We teed off at 7:58 at Twin Oaks, the sun still low and the whole sky gone flat grey overcast, no wind to speak of, walking alone. You striped the opener down the middle, pitched to six feet, and holed it — the cleanest way there is to start a round.

The front settled into a groove after a wobble on the par-5 2nd, where the wedge game leaked a little and we scrambled to a bogey. From there it held. The 5-iron on the 3rd from 192 found the green from the tee — a shot you make better than your average, and you knew it walking after it. On the 4th your wedge from sixteen yards of rough saved the par outright; that's a full stroke you usually give back from that lie, and you didn't. Pars kept coming — 5, 6, 7, clean and unhurried. The only blemish was the 8th, where you hit the green in regulation and then the putter got cold: a 24-footer left short, and the seven-footer coming back wouldn't drop either. Three putts. Nothing to do but read the next one.

We made the turn at +2. You'd tagged a Moment on the 9th — "Back feels a bit better but not great" — and to be honest the swing didn't argue with it. You still striped the drive 262 down the fairway and made a routine par, so whatever the back was doing, it kept its complaints quiet.

The back nine is where the putter went from cold to costly. Pars through 11, then the 12th: green in regulation again, a 45-footer that came up nine short, and another three-putt bogey. The 13th was the one that hurt. You laced the drive 261 down the middle, sitting pretty at 116 — and then gave it all back. The wedge came up short, the next one short of that, and a third three-putt closed the door on a double. That whole hole was close to two strokes you'd normally keep. From a fairway that good, it stings.

You steadied it after. On the 14th you flushed the drive again — 269, dead-straight — and made an easy par, and 15 and 17 came home clean, including a tidy two-putt from fifty-one feet on 15 that never threatened but never scared us either. The 16th and 18th, both par-5s, cost a shot apiece on wedges that leaked into the rough near the green. If the short game had matched the driver today, this is a very different card.

We walked off 18 at 12:39, seven over, under the high grey. The driver was the best club in the bag and the putter the worst — 35 of them, and the three-putts on 8, 12, and 13 are the whole story of the back nine. Everything long was in play. It was the twelve feet and in that got away.