The teenager behind the counter of the Cottonwood Hills pro shop didn’t seem to register that something of consequence was taking place. He failed to appreciate the mind-bending, knee-buckling gravity of the situation. And how could he? The kid had never lost a job he needed or a person he loved, never waited four hours for an HVAC technician who never showed, never watched aspirational produce go limp and liquid in the crisper drawer. It would be twenty years before he was introduced to the stultifying thrum of midlife and another ten before he developed the internal mechanisms that might allow him to understand that the man standing before him was, after a half century of voluntary and occasionally enthusiastic subjugation to the laws of god and man, finally taking his life into his own hands.

“Five large buckets,” Sam said firmly.

“We close in 30 minutes,” the teenager replied, his voice shot through with puberty and indifference. Maybe, like the rest of his generation, his mind was elsewhere, drawn and quartered by the myriad devices and applications and algorithms crying out for his attention. Or maybe, like every teenager ever, he simply couldn’t be bothered to give a shit.

“I’m well aware.”

“But that’s five hundred balls.”

“You’re goddamn right it is.”

This is the point at which, Sam had imagined, the poor kid would start to panic. A single bead of sweat would work its way down his temple. He would grope around under the counter like a bank teller breathing down the twin barrels of a sawed-off, searching blindly for the little red button that would alert the appropriate authorities. But he simply raised his eyebrows at no one in particular, ran Sam’s credit card, and handed him his receipt.

Sam typically opted for a stall toward the edge of the range, where fewer people would witness his wayward drives, duffed irons, and double chips. But tonight was different. He planted his bag at one of the central stalls and collected his balls from the machine, which took three trips. Cottonwood had recently renovated their range, each stall now equipped with state-of-the-art automated teeing systems. You opened a little plastic door and dumped your balls into the subterranean hopper. Then you waved your club head in front of a sensor and—how about that?—a ball appeared through a hole in the astroturf, teed to a height of your choosing. Though Sam had envisioned himself standing next to a horrible dimpled mass, an unholy mound of grass-stained and sun-faded urethane, he dutifully fed his first bucket into the contraption.

They said it was best to warm up with a wedge, but Sam always felt more comfortable with the 7 iron. He sprayed the first 10 or 15 balls across the range before the trajectory of his shots became more consistent, slowly coming into focus down the middle of his imagined fairway. After ball 36—the newfangled tee kept count for him—he reached for the 5 iron. His moral failing, his perpetual deficiency, his utter fucking nemesis. (It had a newer shaft than the rest of his irons because a few years ago, after undoing yet another promising drive, Sam had wrapped it around the trunk of an unsuspecting spruce.) Excluding his putter, Sam kept 14 clubs in his bag. 500 balls divided by 14 clubs came to, his calculator app had told him in the parking lot, 35.7142857 balls per club. 3.6 seconds per ball. He was of course saving his driver for last. In a just world, there would be fireworks.

Sam didn’t really golf anymore. Not even nine holes. He didn’t have the time, nor the friends to play with, nor the fortitude to grind out conversation with whichever unfortunate stranger the club paired him up with. Like all other hobbies or quirks or identifying characteristics, even golf—which, along with gambling and fantasy sports and gambling on fantasy sports, seemed to be one of exceedingly few viable pastimes for men of his demographic—had been phased out of his life without him even noticing, ironed out like an unsightly wrinkle. The mountain bike he’d spent six months researching had been relegated to the shed. He couldn’t remember the last book he’d finished or album he’d listened to all the way through. Sam’s film studies minor, the final vestige of his adolescent artistic curiosity, was a private disgrace that he was as likely to mention as he was the nervy handjob he’d received from his bunkmate at Camp Beaver Creek in the summer of 1988.

The bourbon! He rummaged around in his bag, retrieved the flask he had been gifted at a bachelor party—either Boner’s in Nashville or G-Money’s in Jackson Hole, the cheap inscription long since illegible—and took a pull. It had been a while since he’d had liquor on a weeknight. (Things had gotten a little out of hand during the early days of Covid and he’d been forced to set some ground rules.) The alcohol lingered dryly at the back of his throat before being overwhelmed by the volcanic irritation of stomach acid charging up his esophagus. Tums, glove compartment. But there was no time.

Sam put away the 5 iron and took a dozen easy swings with the pitching wedge. He was locking in, swinging easier, mishitting less often. The hopper ran dry and he refilled it.

105 balls in he could feel the blisters starting to form. His grip had always been too tight. Stress, etc. But this was part of the plan. This was the cost of greatness. Curt Schilling had bled through his sock, Michael Jordan had battled through the flu, Kerri Strug had stuck it to the Russians on a bum ankle. If Sam was to achieve something truly remarkable, if he sincerely aspired to have his moisture-wicking quarter-zip hung in the proverbial rafters, he would have to overcome adversity.

He taped up the affected fingers (both thumbs, both indexes, right ring) and traded his pitching wedge for a hybrid, then the 6 iron, then the 9. Before he knew it, he was refilling the hopper again. He was nearly halfway there. He might actually do it.

Midway through his backswing, something flickered over his right shoulder. He had, of course, anticipated a potential run-in with the cops. He was prepared for a standoff. This was his Waco, his Ruby Ridge. That had been another reason for his carefully selected location at the center of the range: in the event of an ambush, he could step into the adjacent left-handed stall and smash a few drives down the corridor that led to the parking lot before his internal organs were pulpified in a hail of government-issued hollow points. But the glimmer he’d seen over his shoulder turned out to be nothing. Perhaps a stray glare leaping off the windshield of a passing car.

A few miserable swings with the 4 iron—in hindsight, he almost wanted to apologize for all of the vitriol he’d misdirected at the 5—and the blisters on his right hand tore open one by one, leaking and stinging and causing the tape to slip. His balls were all over the place. Entropy prevailed.

The teenager gave his 10-minute warning and the other patrons took their final swings before retreating to the parking lot. Sam had planned to scoff at this empty threat—the whole point of this exhibition had been to assert his free will, to reject the authority of petty tyrants and puffed-up middle managers, to shake off the chains that bound him—but he could feel himself wavering. He checked his phone. Cassie would need a ride home from volleyball practice in 25 minutes. Rachel was at book club which meant, shit, he was in charge of dinner.

Sam looked at his hands, at the remaining balls, at the dying light forming a great bright bruise on the horizon. It hit him again for the thousandth time, the realization that invariably bypassed his brain en route to his stomach. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t ever going to happen. If he started his entire life over again with this pathetic little ambition nestled in his brain, if some supercomputer ran a billion simulations of this particular day, if his schedule were stripped of all distractions and conflicts and the path to success were freshly paved and guard-railed and lined with flashing neon arrows guiding him to glory, the result would be the same.

“Excuse me, sir,” the teenager said. “We’re closing.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

“Can I go ahead and take these last two buckets?” the teenager asked.

Sam sliced his 3 wood into another dimension. He was tired. “What if I said no?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I said, ‘No, you cannot take those buckets. I paid for 500 balls and I intend to hit every last one of them.’ Would you just take them? Would you call the police?” Sam took another swing, this time at approximately 70 percent effort, and by the grace of god the ball went where he’d intended for it to go. “Would you fight me?”

“I’d probably just call my boss.”

“Smart,” Sam said, trying to reassure the kid, feeling guilty for roping him into whatever this was. “You can take the balls. Just make sure you fight somebody at some point.”

“Over what?”

“I don’t think it matters.”

Another swing, another slice. Sam felt a twinge in his lower back. He packed up his clubs and walked back to his car, where he sat in silence for a minute or so, composing himself before he picked up Cassie. He tried to think about her instead. She was a setter and a damn good one at that. Her coach had called her a natural athlete with a feel for the game. But Sam sometimes wished it could be her leaping at the net, blasting the ball into enemy territory. Once, on the way home from a tournament, he’d asked if she ever thought about trying other positions, just to see if she might like them better.

“Obviously I want to be a hitter,” she’d said, visibly upset. “Everybody wants to be a hitter. But I’m too short.”

Later that evening—this had probably been a year ago—Sam had heard Cassie crying in her bedroom. He knocked gently to announce his presence and told her that he was sorry for bringing it up. That he hadn’t meant anything by it, that she was a fantastic setter, and that he was so deeply, unimaginably proud of her. She said she didn’t know what he was talking about.