Chapter 15

We had been in and out of Phoenix so much during the past month that it felt as if we ought to register to vote. Now, the week leading up to the Safeway International had finally arrived.

But Tess and Kim were in for a horrific double-shocker. Superstition Mountain was a 72-hole event, but, for both my girls, it was 36 holes -- and out. They both missed the cut!

It wasn't particularly close.

More time, preparation, and well-spaced practice rounds had been played at Superstition Mountain than at any other golf course they'd visited on the tour. Their double shutout was vexing, to say the least.

The silver lining would have been the fact that we no longer had to hurry westward in order to prepare for the Kraft Nabisco Championship at Rancho Mirage. We would have two full extra days to get there -- in plenty of time for course surveys and practice rounds.

That would have been the silver lining, only it turned out we didn't need to go to Rancho Mirage at all. Neither Tess' nor Kim's overall performance in the year's earlier events merited their making the starting field at the Kraft -- the LPGA's first "major" tournament of the season. There were a number of different ways that LPGA professionals could make their way into the field, but not one of them was applicable to our circumstances. Unless they wanted to just go and watch their betters play, neither Kim nor Tess was invited to the dance.

Our plans, then, had to undergo fundamental changes. The original scheme had been that both women would pass on competing at the new "Ginn Open" in Florida -- scheduled for two weeks after the Kraft. Florida had seemed just too long a haul, from California.

Now, however, there was an entire extra open week at our disposal, thanks to being rejected for the Kraft event. Furthermore, the Ginn Open had an extremely attractive purse -- larger, even, than the Kraft tournament itself! There were too many gaps in the upcoming LPGA schedule for Tess and Kim to sit out such an important event -- especially with nothing on the tour schedule for the week following the Ginn Open, either.

Well, at least, in Phoenix we weren't quite as far from Florida as California would have been. We said goodbye to our long-term RV park at Superstition Mountain and trundled eastward. We got a late start on our departure day, but we pressed on until, once again, we could spend the night in Deming, across the New Mexico State Line.

Leaving Arizona, after the disaster we'd just experienced, felt like an act of cleansing.

It was a long run to central Florida across the vast southern tier of the U.S., but we were in no hurry. Being shut out of the Kraft meant we had more than two full weeks to make the run. I figured a few days away from any golf course at all might be the best medicine for these two.

We took our time. We did a little sightseeing along the way. (Still no Carlsbad Caverns, though.) We arrived in the Orlando area with plenty of days still remaining -- lots of time for practice.

The abrupt major change in plans had seemed, at first, to be a disconcerting element in all our lives. I worried that, maybe, the Ginn Open could turn out to be another debacle. Still, by the time we got settled at the nearest RV campground to the course at Reunion, Florida, it was as if, somewhere, a reset button had been punched.

Surprisingly, Tess and Kim were acting kind-of loosey-goosey and carefree.

We had a solid week of practice rounds, and the April weather was perfect. Maybe what had happened in Arizona didn't have to mean that Tess and Kim were in for a long-term slump. We hadn't planned to play in Reunion, but now, being there felt natural.

There would be time, after this event, for Tess to visit her family in North Carolina, before we set out for the next event she wanted to play in, scheduled for a course near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kim hadn't yet decided whether she would go back to Chapel Hill with us. She was flirting with the idea of flying to Mexico for another tournament there -- one that opened eleven days after the Ginn's conclusion.

Tess teed off at 8:45 a.m. Thursday, hitting a zinger on the first tee, straight down the middle. I thought it might never stop rolling. She birdied the hole and kept right on, all morning. She was four under at the turn and, although she cooled off on the back nine, she picked up one more bird on 16 and finished with a sweet 67 -- one of her best rounds to date as an LPGA pro.

We saw Kim's one-under score on the leader board, indicating she was still on the course, playing the 14^th hole.

"Lunch!" Tess said. "I'm dying, here!"

She'd been eating bananas all morning, so imminent starvation wasn't likely, but we had a stand-up chili-dog lunch at a tent set up for the fans near the 18^th hole.

"Now, that was more like it!" I said, complimenting Tess' great round.

"Yeah. Felt good, all right. I hope Kim does well, too. We deserve a break today."

"... Not at McDonald's, I hope."

"McDonald's makes better sandwiches than this wretched thing," Tess said, making a face and tossing the remains of her dog into a nearby trash receptacle. "But I was thinking about -- somewhere in town."

"Your carriage awaits, Madam, soon as Kim's free."

Kim finished at 71 and was pleased with her round. She'd seen Tess' posted 67 earlier, and when we were all together, Tess got a victory hug. "This is, maybe, going to be your week!" Kim said.

"With the purse this tournament has, it's a good week to be my week -- if it is!" Tess agreed.

"One swallow doesn't make a summer," I intoned gravely.

"That's not what you said last night," Tess said.

It was just a throwaway line. Tess seldom missed an opportunity for suggestive banter. Nobody had actually swallowed anything, 'last night.'

"You and your gags!" I retorted.

"I didn't gag -- even once!" Tess retorted instantly. "Who would gag on that little thing!"

I'm not sure Kim was following this rapid-fire round of sexually charged mock-insults, but it wasn't the sort of exchange that one could stop and explain. Anyway (as Tess well knew) once she had stooped all the way down to the 'small-dick' jokes, I would promptly shut up and concede defeat.

Women who were willing to play "the dozens" with guys had a natural advantage. The guy will almost always pull his return punches, for fear of getting her angry (and maybe getting himself cut off). The woman, though, could fire at will; or, in this case, as Tess was doing -- at Will.

That's OK. When you shoot a 67 in competition, you deserve to be declared winner -- all day -- for everything.

Anyway, small-dick jokes notwithstanding, it was an excellent Thursday night for me. I had to hand it to Tess: She had often really rocked my world in the sack, after she'd experienced a bad day on the course. On such occasions, I was the designated consolation prize, I guess.

That night, however, I found out that exceptionally good rounds could produce great sex as well. She didn't gag, but it wasn't for lack of trying! Even Kim was impressed at the depths Tess demonstrated she could reach, that night.

And -- maybe Kim got shocked at the depths of Tess' depravity, too -- if you could call it that. After I was left satiated and cruelly tossed aside, completely out of the action, Tess worked Kimmy over just as thoroughly.

Luckily, both women had middle-of-the-road starting times on Friday, so they both managed to get some rest that night.

Friday wasn't the artistic triumph for Tess that Thursday had been, but she did shoot a 70, putting her at seven under for the tournament.

Still two days to go. When it was over, Tess was slated to likely be in the second-to-last grouping, starting Saturday's third round. She was sitting pretty, after two rounds, in a third-place tie.

Unfortunately, Lorena Ochoa, leading the pack, had shot twin 66's, putting her at a sizzling twelve shots under par!

Kim's Day Two featured a down-to-earth, even-par round, but she had made the cut handily with her two-round total of 143, four strokes better than the cut line.

Tess, meanwhile, couldn't have been happier if she had shot another 67. "I played better today than yesterday!" she said, exulting. "OK, I didn't score better; but I played better! I wish we could play the next round, right now!"

"You're both raising some hell out there," I agreed. "Big paydays, if you can just keep doing it for two more days."

By now, Arizona was just a hazy image in our rear-view mirror.

We got some wind and some rain on the weekend, and scores went up for almost everyone. Tess came in at one under on Saturday and, playing in the penultimate three-player grouping, finished at eight under, overall -- still firmly in contention. She now trailed the third-round leader, Brittany Lincicome, by only two strokes.

Kim couldn't separate herself very far from par, but she did gain one more stroke on the field. She was still in the top twenty and seemed sure to take home a nice check if she could hold on for one more day.

Tess disappointed herself somewhat, struggling on Sunday. She dropped two strokes to par and finished at six under for the week. But, the good news?... Her 74 was still good enough to tie her for fourth place.

She would take home $118,370!

Lincicome, the eventual winner, pocketed $390,000. I didn't know whether that was an all-time LPGA record for first place money in a "non-major," but it had to be right up there. Ochoa took second and made over $233,000 -- more than first-place money for a lot of the year's LPGA events.

Kim posted another par round, tied for 14^th place, and won $34,508. It was another new career high.

OhmyGod! The two of them were going to kill me, that night. I knew it!

I didn't die, Sunday night, but if I had, I'd have damned-well died happy. Both women had experienced their biggest paydays, ever, and, more importantly, the Ginn Open had given them the ultimate confidence boost. They now were not merely card-carrying LPGA pros.

They were contenders! If this continued into the upcoming tournaments, neither woman would have difficulty qualifying for the next major invitational event.

The USA Today golf reporter who had interviewed Tess weeks earlier now tracked her down and asked for another interview. The as-yet unpublished feature on Tess was going to be updated and upgraded.

And published. On Tuesday, April 17, Tess would be on the front page of the Sports section, her story accompanied by two color action photographs taken at the Ginn.

From now on, folks were gonna know Tess Henderson's name! "Did you see Tess, today?" they would say, instead of just, "Did you see the drive that young girl with the big boobs hit on thirteen?"

There were more time gaps in the LPGA tour schedule than the men's tour had to contend with. There was an event -- sometimes a choice of two -- on the men's tour every week, for almost the entire calendar year. The PGA was such a constant grind that even the hardest-working players -- men like V.J. Singh -- were forced occasionally to just sit one out. Some prime participants -- notably Tiger Woods -- only played about a third of the available events.

The women's tour, and its purses, were growing annually by leaps and bounds (the Ginn Open was a prime example of that), but there were lots of time gaps, all the same. As a result, most touring pros were able and more than willing to play at virtually every event on the schedule.

Now, we had another break in the action. Tess and Kim had both originally planned to skip the next tournament -- the Corona Championship in Morelia, Mexico. We had decided to wait and compete in the SemGroup Championship, beginning another week later, May 4 in Oklahoma.

But now, riding the relative high of her 14^th place finish in Orlando, Kim was impatient to play again. She decided to invest some of her prize-winnings on a side trip to Morelia, and to compete for the somewhat lesser top prize in that smaller event.

With almost three weeks before the Oklahoma tournament was to begin, Tess decided she'd stick to our earlier plan, and head home to let her family and friends fuss over her for a bit. We arranged a time and place for hooking up with Kim again in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, outside of Tulsa. Kim would arrive there, flying in from Mexico, on the 29^th or 30^th. We'd get there a little bit earlier, but both women would have time to prepare, together, for the SemGroup event.

We were back in Chapel Hill when the USA Today feature was published. The main photograph -- a ridiculously large action shot of Tess hitting a long drive -- was memorable. Her form was perfect -- and in more ways than one. The other picture was a handsome close-up of Tess' smiling face. She looked suntanned and youthful. Tastefully, it wasn't a full-figure shot, but was cut off just below her shoulders, like a modest college graduation portrait might have been.