Grip It, Rip It, Kiss Me

CHAPTER ONE

Tala

I know this because three different caddies have told me the same thing over the past eighteen months, and I fired every one of them for reasons that made sense at the time and sound increasingly pathetic in retrospect.

I know this because the trees guarding the left side of the fifteenth fairway are sixty feet tall and spaced eight feet apart, which means the gap I'm staring at is roughly the width of a refrigerator turned sideways, and the ball would need to start low, cut hard, carry a hundred and ninety yards through humid Arizona air, and land on a green that slopes back-to-front like a ski run.

My temporary caddie — a quiet man named Greg who I hired six days ago and who has already developed the facial tic of someone regretting a career decision — shifts the bag on his shoulder.

"Tala, if we lay up—"

"I see the gap."

"The gap is—"

"I see it, Greg."

He stops talking. They always stop talking. I've made that particular tone of voice so effective that grown men with decades of course experience swallow their advice like aspirin and step back.

I should feel bad about that.

I will feel bad about that. Later. After I thread this 4-iron through the trees and watch it release onto the green and roll to six feet and remind every single person watching this broadcast that Tala Sarmiento does not lay up.

I set up over the ball. Grip pressure firm.

Feet shoulder width. I can feel the broadcast cameras — two of them, one behind the tee and one positioned at the green, because the producers know what I'm about to do.

They've watched enough of my rounds to understand that three shots back with four holes to play is not a deficit for me.

It's permission.

I take the club back low and fast. My hips clear. My hands drop. The contact is pure — the kind of pure that sends vibration up through the shaft and into my forearms and tells me before I even look that the ball is going exactly where I aimed it.

For approximately one point four seconds, I am right about everything.

The ball starts low and left. Cuts toward the gap. Enters the trees on a perfect trajectory.

Then it catches a branch I didn't see.

Not one of the main trunks — a branch. A reaching, inconvenient, shit-luck branch that has no business existing at that height on that tree, and the ball deflects sideways with a sound like a gunshot and ricochets off a second trunk and drops straight down into the creek that runs along the left side of the hole.

The gallery groans. The sound is almost sympathetic, which makes it worse.

I stand over the empty tee box and watch the ripples in the water where my ball entered and I feel something hot and tight and completely unproductive climbing up through my chest.

Don't.

I snap the 4-iron over my knee.

The shaft breaks cleanly — graphite composite, surprisingly cooperative when you're having the worst moment of your professional day. Both halves hit the ground at the same time. The sound is satisfying in a way that I know, even as I'm hearing it, is going to cost me.

"Miss Sarmiento."

Marzanna Pike is already walking toward me. Tournament rules official. Polish American. Five-foot-ten, immaculate khakis, zero tolerance for my particular brand of self-expression.

"Conduct warning," she says, stopping three feet away. She doesn't raise her voice. She never does. "Equipment abuse. One more incident today and it's a penalty stroke."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

I look at her. She looks back. Her expression is the one I've been getting from officials, coaches, agents, and sponsors for approximately three years: the weary recognition that I am talented enough to make their patience worthwhile and destructive enough to exhaust it.

"I understand, Marzanna."

She nods. Writes something on her clipboard. Walks away.

I drop a ball at the creek's edge. Penalty. Pitch onto the green. Two putts for a double bogey.

I am now five shots back with three holes to play.

·

Here is the math.

I need to play the last three holes in four under par to have any chance at a top-five finish. Four under par on three holes at this course, in this heat, with the pin positions they've set for the final round, requires either three consecutive birdies or an eagle and a birdie.

The smart play is to accept the result. Finish the round professionally. Protect my ranking points. Walk off the course with my dignity and my remaining clubs intact.

I birdie sixteen from twelve feet.

I birdie seventeen from twenty-two feet, a putt so improbable that even Greg makes a small involuntary sound of admiration behind me.

On eighteen — a long par-4, dogleg right, water guarding the right side of the fairway — I need one more birdie. The safe play is a 3-wood to the left side of the fairway, which leaves a full 8-iron into a green I can absolutely hit.

I pull driver.

Greg doesn't even bother. He hands me the headcover and takes two steps back.

The drive is enormous. Three hundred and twelve yards. It's also ten yards right of where I aimed it, and it finds the fairway bunker that I told myself I could carry.

I'm in the sand with a hundred and sixty yards to the flag and a lip that means I can't do anything except hack it out sideways.

I hack it out sideways. Then I hit a wedge to thirty feet. Then I two-putt for bogey.

I finish tied for twenty-third.

My phone has eleven notifications before I reach the scoring tent.

·

The parking lot smells like asphalt and dust and the specific variety of expensive perfume that means Bisi Mora is standing next to my car waiting to ruin my evening.

She's leaning against the driver's side door. Black linen suit. Gold earrings. Arms crossed in a way that makes her look like a very elegant bouncer.

"Before you say anything—"

"Okafor-Klein is suspending," she says.

I stop walking. "What?"

"Their marketing VP called me during your back nine. They're pausing the campaign. Not canceling. Pausing. Which in sponsor language means they're canceling slowly enough to pretend it was mutual."

I set my bag down on the pavement. The broken 4-iron is still in there. Half of it, anyway. Greg took the other half and put it in a trash can near the sixteenth tee without saying a word.

"Who else?"

"Luminos is reviewing. They haven't made a decision. But the club-break is already on social media, and their brand guidelines have a morality clause that covers—" she glances at her phone "—public displays of unsportsmanlike conduct detrimental to the brand's image of excellence and composure."

"I broke a club. Athletes break clubs."

"Athletes ranked in the top five break clubs. Athletes ranked eighteenth break clubs and get called unstable."

That one lands. I feel it in my sternum.

"So what's the play?"

Bisi uncrosses her arms. This is the part where she stops being my friend and starts being my agent, which means the warmth leaves her voice and is replaced by something more useful.

"You've fired three caddies in eighteen months.

Your ranking has dropped from ninth to eighteenth.

Your sponsor portfolio has gone from seven active contracts to four, and after today it might be three.

The narrative around you has shifted from 'fearless young star' to 'talented mess,' and talented messes do not get invited to pro-ams and charity events and brand summits where the real money lives. "

"I'm aware of the narrative, Bisi."

"Then you're aware that you need to change it, and you need to do it before the next major or Luminos follows Okafor-Klein and you're playing on prize money alone."

I lean against my car beside her. The metal is hot. Desert sun. I can feel it through my polo.

"What do the sponsors want?"

"A professional caddie. Not a buddy. Not a cousin. Not someone you can bulldoze. Someone with enough reputation and expertise that their presence on your bag signals to the market that you are serious about course management and emotional regulation."

"Emotional regulation."

"Their words. I would have said 'not breaking your fucking clubs on live television,' but I lack their corporate delicacy."

I almost smile. Bisi is the only person who can make me almost smile when I want to throw my bag into traffic.

"Who?"

She pulls out her phone. Scrolls. Turns the screen toward me.

The name hits before the photo loads.

Nerys Quillan.

"You're joking."

"I am constitutionally incapable of joking about your career."

"She's a—"

I stop. I don't actually know what Nerys Quillan is now. I know what she was. Everyone in golf knows what she was.

The photo loads. I've seen pictures of her before — old tournament coverage, sports-magazine profiles from a decade ago, the occasional industry-event shot where she's standing at the edge of a group looking like she'd rather be reading weather reports in a locked room.

But I haven't looked at her in a while, and the woman on Bisi's phone is not the woman I remember from the highlight reels.

Dark auburn hair, cut sharp just below her jaw.

A streak of silver starting at her right temple and running back through the rest like someone painted it there with intention.

Gray-green eyes that look directly into the camera without performing anything for it.

Strong jaw. High cheekbones. Tall — noticeably, obviously tall, the kind of tall that makes other women look like they're standing in a hole.

She's wearing a white polo and dark trousers. No jewelry. A plain steel watch. Her expression is so controlled it looks like a landscape — something geological, formed by pressure and time rather than anything as temporary as emotion.

Her hands are visible in the photo. Long fingers. An old scar along the right thumb. She's holding a course notebook, and her grip is precise and relaxed in a way that makes me think about how those hands would feel on other things.

I swipe to the next image. Tournament coverage from her playing days. Younger — maybe thirty, dark hair without the silver, holding a trophy. Same expression. Same jaw. Same refusal to perform excitement for the camera.