WHAT WE’VE GOT IS a situation. The good news is the lie is perfect, not surprising considering the ball has just rolled half a dozen feet. And according to Simon’s yardage book, we’re only 157 from the front edge. The less good news is the lip. It’s high and fat and looming and as they whisper ominously in the broadcast tower, it’s definitely a factor.
But how much of a factor? To reach the front of the green, I need a 7-iron, and the 7 should give me the loft I need to clear the lip. As long as I catch it right. I remind myself it’s not too late to retreat to option #1, golf is not a game for heroes, etc., wedge it out of the bunker and then wedge it onto the green in three, but for the same reason I was reluctant to tee off with the 7, I’m not disposed to hit the wedge now, not when a well-struck mid-iron will put me on the dance floor in two and give me the luxury of three-putting for my card.
Simon pulls the 7, and I descend into my adult sandbox.
From behind the ball I pick a target twenty feet left of the flag and picture the ball comfortably clearing the lip and arcing toward the green, but as I take my stance and hover the club face above the sand, the demons of Q-School must smell blood, because they are circling overhead like buzzards and flapping their furry wings. I block them out as best I can and remind myself I don’t have to hit it perfect, but under no circumstances can I catch it thin. My miss has got to be on the fat side. To err toward fatness, I dig my feet into the sand a titch deeper and choke up on my 7-iron a fraction less.
My last thoughts before my waggle are reasonable and generic—keep your feet quiet, swing within yourself, and maintain your balance—but when you add the crucial earlier exhortation to if anything hit it fat, that’s a compendium of swing thoughts, and as soon as I make contact, I know I did precisely what I told myself I mustn’t do. The shot I envisioned does not come to pass. Instead, the click of club face and ball is followed almost instantly by the thud of ball striking turf.
Rather than bounding forward some piddling distance, the ball rockets straight up into the Arizona sky like Old Faithful, or maybe more like a towering spring training pop-up. As it reaches its apex, I note the disconcerting fact that it is directly over my head where the buzzards used to be, and when it begins its descent, my heart plummets with it and the panic in my chest congeals into nausea when I realize that if I don’t move, the ball will hit me, and if that happens it’s a two-stroke penalty, I’m lying four in the bunker, and whether the ball actually kills me or not, you might as well take me off the respirator, because I’m as good as dead.
As the ball drops, I scramble to get out of its way, but I can’t get any traction. In my desperation to reach higher ground, my FootJoys struggle for purchase and then give way and slide out from under me. With my eyes locked on the ball, which is still bearing down on me with what feels like highly personal and malevolent intent, I fall straight back, and as I do I lose sight of the ball in the blinding sun.