SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY. I used to kind of like that U2 song. Now it makes me wince. Since we’re tied for fourth, we’re in the second-to-last group and not scheduled to go off till 12:53. That gives us a lot of time to kill and too much time to think. I start by administering the best and closest shave I’ve had in years and savoring every bite of my scrambled eggs as if it’s haute cuisine. When we get to the range I try not to hit more balls than usual but extend the time between them, stopping to sniff the air and shoot the breeze between every couple of shots. To my relief I’m hitting it solid and my Big Bertha is really carrying in the warm midday air.
My putting warm-up is less encouraging. Both the pace and the line are vague and the stroke feels squirrelly as hell and after a while Simon steps in and has me practice three- and four-footers so I can at least see the ball going into the hole.
Even after dragging out every part of our routine to within an inch of its life and throwing in a dozen bunker shots from the nastiest lies and stances I can dream up we still have sixty minutes before our tee time, and Simon suggests we head back to the bench we visited our first evening. Because most of the golfers are already on the course and the rest have moved to the putting green, the range is empty enough to safely cross and reclaim our front-row desert seat.
“I wonder how the coyotes are faring,” says Simon. “I’m kind of worried about them.”
“Me too.”
“It’s got to be rough out there for a single mom with three mouths to feed. Not as brutal as Q-School, of course, but tough nevertheless.”
While Simon surveys the unforgiving landscape, I narrow my focus on the round ahead. I remind myself that it’s going to be a struggle. No one gets to traipse through Q-School like it’s a walk through the park. Bad things are going to happen and there will be blood—mine, type 0+—and I have to be ready to hang tough and apply a tourniquet when it does. The basic idea is to be prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised by anything less, and I’ve been giving myself a version of this preamble with some success since my first peewee tournaments. I’m wrapping things up, getting to the part where I tell myself not just to anticipate a struggle but to embrace it and try in some twisted way to enjoy it, when Simon asks, “Okay if I give her a quick call?”
“Knock yourself out,” I say. I wait for him to take out his phone and call his mom or Jane Anne, apprising them of our imminent tee time and offering them one last chance to wish us good luck. Instead he throws back his shaggy head, does something funny with his mouth, and howls into the desert sky. Then he does it again. Simon’s calls are still reverberating in the desert air when a third howl, a lot like the first two but even more convincing, comes back.
“Sweet,” says Simon, “at least we don’t have to worry about her. We can focus on the golf.” And although I don’t let myself say it aloud, I’m thinking a send-off from a coyote before the last round of Q-School has got to be a good omen. I mean, come on.
Despite the prep work and feral salutations, the last round is a struggle from the moment I plant the first tee in the ground, and surprisingly, considering how it went on the range and the practice green, it’s my putter and short game that keep me afloat, not my ball striking.
On the front nine, I don’t record a single routine par. Every one is a struggle, a mini-psychodrama. On the first, it takes a breaking downhill nine-footer to save my par and on the second, a thirty-foot chip. Through six holes, my shortest putt for par is five and a half feet, and on 7, when I finally hit a green in regulation, I’m a field goal from the pin. Call me Travis “Houdini” McKinley because I get down in two and on 9 escape the bogeyman again, this time from a fried-egg lie in a greenside bunker.
My scorecard—nine straight pars for a 36—should come with an asterisk and a five-page footnote. And when I walk off the 9th and nearly trip on a blade of grass, I realize how much all that grinding has taken out of me. Holes like those are like dog years. Each one is the equivalent of three or four, and although I’m only halfway home, I feel like I’ve already played thirty-six.
Actually, I’m a lot less than halfway home, because the next nine are going to require that much more. When Simon and I take the gravel path that snakes through the desert to 10, it feels like we’ve crossed the border into a different country. In this new realm, aka back nine on Sunday, the air is thinner and the light warped and the most rudimentary aspects of the game—swinging with rhythm, taking the putter back smoothly, following through—require inordinate concentration.
On 10, I sink another six-footer for par, but there is only so much pressure a fifty-four-year-old central nervous system can withstand before it springs a leak. On 12, I lip out a four-footer for par, and on 13 and 15, fail to get up a down. After three bogeys in four holes, I feel like a retiree dipping into his IRA way too soon. The precious hard-earned birdies I spent three days hoarding are flying south for the winter at an alarming rate, and with a sickening feeling of inevitability, I’m slipping down the leaderboard from fourth…to fifth…to sixth, and, after an excruciating three-putt on 17…to seventh. Now I’m hanging on to my card by my fingertips and my momentum is all in the wrong direction. Forty lousy minutes have undone three days of hard work and my margin of error is down to one stroke.
Don’t act like this is some kind of surprise, I tell myself. You knew a test was coming, so let’s see what you can do. Q-School is officially in session.