Editor’s note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and performance through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
Three swings. Three whiffs. My club kept cutting through the kikuyu grass but completely missing the ball, the impossibly thick rough gobbling up more and more of it with each attempt.
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My stance more closely resembled that of a Little Leaguer hitting off a tee. My Titleist ProV1x was waist-high on a treacherous side-hill lie. I increasingly believed the task in front of me was not physically possible.
So after a third futile attempt, I decided it was time to take an unplayable drop. I was now hitting my seventh shot, and I still had 140 yards into Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s 18th green. Barbara, our walking scorer, kept the tally.
This is the start of the nightmare scenario that led me, a 26-year-old former Division III golfer turned professional golf writer for The Athletic, to make a 12 on a hole — a septuple bogey — during the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur. It was the most prestigious golf tournament I have ever qualified for: The winner of the tournament gets invited to compete in the U.S.
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