Behind the Scenes: Author Zoe M. McCarthy Imagines Love on a Golf Course

Ask any member of my golfer-laden family if they think I’d write a story where love happens on a golf course, and they’d laugh.

In my early golf encounters, I resorted to observing everything except the golf to keep my interest in the game. While watching golf on TV with my husband, my thoughts drifted to what the pros were wearing. Did they ever wear the same shirts twice? I’d ask my husband how tall he thought a golfer was. Or I’d gauge whether players were good looking enough to be a model for my romance novel’s hero. Imagine my surprise when one of my picks took off his golf cap and revealed a balding white head above his tanned face.

Annually, my husband and I attend what’s now the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, NC. We always go with my sister and brother-in-law, who are avid golfers. I enjoy the rare incidents that occur. During one tournament, a bald eagle flew a few feet over our heads. At another, the huge crowd at the eighteenth green sang happy birthday to pro Rory McIlroy on his twenty-first birthday. At a recent tournament, a player’s ball landed against the leg of my fold-up chair. I had to rise from my chair without budging the ball and move away.

Then one year, John and I joined my sister and my brother-in-law at a PGA seniors golf tournament in Conover, NC. My sister and I watched the over-age-fifty golfers putt on the fifteenth green. In one group, a male and a female caddy stood side by side on the edge of the green with their backs to us. The two tanned caddies talked quietly while their players prepared to putt. He was tall, and she was petite with her blond ponytail protruding from her pink ball cap. My heart experienced a sappy moment, and romantic what-ifs cluttered my mind. I turned to my sister, pointed at the young caddies, and said, “My next book will be about those two caddies.”

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A full-time writer and speaker, Zoe M. McCarthy writes contemporary Christian romances involving tenderness and humor. She’s the author of The Invisible Woman in a Red Dress, Gift of the Magpie, and Calculated Risk. Believing opposites distract, Zoe creates heroes and heroines who learn to embrace their differences. Her book, Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days, releases soon. Zoe and her husband live in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Buy The Putting Green Whisperer here: https://www.amazon.com/Putting-Green-Whisperer-Zoe-McCarthy-ebook/dp/B07FQZ6SYQ/

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