Chapter 13

When the final threesome teed off early Sunday afternoon, there was a nice crowd of club members and Bloomfield locals making up the gallery. Maybe Tiger Woods had more fans watching him play, but for these young women, the numbers were pretty impressive.

One of the three who had started the day at six under for the tournament, a tall, thin, timid-looking young woman named Sarah Montgomery, apparently was suffering severe stage fright. For her, the first hole was a nightmare. She finished the par four hole with a mind-bending, round-ruining nine.

She tossed her breakfast in the woods on the way to the second tee.

To her immense credit, Sarah Montgomery didn't quit, and for the remainder of the day, she played decently. But everyone knew she was, effectively, out of contention.

Tess' other rival, however, was an older player -- not old, by any means, but old for the Futures Tour -- named Martha McLaughlin.

Martha, like Tess, was big and strong and had an intimidating long game. She was a little bit mannish in appearance, as well. Rumors of lesbian domination of women's professional golf are probably -- you should excuse the expression -- overblown, but it was undeniable that Martha McLaughlin looked pretty damned butch.

No matter. She was a true sportswoman, and treated Tess (and me, for that matter) with the utmost propriety and respect. Most disconcerting, for me, was the fact that Tess' rival was preternaturally calm. Nothing seemed to shake Martha McLaughlin's confidence. On the fourth hole -- a short par 3 -- she overcooked one and ended up past the green by 40 yards. She'd left her ball hanging off a 45-degree slope -- the bank of a little stream running through the course. There was no way She was going to get up-and-down from there, but her double bogey, under the circumstances, was a moral victory.

Tess, meanwhile, was one over herself on the front nine, so she had only a single-stroke lead over her rival. Happily, there were no reports of anyone who was playing ahead of them going on a sustained hot streak.

By the 15^th hole, McLaughlin had birdied back into a flat-footed tie with Tess, and it was clear that one of the two of them, without question, was going to win the tournament.

Both women had been steady -- with minor exceptions -- all day long. Tess was relatively calm and seemingly in control, although not nearly as confident-appearing as her rival.

In the previous two days of play, Tess had shot a collective three under for the final three holes of the course. If she could birdie the next two again, as she had on Friday, McLaughlin might find such a performance hard to match, no matter how cool she seemed to be.

But Tess got only a par on 16, and McLaughlin birdied it to take a one-stroke lead. They both took pars on 17, so on the final hole -- a mean par 4 with water down the left side -- Tess was definitely the one most under the gun.

McLaughlin had the honor and hit her ball straight down the middle, perfectly lined up on the dogleg-left fairway for her next shot.

Tess, who only rarely pulled out her driver, decided to see how far she could hit it on 18.

She hit it very far indeed, but not straight. Her ball veered far-right -- safe from the water hazard but deep in the trees and undergrowth. She was, perhaps, closer to the pin than her rival, but unless she had a miracle lie, she was going to have a far-tougher second shot.

When we got there, a little crowd was standing in a semicircle, a polite distance from Tess' ball. The lie was not that bad, and there wasn't much debris to contend with in the little clearing where her ball had come to rest.

Surprisingly -- and inaccurately, I thought, a tournament official ruled that Tess' ball was away, and that she should hit her second shot ahead of her rivals.

She sure as hell didn't look away to me, but there was a thick stand of tall, tall trees between her position and the 18^th green. And there was a full-length sand trap guarding Tess' side of the 18^th, with the pin too close to our side for a safe approach shot.

"I'm fucked!" Tess said to me, her voice loud enough to be heard by the nearest in the gallery. Instantly embarrassed, she looked at the group, spotted a little girl around age nine, and muttered, "Sorry!"

There was a small opening in the trees off to the left that would give Tess a path back to the fairway, if she wanted to play it safe and could hit it straight enough. "Looks like another chance for a safe second-place finish," she said.

"Can you get it through that little-bitty gap?" I asked.

"Probably. But I'm already down one. She can par in while I'm farting around with recovery shots, and -- like I said, I'm fucked." She spoke much more softly, this time.

"You could still par in," I told her. "And I'm pretty sure that would hold up for second place."

"Second place. Again," Tess said. "I know -- it ain't lopped chivver."

"Then again," I told her, "you could do something really nutty, like trying for the green from here. Even if you blew it, a bogey might still get you runner-up money."

"True," she said.

Well, she didn't tell me what she had decided to do, and she didn't ask me, either, what I might recommend. I didn't expect her to ask me. Hell, I'm glad she didn't ask me. What the fuck did I know?