Chapter 36: Distracting Golf

In a golf tournament, Saturday is usually referred to as ‘Moving Day’. That’s because it is the day that golfers usually take greater risks in order to move up (and sometimes down) the leaderboard trying to get into position to win on Sunday. They say that while it’s not possible to win the tournament on Saturday, you CAN lose it.

On this Saturday morning, I elected to sleep in. I had made the cut and was in the next to last pairing with the golfer in third place. That meant that my tee time was at 1:15.

After worrying so much about her father yesterday afternoon, Rachel was exhausted and had slept soundly all night. She was still asleep when I woke up. I simply held her close until I had to go to the bathroom. After I did my morning ablutions, and seeing Rachel still asleep, I made my way to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

Mom and Dad, along with Olivia, Krystal, Ayumi, and Carlos were all seated around the dining room table drinking coffee and talking. Carlos was telling everyone how much better he felt. And Dad was explaining to him how he couldn’t tell anyone about what I had done for him.

“I fell asleep on the couch in the living room and when I woke up, I felt better. That’s all I know,” he told my Dad.

“Good. Just stick to that and Alex and Rachel should be safe,” Dad told him.

After breakfast, I decided to go for a swim. The pool did not have a screen enclosure but I didn’t have a problem with insects. Probably because the wind was blowing at a fair clip which was something I had been warned to expect in Kansas. Since it was predicted to last the rest of the day, I wondered how it was going to affect my golf game.

I had played in wind before, and knew that it required a different approach with much more finesse and control. And you couldn’t hit the ball as high which limited your distance.

About eleven o’clock, Dad and I headed back to the clubhouse. Mom said that since Carlos was feeling so much better, everyone was coming to watch me play.

“Oh great!” I thought to myself. “Just what I need. A gallery!”

I did my usual warmup, paying particular to how my shots reacted to the wind. Unfortunately, as I made my way around the course later, I knew that the wind would be affecting my shots from different directions so what I practiced wouldn’t always work. I finally gave up and went to practice my putting.

When we got to the first tee, I found out from the golfers who had already completed their rounds, that just about all of them were scoring higher than the previous two days.

I introduced myself to my playing partner for the day, a guy from Florida named Hector Jimenez. A graduate of the U (The University of Miami), he had been on the Korn Ferry Tour for five years but had never really gotten this close to winning before.

It only took two holes to discover that Hector was a cheat. He didn’t falsify his score because we had an official scorer and cameras watching most of the time. But what he did was, every time I got up to hit, he would stand just in the line of my peripheral vison and as I brought my club back, he would make a slight move or an odd sound such as a cough or sneeze to distract me.

After a par save on one and a bogie on two, I was ready to zap the shit out of him. Dad calmed me down and suggested that I get an official review from the TV people. I nodded my head, but I didn’t really want to bother with the distraction. So I promised myself that I would do it only if he wouldn’t stop.

When he lined up to do it again on Three, I simply stopped and asked him to step back. He just gave me a look and became still until I drew back my club. Then as I started my swing, he jangled the keys in his pocket.

I stopped my swing halfway through and asked for an official. Then I stood there and waited for a tour official to arrive. Dad nodded to me that the cameraman he had clued in, had got it on film.

“Would you take a look at the camera footage of my last two tee shots and the shot from the fairway on Two. My playing partner is intentionally trying to distract me,” I told him.

He went to Hector, who pleaded that he didn’t speak English and escorted him farther behind me. Then he signaled me to hit. After my shot, I heard him use his radio and ask someone to check the tape.

As I walked off Number Three with my birdie, I heard him give Hector a warning. After that, I had no more problems with Hector. I heard later that afternoon that his partners from Thursday and Friday had experienced the same thing, but had not notified the officials at the time, although one of them had filed a grievance after the round. When I arrived on Sunday morning, I noticed a big DQ (Disqualified) next to his name, even though he shot a 72 on Saturday.

As for me, I put it out of my mind and followed my birdie on Number Three with birdies on three of the next four holes. I made the turn with a 33, putting me at 14 under.

The back nine at Creekview North was a little more open than the front side and had played havoc with most of the golfer’s scores that day. It did with mine as well. I had two bogies and three birdies for a 35. That gave me a 68 and a three day total of 15 under.