Conner tried again, on the fourth hole, the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh. Each time, the story was the same. Beautiful launch, followed by a sudden slice to the right.

“What’s going on?” Conner said, as he searched for his ball in the rough off the seventh fairway. “My drive used to be the best part of my game. You said I could hit a dime at two hundred yards.”

“That’s what you get for listening to me.”

“I’m serious. You’re my caddie. You’re supposed to help me out when I’m in trouble.”

Fitz shrugged. “Sorry, Conner. If I could help, I would. But I’m as mystified as you. This is just weird.”

“Thank you, Harvey Penick.”

“Look, this is going to require some study. After you finish, we’ll go out on the driving range and take a look at what you’re doing. Maybe I can figure something out.”

Conner reluctantly agreed. By that time he was already seven over par. During the next ten holes, he managed to make some improvement, but not nearly enough. As he approached the eighteenth tee, he was four over par, and he knew perfectly well that wasn’t good enough to finish in the money in a par-three tournament.

“Fitz, I’m going to try the nine-iron again.”

Fitz closed his eyes. “You know, I was just thinking, ‘How could this boy possibly make things worse than they already are?’ And presto-right on cue-you answered the question. You must be psychic.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Conner snatched the club from his bag. “Don’t give me any crap or I’ll dock your day’s pay.”

Fitz snorted. “As if there’s going to be any pay after this performance!”

Conner ignored him. He placed the ball on the tee, rocked himself into position, and swung. The ball rose into the air and, once again, swerved right, descending into a deep and wide sand trap.

“Goddamn it!” Conner shouted.

“Stop swearing!” Fitz commanded. “Officials are everywhere.”

Conner silently trudged down the fairway, finally finding his ball buried in the sand.

“I know better than to imagine that you might consult your caddie on how to get out of this tough scrape,” Fitz said. “So I’ll ask you. What’s your plan?”

“Thought I’d use a wedge. If I pop it high enough, it might go all the way to the green.”

“Do you see the sheer wall of this trap, Conner? There’s no way-”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

“It would be smarter to just get yourself out of the trap. Get to the green on your third.”

“You always want to play it safe. It’s like golfing with my grandmother.” Conner addressed the nearly buried ball, crouching slightly for his scoop shot. He swung the wedge. The ball bounced up against the high wall of the trap and ricocheted back into the sand.

“Goddamn it!” Conner shouted, then looked sheepishly at Fitz. “No one heard me,” he grunted.

“I did.”

“I meant no one who would report me.”

Fitz arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Conner squared himself once more before the ball half-buried in the sand. He took a deep breath, said a silent prayer to the patron saint of golfers, whoever that was, and swung. The club ground out in the sand before it hit the ball.

“Did the ball move?” Fitz asked, inching forward from his safe berth outside the trap. “If the ball moved, you have to take a stroke, even if your club didn’t hit the ball.”

“The ball didn’t move,” Conner said. There was an eerie quiet to his voice. “But something else did.” Conner poked the tip of his club into the sand. There was something down there, just below the surface of the sand. Something… blue.

He crouched down for a closer look. Using the handle of his club as a probe, he dug around, brushing the sand off the surface. The blue-something was a piece of fabric. A shirt, he realized. A shirt sleeve, to be precise.

Conner shot up in the air, his face stricken.

“What?” Fitz asked, moving forward quickly. “What is it?”

Conner found he couldn’t speak. He could barely manage to point down toward the sand.

There was an arm in the shirt sleeve.

A horrible sensation coursed through Conner’s body. His brain was beginning to put two and two together, and he didn’t like the sum. Taking a deep breath, he bent down and began brushing away the sand surrounding the tattered shirt sleeve.

The shirt was attached to a body, all buried beneath the sand. Grabbing it with both hands, Conner pulled the body out and rolled it over to get a look at the face.

Conner heard Fitz drawing in his breath, just behind him. He was finding it hard to speak himself.

His worst fears were confirmed. It was his best friend, John McCree, with his mouth filled with sand. And a fist-sized bloody gash on the side of his head.

At the Masters, falling out of favor with the powers-that-be can be fatal. After finishing second, Frank Stranahan looked forward to going for the win. But the next year, he had an unfortunate contretemps with Cliff Roberts and was thrown out of the tournament before it had even started. Herman Keiser’s upset victory endeared him to many, but Cliff Roberts disliked him so intensely that he accused Keiser of stealing his championship green jacket.

Jimmy Demaret won the Masters three times, but that wasn’t enough to impress Bobby Jones or Cliff Roberts. Demaret had told a slightly off-color joke on the grounds one day that resulted in a written reprimand from Jones. And the Augusta National, as many others learned before and after Demaret, had a long memory. Unlike Augusta favorites Gene Sarazen or Ben Hogan (neither of whom won three times), no bridges, ponds, or cabins were named for Jimmy Demaret. “I can’t even get an outhouse named for me,” Demaret commented.

“My God,” Fitz whispered under his breath. “What happened?”

Conner found his tongue frozen and his brain almost equally paralyzed. His eyes were locked on the bloody, sand-encrusted figure buried beneath the surface of the trap. A million thoughts raced through his brain, and almost as many emotions as well. John. John!

He heard Fitz rustling behind him. “We should… do something.”

Conner heard the words and knew them to be correct, but he was far too immobilized to act upon them. He didn’t know what all he was experiencing-part shock, part grief, part panic. John!

“We can’t just leave him here,” Fitz muttered. “Other players will be along soon.”

All true, but at the moment, the tournament was the furthest thing from Conner’s mind. He kept staring at John’s blood-streaked face, while his brain leap-frogged through the conjoined life the two of them had shared. This is the boy who turned me onto golf, he thought. This is the kid who got me through high school. This is the man who helped me break onto the tour. Everything I am, I am because of this man.

This man whose corpse was buried in the sand trap on the eighteenth hole.

Conner pushed himself up to his feet, drinking in air, hoping the sudden rush of oxygen would clear the cobwebs in his brain. We have to do something, Fitz said again, or perhaps Conner was only hearing an echo in the nether reaches of his brain. At any rate, the statement was true. Very true.

Conner stumbled back to his golf bag and pulled out a cell phone. He flipped it open and then, with concentrated effort, punched 9-1-1.

About an hour after the police finally arrived, the crime scene was secure. Tournament play had been halted; the entire sand bunker and surrounding area was cordoned off with orange warning cones and yellow tape. A man in a suit was videotaping, recording the position of the body and the surrounding area. Three technicians in coveralls were cautiously searching for trace evidence-hair, fiber, blood. Another man was dusting for fingerprints; yet another was on his hands and knees, pressing his nose against the fairway, searching for the imprint of a footprint that might be recordable.