Mozzarella
Sticks

Friday night. Rain had just passed through, and the greens at PopStroke Sarasota were glistening under the lights like they'd been polished by hand. My son is nine. He plays with the intensity of a man defending a championship.

On the 3rd, he lined up a putt from the very back of the green, read it from both sides, crouched like he'd seen on television, and announced to no one in particular, "It breaks toward the parking lot."

It did. He made it. He did a lap around the green.

We stopped on the patio before the back nine, and he ordered for both of us, with the authority of a nine-year-old who has just made a forty-footer. "Mozzarella sticks," he said. "Obviously."

Golden-fried, crisp and shattering on the outside, and inside, mozzarella so molten and stretchy it reached from the plate to his chin and kept going, a long white bridge of pure joy. A little sprinkle of parmesan across the top, like snow on a rooftop. And a cup of marinara for dipping, warm and bright and red.

He dipped each one twice. I didn't correct him. Some rules are meant for later in life.

He beat me by one stroke. On the way to the car, he said, very seriously, that the mozzarella sticks were "the real hole in one." I wrote it on the scorecard and kept it.