Suddenly he feels a warm breeze on his face.  High above, the air whispers through tall Georgia pines and everywhere is the varied scent of dogwood, azalea, and magnolia—an outdoor hothouse of  floral aromas.
      “Whattaya think, Boss?  Driver, three-wood, or one-iron?”
      “Uh . . . I . . .” he mumbles.  It’s like waking from a dream.  Or possibly waking to a dream.  He only knows he’s no longer sitting at home watching final day’s action at the world’s favorite tournament, but has somehow, like Alice stepping through the front of the tv tube, been magically transported to this lush setting.  He looks around in wonder: people everywhere—standing behind him on the tee, rushing from other parts of the course, craning necks over gallery ropes strung alongside the tee.  Tiger Woods leaning on a golf club nearby, chatting softly with his caddy.
      TIGER WOODS!
      He, Lew Winston, recalls his last moment of normality, the last scene he remembers before his fade to  gray . . .
                                                                    *  *  *
       “Who’s ahead?” Valerie asked.
       “Toby Bonner, by three.  Woods and Love are both three back.”
       “Toby Bonner?  Who’s he?  I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any Toby Bonner.”  Valerie was frying chicken and had come from the kitchen to stand behind him for the drama of the eighteenth hole—Sunday, final round of the 2001 Masters at Augusta, Georgia.  She leaned on elbows on the back of his chair, absently wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.  Valerie Winston—tall, blond, tanned, beautiful, a fifteen handicap at the Oak Run Country Club west of Chicago.
       “I don’t know him either,” Lew replied, shaking his head.  “Maybe he got in through one of the side doors, like winner of the Transylvania Open or leading money winner on the South Polar Tour.  And just look at him,” he said, pointing to the screen.  “He’s got to be the oddest looking pro golfer I’ve ever  seen.”    The man in question had just finished putting out on seventeen, a tricky four-foot slider for par from above right.  Woods had earlier made a twenty-footer for bogey from below the cup to fall three shots back.  Tiger, most unTigerlike, had hit a short drive to the left, pulled a mid-iron into the left bunker where it buried just under the lip, a blast that caught the lip and rolled back down in the sand, a mediocre bunker shot to twenty feet, then the typical Woods confident stroke for a five that brought forth the expected raised fist and growl of triumph from the young man.  A scrambled bogey for Tiger, and three back with only one hole to play, not a happy situation for the heavy pre-tournament favorite, and his scowl as he strode to the eighteenth tee said it all.

 

          The Eighteenth

                              by Jerry Travis

[If you want to read “The Kiss” or “As Ye Sow,” scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the title.]