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\f0\fs24 The range was visible through the chain-link fence that ran along the cart path, and Andy could see Ella out there at the far end, hitting iron after iron with a rhythm that looked almost mechanical. Bobby had gone out too, though he'd stopped after about ten balls and was now mostly watching her, which said something about the kind of competitor he was\u8212?size up what you're dealing with before you commit to anything.\par
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Andy stood at the first tee with Bobby's father, Alex, who was a solidly built man with a salesman's handshake and a seven handicap he wore like a badge of office. They'd played together enough times that the pleasantries were handled in under a minute.\par
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"How's she hitting it?" Greg asked, nodding toward the range.\par
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"Asked me about her elbow on the drive over."\par
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"Bobby watched golf on the VCR until midnight. I could hear the narration through the wall."\par
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Andy smiled. "What's his plan after high school? Ella ever mention if he's got schools in mind?"\par
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"Florida." Alex said it simply, the way you say something you've already made peace with. "Wants to go to UF. Play for the Gators. I think it's realistic, honestly. Kid's gotten long."\par
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Andy nodded. That was true. Bobby had added at least fifteen yards since October, which was what happened when a boy went from fourteen to fifteen and every cell in his body decided to cooperate simultaneously.\par
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"Ella's got Stanford in her head," Andy said.\par
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"Stanford." Alex gave a low whistle. "Women's program there is no joke."\par
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"No, it is not." Andy said it evenly, though what he felt was something more complicated\u8212?pride wound around worry, the way it always was with her, the way it had been since she was nine years old and told him she was going to be a professional golfer with the same voice another kid might use to say she was going to have a sandwich.\par
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The kids came off the range at 7:21 and walked toward the first tee with their bags, already talking, already disagreeing about something\u8212?the natural state of their friendship, as far as Andy could tell.\par
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"\u8212?doesn't count as a warmup if you're just steering it," Bobby was saying.\par
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"I wasn't steering anything. I was managing trajectory."\par
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"Those are the same thing."\par
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"They are genuinely not the same thing, Bobby."\par
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They arrived at the tee, and Andy watched as Ella walked straight past the white markers without slowing, continuing to the tips, the black tees. Bobby followed without comment, which meant it had already been established between them. This was how it always went\u8212?the girls' program at their high school never saw the back tees, some combination of tradition and tournament rule that Ella regarded as a bureaucratic insult to her specifically. Every time she had access to a course without a committee telling her otherwise, she went back as far as the course would let her.\par
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"Dollar a hole," Bobby said, setting his bag down.\par
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"Obviously." Ella was already pulling her driver. "Automatic press on two down."\par
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"Agreed. Who flips?"\par
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Ella pulled a tee from her bag and held it up. "Tee flip. Call it."\par
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She tossed it. Bobby said point. The tee indicated Ella.\par
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"Point," Ella said. "I'm away."\par
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Bobby spread his hands magnanimously. "Ladies first."\par
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"I was away before you made it a gender thing."\par
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She teed up a Titleist, took two practice swings with the deliberate, slightly exaggerated elbow position that told Andy she was still working on whatever she'd been chewing over in the car, and then stepped into her address. She went still for a moment\u8212?that familiar stillness that had always struck him, even when she was small\u8212?and then swung.\par
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The ball came off the face with a crack that carried in the morning air, starting just left of center and drawing back toward the middle, climbing, holding its line, and landing in the short grass about 260 yards out with a small bounce that kicked it further still. It was, by any reasonable measure, a very good golf shot.\par
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Bobby looked at it for a moment. "Not terrible," he said.\par
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"Thank you so much."\par
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He teed up, stood over the ball for about three seconds, and hit it. There was no equivocating about what Bobby Carpenter's swing had become over the past year\u8212?it was long and loose and catastrophically effective. The ball went high and straight and came down thirty yards past Ella's, still in the fairway, rolling.\par
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He looked at her. "Not terrible," he said.\par
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Ella made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a sigh and picked up her tee.\par
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"I have an eight-iron in," she said, which was not directed at Bobby but was also clearly intended for Bobby to hear.\par
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"I have a gap wedge," Bobby said.\par
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"I know. You've been thirty yards past me since April and you've been quietly smug about it since April and I've been watching you miss greens from a hundred yards while I've been getting up and down from everywhere, so."\par
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"It's the first hole, Ella."\par
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"It's a pattern."\par
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Andy watched this exchange with the quiet pleasure of a man who had spent nine years watching his daughter negotiate the world entirely on her own terms. He looked over at Alex, who had the expression of a spectator at a tennis match.\par
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"Should we?" Greg said.\par
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"We should," Andy agreed.\par
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They teed off from the white markers\u8212?Andy striping a drive down the left center, Greg pushing his slightly but finding the fairway\u8212?and followed the cart path in the general direction of the morning, which was already warm in that particular South Florida way that suggested the afternoon would be nearly intolerable.\par
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"First beer of the day," Alex said, scanning the course. "What do you think is reasonable? Eight o'clock?"\par
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"Eight seems aggressive."\par
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"Eight-thirty."\par
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Andy thought about it. The cart girl came around on a rotation, and he'd clocked her at about forty-five minutes on previous rounds. "First time she passes the third green is probably eight-fifteen or so."\par
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"Eight-fifteen," Greg said. "That's almost dignified."\par
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The first green was a generous size, slightly elevated, with a false front that the course's designers had apparently included as a personal slight against the golfing public. Ella and Bobby had both hit their approaches and were already standing over their balls by the time their fathers arrived. Ella was pin-high left, maybe eighteen feet. Bobby was further out, twenty-two or twenty-three, below the hole, which was the favorable position.\par
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"You're away," Ella said.\par
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"I know I'm away," Bobby said, already reading his putt, walking the line from behind the ball and then crouching to look at it from the side.\par
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Andy stood quietly near the fringe and watched. This was his favorite part of watching Ella play\u8212?not the drives, which were impressive but mechanical, but the moments on the green when she went still and read the thing like a text she was translating rather than a surface she was navigating. She was doing it now, not to her own putt but to Bobby's, watching to see what the green would tell her before she had to ask it herself.\par
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Bobby pulled the trigger. The ball tracked right to left, losing speed at exactly the rate the slope demanded, and fell into the front of the hole with a sound that was almost apologetic about how good it was.\par
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"Yeah," Bobby said, to no one in particular.\par
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Ella waited for him to retrieve his ball and step clear, and then she stood over her own putt, slightly uphill, minimal break. She looked at the hole once, looked down, and hit it.\par
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It went in. It went in as though it had not seriously considered any other outcome\u8212?tracking straight, holding its speed, rattling the back of the cup and dropping.\par
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Bobby looked at her.\par
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She looked at Bobby.\par
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"I have a very good short game," she said.\par
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"I have seen your short game."\par
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"Then this should not be surprising to you."\par
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Andy wrote the halved hole on his scorecard and glanced at Alex. Two kids walking toward the second tee already arguing about something, their bags on their backs, their whole summers arranged around this\u8212?eighteen holes today, eighteen more after lunch, and the days that followed full of the same, the slow accumulation of something that Andy suspected was going to be important later in ways that were impossible to name yet.\par
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"Eight-fifteen," Alex said again, watching them go.\par
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"Eight-fifteen," Andy confirmed, and followed his daughter down the fairway in the early morning heat.
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