The night before the final round of the Web.com Tour’s Final Stage of Qualifying School, Steve LeBrun laid in bed and thought what he was going to do with his life instead of golf.

“If I don’t shoot 10-under tomorrow,” he thought, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

He shot 10-under. Play professional golf was what he was going to do.

LeBrun, 40, had one of the most exhilarating finishes to Q-School in the tournament’s history last December. He birdied his final five holes to earn eight guaranteed starts on the Web.com Tour for 2019 by finishing right on the number.

Almost five months later he looks back on that run as a microcosm of his newfound outlook to golf. He can’t, he says, dwell on every single shot or moment. On golf and life he’s decided to take the path of positivity and hope.

“There was a happiness that came over me, and that’s been my new thing. You have to find a way to be happy,” he says.

LeBrun has been a professional golfer for more than 15 years, but has never been in a situation as dire as what happened on the back nine of his final round at Whirlwind GC in December.

He had just made a “lousy” par on 13 before knocking his 7-iron on the par-3 14th to 15 feet. He made the putt. The 15th is a reachable par five, and he two-putted for another birdie. On 16 he nearly holed a wedge from the fairway and tapped in a third birdie in a row.

“There was such an excitement and happiness that took away any pressure on the last two holes,” he says. “After I hit a good tee shot on 17, I was walking down the fairway thinking how awesome it was to even have a chance.”

He hit the best 3-wood of his life. Ten feet. Another birdie.

He got to 18 and hit another good drive, down the middle. He had 105 yards left and says he was licking his chops. He spun a wedge to four feet.

“It was probably the longest 4-footer I ever had,” he says. “But I had that happiness and I stepped up to that putt being happy with what I had done, and what I did in that round.”

Drained it. 62. Euphoria.

And he hadn’t even found out the result of his favourite NFL team’s Sunday afternoon match-up with the New England Patriots yet.

“My brother called me right after and said, ‘this is the best day ever!’” exclaims LeBrun, whose Miami Dolphins completed a miraculous last-second drive for a touchdown to beat the eventual Super Bowl champions. “My wife must have turned the game off, because she said they almost won.”

Although LeBrun’s wife was wrong about the score of the football game, she hasn’t been wrong about much – if anything – in their marriage. In fact, LeBrun says he wouldn’t be where he is without her.

“Who knows if I would have kept going with her support? She always said how good I was and how good I am,” he says of Jen, who he married in 2005. “I was the one who put (pressure) on myself. It never came from her. It was never, ‘you need to quit’ it was always on my terms that I was thinking “you got three kids and a mortgage and stuff to pay for.’ I was the one that thought about doing something else because I’m not performing.”

LeBrun’s voice breaks, for the briefest of moments, as he describes how she’s always been by his side through his professional golf journey. He calls her “unbelievable.”

“There’s no other woman who could have put up with the ups and downs of my career and kept going… and it’s all her,” he says. “She’s meant the world to me.”

This, even though they haven’t had the most sterling of track records as player-caddie, he says with a laugh, until earlier this year.

LeBrun says his wife was on his bag when they first got married as a cost-cutting measure. It wasn’t on her, he says, but they missed a lot of cuts when the husband-and-wife pair would be inside the ropes.

But something clicked earlier this year. With Jen on the bag, LeBrun finished T-2 at The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay – his best-ever Web.com Tour result.

“At the end of that tournament I said she could retire from caddying now, since we finished on a high note,” he says with a laugh, although he admits Jen is going to try to caddie once more before the season ends.

LeBrun says getting off to such a good start has been key for his confidence. He’s exempt from any re-shuffles now, and is 16th on The 25 thanks to two more top-20 finishes so far in 2019.

At 40, he knows he’s not able to hit it as far as the young crop of Web.com Tour stars. But experience, he says, is invaluable. He knows not to get to high up or to far down – even though there have been a lot of downs.

“There were a few years of no status. Three kids. It was going to be tough to have conditional status on the Web.com Tour this year,” he says. “In the long run, it was do or die for me.”

Do, he did – with a smile on his face.

“I’ve still got some career left,” he says. “I can still play this game.”