin and Andy Bean about the “instruction” that they had given
Melanie. Irwin was flattered that an eight year old Melanie had
been “in love” with him, but neither ever remembered any
circumstance where they would have influenced her golf. Once they
saw videos of her swing they quickly distanced themselves from any
responsibility, or credit, for her success.

No one in the U.S. ever asked who “Moe” was
since most assumed it was just some local guy who played at the
Folly. Some conscientious reporter actually looked up the 1963
Saskatchewan open where Melanie said her father met this guy named
Moe, and discovered, for most Americans anyhow, Moe Norman, the
winner of the 1963 Saskatchewan Open and the winner of the Canadian
Amateur in 1955 and 1956, the Canadian PGA in 1966 and again just a
few years ago in 1974, and many other tournaments. He was well
known in Canada, but except for a few pros in the U.S., he was not
known well to the American golfing public. The reporter could never
get confirmation from Norman or anyone else that he actually
visited the Folly after his Canadian PGA win in 1966, but one look
at Melanie’s swing showed some similarity to his unusual swing, so
it could have been true. And he had as prodigious a talent as
Melanie was showing. By the time of his death in 2004 he would have
achieved fifty-five Canadian tour victories, thirty-three course
records and seventeen holes in one. He would be called by one
famous golfer as “the most pure ball striker alive today” and his
ability to hit shot after shot perfectly straight earned him the
nickname “pipeline Moe.” Melanie could have had a lot worse
instructors.

Much to Melanie’s chagrin, Rebecca played
loud and loose with the “great women's hope” card and told anyone
who wanted to hear that Melanie would be a champion on the men’s
tour one day, not the women's. This blatant bragging ticked off
both the men and women, but Rebecca did not care and Melanie left
that stuff to her.

But by the time Melanie had beaten Mary for
the state NCGA women's championship and they had jumped in
Rebecca’s 1977 BMW convertible and headed to California, there was
no doubt they were something of a spectacle. So in truth, Coach was
just as happy that they were making their way to California on
their own and incognito. He was getting a little tired of the
constant media attention on Melanie and Rebecca when he actually
had a winning men’s team, which he thought was far more important
than the women’s side. Two of his players were seniors and had
already secretly signed endorsements for when they turned pro.
Their victories and standing…Chad had won the State amateur last
year and Burt had been third. That meant they had a lifetime access
to the qualification rounds for any amateur event in the country as
well as entry to qualifying events for either Q School for the PGA
or the new nationwide professional tour. They could even enter the
long series of qualifying rounds for the U.S. Open if they wished.
They were good. They had done much for Coach’s reputation in the
golf world, and after his golfers did well in the nationals he
would have offers from much larger schools for much larger
paychecks. Melanie was in fact a little bit of a fly in his
aspirational plans since he could neither take credit for her swing
nor for her success. He was not sure he wanted to take much credit
since her swing was so odd. She was basically uncoachable. He
reveled in the fame that she brought to the school, but tried his
best to deflect the attention to the star men golfers. He would be
driving Burt and Chad down to California himself. A parent was
driving the other female golfer from Clapshorn. To Coach’s relief,
Rebecca and Melanie were on their own.

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The trip was uneventful for both. Melanie
drove as usual. Rebecca felt far safer with Melanie behind the
wheel and Melanie loved to drive the luxury car and she loved to
drive it fast. Rebecca called it Melanie’s only submission to
recklessness. She had been driving the old F150 on the farm since
she was old enough to reach the pedals and like most farm kids had
a feeling for machinery and driving fast on gravel roads. They
stayed off the freeway system as much as possible, enjoying the
back road scenery and emptiness. Rebecca grew up with massed
traffic, not speed, so she was more than happy to let Melanie deal
with the open roads of the Midwest.

Driving was a time when they talked.

“So, do you miss playing?” Melanie asked as
they pulled off the I 15 for a parallel but quieter road.

“I still play with you.”

“I mean the competition. You are still
better than the other girls on the team. Coach was some ticked when
you said you were quitting just to caddy.”

“Look. First of all, Coach gets his rewards
so don't worry about him. Secondly, don’t say “just” when you refer
to being a caddy. It’s a brutal job to have to follow someone like
you around all day, picking up your ball, carrying your clubs and
getting you dates.”

They both laughed since they knew Melanie’s
dating life was non-existent. “Come on, be serious,” Melanie whined
as she accelerated to pass a farm truck loaded with hay. “Don't you
miss it? I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t play.”

“Surely you realize by now, my dear, that I
am not like you. Apart from being considerably more attractive to
the opposite sex.”

“More available you mean,” Melanie
interjected.

“What? You don’t think boys are irresistibly
attracted to a perfectly formed Hassidic Jewish nose? And my
figure? Not like your skinny little ass! I have something that they
can get a hold of. Who can ignore my charming New Yoke accent and
personality? What’s not to like and love?”

“Right. More available. But you aren’t
answering my question.”

“Alright. Alright,” Rebecca turned serious.
“Unlike you Melanie, I did not choose golf. My parents chose it for
me. They both grew up relatively poor in the garment district of
New York where their fathers had started a fabric import export
operation, bringing in expensive cotton from Egypt and new
synthetics from Asia. I gather it was tough going at the start.
Understandably, the American textile industry was not keen on
competitive imports. I guess they eventually did very well and
while my grandparents never left the “district” as they called it,
they bought Mom and Dad a big home on the Island as a wedding
present. Dad took over the business. He was very good at both the
business and investing, and now our family is quite well off you
might say. However, even after they made lots of money, Mom and Dad
both felt they were still considered those “upstart Jews from the
garment district”. They figured that if we all joined the country
club and all played golf and tennis as soon as we could walk, and
graduate later in life to lawn bowling, we would become one of the
gang. My older brother Herb was the designated tennis player. Don’t
ask where he lives now. I was the designated golfer. Took lessons
from the time I was five. Did all the junior tournament stuff, the
club champion stuff, dressed the way I should and to my family's
relief, I turned out to be pretty good at the game. By high school
I was one of the best young women prospects in the state. My
parents already had made a big enough donation to ensure my
admission to an Ivy League university.”