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The driving range is crowded. Twenty players warming up. Practice balls in neat pyramids. The sound of contact — metallic, percussive, rhythmic — fills the morning air like industrial music.
I'm hitting 7-irons when Zoraida Kwon appears.
She sets up three spots to my left. Her practice routine is metronomic — same tempo, same shape, same clinical precision that has made her the fourth-ranked player in the world and the most psychologically steady opponent on tour.
Zoraida and I have been competing since we were fifteen. She beat me in the junior-national final. I beat her in our first professional event. The score between us is roughly even, which means neither of us has the luxury of dismissing the other.
She hits five balls. Perfect draws. Each one landing within a three-yard radius.
Then she looks at me.
"New caddie looks settled."
"She's good."
"I'm sure. Does she pick your outfits too, or just your clubs?"
The words are delivered with Zoraida's characteristic surface warmth — friendly tone, friendly expression, poison payload. She's not insulting Nerys. She's implying that I need managing.That the caddie relationship is closer to a guardianship than a partnership. That the improvements in my game are evidence of dependence rather than growth.
My grip tightens on the 7-iron. I feel the old response rising — the heat in my chest, the narrowing of focus, the immediate tactical calculation:I can outdrive her by forty yards. I can play the first hole more aggressively than she'd dare. I can make her watch me attack shots she'd never attempt and I can win by making her feel conservative.
I take a breath.
"She's the best strategist I've worked with. You should try it — might get you from fourth to third."
Zoraida smiles. Hits another ball. Walks away.
On the course, I tell Nerys what happened.
"She's trying to make you play against her instead of the course."
"I know."
"Good. Are you playing the course or her?"
"Both."
"Pick one. The course doesn't care about your ego."
I pick the course.
For eighteen holes, I play the strategy. Every shot. Even when Zoraida birdies the third and the sixth and takes the lead. Even when she's standing on the adjacent fairway, visible in my peripheral vision, playing steady, flawless golf designed to make my patience look like timidity.
On the twelfth, Zoraida hits an aggressive approach that lands three feet from the pin. Eagle putt. The gallery erupts. She doesn't look at me, which is her way of making sure I know she's not looking at me.
Nerys hands me a 7-iron. "Center of the green. Twenty-foot birdie putt. Play the course."
I play the course.
I birdie the twelfth from twenty-two feet. I birdie the fourteenth from fifteen. I par the fifteenth when the aggressive play would have risked bogey. I birdie the seventeenth from eight feet after a textbook approach that Nerys reads perfectly — "Start it a ball outside the right edge, uphill, it won't break as much as you think."
I finish the tournament at eleven under par. Second place. One shot behind the leader, a German player named Lena Falk who shot a sixty-four in the final round.
Zoraida finishes fifth.
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