DogDays

We drove west on Carefree Highway until we questioned whether we were going the right way. The group text went out on Tuesday, and it was booked by Wednesday: four names on a 1:48 that nobody else wanted, picked late in the day for the breeze and the chance of a monsoon. Nobody asked how hot it would be. We knew how hot it would be.

The card clipped to the wheel stayed there the whole round, blank. We kept tabs in our heads, knowing any birdies would be remembered.

The range was ours alone, which no tee time buys in the winter months, and the warm-up stayed short: six balls and a towel over the grips, an old trick to keep them whole through September, when the real Arizona golf season ends.

When you have the course to yourself, not rushed and packed between snowbirds, every hole flows from fairway to green and every pin feels attainable.

The monsoons build every afternoon in July, and on this afternoon they climbed into the stratosphere for us alone, cumulus clouds on their way from the Mogollon Rim. Between shots, everybody watched, hoping for the clouds to close the gap.

In January, this tee time is three hundred dollars. In July, a foursome runs the same rate, leaving room in the wallet for drinks at the turn.

Golf in the Southwest is typically dry and prickly by July: the Bermuda, attendants, marshals, all beaten down by the heat and the lethargy it brings. That was not the case that day. The course and people were welcoming.

Whatever it costs to keep a place this soft through an Arizona summer, they were spending it that afternoon on four friends and a roadrunner.

The four of us found the game slipping in the last stretch. Whether it was the adrenaline letdown from some of our best golf on the front six, the heat inducing mild delirium, or the free Modelos the cart girl threw in the cooler for the birthday festivities, we all found ourselves in the sand more than we would have hoped on the back nine.

In my haste of swapping film, eager to catch the clouds in a different light, I cracked the backplate, exposing the film to the sun and heat, bleaching a photo of my brother, whose birthday we were celebrating on the course. It was worth it for the stills of us descending toward the vapor, through the saguaros.

A mirage on the back nine: a 4-iron close on 14, the final birdie of the day on a hole flanked by the traps.

We left in a hurry, needing to get back to our homes. A steeper task being so far from the city. Water drops touched down right as I pulled my bags out of the car on the driveway.