REMEMBER THAT OLD PUBLIC-SERVICE announcement that showed a big black frying pan on a stovetop and said, “This is drugs,” then dropped an egg in the pan and said, “This is your brain on drugs”? Well, I’d love to see what they’d come up with to illustrate a brain under the influence of Senior Q-School. Maybe they’d take a fork and scramble it or leave it in there for six hours—the average length of a Q-School round—until it was so burnt and blackened you couldn’t get it off with a jackhammer. Or maybe the actor’s hand would shake so badly, he couldn’t break the shell. In any case, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Pressure messes with a golfer’s mind in all kinds of inventive ways, but mostly it makes you think too much. Under stress, the mind tends to get way too involved and chatty, and, like Jack Nicholson’s character in Chinatown, stick its nose where it doesn’t belong. Friday morning, my nerves are still holding up pretty well, maybe because from twenty-five to fifty, I spent my time cranking out headlines and slogans instead of grinding over six-footers. On the front side, I birdie both par 5s and one more on the back, and my 69 inches me one spot up the leaderboard into fifth.
But Saturday afternoon, as we get a little closer to the finish line, the collar tightens and those unwanted voices get darker and cheekier. When they become impossible to ignore, I try to stand up to them and let them know they’re wasting their breath. Before every dicey shot, I tip my hat in their direction like an invisible gallery. I hear you, I see you. I can even smell you. But I’m not going to let you mess with me. And I’m not going to do anything differently no matter what you dredge up.
For six hours, I’m not just playing the golf course, I’m negotiating and debating with the mob inside my head. Despite the distraction, I somehow maneuver my way around Tucson National one more time, dodge the bulk of the trouble, and avoid the dreaded big number. This time, the best I can manage is even par 72, but because my fellow competitors are contending with similar visitors and voices or worse, it’s good enough to climb into fourth and ensconce me a little deeper inside the magic circle.
Still, I know it could all be lost in one bad swing.