I started this journal the night before tryouts in August 1997, when I was fourteen and furious. Two years later it took forever to load, so in August I split it up and gave it a new look. The newest entries are on this page, starting with summer. The older ones are on their own pages, and I left them looking the way they did, so you can watch me learn HTML. I'm sorry about the grass.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Grandma came over after church to watch the Ryder Cup with me and Dad. She walked up our driveway without her cane, which she wanted everybody to notice, so I'm noticing it here.

If you didn't see it: the Americans were losing to Europe 10 to 6 going into today, which everybody on TV said was too much to come back from. Then the Americans won the first six matches in a row. Dad stopped sitting down. Grandma said "Well, now" about every five minutes, which is the most excited I have ever heard her.

Then Justin Leonard, who was playing José María Olazábal (the one who won the Masters in April), made this enormous putt on 17, like forty-five feet, and it went in, and all the American players and their wives ran out onto the green jumping and hugging, while Olazábal still had his own putt left to try. They had to clear everybody off so he could putt. He missed.

The Americans won, 14½ to 13½. Dad cheered. Then he said "They shouldn't have run on the green like that, though." Grandma said "No, they should not." I agree with both of them. You can be happy and still wait your turn. That's golf. Olazábal just waited, and I think I liked him best of anybody today.

Here is what I kept thinking about. Down 10 to 6 is a lot. Everybody had already decided. And then they just played one hole at a time like it wasn't decided, and it wasn't.

Two years ago I was the girl at the bottom of the list with "(girl)" written next to her name in pencil. A week from tomorrow I'm playing in the state tournament. I don't have a comeback for that. I don't need one.

When she left, Grandma stopped at the door and said, "Ladies' tees. Ha." And then she walked down the driveway, no cane, all the way to the car.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

I'm going to State.

I'm still kind of shaking, so this might come out weird. Sectional was today. Eighteen holes, eleven teams. The top three teams go to State, and then the next best five players who aren't on those teams go too, as individuals. Our team finished fifth. I shot 79 and got the fourth individual spot, by one shot.

Tim missed by one. One shot. He's the best player on our team and he's been the best since we were freshmen, and he missed by one and I made it by one. He came over while they were posting the scores and said "Go win it," and then he went and sat on the bus by himself for a long time. I don't know what to do with that. I'm happy and I feel awful and I think that's allowed.

Eli shot 88, his best ever in a tournament. Nora came with her mom to watch, and she followed me for the whole back nine and didn't say one word, because I told her about the system once and she took it seriously.

Dad isn't allowed to caddie in high school matches, so he walked along the edge of the rough the whole way, all eighteen holes, with his notebook. And Grandma came. She said back in April she'd walk, and she did: nine holes on her new knee. Then she sat in the clubhouse with a lemonade and waited for me. When I came in she didn't ask my score. She asked if I hit from the whites. I said "Grandma. Always." She said "Good girl," and I didn't even mind the "girl."

Coach Fryar told me on the bus home that I'm the first girl from our school to play in the state golf tournament, since there's never been a girls' team to go. He said it like he was reading it off a paper again. But then he said, "I'm proud of you, Crystal." Not off a paper.

State is October 4 and 5. I have to write a history paper first.

Tuesday, September 21, 1999

Practice round at the sectional course today. It's two hours away and we rode in the school van with Coach driving and Omar in charge of the radio, which was a mistake.

The course is long and hilly and the greens are fast and slope toward the front, so if you're above the hole you're basically putting on a kitchen floor. I three-putted four times. Tim says that's what practice rounds are for. Tim never three-putts.

The weird thing: I wasn't the only girl there. There were two others, one from a school up north and one who plays with her brother on their team. We didn't say much. We nodded at each other on the range like, hi, you too? It reminded me of my first junior tournament. Except this time I nodded first.

I'm going to bed. I'm going to see slopes all night.

Thursday, September 9, 1999

9/9/99. Our computer teacher told us some old computers might go crazy today, because programmers used to type 9999 to mean "the end." She said it's a little practice run for Y2K. Nothing happened. The lights stayed on. The clock in the gym is still wrong, but it's always wrong.

Also, I shot 38. Two over. My best nine holes ever. I birdied number 5, the short par 4, with a wedge to four feet. Grandma's putter, still in the bag, still going "tink."

It was Nora's first JV match. She shot 58 and came off the 9th green looking like she wanted to disappear into the parking lot. So I told her about my first match, when I shot 56 and topped my first drive 40 yards and a boy from the other school went "ooh." She laughed. Then she asked if it gets better. I said yes. Then I said, well, it gets different. Then it gets better.

Saturday, August 28, 1999

New look. I spent the week splitting this whole thing up into pages, because Mom tried to load it on her computer at work and gave up. And I changed the colors. Forest green and navy. Our school colors are actually maroon and gold, but these are golf colors, so.

Moving everything meant I read all of it, starting from the first night. Two years ago today I had been on the team for two weeks, nobody talked to me but Eli, and I was keeping a list of comebacks I never said out loud. I never did say one, by the way. Not one. Resolution #3 for 1998: failed. I'm OK with it. Turns out other people said them for me, and then after a while nobody needed to.

The fourteen-year-old who made the grass page wasn't wrong to be mad. I want to say that to her. You weren't wrong. You were just early.

Junior year starts Monday.

Thursday, August 12, 1999

Tryouts were Monday and Tuesday. This year there was a girl.

Her name is Nora and she's a freshman. I saw her on the putting green on Monday before anybody else got there, by herself, putting over and over to the same hole with her shoulders up around her ears. I know that exact look. So I walked over and said hi and told her I'm Crystal, and she said "I know, I read about you in the school paper." (There was a little article in the spring. I didn't put it on here because it had a picture of me squinting.)

She asked me which tees she should play from. I said, "The whites." She said "Even in tryouts?" I said "Especially in tryouts."

On the first tee one of the new freshman boys started to say something about the ladies' tees. He got about three words out, and Doug, DOUG, who was standing next to Brett when Brett said it to me in 1997, said "Dude. Don't." And that was the end of it.

The list went up today. Nora made it. Number 11 of 12, JV. Two years ago tomorrow, I was number 11 of 12.

I'm number 2 this year, behind Tim. Eli is number 5. Omar's number 3 and says he let me win the qualifying, which he did not.

Friday, July 16, 1999

Dad and I had our first real fight on a golf course yesterday.

It was a tournament at a course on a lake, and on number 9 I was going to go for the green over the water, and he broke the system. He said "Lay up." I hadn't asked. I went for it anyway and it went in the water and I made a double, and then I said something mean, which I'm not going to write here, and he didn't say anything for three holes. Which, technically, is the system. But not the way we meant it.

On 13 I said I was sorry. He said he was sorry too, that he knows the rules, it's just hard to watch somebody you love about to hit it in a lake. I shot 81. We got milkshakes after. That's always been our deal.

Also. There was a boy in my group from another school, Clayton, who said "nice shot" on 15 like he actually meant it, and asked if I'm playing in the August tournament. I am. He is too. That's all. That's the whole thing. Alexis wants details and there are no details. He has nice manners and he fixes his ball marks. That's not nothing.

Wednesday, June 23, 1999

78.

Yesterday. First junior tournament of the summer. I broke 80 for the first time in my life.

Front nine 40, back nine 38. Birdie on 17, a downhill eight-footer that I hit way too hard and it hit the back of the cup and dropped. Dad was on the bag and he kept the system the whole round. Not one word. I could see him dying, every single hole.

After the last putt on 18 he said, "Can I talk now?" like he always does. And I said yes. And then he didn't talk. He just hugged me, right there on the green, for a long time, and I thought about Tiger and his dad at the Masters two years ago, the reason I tried out in the first place, and I almost lost it in front of everybody.

Grandma said on the phone "Seventy-eight. I never broke 80 in my life." I said she would have if they'd let her play on Saturdays. She said "Oh, I know it."

Sunday, June 6, 1999

Juli Inkster won the U.S. Women's Open today, by five shots. She's thirty-eight and she has two daughters. She played like she had somewhere to be after.

We watched at Grandma's. When it was over, Grandma said "That's a mother of two, winning by five," and she looked at Mom like it was a dare. Mom said "Don't look at me, I have a bad back." Mom has never swung a golf club in her life.

School's over Friday. Summer means tournaments, the twilight rate at the muni with Eli, and Dad on the bag. I've been thinking about why I like watching the women's golf so much more than I used to. It's not that they're women. It's that I can see myself there. You don't know how much you need that until you get it.