Chapter 63

Since the land around Las Vegas is so flat and there are relatively few roads, Ann had no trouble at all finding the country club where Mike and Mark were scheduled to go off from the first tee an hour later. They changed in the ladies' locker room and then went to the practice tee with Duke and Duchess pacing beside them. It was the tigers first time at a golf course and the animals kept their eyes casting around to take everything in. They had been fitted with light harnesses to enable them to carry the girl's golf bags so they could caddy for them.

Aside from providing protection and companionship, the tigers offered other advantages. First, quite by accident, Ann had found that with their wide-spaced eyes the animals had superb depth perception resulting in an ability to visually measure distance that rivaled top optical range-finders. When this ability was discovered, working with Susie, the computer, the two huge animals studied the game of golf, including its rules, but particularly focusing on club selection. Duke was caddying for Mary, while Duchess was carrying Ann's bag.

On the practice tee, the fun began. Sitting beside Mary, Duke looked down the range and selected the 150-yard marker. First, he reported that the distance was incorrect; it was 145 yards. Second, because the ground sloped down from the practice tee, she needed a shorter club than normal for the distance and recommended one. Having taken her initial warm-ups, she took the indicated club, swung normally and hit the ball high into the air. It landed right at the base of the post supporting the marker, and Duke congratulated her on her lovely golf shot.

The two girls repeated the process aiming for different targets on the practice range with the same result. They finally decided that, inside 250 yards, the tigers distance estimates were accurate to within a single yard. Moreover, they were natural-born judges of terrain. It was shaping up to be a very interesting day.

Finally they walked over to the first tee. Mark and Mike Campbell were waiting there for them, having just learned what the girls already knew: the pro had paired them to create a foursome.

"Hi!" Mark greeted Ann. "I'm Mike Campbell."

He held out his hand and Ann just looked at him. "Do you want to try again, Mark?" she asked. "Or did you forget what I said the last time?"

Then she just shook her head and said, "Mark, I think you and your twin need a lesson. I think I heard somewhere that you're looking for some money for your company. Is that correct?" When he said it was, she continued, "How does $500 million sound? Free and clear. No cost to you."

Mark was stunned. "Who do we shoot, and then which bank do we rob?"

Ann reached into a pocket of her golf bag, took out her Morgan-Guaranty check book, and wrote a check payable to him in the amount of $250 million. But she didn't sign it. Holding it out to him, she said, "I'll sign this check — and Mary will sign another in the same amount — if you can beat us on the golf course this afternoon. How's that sound?"

"As a joke, it sounds pretty good," he admitted. "But as a check? Get serious! I could write one just like it payable to you, but it would lack $249 million and large change of clearing."

She took the check back, wrote a phone number on its back, and told him it was the phone number of the Private Banking Division at Morgan. They would tell him if the check was any good.

He cocked his head and said, "You're serious, aren't you?" When she assured him she was, he took the check and went back toward the pro shop. "But I'll get the number from Long-Distance Information, if it's all the same to you."

A couple of minutes later he came back looking pale.

"What did they say, Mark?" his brother asked.

"The guy — a vice president, yet — took my call. I told him I had a check from Ann Whitfield. He said, 'It's good.' 'But I didn't tell you the amount, ' I said. 'Is it for more than $10 billion?' he asked. Stunned, I said it wasn't. 'Then it's good.'"

Mark shook his head trying to clear it and then added, "I asked him what if I had said it was for more than $10 billion? He told me that in that case there might be some delay; he would have to work it out with his money desk." Then he turned back to Ann and said, "Okay, if I beat you, you give me $250 million. But what if — by some miracle — you win? What happens then?"

"Oh," she said with a happy grin, "that's easy. You just sign over your shares in your company to me. We know that without the money — and you haven't had much luck raising any, have you? — the company's toast. So the company wouldn't be worth much, anyway, without the new money."

He shrugged and shook on the bet, while Mike did the same with Mary. As the men stretched — neither had been to the practice tee — Mark said, "Wait a minute. On this course, they give away miles to the ladies' tees. You have to play from the whites with us!"

Ann appeared reluctant, but finally agreed. While her face was impassive, inwardly she wanted to cheer. Both she and Mary knew that they had to play from the men's tees. The distances off the ladies' tees were often too short for their game.

Then Ann said, "To show you what ladies we are, since we're going off the men's tees, we'll even give you the honors on the first tee. So hit!"

The course they were playing was a typical desert course. It had lots of bunkers, but was basically very flat. In spite of its irrigation system, the fairways were quite hard so a well-hit ball carried a long way. As a result, in yardage, the course was very long but very flat. With their tremendous power it was ideal for the girls' game. Their accuracy virtually ensured that the sand bunkers wouldn't be much of a factor, either.

However, the greens were very large in area, so it was quite common to have first putts longer than 100 feet. But with their short-game accuracy and putting skill, that posed no problem, either.

Mark led off with a very nice drive that landed about 200 yards out, and rolled another 25. He was quite proud of it, and looked it. Mike followed, but he pushed his drive off to the right and caught a trap on the right edge of the fairway. The girls flipped a coin, and Ann went first. She had really been letting out her swing at the end of her practice, and while the first hole was very long — it was a 445-yard par 4 — it was straight to the pin.

She took her stance, took a deep breath and let it out, then addressed the ball. She really got her hips and legs into her shot and loved the sound the driver made as it struck the ball perfectly in the heart of its sweet spot. Only when she finished her follow-through did she look up and pick up the ball in flight. It was in a low but still-rising trajectory just to the right of the fairway centerline. Finally it came down and landed at a shallow angle that would maximize the roll. With the top-spin put on the ball by her slight draw, the ball continued to run and finally came to a stop.

"That was 285 yards in the air, Mistress, and another 30 on the roll," Duchess informed her. You hit it 315 yards." Then she paused and added, "It was a truly beautiful golf shot."

The men had watched the whole process and were now utterly stunned. "My God!" Mark said in stunned amazement, "Davis Love, III, and John Daly don't hit drives that far!"

"No, they don't," Ann agreed. "I know Love holds his down to about 275. He says that beyond that he just gets into trouble — driving through doglegs and things like that. I was just showing off. I apologize."

"Your apology is not accepted," Mark said with a grin. "Never apologize for a shot like that! It was utterly magnificent. It must be almost 300 yards out."

"It's 315," she said. "It was 285 on the fly, and the rest was roll." When he looked at her with a question in his eye, she just pointed to Duchess, who sat there with a smug grin on her face.

Mary's drive was almost a carbon copy of Ann's, except it ended up one yard shorter and two feet to the left. Mike used an iron out of the trap but was still over 100 yards short of the green while already lying 2. Mark hit a good second shot but was 50 yards short of the green.

Reaching Mary's ball, Duke took a range on the flag stick and said it was 119 yards to the pin. Mary pointed out that the hole was 450 yards, but Duke reminded her that distances were measured to the center of the green. Since the pins were moved every day, and since typically the greens were very large, this could create substantial differences in the yardage a hole actually played. Mary took her wedge and hit the ball perfectly. The men watched in utter amazement as her ball appeared to be dropping almost straight down as it reached the pin. It hit three feet past the cup, and walked backward but stopped six inches from the hole.

Ann took her wedge and hit it perfectly. It, too, landed about three feet past the cup, but came walking backward to drop neatly into the hole without even touching the stick.

"Yes!" she screamed as she jumped thrusting her right fist up into the air. Mary hugged her, and Duchess gave her a kiss. The two men were stunned.

Mike hit a good third shot to the green, but it landed over 100 feet away from the pin. It took him two putts to get down for a 5. Mark hit a lovely pitch, and then sank a 9-foot putt for his par. Mary tapped her ball in for a 3, while Ann had her eagle 2. With only one hole played both men were already down by two strokes.

The first hole set the tone for the whole round. One of the first things the girls did was to develop an appreciation for the tigers' incredible ability to determine range. On every shot where it was relevant, they would give the exact distance from the ball to the pin. This proved to be invaluable on the par-3 holes because not only did the distance change due to the placement of the pin, it also changed with the placement of the tee markers. The only long putts the girls took all day were on par-5 holes that they invariably reached in two. Almost inevitably, they were putting for eagles.

When they finished the front nine, the girls were tied at 30 strokes each. Mary had picked up the stroke she had lost to Anne's eagle on the first hole with a hole-in-one on the par-3 4^th, thanks largely to the precise range to the pin that Duke had provided. The men were being demolished. Mark had a 40 and Mike had a 41 for the front nine.

They had previously arranged with the starter to take a break after nine holes, and given the girls' prominence, there were no questions asked. They ordered lunch on the terrace, and asked for two empty ice buckets filled with Snapple lemonade for the tigers who were lying at their feet. The girls were sitting stretched out on their chairs with their feet resting on two others, while the men were in a state of shock and dismay. Their company was falling right out from under them.