Given the feedback I received from you in Volume 7, I decided to go ahead and play 18 holes in order to establish a handicap ahead of my very first tourney.
I am in a situation at work where I have excess vacation time and if I don’t use it, I lose it. So, on a random weekday when I didn’t have any meetings I couldn’t miss, I took the day off and headed to Alhambra Golf Course.
I got there ahead of time so I could do a proper warmup. I went to the range and got a small bucket just to get the kinks out of the clubs I’d be hitting off the tee. My focus for the day was to swing easy and controlled. I did not need my hands bleeding in front of random strangers.
The range work went well. I was hitting the clubs pretty straight albeit a little to the right. I reminded myself to adjust my aim while on the course to account for that. I then went to check in and get my cart.
Initially, I was going to walk but I knew I was going to play with others and figured it would be faster this way. My cart number was my high school football number, so I took that as a good omen for the round.
There was still a little time before the tee time, so I went to the green for a little practice drill. The same one I’ve previously told you about where it starts at one foot away and then goes around the four directions expanding one foot at a time.
This went surprisingly well as I didn’t miss until I was about six feet out with a tough left to right. I was feeling good.
Too good.
As I got the tee box, the familiar game of trying to figure out who you are playing with started. There was a group of three older ladies milling about and I really thought I’d end up in the same foursome as them.
Right as my name was announced on the speaker, a young Latino dude drove up in his cart.
I asked him if the ladies were going to be joining us and he said that they were actually going to play together behind us and he and I were going out as just a twosome. That was actually fine by me. I didn’t need to be embarrassed by a group of elderly ladies that played better than me.
As were waiting for the group ahead of us to clear, we started chatting and I was further relieved when he said he was using this as practice as he wasn’t that good and needed to improve. That also helped to take pressure off. I warned him I wasn’t good by any stretch and he was cool with that. He turned out to be a great playing partner.
I managed to hit a solid tee shot with a 3 Wood (as I was nervous about hitting Driver) right down the middle. I hit more solid shots and ended up with a bogey. The second hole was another bogey and the third was a double bogey but I came back with two more bogeys on the 4th and 5th.
If you remember, I’ve reset my expectations so I can shoot 100, allowing myself 9 bogeys and 9 double bogeys. I was ahead of the pace I’d set it for myself!
And then came the 6th hole.
Granted, it was rated the toughest hole on the course but it was only a 483 yard Par 5. It seemed doable. I got a 10.
One thing I should mention is that my playing partner and I were extremely fast. There was no dilly dallying. As a result, we ended up playing through not one but two foursomes.
I got back on track with bogeys on the 7th and 8th and finished the Front Nine with an extremely decent score of 51. However, I did not know that as I was on purpose not adding up the numbers. It was another strategy I was trying out to keep my head in the game and not get too far ahead of myself.
The old “One Hole At A Time”, if you will.
My playing partner and I were getting along pretty good and we were cheering each other on when we hit good shots. It was a very supportive environment. Even on my disaster hole, he made a joke about how those are the holes that make people quit the game. Yet we played on.
The Front Nine has some water hazards and other dangers but it is relatively flat. The Back Nine has pronounced elevation changes and narrower fairways. I knew it would be a challenge.
I started with a double bogey, followed up with a triple bogey, and then a quadruple bogey Snowman on the Par 4 12th. Not the best start.
However, I decided this wasn’t going to ruin the good round I had going. I had already banked plenty of bogeys, so a few more would get me right back in it. Maybe a Par would be nice too?
After a double on 13 and a triple on 14, I finally got another bogey on 15. I’ve mentioned this before but somehow I tend to finish well. After a triple on 16, I bogeyed both 17 and 18.
My score on the Back Nine was a 54 for a total of 105. My best score in literally decades!
PROS
If I hadn’t had the disaster hole on the 6th, I would have touched 100.
Had a very supportive and positive playing partner.
Only two lost balls and they were both on that same Disaster Hole!
Stayed out of trouble for the most part and kept the ball in the fairways.
CONS
I need to work on my chipping. I did alright but I was able to see where I could cut down on the number of strokes with better chips.
No sexy golf cart girls. I’m beginning to think they only bring them out for tournaments or weekends.
No pars.
OVERALL RATING:
What can I say? Best Round in ages!
I now have an established handicap. It is 37.6.
The USGA has officially certified that I suck.
See you next time.
[…] you may recall from Volume 8, I decided to go ahead and play 18 holes in order to establish a handicap ahead of my very first […]
I was out all day yesterday, so I just read this.
You don’t suck, you’re still just starting out. There’s a big difference and the fact that you’re living around 100 at this stage of the game is remarkable. 80% of all golfers cannot get down to double digits. You’re gonna break through, just keep at it.
To that end. Blow-up holes. They suck, In the 25 years I competed, I had my share. But getting rid of those is a key to better course management. For most folks it’s usually due to just kind of losing focus after a couple bad shots on a hole. When I coached a college team, it’d drive me nuts when I’d collect scorecards and see a 10 or 12 on there. For those guys it was them trying to correct one bad mistake with one shot. Like fanning one into the trees and trying to hit a 2’x2’ window going for the green rather than just punching out and trying to safely advance the ball as far up the fairway as possible. That kind of stuff is like quicksand. The more you fight it the deeper you dig.
The first step to avoiding the blowups, is having a solid, unchanging pre-shot routine for each particular shot that you hit. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated, and it certainly shouldn’t take much time, but you should have a solid routine for each shot. And even more important a short memory.
Here’s what I mean. I never think about the previous shot that I hit, unless I’m practicing on the range. I don’t think about any particular shot after I hit it during a round until the round is over with and I self-evaluate where I was good and where I went wrong. During a round, after I hit the shot, I wipe the clubface off with a wet towel and put it in the bag. Then whether I’m walking or riding, I don’t even think about golf until I arrive at the next shot location. If I’m alone, I listen to some music, or I chat with my playing partners, but I do not think about the shot I just hit at all.
Once I get to my ball, and it’s my turn, I try not to think about how it got to that spot, I get a flag yardage, and a carry yardage if I have to fly some trouble. Select my club based on the lie and wind, and launch into my routine. Pre-shot routines vary by player, but all of them have common components such as targeting (primary (where you want the ball to end up) and secondary (a spot just in front of your ball on the line to your primary target where you want the ball to start) targets), alignment, and a practice swing or two for feel and rhythm. I take two practice swings to the side of the ball, set my feet, check my alignment and adjust if necessary, take one last look at the target, return my eyes to the ball, take a smooth breath and pull the trigger. The whole process takes twenty second, max. And once my feet are set and aligned, I don’t linger over the ball. The longer you stand there, the more tension tends to build in your hands and back. And like I was saying last week, tension leads to bad times. You get tight and slow.
I’ve had that same routine for full swings since junior college and it hasn’t changed in 25 years. Once you settle on a routine, stick with it. It’s important to get your mind in the same place for every shot that you hit.
Keep at it man! You’re killing it!
Aww crap! Raquel Welch has died at the age of [counts on fingers] One Million, Two Thousand, One Hundred and Twenty-Three years!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd-kdrF6rxk&ab_channel=Hammer
Update on home renovations: The good news is that our contractor has advised us that everything has been on time and that they do not expect additional charges beyond what’s already contracted for.
/knocks on wood until knuckles bleed
The bad news is that we will likely not remain on time, as we’ve reached the point where unimportant things like the counter-tops and, oh yeah, all of the appliances, are not showing up where they’re supposed to be.
But we can start moving some of our stuff into the cabinets and they can work on the bathroom and my wife’s office while we hope our sink/stove/counters/fridge/dishwasher eventually find their way home. It’s like ‘The Incredible Journey’ for AIs.
Well done. Stay on target.
Worked out great for Porkins.
He’s called Porkins ’cause he’s fat, get it?
https://twitter.com/CincyProblems/status/1361020203358969859?cxt=HHwWhoC7lb-qqOMlAAAA
Is Cincinnati the Michael Scott of municipalities? Imaginary ppl wants 2 noe
A very happy World/National Hippo Day to our resident river horse!
Your pill addled musings are very much enjoyed & appreciated, O King of th’ Hippos.
Hippo (and Other Hippo) plan to celebrate my staying awake during today’s Shempions. Which I failed to accomplish yesterday.
There Will Be Pills (duh doy)
That sounds like a blast. You do need to speak with the supervisor about the cart girl short fall. That issue needs resolution before someone pokes an eye out.
“The Night I Won the Super Bowl” OR “The Most Boastful Story Ever Told at DFO” (part 4):
The end of the lease ultimately resulted in the end of my relationship with S_____. We enjoyed living together as a couple; we were having a great time. But moving in with only each other would have been a prelude to marriage, and neither of us was ready for things to reach that stage. So we looked at getting separate places. S______ made plans to share a place with E______, one of our exiting roommates. As for myself, I was at a bit of a loss. Until a college friend of mine, who had become a dot-com-millionaire overnight thanks to the IPO of a company he’d worked for in high school, said to me “hey, why don’t you come live in Fort Awesome? You can stay in the loft.”
“Fort Awesome” was a house that F_____ had bought and then renovated using a healthy portion of his newfound wealth. The Fort (technically “Fort 2”, since the original Fort Awesome had been a condominium in the Pacific Beach flats) was located off Mt. Soledad Road – no longer an easy stroll to the Broken Yolk, but a very short drive (or cab ride) away from the twentysomethings’ playground of Garnet Avenue. The loft was a room on the third floor of said house. While it was lacking in privacy – it didn’t have a door – it did have its own bathroom (the remaining bedrooms were on the bottom floor) and picture window with a spectacular view of Mission Bay. My victory in the Super Bowl of life did not occur in this room. But that autumn, this room did play host to another milestone, that one might argue could be regarded as the greatest sexual achievement of my life…
Melvin Gordon can relate
“…those were the times, my child, when I carried you.” – NFL officials
Brilliant.
bravo
I just started reading this, but before finishing I wanted to come down here to the comments and point out that there is no such thing as a meeting you can’t miss.
I have a masters in taking calls from the road when getting the kids to and from things.
As I head towards retirement I am more and more blowing off all but the most important meetings. Developing my deputy for his career in azz pain.
“Developing my deputy for his career in azz pain.”
Good for you, mentoring a young proctologist like that.
I can’t chip for shit. They always run long on me. Though I don’t think I’ve completely mastered backspin so thats probably why
Dumb question, but since I understand bowling handicaps more than golf ones, is this a bad thing for you to have it set by your best score in decades rather than a 115 or something?
For competition purposes, it would be a bad thing. But – if repeated – it’s an indication that he’s improving. So it’s a good thing!
Unless you’re playing for money I don’t think it really matters.
If you are playing for money, however, I’d fire a couple of (dozen) balls into the water ahead of the tournament.
I mean, I’d do that anyway.
It takes into account your last 54 holes. As I play more, it will be updated. For better or for worse.
What if your body count isn’t that high?
Well, that really depends on how efficient you are with each body. Balls is usually good for a pair of holes each time. Buddy Cole’s Halftime Show has been known to get as many as six!
“Holes and bodies? Did someone go on another ‘retreat’?”
Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesperson
I think this was in To the Linksland, a book partly about golfing in Scotland, partly about caddying on the European PGA about 20+ years ago. The author had an impromptu interview with the Grand High Poobah at a course in Scotland who told him that the toughest part of his job was raising a member’s handicap. “Mr. MacTavish, your handicap is no longer a five, it is now a six.” They’d be uber pissed.
Another story from the book. I want to say that this was the head ranger or whatever at St. Andrews. A guy showed up at like 10 AM, American tourist who was wanting to play a round at St. Andrews. Head ranger looked out on the course, that was pretty much empty, and told the guy, “Sorry, we can’t possibly make room for you out there on the course today.” Tourist asks, “Can I take your picture?” Head ranger asks, “What for?” Tourist says, “I want to show my friends at home a picture of the guy that wouldn’t let me play at St. Andrews.” That got the tourist on the course.