In the middle of the fairway, Sean and Cameron had a murmured conversation. Even from behind the ropes, Lily could feel the tension emanating from them.
Based on the position of his ball, he had a critical decision to make. The hole was nearly three hundred yards distant, protected by a water hazard next to a big sand trap gouged out of the earth under the brow of the green. Wyatt Allen had made par on the difficult hole, not a brilliant finish but one that was good enough to keep his lead.
Just making par would keep Sean in contention. A birdie would give him a shot at second position. An impossible-to-achieve eagle—two under par—meant a true shot at winning.
The safe move would be for him to hit the ball to the edge of the water, an easy enough shot. Then all he had to do was hit over it and the sand trap, landing on the green for a possible birdie putt.
So what were he and Cameron arguing about?
Cameron was trying to get him to hit a certain iron, one that would get Sean just to the edge of the water but not in it.
Sean shook his head, refusing the iron. Instead, he reached for a fairway wood.
A collective gasp went up from the spectators. He wasn’t going to go the safe route. He wanted to try smacking the ball up and over the lake, over the bunker and onto the green in one go, giving himself a shot at an eagle.
Red cursed under his breath. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“He hasn’t even hit it yet,” Lily said, thinking positively. “I’ve seen him hit this shot a hundred times this summer.”
“There’s a difference between a Donald Ross course and a driving range.”
“Hush,” she said. “Give him a chance.”
“I did,” Red growled. “He’s blowing it right now.”
“Hush,” she said again.
“Yeah,” whispered Charlie. “Hush.”
Cameron’s demeanor changed from contention to encouragement. It was, Lily knew now, the sign of an excellent caddie. Even when the player made a bad move, once he committed to a course of action, it was the caddie’s job to be supportive whether or not he agreed with the strategy.
Good for you, Cameron, she thought.
Lily held her breath. She felt an odd ripple of warmth, watching Sean. As he stepped up to address the ball, she felt all the tension ease into a strange calm. He could do this. Surely the universe would not be so cruel as to take it away from him.
Sean swung at the ball, a graceful stroke with intense power behind it—his trademark swing. Then there was nothing to do but wait. The flight of the golf ball seemed to slow in proportion to the tension of the people watching it. The tiny white orb arced upward as though rocketing toward heaven.
Some people talked to it: “Go, go, go,” or “Get up there…”
It wasn’t that Sean had so many fans. It was that true fans of the sport always wanted a brave shot to make it. And this was more than a brave shot. This was a Hail Mary. Which Lily caught herself praying as the ball reached the peak of its arc and started its descent toward earth. Or, in the case of this particular shot, toward water.
No, please, she thought, please don’t go into the lake.
“My God,” someone nearby said, “it’s…it’s going on the green.”
Lily couldn’t believe her eyes. The ball found the smooth slope of the putting green. It had cleared the lake, where so many balls had gone to rest. It had cleared the trap and landed on the putting green only a few feet from the hole.
She caught a glimpse on the monitor of Sean’s face—pure elation, a joy so powerful his eyes glowed.
“It hit too hard,” Red muttered, speaking over the applause and yells of encouragement.
“So what if it did?” Lily said.
Then a collective groan flowed through the crowd. The ball came down so hard that it rolled downward off the green. It went into the frog hairs, the slightly taller, coarser grass at the edge.
Stop there, Lily urged. Stop right there and he can still make a birdie.
The ball didn’t stop. It spun downhill, gathering speed, and then dropped, like a bird shot from the sky, into the sand trap.
The groans of disappointment became tsks and I-told-you-sos.
Lily knew the sports commentators would have a field day with this. This was why Maguire was a contender, not a champion, they’d say. He