We teed off at 8:57 under a high sun at Twin Oaks, mostly cloud overhead, the air already thick at seventy degrees and seventy-seven percent humidity, with Ian, Dav, and Rick. The opening hole gave us a glimpse of the day's pattern — drive into the rough, the 50 into the bunker, out to the fairway, and a bogey signed. Nothing alarming. You steadied after that, parring 2 through 9 around a couple of stumbles, holding the front to a tidy 39.

The putter wasn't reading well, and you knew it. On 3 you put the 6-iron on the fairway short of the green and three-putted from seventeen feet for a bogey that had no business being there. The same on 4 — a hybrid off the tee, the 9-iron into the bunker, but a clean 54 out to fifteen feet, and we left it. Those were the giveaways. Through it all the long stuff stayed mostly in front of you.

"Not hitting it great and no putts are dropping. Probably feels worse than it is after yesterday's great round."

The good ones, when they came, came on the par 3s. On 7, from 180, you flushed a 6-iron onto the green and gave yourself a real look — that was the best swing of the front by a fair margin, a shot you usually don't get clean from there. And on 9, after the wedge leaked, you ran a putter from sixty-seven feet up to two for the tap-in. That was a save most days leaves out there. By then you'd left a Hands line — *not hitting it great and no putts are dropping, probably feels worse than it is after yesterday.* It did feel worse than it was. The front was solid; the round was honest with you.

The back is where the day got heavy. On 10, the 6-iron flew the green into the native area, the 58 from there was clean enough, but you three-putted from thirty-nine feet for double. From there the bogeys came in a slow leak — 13, 14, 15, 16, one after another. Mostly the putter. On 13 you three-putted again from thirty-nine feet. On 15 you missed from eight feet and again from six — that one stung most, a stroke and a half gone from spots you usually clean up. The greens were quietly taking their toll all afternoon.

You found a few good swings in the mess. The 9-iron on 16 from 145 in the fairway was a clean strike, even if the day's tally didn't reward it. And the 58 on 17 — from twenty-three yards in the rough, hot and tired and sore, you put it to three feet and made it for the lone bright par on the back. *Absolutely exhausted,* you wrote there. *Just want to get this one over with.* I don't blame you. We closed 18 with a bogey, the drive in the fairway and the rest of it scratching home.

"Absolutely exhausted. Hot, humid, tired, hands sore... Just want to get this one over with."

We walked off 18 at 1:39, eighty-two, ten over, the sun still high and the back nine longer than the front. If the putter had shown up, this is a 75. It didn't. Some days that's the whole story.