We teed off at 8:03 at the Links at Lakehouse, the sun still low and flat across the 1st, not a breath of wind and not a cloud in the sky. You'd written "Ughh" on the setup, and the first four holes did their level best to make you a prophet. Bogey, bogey, bogey, bogey — nothing disastrous, just a slow leak. The 5-iron off the tee on 1, the driver into the native area on 2, and then a putter that wouldn't cooperate. You had five feet on 1 and left it short, then holed the tap-in. That was the pattern for a while: get there in decent shape, give one back on the greens.
Things settled from 5. The pitching wedge from 129 out of the rough on 5 landed soft and stayed, and though the putt didn't drop, the bleeding stopped. On 6 you finally got one back — an 8-iron to eight feet, then you rolled it in for par on a hole you usually give a stroke and a half back to. Then came the run that turned the morning. On 7, the par 5, you found the fairway off the tee and stuck a 6-iron from 182 onto the green in two — that approach was a full stroke better than your own average from there — and two-putted for birdie. And on 8, from 46 yards in the fairway, you holed the 54 for eagle. "Hole out eagle!!!!" you wrote, and I'll allow the exclamation marks this once — you'd earned them. Two holes, three strokes back. You closed the front with a bogey on 9, but you'd already written "birdie eagle sure helps the score," and it did. Out in 37.
"Not hitting it great, but going birdie eagle sure helps the score!"
The back opened the way you'd want. A drive down the middle on 10, a 9-iron to twenty-five feet, an easy par. I figured we were onto something. Then the greens turned on us. On 11 you hit the green from the tee and three-putted from eighteen feet — that first putt ran a full stroke past what it should have.
The 12th was the hole that got away. A par 5 that stretched to nearly 560, and you never quite caught up to it — driver into the rough, then a long grind up the fairway, a 54 that came up short from 63, and a fifty-one-foot first putt that left too much. Seven. That was the double, and the one that cost you the most against your own numbers all day. The 13th followed with a bogey, the tee shot leaking right into the rough.
But 14 was worth the walk. You laced the drive 297 down the fairway, flushed it flat, and had a wedge in for your par. You stopped to take the view in — "Nice view!" — and it was. Pars on 14 and 15 held the line. Then the greens took their last two bites: three-putts on 16 and 17, the second one turning a par 3 into a double when the chip from 18 yards came up well short and left you fifty feet of putting to do. That one hurt more than it looked.
You closed like a scrambler on 18 — into the rough, into the bunker, out to the rough again, then a 54 from twelve yards to two feet and a tap-in for par. We walked off at 12:40, eighty on the card, the sun high overhead. The eagle carried the round, the putter took most of it back — you three-putted four times today. But you'll remember the 8th long after you've forgotten the rest.