Ace! The Golf King's Reconquest novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Range
Old pro Amos Dukes takes Holt's swing apart at dawn, and the cottage locks are changed with everything on the wet lawn.
The driving range at Riverside opened at five, and the first ball of the morning went into the net.
Amos Dukes had unlocked the gate himself.
He was seventy-two, bald as a tee, with a white mustache and two bad knees.
He had taught Holt his first grip on this same strip of rubber mat when Holt was fourteen.
He stood behind the mat with his arms folded.
"Again," Amos said.
Holt hit another.
It went right, low and ugly, and skidded into the practice net.
"Again."
Poppy sat in her car seat in the open door of the pickup, thirty feet back, eating a cracker.
It was Wednesday and Mavis kept her on weekdays, but Mavis had a hip appointment first thing.
Holt hit eleven more.
Four of them were good.
"You're a different man when nobody's looking," Amos said.
"Nobody is looking."
"Except me."
"You don't count."
"I count," Amos said. "I'm the one who knows what you can do."
He took a small flask out of his back pocket, looked at it and put it away.
He never drank from it.
He only liked to know it was there.
"Yesterday you hit a five-iron with a TV camera and four hundred strangers on you."
"Four inches. I saw it on that boy's phone."
"I was angry," Holt said.
"Good. What about now?"
"Now I'm tired."
"That won't do."
Amos waved at the parking lot, where three men in matching windbreakers were walking toward the mats with their bags.
They were retired and came every morning at half past five.
They argued about last night's football all the way to the first tee.
"Gentlemen," Amos said. "Do me a favor."
"This is the young man who got fired for winning a bet."
The three men looked at Holt.
"The gardener?" one of them said.
"The one from the song?"
"The one who couldn't take a four-shot lead?"
Holt felt it go through him.
He put a ball down.
"Say it again," he said.
"Four-shot lead," the third man said, enjoying it. "Walked right off. Must've seen a ghost."
Holt swung.
The ball left the clubface.
It carried two hundred and forty yards.
It hit the net at the far end of the range, high up, with a sound.
Poppy dropped her cracker.
The three men said nothing.
"Again," Amos said softly.
Holt hit eight in a row, left to right, each one landing within ten yards of the last.
The men stood with their mouths open.
One of them took out a pen and started writing something on the back of a scorecard.
"What was that?" Holt asked, a little out of breath.
"That was you," Amos said. "You can't swing for someone who's watching you politely."
"You swing for someone who says you can't."
"That's not a swing, Amos. That's a grudge."
"A grudge is a fine thing to carry for thirty-six holes."
Amos pulled a wrinkled printout from his pocket and held it out.
It was the field sheet for the Monday qualifier at Wando Creek.
A hundred and forty-four names, and four spots.
"Seven-twelve tee time," he said. "Thirty-six holes in one day. Rest on the lunch hour."
"Bring a sandwich."
Holt read his own name at the bottom of the list.
"Bryn's entry," he said.
"She came by yesterday at noon," Amos said. "She stood where you're standing."
"She asked whether I'd carry your bag."
"What did you say?"
"I said I'd carried worse for less."
Holt laughed, which he had not done in some time.
It came out rusty, and Poppy looked up from the car seat and laughed too, without knowing why.
He packed the clubs at half past six.
He drove the pickup back toward Marsh Point with the heater on and Poppy singing to the dashboard.
A fine rain had started by the time he turned into the cottage lane.
He saw the front door before he saw anything else.
It was shut, and there was a bright new brass lock on it that had not been there at five o'clock.
His cardboard boxes stood on the lawn in the rain.
His winter clothes were in a heap.
The portable crib lay on its side.
A work shoe had been left on top of the pile, and it had a note tucked in the laces.
He pulled out the note and read it standing in the wet.
Per the general manager. Property of the club. Do not enter.
It was dated that morning, and it was not signed.
It was Wednesday, and he had until Sunday.
Poppy had gone quiet in her seat.
"Dada?" she said, and pointed at the crib on the grass.
Behind him, a truck turned into the lane and its engine cut out.
He did not need to look to know whose it was.
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