There's a hole at Whitnall Park that I think about more than any other hole I've ever played.
The seventh. Par 5. If you've teed off at 5:44 in the morning, you've approached the seventh and stood at that tee box with the sun coming up directly in your face — bright, blinding, completely indifferent to your game plan — you know exactly what I mean.
The green sits on top of a hill. That's the reward. If you find it, you feel it in your chest — that particular satisfaction that only comes from executing something genuinely difficult. But go long and you're finished. There are bushes behind the green and the ground falls away immediately. No recovery. No second chance. The hole doesn't negotiate.
That's why I love it.
In all the courses I've played, all the holes I've walked, the seventh at Whitnall is my favorite. Not because it's forgiving. Because it isn't. Because it asks something of you before 6 in the morning when most people are still horizontal, and it either rewards you or it reminds you that tomorrow exists for a reason.
I have a system for how I read the hole when I walk off it.
A bogey and I'm fine. I took my medicine, I managed the challenge, I moved on. That's a win by any honest measure.
A par and something shifts. There's a quiet confidence that follows me to the eighth tee and, if I'm being truthful, through the rest of the day. This is going to be a good one.
A birdie — and I mean this — there is nothing I cannot do that day. Not arrogance. Just clarity. The kind that comes from doing a hard thing well before the world has fully started.
A double bogey or worse? I stand there for a second, look back at the tee box, and remind myself that tomorrow morning will come. Same hole. Same sun. Same hill. A brand new chance to work through the same challenge with everything I learned this morning.
That's how my days start. On the seventh tee at Whitnall, half-blinded by a sunrise I drove sixteen minutes to watch, playing a hole that doesn't care how I slept or what I've got going on later.
Five Sixteen Coffee is there for all of it. The birdie mornings when everything feels possible and the cup tastes like a celebration. The double bogey mornings when I'm already thinking through tomorrow and I need something steady in my hand while I do.
It doesn't change the score. But it's there. Every morning at 5:44, right alongside whatever the seventh hole decides to give me.
Whitnall Park Golf Course, Hales Corners, Wisconsin. Par 5. Green on a hill. Bushes behind it. Sun in your face. Favorite hole I've ever played.