The parking area. Equipment being loaded. Caddies heading to the hotel shuttle. The tropical air is heavy with post-tournament decompression — the specific quality of exhaustion that follows four days of sustained mental effort in a foreign climate.
Nerys walks beside me to the rental car. She sets the bag in the trunk. Closes it. Leans against the bumper.
"You let her get in your head and you didn't let her change your plan. That was the hardest thing you did today."
"Harder than the seventeenth?" The approach shot that set up the final birdie. A 7-iron from a hundred sixty-three yards that I hit to eight feet under pressure.
"Much harder. Anyone with your talent can hit a 7-iron to eight feet. Not everyone can hear a rival imply they're helpless and then spend four hours proving otherwise by doing exactly what they were already going to do."
I lean against the car beside her. Not touching. Two colleagues in a parking lot. Anyone watching would see a player and a caddie discussing results.
"I wanted to outdrive her off every tee. The entire round."
"I know."
"I wanted to play every shot she'd never attempt and make her watch."
"I know that too."
"And instead I played center-greens and smart approaches and textbook wedge shots, and I finished second."
"You finished second playing the best golf of the tournament. Falk shot sixty-four. Nobody was beating that today. You lost to mathematics, not to fear."
I look at her. She's not performing the analysis. She's stating it the way she states wind speed — factually, without inflation.
"You're the first person who's ever made second place feel like it means something."
"Second place means you made the correct decision on every hole and someone else was brilliant on the same day. That's not failure. That's probability."
The shuttle bus pulls into the lot. Caddies board. Officials pack up. The day is ending.
I get into the driver's seat. Nerys gets in beside me. I start the engine.
At the first red light, I reach across the center console and take her hand.
She doesn't look at me. She doesn't comment. Her long, scarred fingers thread through mine — her hand engulfing my smaller one, the pad of her thumb resting against my wrist where my pulse is running faster than a woman driving a rental car through Singapore traffic has any reason to expect.
She holds my hand the way she holds a putter now — gently, with her fingers rather than her palms.
We drive toward the hotel. The city glows around us. My left hand is on the wheel. My right hand is in hers. The air conditioning hums.
I am ranked fifteenth in the world after this tournament. Second place. Eleven under par. The best sustained golf of my career.
And I'm thinking about none of it.
I'm thinking about the woman beside me. Her hand in mine. The silver streak falling against her temple. The voice that saidyou've earned itin the dark this morning and made me feel like I had accomplished something more significant than any trophy I've ever held.
I'm listening to Nerys Quillan not because she forces me to.
Because she's right.
And because being calleddisciplinedby this woman is worth more than every sponsor, every highlight reel, and every standing ovation I've ever chased.
I tighten my grip on her hand. She tightens back.
That's enough. For now, that's everything.
CHAPTER TEN
