We teed off at 6:45 at Twin Oaks, the sun still low and the air thick with morning humidity — ninety-one percent and dead calm, one of those clear July mornings that turns heavy by the back nine. Ian was with us, and a walk-on named Max Kim who'd flown in from Korea the day before and looked it. You striped the opening drive down the middle, wedged to the green, two-putted for a clean four. A good way to start.

Then the round found its first gear. On the par-5 2nd you drove into the rough but scrapped your way up, pitched the 54 to fifteen feet, and rolled it in for birdie. That putt was worth better than half a stroke over what you usually do from there. The next two holes gave a little back — a bogey at the 3rd after the 8-iron leaked into the rough, and a bogey at the 4th where the pitching wedge from 124 in the fairway drifted right into the rough. That approach was the one that stung; from that spot you're usually a stroke better. But you steadied, parred the long 5th, dropped one more at the 6th, and then closed the front the way you'd want to. On the par-4 8th you flushed a 4-iron off the tee, a wedge to thirteen feet, and buried the putt for your second birdie — a hole and a half better than your average, and you knew it. Two birdies on the card at the turn. As you put it yourself on the 9th: some good, some bad, but the two birdies sure helped.

The birdie streak carried over. On the 10th, a 206-yard par 3, you took the 4-iron and hit the shot of the day — dead on the number, three feet from the flag, tap-in two. From that distance you'd take that result once a year. That put you back to even par, and I figured we were settling into something good.

But the heat had other plans. It got hot and it got long, and the back nine slowly wore you down. The 11th and 12th held together on the strength of your short game and putter — a nine-iron pitch to three feet, then up-and-down out of the bunker for pars. The 13th slipped away when a five-footer for par didn't drop. Then the wedges went sideways. On 14 you laced a drive 284 down the middle and then flew the 50 into the rough from a hundred yards — bogey. On 15 the 58 from eighteen yards came up eight yards short, and that little chunk cost you the better part of a stroke and the hole with it. Bogey.

You kept fighting where you could. On the par-5 16th you rolled in a thirteen-footer for par, and on the 17th, after a mess off the tee and a chip that went nowhere, you holed an eighteen-footer for bogey that felt like a par. The 18th you closed properly — drive in the fairway, a scramble through the native area, the 54 to five feet, and the putt down for par.

We walked off 18 at 11:11, four over, under a high hard sun. It was a what-could-have-been round and you said so yourself — the approaches leaked all day, most of a hero's worth of strokes left in the fairways. But three birdies on a scorecard is three birdies, and the putter never quit on you. If the wedges had matched the driver, we'd have had something. They didn't, and we still shot 76.