The Sand Trap (3 page)

Rebecca had a slightly different early life.
Staten Island was a long way from Bumstead, Saskatchewan and a
wealthy Jewish family was a long way from eccentric Presbyterian.
Rebecca also knew from the toddler stage that golf would be a big
part of her life. Even as a young child she knew she was neither
beautiful nor visibly athletic. The former her family could easily
endure, the latter not so much. Fortunately for her, belonging to
the only Country Club that would admit Jews was a social
prerequisite for her family. While no one else in her family really
cared about the golf part of it, Rebecca found in the game a place
where she could hide from the schoolyard and classroom abuse that
came from her religion, from her mundane appearance and from her
considerable intellect. While she figured she could not do much to
change the first two twists of genetic fate, she decided her mouth
would make up for them both and Rebecca Freid became what would be
called, in her elementary school days, a loudmouth, and in her teen
years, a filthy loudmouth. No one was immune from her sharp tongue
and no amount of social coaching or remonstrating would curb the
foulness. On the golf course, however, she was truly herself
without the protection of the facades. She practiced, she studied
and she competed and by her early teens was one of the top ranked
junior golfers in New York State, already courted with golf
scholarships at two Ivy League schools.

And then the hormones kicked in.

In addition to a passion for golf, Rebecca
found she had a passion for – well – for passion. She liked sex.
Her early experiences at sexual exploration were, of course,
self-inflicted. She did not even have a girlfriend to explore these
feelings with. So not being instantly attractive to the other sex,
she had to find a different route other than normal dating to get
her quickly escalating sexual drives satisfied. She found it by
instinct and sort of by chance. Near the end of a practice day on
the range, just she and Dwayne Hochschild, a gangly but appealing
thirteen-year old from her school, were washing their clubs before
putting them away. She simply went up to him and asked him if he
wanted to go into the garden shed beside the range and “do it.” It
took him a moment to realize what “do it” actually meant and
suddenly her short, dumpy body, homely face and grating character
were all forgotten and they indeed did “do it.” Dwayne, of course,
bragged to the whole school about his conquest and soon Rebecca was
very popular on the range. “Doing it” became as regular a part of
her routine as putting, 8-irons and drivers.

On the surface none of this explains why she
ended up on a golf scholarship to Clapshorn College in Montana
instead of Yale or Harvard and was now caddying for Melanie at the
1978 Montana State Regional Women's NCGA championships. In truth,
it had not taken long for the Clapshorn sorority crowd to learn why
Rebecca was at Clapshorn and not Harvard, and not long for Melanie
to understand why no one would trust Rebecca to guard their
daughter’s honour. You don’t get thrown out of one of the most
prestigious Jewish private schools in New York state and expect the
Ivy Leagues to come begging, no matter how rich your parents are or
how good your golf talent. It was bad enough when the Principal of
the school found out that Rebecca was shagging her son (it was not
the son’s fault of course). The situation turned even worse when
the school found out she was doing half the senior class (men only,
she kept emphasizing to her parents). Her golf was not good enough
for Harvard to obviate her sins, so Ivy League was out and a small
college as far from New York City as possible was in. At Clapshorn
she did not even make it a competition. Golf took a distant back
seat to parties and promiscuity.

In her second year at Clapshorn she met
Melanie and discovered their shared passion for golf.

“Now keep your mouth shut and be gracious,”
Melanie lectured as she and Rebecca walked off the eighteenth
green. “We won today remember, and one more infraction and you
won’t be able to caddie for me at the nationals.”

“OK. OK. But you let that bitch off easy.
Now they'll be saying that you were falling apart and she could
have won if the game was two holes longer blah, blah, blah,”
Rebecca whined. “And now I have to be nice to her? That’s
bullshit.”

“Not her Rebecca. Just the coaches and the
parents and press and anyone else who decides to congratulate
us.”

It turned out not to be many. Most of the
throng of well wishers and spectators, and even the press, were
around Mary Proctor whom most thought was Montana’s next great
female golf hope. Her supporters said it was just a fluke that the
weirdo from Clapshorn beat her and she would get even at the
nationals. And why not? She was cute, had an engaging personality,
a picture perfect swing and was from a very old and wealthy Montana
family.

Melanie and Rebecca enjoyed a few moments of
glory while the state trophy was presented to Melanie for
individual honours, but they were soon on their own as they headed
to the parking lot and to Rebecca’s new BMW.

“You’ve got to quit doing that Melanie,”
Rebecca admonished. “One day you’ll do it at the wrong time and
lose a match. I mean really. Putting it in the sand on fifteen was
bad enough, but hitting it in the water on eighteen just to see if
you could recover was just silly.”

Only Rebecca knew just how good Melanie
really was. While Melanie had yet to lose a match in either
medalist or match play, Rebecca knew she had not even come close to
her potential as a golfer, even though she had never played in a
competition until she was in her first year at Clapshorn. “We’ve a
couple of weeks before the nationals in California,” Rebecca
announced. “Let’s drive down and make a trip of it. It’s only a
couple of days from Billings to San Diego. It will be fun.”

“Ok,” Melanie agreed as she raced the big
BMW out of the club parking lot. “But we’ll have to clear it with
Coach first. They like the team to travel together. I’m not sure he
sees you as a totally trustworthy chaperone for his star woman
golfer.”

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Clapshorn College was one of a thousand or
so similar four-year degree institutions spread across the U.S.
Maybe a quarter were private, profit or non-profit in some way or
another, and all competed vigorously for the top students and the
highest performing athletes. College sports in the U.S. could mean
big money for an institution if handled correctly. At 1800
students, Clapshorn was of average size for these institutions. It
was a private, not for profit College, founded a hundred years ago
by early Methodist settlers in the Billings area. It prided itself
on small classes, a beautiful campus, distinguished professors and
the most successful athletic programs in the state. As one sports
writer wrote after Clapshorn soundly beat Montana State in a
basketball show down, “This place punches way beyond its weight.”
Sport was big money for Clapshorn. It had a generous alumni and
gate receipts for most sports brought in far more than expenses.
These expenses included a national recruitment and scholarship
program that attracted athletes from around the country and
sometimes the world. Its recruitment tentacles stretched inside an
alumni network that stretched across North America.

It was that network that turned up both
Rebecca and Melanie. Clapshorn had a reputation for attracting some
unique athletes but since they were so small and relatively
isolated-- not PAC 10 or NCAA Division One-- they had trouble
attracting the best and the brightest. Sometimes they had to take
the best and the marginal. Sometimes they hit the jackpot as they
did with Brad Smithers, an exceptional basketball athlete from
Yonkers that no Division One School would touch because of his
youth crime record. He came to Clapshorn, starred as a basketball
player, obtained a good degree and was an all star in the NBA for
ten seasons before becoming a Congressman. This kind of success did
not hurt Clapshorn’s recruitment efforts. But they had just as many
losers. Young people who were recruited with athletic stars in
their eyes and the promise of a fully paid college degree. The
small print of the scholarship indicated that the full ride only
came with the expectation of full performance as well, so if an
athlete failed to make the team, or had a career ending injury, or
failed out for any number of other reasons, some of them behaviour
related, they were on their own for the annual $40 thousand a year
fee. Most of these athletes were only at Clapshorn because they
received full scholarships, so as many young Clapshorn athletes
headed home as headed for stardom. In Rebecca’s case it did not
matter since her parents were more than willing to foot the whole
bill and more. It was a bonus if she played golf. In truth she was
heavily recruited for women’s golf as one of those “no one else
will take her” recruits with signs of great athletic ability but
some other personal challenges.

While Rebecca was well known and just a big
risk, Melanie was one of those “discovered” athletes. Bob Philips,
her high school Physics teacher was a Clapshorn alumnus. A lot of
Canadians from the Western provinces went south of the border when
they could not get a place in a provincial university. There is no
significant private university system in Canada to take up the
accessibility slack, so a lot of Saskatchewan and Albertan
professionals have Montana or Colorado degrees. Bob was one of
those. His marks were never high enough to get into either of the
two provincial universities in Saskatchewan. However he was a
standout as a junior golfer. Canadian universities offer minimal
athletic scholarships and Clapshorn offered a full ride. He became
one of the fortunate ones who turned the offer into a full
four-year degree in Physics from Clapshorn and a teaching degree
from Montana State.

He had met Melanie in her first year at
Regina Collegiate Institute, but by her third year, like most
others at the collegiate, he still knew very little about her. He
knew she lived with her Grandmother in an exclusive part of the
city. He could see she was attractive, but by no means beautiful.
She had a rugged look, like she had been outside in a wind all her
life. She was tall – six feet. There were rumours she had excelled
at sports when she lived in some small farm town north of Regina,
but she had never consented to take part in any athletic teams at
the Collegiate despite quite aggressive efforts by the women's
basketball coach. She was quiet and kept largely to herself. She
was academically adequate. In essence there was nothing out of the
ordinary in Melanie McDougal's appearance or demeanour that would
catch his interest as an alumni recruiter for Clapshorn
College.

That changed the summer after Melanie’s
grade ten year, when he and his wife went camping on the North
Saskatchewan River just outside of Bumstead. On the recommendation
of the campground owner, Bob and his wife Helen decided to try a
round of golf at the only golf course in the area. It was
officially and pretentiously called The North Saskatchewan Golf and
Country Club, but the locals, including the campground owner,
referred to it as the “Folly” – Dougal’s “Folly”. Dougal, of
course, was not the first farmer to decide to turn his farm into a
golf course. There are potato fields all over North America that
are fertilized with golf balls rather than nitrogen. But even by
the quirky standards of golf course design, the Folly was
unique.

The Folly was nine holes and each hole was
basically only tee box, landing area and green, the latter two
almost impossible to hit by the ordinary amateur. In between them
were fields of wheat, corn, soy, barley and a new crop that
McDougal had started to plant in the early seventies that was
supposed to be healthier for those who cooked with it. The first
hole was a 344-yard par four. The first 230 yards was a cornfield.
At the end of that was a grass strip thirty yards wide in which the
ball had to end up in order to have a second shot. The next shot,
skill willing, would be a 100 to 130-yard shot over a wheat field
to a green half the size of a normal one. All of the greens had
more undulations than a roller coaster and were mostly surrounded
by sand. Each subsequent hole followed a similar principle. Hit
over a field planted with a crop of some sort to a small landing
area and then to a small, ridiculously shaped sand encircled green.
The first shot on the par 5 fifth, which McDougal called his
signature hole, actually went over the complete 200-yard width of
the North Saskatchewan River.

Early on in the course’s operation McDougal
recognized that lost ball hunters were tromping down his
cornfields, so he established a few local rules to save his fields.
The first was that a ball lost in a cornfield or other such crop
was just a one-stroke penalty and a drop in the landing area.
Still, he was surprised bad golfers would trample through a wheat
field to save one stroke and recover a twenty-five-cent Canadian
Tire ball. They were making far too big a mess of his crops. . So
he added another local rule. No going into his fields to get a lost
ball. This worked even better for the health of his crops, but the
complaints about people losing the ball their dying father had
given them started to drive him crazy. Finally, he provided buckets
of free golf balls, at the tee, at the landing area and beside the
green. When players hit a shot into the wheat or cornfield or in
the river, they just took another one from the bucket. It was an
honour system. They could stuff their bag with McDougal balls if
they wanted to, but other than the few kids who maybe did it once,
this rarely happened. There was also no pro shop, no course
marshals, no office, nor any place to pay for your round except a
little box that looked like a bird house situated at the first tee
that said: