Chapter 11: Round One

"Now on the tee, from Charleston, South Carolina," the starter said. "Holt Brannigan."

The sound that came back at him was not polite.

Four thousand people stood around the first tee at Marsh Point, and most of them had seen the video.

They roared.

Holt had forgotten what it did to the air, that much noise on a cold morning.

He felt it in his teeth.

He felt it in his knees, too, and he put one hand on Amos's shoulder to steady himself.

"Breathe," Amos said, from the side of his mouth. "Look at the pine."

Holt looked at the pine at the end of the fairway.

Calvin Stratford waited three feet away in a white sponsor cap, relaxed as a man at a barbecue.

He had a smile on, and a joke ready for everybody in the gallery.

"Hey, champ," he said. "How's Poppy?"

Holt turned his head.

"She's sick, isn't she? I heard. That's rough."

"Ear infection?"

He said it so gently that a woman near the ropes sighed.

"She's fine," Holt said.

"Good. Kids get over everything."

Calvin teed off first.

His drive split the fairway by two hundred and ninety yards.

Holt stepped up.

At the top of his backswing, somebody coughed.

It was a hard, full cough, from five feet away, and it was Calvin's.

The ball went right, into the first cut of rough.

The crowd groaned.

Holt walked off the tee with his jaw tight.

"He did that on purpose," he said.

"Of course he did," Amos said. "Make him pay for it."

It took five holes.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Ace! The Golf King's Reconquest from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.