the green slowly. Her shortcropped dark hair under the sweatstained cap was liberally sprinkled with grey and there were deep crows-feet at the corners of her narrow grey eyes. The skin of her lean face and strong arms was weather-beaten and darkly tanned with ten years of constant exposure to sun and wind and the sharply etched lines between her level brows and around her wide, mobile mouth were testimony to long hours of relentless pressure in the tough pro circuit.

The gallery began to stir and mutter restlessly at her long, careful deliberation, but Dana was as completely unaware of her audience as she was of the spikes on her shoes. It was this ability to shut herself away from all distractions, to exist in a vacuum of utter concentration, that had made her very nearly invincible for the better part of a decade.

Although she invariably drew the largest gallery in every tournament, Dana Farrell was not popular with many of the fans. Her unshakable poise and slow careful play often annoyed the spectators, and as always, at least in America, the sympathy of the crowd lies, not with the invincible champion, but with the underdog. Some of Dana's followers did come to see and admire the very nearly flawless exhibition of golf she always provided, some came hoping to see her blow up under pressure and thus disprove the legend of her invulnerability (no one has the right to be invulnerable) but the bulk of the gallery came to see her beaten-preferably by a young, temperamental unknown. It almost never happened, but the crowds never ceased hoping.

Now, as Dana finally completed her long study of the green and took her stance over the ball, silence fell again, broken only by a loud cough from one irritated spectator. He may as well have saved his breath; if he had suddenly begun to play The Star Spangled Banner on a bagpipe, Dana Farrell would have remained oblivious. The club head met the ball smoothly and it began to curl slowly across the green. When it seemed certain that it would stop short and far to the left, it suddenly seemed to pick up speed and head for the cup as though drawn by a magnet. There was a soft "thunk" as it dropped, a spattering of applause, then the gallery broke rapidly across the fairway to pick up Joan Collins' twosome coming up on 14.

Dana shook hands with her caddy and a dozen well-wishers who crowded around, signed autograph books for three teen-aged girls, tried to smile for a very young and nervous photographer from the local paper who handled his brand new Speed Graphic as though he were afraid it might suddenly explode, and then started walking slowly toward the white stucco and glass monstrosity that was the pride and joy of the Riverdale Country Club. Newly built at great expense in a local architect's imaginative but mistaken conception of an Italian villa, its design had been aptly described by one famous visiting golfer as "Filling Station Modern."

Now that it was over, Dana was sharply aware of the intense fatigue, not altogether physical, that spread through her vitals like a drug and left her weak and faintly ill. She was painfully conscious of the gnawing ache in

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