Tomorrow I play nine holes with Nerys Quillan walking beside me. Her voice in my ear before every shot. Her hands in my sightline when she points at targets. Her body three feet from mine for four hours on a golf course where nobody will know that the reason I keep looking at my caddie is not strategic curiosity.
I close my eyes.
Softer,she said.
And my entire body listened.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nerys
I have prepared for this tournament the way I prepare for everything: completely.
The Phoenix course is a desert layout built on the bones of an old flood plain. Bermuda grass fairways, bent-grass greens, irrigation that keeps the playing surfaces soft enough for target golf despite the ambient temperature, which will reach a hundred and four degrees by the afternoon rounds. The wind is negligible today — three to five miles per hour out of the west, barely enough to affect club selection on exposed holes but sufficient to dry greens on the back nine by roughly four percent per hour.
I know this because I arrived three days early, walked the course twice, studied the pin sheet from the tournament committee, cross-referenced historical scoring data from five previous events at this venue, and compiled a thirty-one-page strategy document that accounts for Tala's distances, miss tendencies, and the specific holes where her scoring differential between aggressive and conservative play exceeds one stroke per round.
The strategy is not conservative. I dislike that word because it implies timidity. The strategy is optimal. It selects the highest-probability path to the lowest score on every hole, accounting for Tala's extraordinary length, her elite short game, and herdocumented tendency to lose between one point five and three strokes per round on decisions that prioritize spectacle over position.
I have explained the strategy to Tala in detail. Twice. Once over the phone three days ago, once in person at the practice facility yesterday, with the whiteboard and the course map and the specific yardages and the reasoning behind every recommendation.
She nodded at appropriate intervals. She asked two intelligent questions about the par-3s. She suggested an alternative approach to the fourteenth that was, to my irritation, marginally better than my original plan.
I revised the fourteenth. She smiled when I did — a quick, warm thing that made me close the notebook faster than necessary.
She understood the strategy. I am certain of this. Tala Sarmiento's problem has never been comprehension.
We are standing on the first tee at seven forty-two in the morning, the air already thick with heat, and she is bouncing on her toes the way she does before rounds — a physical tic I've catalogued as her body's attempt to discharge nervous energy that her mind refuses to acknowledge as nerves.
"Okay," I say. The bag is on my shoulder. It is heavier than I expected — Tala carries fourteen clubs, a rain jacket, three gloves, and what appears to be a small pharmacy of protein bars. "First hole. Par four. Three-twenty to the center. Pin is front-right, twelve paces on. The play is a 3-wood to the left side of the fairway, leaving a full wedge into the green."
"Why not driver?"
"Because your driver misses right on this type of hole — slight dogleg left, narrow landing area — eleven percent more frequently than your 3-wood. The 3-wood gives you the same approach distance with a wider margin for error."
She looks at me. Looks at the fairway. Looks back at me.
She hits the 3-wood.
The ball splits the fairway. She hits wedge to fifteen feet. Two putts for a solid par on a hole that has averaged 4.3 strokes in the previous three years at this tournament.
"Good start," I say.
She nods. We walk to the second tee.
•
For six holes, Tala Sarmiento is the best golfer I have ever stood beside.
She is not perfect. She misses a twelve-foot birdie putt on three by a ball's width, and her bunker shot on five is technically adequate rather than brilliant. But she follows the strategy. She hits the clubs I recommend. She aims at the targets we discussed. She makes intelligent decisions about approach angles and leave positions, and she asks me twice — twice — what I see before she commits to a shot.
On the sixth green, she makes a twenty-footer for birdie to reach one under par. She pulls the ball from the cup and glances at me over her shoulder, and her expression is not the performance version. Not the camera-ready grin. It is small, private, and directed at me with a specificity that makes the bag feel lighter.
I make a note in the yardage book:Responsive when engaged. Plays within the plan when trust is active. Monitor for sustainability.
Hole seven is a reachable par-5. Five hundred and twelve yards. The fairway narrows at the two-seventy mark, pinching between bunkers left and a waste area right. The green is guarded by a creek that crosses thirty yards short.
The strategy is clear. 3-wood off the tee to the wide section of the fairway. Lay-up short of the creek with an iron. Wedge to the green. Birdie opportunity from twenty feet or less.
