The Archie Wheeler! An Odyssey in an amazing summer tournament!

About fifty feet from the main entrance to Brooklawn Country Club, you’ll find a wall filled with photos of yesteryear’s golf greats, such as , who passed through Brooklawn on their way to international stardom. Sharing the wall with the golf legends are black and white photos of nameless first- generation American golfers. Judging from their mischievous grins, they were likely blowing off more solemn duties to play golf when they were immortalized on film.

Gene Sarazen, former pro at Brooklawn A little further down the corridor, in the grill room, a Country Club is only one of only five mahogany board sits behind the bar commemorating the golfers to win all four major tournaments men’s club champions. Brooklawn’s logo is a large elm tree with 18 and 95 wrapped around its base, the 1895 presumably indicating the year Brooklawn Country Club was founded. However, the first men’s champion listed on the board is 1901. Considering that only eight golfers participated in the first British Open in 1860, it’s reasonable to deduce that it took Brooklawn six years to !field enough golfers for a proper club championship. The club’s champion board inscribes each year’s winner’s name in impressive gold leaf. Over time, several names repeat themselves so often you wonder how private Brooklawn actually was at the turn of the century. The first men’s club champion was Archie Wheeler, winning in !1901 and repeating in 1902. ! Brooklawn occupied a warm spot in Archie’s heart because he bequeathed money to Brooklawn to be spent on the festivities of an annual club tournament that now bears his name: the “Archer C. Wheeler Memorial Tournament,” affectionately know as the “Archie”. In a testament to Archie’s evident bonds to all of Brooklawn’s members, the Archie is open to all current and former members. Thus, the Archie serves as a reunion of sorts for many long-lost members or at least the ones that squared away their Archie Wheeler, Brooklawn’s first men’s Champion !tabs at Brooklawn before departing. Whether Archie specified the details of the tournament in his will is debated. In any event, it was settled long ago that the Archie would be a “net” tournament, meaning that anyone (and more specifically the mid-to-high handicappers) has a chance to win. For the non-golfer, “net” scores are determined by simply taking your “gross” or actual score and deducting your . Thus, if you shot an 82 with a 12 handicap, you subtract your handicap from your final score !(82-12=70) and post a net 70 for the round. The normal golf “courtesies” extended on weekend matches don’t apply to the Archie. Every stroke is counted and every putt, no matter how close the ball is to the hole, is putted. Two- footers induce knee-buckling moments, ballooning more than a few scores. Also, just like the big boys, you’re given a pin placement sheet, lending an air of importance to the tournament despite the fact that such strategic information for anyone sporting a double-digit handicap, is as useful !as giving carpet bombers precise coordinates. After playing 18 holes of golf, the winner of the Archie is decided by a three-hole playoff between the players with the four lowest net scores (and all those that tie). While the purists surely sniff at Archie’s “net format,” the three- hole playoff is also a “net” format. A low handicapper is screwed if the high handicapper reels off three good holes in a row. The playoff is referred to as “going down the hill,” since the first playoff hole rolls downhill from the !clubhouse. As I’m sure Archie wanted, members roll out in full force as cocktails, supplied by Archie’s beneficence, flow and a band fills the air with festive music. Drinks in hand, several hundred march down the hill to watch the three- hole playoff unfold with the solemnity of the British !Open, just with far more cocktails, thanks to Archie. Before my first Archie, the pre-tournament buzz was palpable, with every member and former member harboring hopes that they would find their rhythm and “go down the hill.” My three partners for the Archie were Alex, Peter and Ernie, all long-time members who had played in over 60 Archies! collectively. I learned that only Peter had gone ‘down the hill’ before. I The 14th tee box looking “down the hole.” think Peter traces his lineage to the guys who carved Brooklawn’s fairways with horses. Peter is a good golfer who recently won the club’s senior championship. Like me, he practically overheats over golf history and reminiscing over the mystique of the ancient game. I can picture him sitting alone in Brooklawn’s trophy room, scotch on the rocks in his hands, savoring the scent of the hickory- shafted clubs and chatting away with the ghost of Archie. Then the nice security guard turns on the lights and politely reminds him that the club has been closed for three hours. This fictional scene unfolds in my head all in a good way, of course. Anyway, golf or gowf, is in Peter’s !DNA. Our group started on the first tee of the shotgun format. (In “shotguns” golfers start on all the holes at the same time.) I started off slowly but managed to pull off several “scrambling” pars by pitching the ball close enough to the hole to give myself a prayer at a one-putt and actually sinking the putts. I also chipped in on the ninth hole for a birdie. As the round progressed, I managed to avoid any blowups and ended up shooting 81. With my 13 handicap, I shot a net 68. !(81-13=68) After finishing, it didn’t seem like a particularly momentous round until Peter put things in historical perspective. “You’re definitely in,” Peter said as we finished the round. “There’s never been a 68 who didn’t !go down the hill. Never.” Espoused with the certainty of a guy who has been the club’s historian, golf chairman, green chairman and about seven other committee positions at Brooklawn, I accepted his declaration as gospel. “In fact, I’ll caddy for you when you go down the hill,” he added. Caddy for me? I liked how my first Archie was unfolding. ! I learned I had to wait around until about 5 p.m. when the afternoon qualifiers finished to see !who officially qualified to ‘go down the hill.’ No worries. I drove home and told my wife and kids that I was likely going to “go down the hill” and that people actually were going to watch me play. Yawns. An eyeroll. My wife, who had just !taken up golf, then sprouted a “I’m worried for you” look. “Who is going to watch YOU play?” Charlotte, my youngest daughter asked, with a mildly disdainful laugh. While I couldn’t argue with Charlotte’s sentiments, I replied cockily, “Oh, !probably a few hundred people.” Guffaws. I showered, ate and prepared myself to “go down the hill,” though this being my first golf tournament, I was exceedingly short of experience of what to do while you whittle away time before a playoff. As the afternoon wore on, I began imagining I was just like all the pros who I’ve watched on television waiting in tents before a playoff. You had to be there to understand the tension, the nerves, the stress. With calm professionalism, we bide our time. It was the first of many delusions to !sweep over me. When I returned to Brooklawn I hit a few range balls and then moseyed on back to the 14th tee area. The two- man band was in full swing and the cocktails which Archie had !bequeathed were already flowing. I handed my golf bag to Peter and we headed to the 14th tee where the other three guys in the playoff were already waiting. Jim Fatsi, then the assistant pro, drew straws to determine who’d tee off first. I don’t know if I won or lost, but Jim bellowed my name first. “Now on the tee is Tom Reilly from St. Lawrence University.” (I was wearing a Saint Lawrence golf shirt.) A smattering of claps. As I approached the tee, I could swear that in my peripheral vision I saw a !few heads turning away from me, as if diverting their eyes from an oncoming train wreck. Without paying too much attention to the doubters, I stuck the tee in the ground, positioned the ball on top of it, stepped back, breathed deeply and then swung. While the swing didn’t feel any different from ones which periodically result in gargantuan slices into the next county, I managed to stripe it down the middle of the fairway, opening the relief valves of my neural system. As the other three golfers teed off, my breathing slowly resumed to normalcy. Maybe they thought it was the price of Archie’s free drinks, but to my surprise, after the other golfers teed off, at least 200 people !followed us down the hill. My ball settled in the middle of the fairway, about 155 yards from the green. When my turn came, I breathed deeply, took a practice swing and then hit an 8-iron. Miraculously, it was as good a shot as I could muster, landing seven feet from the pin. I turned and looked at my wife, Ellen. We both suppressed laughs and acted like we were accustomed to me routinely hitting greens as if I was !throwing darts. Exuberant to be on the green in two, I must have unconsciously set low mental goals for my first putt: close enough was a victory. I could hear Peter exhale deeply as I missed the makeable birdie putt and had a short tap-in putt for a . I couldn’t admit to him that I felt like I had won the Publisher’s Sweepstakes with a par. Since it was a net playoff, and the other guys who parred the hole had lower handicaps, I was in the lead. Two holes to go. It wasn’t premature to envision your name engraved on the “Archer C Wheeler Memorial Tournament” board was it? Even though the winners of the Archie are listed in a dark corner of the bar on a board which is used to stack dishes, every participant would love to see his or her name in gold !lettering. The next playoff hole was the fifteenth hole, a 138-yard par 3, where the green is guarded by two very large sycamore trees. For the past several years, the membership has been sharply divided on whether to cut the sycamores down. At one time, the golf committee condemned the trees to firewood, but a passionate posse of tree lovers formed a tree defense league and prevailed upon the powers that be to issue a stay of execution. I’ve since learned that no course in our land is spared from passionate debates over the fates of trees. Discussions about trees on golf courses stir things up like bare feet wading in a mucky pond: once stirred, everything remains mucky for a long time. Anyway, while the fate of the sycamores remained mucky, the sycamores guarded the 15th !green. Standing on the 15th tee box, I felt the first a rush of adrenaline from playing in front of a crowd. It wasn’t like the knee-wobbling feeling that I experienced the hole before. This rush felt great, inducing unfounded and unwarranted confidence in my swing. ! The 15th-hole with the towering sycamores which received a stay of execution. I asked Peter for my pitching wedge, since the tee markers were closer than usual. There was no wind, so I was confident in the club selection. Before I swung I knew I’d do a cartwheel over any shot that wasn’t a wormburner into the pond directly in front of the tee box. By that low bar, my shot’s first hundred yards would have been judged satisfactory. However, its final grade was middling. It went about 10 yards past the middle of the green and !tailed off into the back of the left bunker. When I reached my ball, I saw it lying, half-covered in porous sand on a downhill lie. Peter handed me my sand wedge without exchanging a word. I tried to mask my growing concern that it could take me seven swings to propel the ball from sand to green, utterly clueless on how to deftly hit a downhill sand shot to a green that sloped sharply from the back to the front. At that time, I was also very cognizant that I wasn’t alone on the course. It seemed like I could hear the ice clink in every one of the 200 !hundred spectators’ cups. I fixed my eyes on a spot about two inches in front of the ball, inhaled and swung. The ball rose in a puff of sand and magically rolled toward the hole. A pitter-patter of applause triggered a release of whatever chemical prevents a heart from seizing. I again tried to look like I fully !expected to pull off the bunker shot. When the ball stopped rolling, I had a winding six-footer for par. I read the green and deliberated with Peter. “About a foot to the left. It’s all about speed,” he said after examining the ball’s path to the hole. Not having a clue how to properly gauge the speed, I sidled up to the ball and putted it two feet beyond the hole. It was a respectable miss. I !exhaled and then knocked the ball in for a bogey. Walking to the 16th and final hole, Peter cheered me on. “You’re still in the lead,” he said. “You‘ve got this.” His encouragement fueled me. I believed my caddy was not just raising my competitive spirits. He was spot-on with the truth: the Archie was within my reach. One simple, par-4, 335-yard hole stood between me and a champagne-spewing victory celebration. The 16th hole is listed as the 12th handicap hole on the course’s index, meaning that some golf experts decided that this was the 12th most difficult hole on the course. How difficult could the 12th ranked hole be? A.W. Tillinghast reconstructured ! the dog legged 16th hole ! When we reached the 16th tee box, I surveyed the fairway. It was lined with hundreds of people in madras shirts and sun dresses. Their cups needed refilling, but with the match still up for !grabs, the crowd buzzed or it least it seemed to buzz inside my head. The 16th hole is a relatively short hole with a sharp dogleg right up to the green. Tall trees on the right blocked any chance of blasting a drive directly toward the green. In addition to the cluster of trees on the right side of the fairway, A.W. Tillinghast, the legendary architect, positioned bunkers at the elbows of the fairway. If you hit it short and slightly right, you’re in the !sand. If you drive it too long, you’re in the sand. “Do you want your three-wood or driver?” Peter inquired. I was momentarily thrown off by his question. I had always used my driver on the 16th hole. In the heat of the playoff, I didn’t think the fact that we were hitting off the blue “member” tees and not the black tees 10 yards further back which we usually hit off, would make any difference. I !went with my driver. Right before I teed off, I looked up at the clump of trees to the right of the fairway and inexplicably thought of a story Peter told me about his high school golf coach. I had no idea why, on the eve of my championship swing, the story filled my head. Anyway, Peter’s coach’s name was Bill Stone and they called him the “Rock,” which I’m sure was an endearment. If any member of the golf team hit his drive in the trees on the right, the Rock made them run a mile on the high school track in their golf shoes. Under the Rock’s coaching, I figured I’d be at least 15 !pounds lighter. The sun shone brightly as I aligned my tee shot. Not a single swing thought crept into my head. I was on autopilot, strengthened by Peter’s inspiration. I waggled the club in my hands and just swung, striping the ball directly down the fairway. Polite applause. Again, relief and a release of the endorphins that prevents you from soiling your pants in public. “Great shot,” Peter cheered. I was sure that I was entering the magical zone where raw golf talent just oozes. What better !place to ooze talent than at a club tournament watched by hundreds of people? When the last golfer teed off, we marched determinedly up to our balls. The 16th fairway was full of spectators and people I faintly recognized complimented me on my tee shot. I concocted a nonchalant look that said that it was just a mundane, 250-yard, down-the-middle of-the fairway poke for me. I also wondered how many people in the crowd had witnessed me slice drives into other fairways on a recurring basis before banishing the negative thought. I then imagined striding amongst his “army” as he bore down on a victory. How did he walk? Were his strides long and deliberate or did he amble? Suddenly, I was not sure about how I should walk. As I strode down the fairway I concluded a victorious gait was most appropriate. I wasn’t sure what a victorious stride should look like primarily since I had never won a tournament or actually even played in front of people before. I pledged when I got home to pull up a YouTube video of Arnie walking down the fairway and ape it, in the !event of future victory walks. Before I reached my ball, I mentally visualized it sitting exactly in the middle of the fairway, leaving me with 120 yards to the middle of the green. I knew my pitching wedge would take me home. An easy swing and I’m on in regulation. Two putts later, I’m in the hole and the !celebration would begin. I was ready. When we reached the crest of the fairway, I glanced at where my ball was supposed to be. I say ‘supposed to be’ because there was no ball to be seen. Nothing. My eyes darted everywhere. My ball had vanished as if a hawk had swooped in and mistaken it for a hen’s egg. Maybe some of my friends were goofing on me and scooped it up. Nah, ! that would be a cardinal sin in the Archie. “Where the hell is my ball?” I walked past the fairway and there --- in the sand-trap --- a ball with apparently the same markings as mine lay. “What the hell? I’ve never driven through the green and into the trap before,” I whispered desperately to Peter. “I would’ve hit a three-wood,” he said in a way that wasn’t overly consoling or, to be technical, any way relevant to my challenge at hand. How did I hit the ball fifteen yards farther than I had ever done before? Was my swing spiked with !adrenaline? My heart raced as I looked up the hill. The hundreds of spectators holding cocktails seemed to multiply until they morphed into a throng much larger than the crowd that hugs the 18th green on Sunday at the Masters. Worse, the sun shone directly down into my eyes. Looking up at the green all I saw was a blinding orb of light with human appendages sprouting from its edges. ! Fairway sandtrap view up the 16th ! “Do you want my sunglasses?” I heard Ellen ask me as I squinted painfully at my target which !was concealed by a bright orb staring back at me. “No, I’ve got this,” I replied, trying to sound confident. Looking back on the moment, however, I realized my voice was suddenly monotonal. There was not a wisp of confidence in it. I was quickly learning that an impending mental collapse first manifests itself in one’s vocal chords. Afterwards, I wished I had hummed a sunny Broadway tune. ! I swung at the ball like I was in a greenside trap. The problem was that I was in a fairway bunker, far from the hole, not in a greenside trap. The ball popped out about ten feet and limped into the fairway, !100 yards from the green. “Ooooh,” the orb’s appendages gushed sympathetically, as if they knew the shot had deprived me of victory. I marched quickly to the

The glowing orb seemed to sprout Solo cups ball, intent on getting it on the green. The speed in which I raced after my ball would rightly give a spectator the impression that I thought that the winner of the Archie was determined by who got their ball on the green first rather than in the hole in the least !amount of strokes. Dispensing with deliberations over club selection, I took a stab at the ball with my sand wedge. I hit the ball precisely like I should----if the ball had been still in a sand trap. On terra firma, the same shot resulted in a 10-inch divot, mostly consisting of sod gouged out in front of the ball. The swing advanced the ball about the length of the divot. !“Ahhh. Oooooh.” The orb guys were really pumping me up. I swung too hard at the next one, sending the ball to the high side of the green, which strategically is death, since the 16th green is perilously steep above the hole. When I got to the green, I could now see all the faces behind the orb. They mostly avoided eye contact with me by dipping their noses into empty Solo cups since it is too painful to make eye contact with a man melting before your eyes. I decided to put them out of their misery and speed-putted, adding !another three strokes to my grand finale. As I waited for the other players to finish putting, I felt sympathetic stares burn into the back of my neck. If each pair of eyes were ray guns, I would have had a case of third-degree sunburn. !Now, I avoided all eye contact. As the last contestant lined up his putt, I thought that Peter was standing farther away from me than usual. Perhaps my blown nerves were leading me down a paranoid path, but to me, his body language suggested that I smelled horribly. I walked over and handed him my putter. In gracious silence he pulled the head cover over the putter and we watched Jim, our pro, quickly add up the scores. With my blowup on the 16th, Jim’s board tally showed I ended up in third place. We stared at the board for a few seconds. “I was second,” Peter finally said. “Huh?” “When I went down the hill, I took second place.” “Oh,” I muttered as Peter walked briskly back to the bar, with my clubs slung over his shoulder as if they weighed 200 hundred pounds. When he was out of earshot, I yelled, “The Rock would have told me to use the three-wood!” ! I beamed a cheesy smile as a group of well-wishers descended upon me as I lined up to take a photo with the winner and other two finalists in the Archie. As the camera snapped photos I consoled myself with the thought that at least Archie’s drinks would be cold. After quickly showering and consuming a vat of beers, the traumatic conclusion of going down the hill transformed into a slightly positive memory. 2013 Archie Finalists. John Palonian, holding board, was the Champ Over drinks and dinner, 20 people must have introduced themselves, and I began to feel like a minor golf celebrity; albeit one known for falling off the rails on the !final playoff hole. My illusory fame and adoration faded before the hangover did and I awoke the next day as an anonymous golfing hack. I comforted myself with the thought that it was a character-building !experience and next year the Archie was in my crosshairs. Summer ended. Winter came and was followed by spring. August was in sight and another Archie was approaching. Alex texted me the day the sign up for the Archie was circulated, asking me if I wanted to keep the tradition alive and play with the same guys this year. Founded in 1895, tradition goes a long way at Brooklawn. “Definitely,” I texted back. Perhaps our Archie tradition would extend for decades, I thought to myself. Via text, I invited Peter to partake in our budding tradition. He replied in a nanosecond, as if he was waiting for my text. “Thanks, but I’m already committed.” Peter was evidently investing in another tradition. A year later, I also wondered if he was miffed I hadn’t tipped him for caddying. The new Archie tradition consisted of me, Alex, Brian and Craig. The new guys were good guys who I had played with a few times before. I was not sure if they were up on their Archie lore but just in case they weren’t, Alex enlightened them. “Tom went down the hill last year.” A momentary stillness followed which I interpreted to be a result of their sheer awe. As I basked in my golfing glory, Alex broke the silence, turning to me. “How’d you do on the 16th hole again?” Balloon burst, I was now in awe of Alex’s memory. How could he remember that one catastrophic hole a year ago? It was great to have friends !like Alex. th The gloomy feel of this photo The shotgun tournament had us starting on the 18 tee. As the hopefully conveys what befell me only participant who had gone “down-the-hill,” I felt that I had on my 2nd Archie a responsibility to lead the group in our charge to go down the hill this year. Assuming the mantle of leadership, I immediately duck-hooked my opening drive into a thicket of long grass. Lucky to find my ball, I punched it out into the fairway, hit a poor approach shot and then pitched it to 10 feet above the hole. I miraculously sunk my putt for a bogey. Then, for the next few holes, the golf gods smiled upon me. I drained several long putts to save par and steal a birdie. I was even after six holes. I gave a stroke away on the 7th and 8th but that left me only two-over on the front nine. I was back !in the zone for the Archie. With going “down the hill” plainly in my sights, I hit a straight drive on the 12th hole and had an easy 150-yard shot down a hill to the green. The shot was as simple as it was straight. No wind. Easy pin placement. I proceeded to whack a wormburner line drive that didn’t rise more than two inches off the ground. The ball raced over the crest in the hill and rolled to five feet from the pin. !It was just going to be one of those rounds. Despite leaking a stroke on both the 13th and 14th holes, I was only five-over going into the th !simple, par-3, 15 . I was squarely in the hunt for the Archie. As I stared at the green, protected by the towering sycamores, my mind returned to the club’s continuing debate over their fate. For now, they looked okay to me and well out of play. I teed up my ball and aligned myself to the target. Historically, I had a pretty good track record on the 15th. While it is certainly a challenging green, I found it more sympathetic to my putts than most other !greens. I’m not sure if I had a swing thought but my luck ran out as I pulled my ball smack into the sycamore tree on the left side of the green. The ball rattled around in the branches before dropping down somewhere to the left of the tree. Despite it being a crappy shot, I still held on to the hope of chipping close to the hole and one-putting for a par. ! ! Upon our arrival to the tree, we found that my ball was intent upon hiding. “I saw it bounce,” I said to fortify the group’s confidence that we could find it. We all scoured the area and Anton, my caddie, feverishly searched the clumps of tall grass about ten feet from the tree. Then, not far from where the ball “should” have landed, Alex spotted a ball. “Here it is.” Relief. I bent down to the ball. It was a Bridgestone 2. I was playing a Bridgestone 2. On closer examination, though, it did not bear my telltale doodles. How had the mighty sycamore scrapped off my markings? “I marked my ball,” I said. “This isn’t it.” “Are you sure?” Alex asked, sounding as if the possibility of having two Bridgestones 2s in the same area was a one-in-a million possibility. I really, really, really wanted it to be my ball. “No, I thought I played one with a circle on it.” Using the word “thought” held out hope that I’d quickly recall that I was mistaken. My head raced. Maybe, my other ball had become too scuffed and I pulled another ball from my bag and mixed it up. Certainly the odds of two, Bridgestone 2s in the same area were astronomically high. Anton’s eyes pleaded for me to identify the ball. My neural waves kicked into high gear, moving way faster than the light of speed through my head, as I desperately sought to recall how the Bridgestone 2 I was staring at below my feet, was my Bridgestone 2. There must be an !answer. Anton stared at me. “Damn, I said,” picking up the ball. “This isn’t my ball.” The ball that I had seen plunk right under the condemned sycamore had vanished. Without anyone else to curse, I cursed the !sycamore for scraping off my ball’s marking. Yes, I was flailing. Because the Archie is a tournament that is guided by the Rules of Golf, with all of their sticky technicalities, I had to go back to the tee box to hit my next shot. Since I saw my first ball drop at the base of the tree, I didn’t hit a provisional ball after my first shot collided with the sycamore. Now, however, since my first ball was depressingly deemed lost in perpetuity, I had to high-tail it !back to the 15th tee. I borrowed Brian and Craig’s golf cart and raced back. By this time, the foursome behind us was waiting on the tee box. As I performed the walk of shame across the tee box, I’m sure I looked !like I was acutely constipated rather than stoically accepting my plight. I dropped the ball and took a quick jab at it. The good news is that I managed to avoid the sycamore trees but the shot was not without its share of excitement. I pulled the ball into the top !of the left bunker. Racing back to the green, I found my ball buried in a mound of sand. The golf gods had upped !the ante by burying the ball in a downhill mound of sand. Wonderful. I whacked the ball out of the bunker, causing it to skid across the green and roll into the bunker on the other side of the green. I then punched the ball onto the green with too much force. It rolled past the pin and four feet off the green. With the heat of the foursome on the tee box !boring into me, I was now in a race to finish the hole. I then three-putted for an 8. Yes, an 8 on a par-3. As the rest of the group ambled silently to the 16th tee box as if in a funeral march, I could hear Alex recounting my strokes. “His second shot lay three in the bunker, four in the other bunker. five out. Three putts, Eight.” Unfortunately, !there was no mercy rule in the Archie. Remember Jean van de Velde, the French golfer who stood on the 18th tee box of the British Open in 1999 needing only a double- bogey 6 to win? With the world watching, his wayward drive was followed by a worse shot and his succeeding shots went downhill from there. Even with Jean’s calamitous meltdown he managed to scratch out a 7 on a par-4. On the easy enough par-3, I hacked my !way to an 8; five over-par. Being innately nice guys, Brian, Craig and Alex felt my pain and held off from mercilessly doubling over in laughter. However, I would have preferred uproarious laughter to the awkward silence that hung over the tee box. I also could see in Brian’s eyes that he was worried I would impale myself with my putter.

! Even Jean was able to muster a 7 Finishing the last two holes was like root canal. After excruciating in his legendary meltdown. pain, a painful throb pulsed through me. I bogeyed 16 and 17 and finished with an 85. I calculated the havoc my titanic blowup on the 15th hole inflicted upon my scorecard. If I had parred the 15th, I would have shot an 80. !Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. When I returned to the porch, I eyed the scoreboard. Since the morning was rainy, the morning scores were unusually high. The afternoon scores didn’t seem particularly competitive either. More mental calculations. If I had shot an 84, I would have qualified to go down the hill. A wildly bad 7 on 15th would’ve put me in the playoff going down the hill. Now I was in need of !medication. When I reached the beer tent, Brian approached me with a beer. “Here, this is to keep you off the suicide watch.” I knew he was thinking that on the 16th tee! I chugged it. The cup must have been extremely small since it was drained in a heartbeat. I headed for another beer and thought of next year’s Archie.