We teed off at 6:43 at Rancho Bernardo Inn, the sun still low and the sky already going cloudy over the 1st fairway, ninety-one percent humidity hanging on everything. Just you and Ian. You split the fairway to open, wedged on, two-putted for par, and we were off — quiet golf, the kind that doesn't announce itself.
The front settled into a rhythm most players would trade a lot for. Par at 2, then on 3 — the par 5 — you found the fairway, bunkered the 4-iron short right, and floated the 54 out of the sand to two feet. That was the birdie, and it came from a spot most people are happy to just escape. The one blemish was 4, the par 3, where the 5-iron leaked into the rough long and left us scrambling. You got up-and-down territory and then left the twelve-footer short. Bogey. We gave that one back and moved on.
From there the approaches carried us. On 6 the pitching wedge from 124 nearly went in the hole. On 8, the par 5, you laced the drive down the middle and hit the 4-iron from 197 clean onto the green — that swing alone was worth better than two full strokes over what you'd normally do from there. You called it yourself standing over the eagle putt: two great swings in a row. The putt slid by, but the birdie was never in doubt. We made the turn at even-par, and you told me you were tired. You didn't look it.
The back nine was the approach clinic continuing. The 9-iron on 11 to ten feet, the wedge on 13 to eight — the irons kept finding the middle of things. On 11 a hawk lifted off and you stopped to watch it, and you rolled in the putt after. The truth of the day, though, was on the greens: the irons were giving strokes back and the putter kept handing them over. The birdie looks came and went — 6, 8, 10, 13 — and the round stayed at one under because the ball wouldn't drop.
Then 15 and 16 in a row tested us. On 15 you pushed the 8-iron long-left into the rough and never recovered the stroke; on 16 you were in the fairway all the way and still couldn't get the wedge and the putter to agree. Two bogeys, and suddenly we were one over with two to play. If golf is a game of second chances, you took both.
On 17 you drove it in the fairway, wedged to twenty-one feet, and holed it — a putt you had no business making given how the day had gone on the greens, and it went in dead center. Back to even. Then 18, the par 5: you flushed the drive nearly 300, laid up with the hybrid, and lagged the long one from off the front to a tap-in. Birdie to finish. We walked off 18 at 10:30, one under par, under a sky that never did clear.