Bethany Stewart, four-time British Open champion and current world No 1, tugs at the peak of her cap. This simple act, repeated each time she stands over her ball, is a signal to herself that she is ready. It clears her mind. Removes the noise of the world. The complications of life dissolve. 

Her ball has a good lie, propped up in some light rough to the left of the fairway. The contact should be clean. It might even come out a little hot. She will have to be careful of that. The 17th green, according to her caddy, is exactly 163 yards away.

‘Just the bunker to clear at the front,’ he says as he double-checks his yardage chart. His name is Big Stu; a barrel-chested gorilla of a man with a scar running down the back of his shaved head, although you wouldn’t know it unless he took his Bethany Stewart-branded cap off. ‘154 yards to carry it, but the best putt is from beyond the hole,’ he adds. Uphill putts are easier than downhill putts. ‘169 to the back edge.’

‘You really think it’s a seven?’ says Beth. She is worried about the lake behind the green, its depths surely full of golf balls. She wonders briefly if they ever employ divers to retrieve the balls and give the marine habitat some respite. 

‘Look at the flags above the grandstand,’ he says. Three flags, representing Germany, the European Union and the Ladies European Tour, previously limp in the still blue sky of the Bavarian forest, have woken in a breeze that has picked up in the last few minutes. ‘The wind is coming off the left now. You’ll need a seven with your draw.’

Beth takes a step back, tears some grass from the ground and tosses it into the air. The grass falls at her feet, untouched by any breeze. She pulls away, fiddles with her glove. ‘I don’t know, Dad.’

‘I’m telling you Beth. You can’t feel the wind down here, but once the ball is above the trees…’

Beth twirls the club in her hand like a majorette baton as she considers his words.

‘I feel like if I take a seven, I’ll worry about it being big and won’t commit to the shot.’

‘Beth, listen to me. Take the seven.’

Beth has listened to her dad her entire life. 

What if I stopped doing that?

The thought startles her. She pushes it away. Now is not the time. She takes a breath, and reminds herself just why he is, and always has been, the perfect caddy for her. Her lives in a binary world, for a start. She can either reach the green in two or she can’t. She can either carry the fairway bunker or she can’t. She can either go out with her friends and miss out on practice and not become the best player in the world, or she can’t. And it is that clarity of thought that has been the key to their shared success over the years. So garrulous off the course, on it he has earned the nickname ‘The Whisperer’; a gentle breeze in Beth’s ear, clearing the fog of uncertainty, steering her through thousands of rounds of golf for over 20 years, so that together, they have been cast as one of the great sporting partnerships, inserted into lists alongside Torvill & Dean, Lillee & Thomson, Redgrave & Pinsent. Beth is so far clear of her peers there is talk of her being the greatest of all time. There are plans for a lucrative one-off head-to-head showdown with the men’s No 1. But before that, she has a job to do here. Seven solid shots and she will be Tour champion once again, winner of the European Masters and guaranteed to end the year as world No 1, even if she doesn’t play another shot over the next four months. 

But really, what if I didn’t listen to him.

The thought recurs. No. Now really was not the time. Another breath then, and a glance around at her surroundings. Closeted within the endless trees of southern Germany, the Ebersberger Eichen National is one of her favourite courses. On a clear day from the height of the 14th tee, the spires of Munich can be seen, but otherwise there is no hint of the human world. As long as she ignores the thousands of people traipsing around the course watching her every move, that is. As long as she ignores the cameras and stewards and grandstands and security and the unknown hundreds of thousands watching on television. As long as she ignores BethStewartFan911, who, she is acutely aware, is standing a little over 10 feet away and staring at her arse. And, of course, as long as she ignores the fact her dad is six feet away, plotting her every step. 

She has learned to shut it all out, for the most part. A sport psychologist, recommended to her by the best snooker player in the world and the fourth best tennis player in the world at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year awards a few years ago, trained Beth to remove from her mind all that was unnecessary in the execution of a golf shot. ‘Just go back to those first years on the course with your father,’ he said. She nodded, but she knew she would not do that, and she does not do that. Instead, she thinks about the time just before she first held a golf club, when she was nine years old and had a pair of roller-skates with flashing lights, in which she would skate around the cul-de-sac all day, every day for an entire, sweltering summer, white headphones over her ears listening to the Robbie Williams album her mum had bought her for her birthday, skating around and around and around, lost in the bliss of her own company. She dreamed of being a an artist, or a writer. She loved those roller-skates, and it is that specific memory, of those long summer days, that she turns to in moments of intense pressure. It helps her settle within herself, helps her feel physically loose, to the point where people remark on how she often allows a small smile to creep over her just before she draws the club back from the ball. Long-reads have been commissioned, entire podcasts produced, all asking the question of just what Beth Stewart is thinking about before she hits a crucial golf shot that causes her to smile. Those less generous call it a smirk, but the received wisdom among those who have given the topic an unholy amount of consideration is that either way, it is a smile of supreme confidence, born out of knowing that on her day, she is comfortably better than her peers and as long as she doesn’t do anything stupid, victory will be hers. But they are wrong. The smile is neither confidence, nor arrogance. No, it is a call to her younger self, to the paralysing introversion of youth, that everything is going to be okay. 

Look at me now, Bethany Lauren Stewart.

‘It’s a seven iron, Beth, all day long and twice on Sundays.’ Her dad’s voice has firmed up. His patience at an end. ‘Just take the club, swing, and put the ball on the green.’ 

Beth relents. ‘Fine,’ she says. Ugh. Thirty-two and still sulking at Dad. A deep flutter of frustration. That deep ball of heat in her core. It is a job every day to keep it doused. But she does as she is told and takes the seven iron from the bag. Another deep breath, then, and another tug of her cap. She settles into her stance and a hush descends upon the crowd. She takes a moment to visualise the shot she wants to play. A high draw into the wind, clear of the bunker at the front right and a soft landing into the back centre of the green. 

And now, she is ready. 

Her left knee kinks a little. 

You might not notice it, if you didn’t know to look, but that tiny twitch has always been her trigger movement, the ignition to her swing, and so with it she pulls the club back from the ball, rotates her shoulders and twists her hips so that the club-face is drawn high behind her, and it is only as she uncoils her body and brings her arms and hands down in whipped fury towards the ball that the question repeats –  what if I didn’t listen to him? – and a life not lived flashes before her eyes. A life without hitting a single golf ball, without walking a single course, without fame and privilege, limousines and business class, without her dad tracking her every step; a life with girlfriends and boyfriends, with drinking and dancing, mischief and trouble, crashed cars and crashed parties, fast food and weekends on the sofa; a life with children, with school runs and ironing, broken bones and waterparks, a life suffering on windswept touchlines and at tuneless recitals; a life lived for someone else, for something more important than hitting a dimpled ball around an enormous field. Somehow, she imagines it all in that instant, so that as the club sends the ball on its way, she lets out an enormous gasp with the effort and the ball arcs into the deep blue June sky.

From up there, the ball will have a fine view. Hundreds of thousands of beech, spruce, Scots pines and silver firs, stretching to the snowy peaks of the Austrian Alps. And hundreds of pairs of eyes trained on it, all doing their best to calculate its trajectory and just how close to the hole it will land.

‘Sit,’ she says. ‘Sit down.’ 

But the ball is not listening. Has the wind dropped suddenly? Difficult to tell. The flags are still fluttering, but perhaps with not the vigour of a few seconds ago. In any case, the ball arcs over its apex and begins its descent. ‘Sit down,’ pleads Beth once again, but she knows, she knew as soon as she hit it, could feel it, and as the ball approaches earth once more, there is a murmur of consternation among those in the crowd who can now see what Beth has known all along. She has missed the green and the ball is heading straight for the lake. 

It disappears with a silent splash. 

Several hundred sharp intakes of breath seem to suck the air from the Bavarian countryside. Total disbelief. Some people cheer. Beth feels sick. She looks to her dad. He stares at her in accusation.

‘What the hell was that?’

But all Beth can think about is not what she has done, but everything she hasn’t done. Big Stu bends to take another ball from the bag. 

‘It’s okay. Take a drop by the lake, get out of here with a six and you should still be ahead. Beth? Beth, you need to concentrate.’

Behind the blank smile, she can feel it coming. That deep ball of heat. That fire. The fire he put there. The fire he insisted she needed to become the best in the world. She can feel it rising within her, a thrumming of the chest, a shortening of breath, the sweat on the back of her neck. 

‘Sometimes I think you do these things on purpose, just to spite me,’ he says, oblivious. He should have known, really. He should have seen it coming. ‘Just like your mother. So stubborn.’

Hate the way he talks about mum.

Hate the way he talks. 

Hate the way he…

‘You’re fired.’

The words are out before she even knows they are there, and when they are out, she lets out an impulsive giggle in sheer disbelief at their audacity. Big Stu shakes his head and moves to hand her the ball.

‘You’re fired.’

She repeats the words, her heart thumping. Every nerve in her body fizzes as she stares at him, eyes wide, a hint of a smile. 

‘Beth, seriously. This is no time for jokes.’

‘I am serious, Dad. You’re fired.’

Big Stu glances around, at the thousands of people currently watching them, then at the cameraman lingering 10 feet away, surely able to pick up everything they are saying. He looks suddenly scared.

‘Beth, what are you doing?’

‘I want you to leave.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I want you to leave. Now.’

‘What, just walk away? Leave you here. I can’t do that.’

‘You can.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’m deadly serious. I need you to walk away now.’

Big Stu chuckles nervously and takes another step towards her.

‘Pickle, you can’t do this.’

‘Don’t call me pickle.’ His name suddenly revolts her. Stuart Stewart. It’s not his fault, but it is pathetic. ‘And I can do this. It’s taken me too long to realise it, but I can.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘I need to be able to do this on my own,’ she says.

‘No one does this on their own, Beth.’

‘Well, maybe I need someone new.’

‘No, you need me. You’ve always needed me.’

She shakes her head. ‘You’ve got it wrong. It’s the other way round.’

The cameraman inches closer to the pair of them as a murmuring settles over the crowd, a sense that something extraordinary is happening, Beth as surprised as them. 

‘Let’s talk about it after,’ he says. ‘Finish the round, win the trophy, collect the money and we’ll talk about it.’

‘No.’

‘But we always talk about it.’

‘No, you always talk about it, and then I have to do what you say.’

Big Stu swallows, pulled his cap from his head and runs his hand over his scar, a pure white slice through the stubble.

‘Is everything okay?’

The call comes from across the fairway, from Maja Lundqvist, who has played her approach shot and is waiting to walk up to the green. 

‘Yes, fine. I’m coming.’

Beth takes a step and reaches for her bag, but her dad grabs her arm.

‘Beth. Please. I’m begging you. Don’t do this. Not here. Not in front of everyone.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

She shrugs him off and lifts the bag onto her shoulder. There is a collective gasp from the spectators, almost in horror. She thinks of the television commentators, surely in apoplexy. The famous Beth Stewart temper. The one thing that could stop her becoming the greatest of all time. If she could only curb that temper, they will be saying. Whatever. It doesn’t what they are saying. It doesn’t matter what anyone is saying. She is free. Her shoulders burdened by the weight of the bag, she strides up the fairway to astonished applause, and has never felt lighter.