CHAPTER TWO #2
She nods. Walks to the hitting area. Strips off the jacket — the tank top beneath reveals arms that are lean and defined without being excessive, the kind of athletic musculature that comes from ten thousand swings rather than weight-room vanity.
A tattoo emerges below her right collarbone.
Small white flower, delicate lines. Sampaguita, if I'm recognizing it correctly. Philippine national flower.
She sets up with a 7-iron. Her pre-shot routine is textbook: two waggles, a glance at the target, a settling of weight into her right foot.
The swing is extraordinary.
I don't use that word imprecisely. I have watched thousands of professional swings in person.
I have studied biomechanics with coaches who can decompose a movement into individual joint angles and muscle-activation sequences.
Tala Sarmiento's golf swing is a naturally occurring phenomenon — the rotation, the sequencing, the way her hands release through the hitting zone with a speed that her frame should not be able to produce.
It is the kind of swing that coaches spend entire careers trying to build in other players and never quite achieve.
She hits six balls with the 7-iron. Each one is precise. Flight consistent. Shape controlled. Landing within a five-yard circle at a hundred and sixty yards.
Then she picks up the driver. The shift is immediate — her tempo increases, her grip pressure rises, and the smooth rotation becomes something closer to a controlled detonation. The ball leaves the clubface at a speed I can hear.
Three hundred and five yards. Draw. Center of the range.
She looks at me. There it is — the check. The glance that says are you impressed yet?
"Your swing is extraordinary," I tell her.
She blinks. She did not expect the compliment.
"Your tempo is dishonest."
She turns fully. The driver is still in her hands, and she holds it the way she holds everything — like a weapon she's deciding whether to deploy.
"Dishonest."
"You accelerate through impact because you're afraid of what happens if you feel the full weight of the moment.
Your backswing is controlled — measured, rhythmic, well-timed.
But the transition happens too early. You pull the trigger before you've completed the loading sequence.
You rush past the point where the shot is decided because staying in that space frightens you. "
Her jaw tightens. The scar on her lip whitens slightly.
"I've been swinging like this since I was fourteen."
"Which means you've been frightened since you were fourteen. That's not a criticism. It's an observation."
Silence. The desert morning is perfectly still. A hawk moves overhead, casting a shadow that crosses the practice range without pausing.
"That's a lot of diagnosis from six swings," she says.
"Seven. I counted the one you nearly hit and then pulled back from."
Her eyes narrow. "I didn't pull back."
"Between the third and fourth iron. You addressed the ball, began your takeaway, and stopped. Stepped off. Re-addressed. Hit a different shot."
"I was adjusting my alignment."
"Your alignment was correct. I checked. You stopped because for a quarter of a second you intended to hit a fade — a shot requiring patience through impact — and the intention itself felt wrong. So you stepped off and hit a draw instead, which allowed you to swing faster."
She stares at me. I hold the gaze because looking away from Tala Sarmiento when she is trying to decide whether to be offended or fascinated would be a tactical error.
She chooses fascinated. Not visibly — her expression hardens rather than softens, her chin lifts, her shoulders square.
But her eyes stay on mine for three seconds past the point where a merely offended person would have looked away, and during those three seconds I watch her process the possibility that I might be correct.
"Nobody's ever caught that," she says.
"Nobody has watched you the way I have."
The sentence leaves my mouth before I can adjust it. It is factually accurate — four notebooks, hundreds of hours of footage — but the phrasing carries weight I did not intend. Or perhaps weight I intended and did not authorize.
Her eyes drop. Not to the ground. To my hands, holding the notebook. Then to my forearms, where I've rolled my sleeves to the elbow. Then lower — my waist, my hips — a scan so quick and thorough that it would be invisible to anyone who wasn't watching for it.
I am watching for it.
She brings her eyes back up. She knows I saw the assessment. She does not appear embarrassed. She appears challenged, as if being caught looking is another form of the aggressive play she defaults to under pressure.
"So you've been studying me," she says.
"I study every player I consider working with."
"For four years?"
She's done her research. Or Bisi has. Either way, she knows I didn't start preparing last week.
"Your game presents unique strategic questions."
"My game, or me?"
"Your game is a product of your decision-making. Your decision-making is a product of your psychology. I don't separate them."
"That sounds like therapy."
"Therapy addresses why you make decisions. I address which decisions to make. They're complementary but not identical."
She plants the driver head-down on the turf and leans on it, both hands stacked on the butt of the grip. The posture is casual, confident, and designed to communicate that she is not rattled.
The slight elevation of her pulse says otherwise.
"What if I don't want to change my decisions?"
"Then you will remain an exceptionally talented golfer who finishes in the twenties and breaks equipment on television while your sponsors leave. That is a perfectly valid career choice."
"You're not going to sell me on yourself?"
"No. You're already here. Selling at this point would be redundant."
Something shifts in her expression. Not softening — opening. A door moving from locked to ajar.