As you may have heard, I’m not a big Tiger Woods fan. To paraphrase The Bard, how much do I hate thee, let me count the ways!

• He’s a dumbass with a shitty personality.
• He cheated on his beautiful blonde wife with skanks.
• The golf world covered up his bullshit because it desperately needed him to be relevant in a society that rightly thinks golf is boring as fuck to watch on TV.
• He can’t drive a Hyundai for shit.

There was a comedian that did a wonderfully hilarious Tiger Woods impression. I think it was Jamie Foxx, I’m not sure. It was kinda like the Eddie Murphy “banana in the tailpipe” voice in Beverly Hills Cop.

All of that is preamble to me telling you that I played an “away” tournament at the course that Tiger grew up playing in Anaheim, CA. The course is “Dad” Miller Golf Course and, to their credit, they don’t really mention anything about Tiger Woods. If you didn’t know he used to play this course in high school, they wouldn’t tell you.

I got there early as traffic in LA is unreliable and you can get stuck in a jam at any time. Seriously, back in the days when I used to go to clubs/bars, I once got stuck in traffic at 3 AM.

We got a free small bucket of balls with our tournament fee so I headed to the range. To my shock, the range was completely full and there were people waiting behind the bays like it was a fucking supermarket! WTF, Anaheim?

I went to the adjacent putting green to practice and figured I’d give my balls away to someone as I really didn’t think I would be able to hit before my tee time. The greens were slow and I took careful note of that. As I finished my putting drills, I walked back to see if there were any open spots. Nope.

Luckily, an older gentleman saw me and waved me over. He still had a bunch of balls on his tray but he said I could hit them. He was done.

Sweet!

I put my bucket down next to the balls and started hitting. I needed to loosen up after driving for 45 minutes, so that really helped. I noticed my hits were drifting to the right. I took careful note of that too.

At one point, as I was picking up my next ball, the left lens popped out of my glasses. Seriously.

Luckily, I managed to catch it in the air and the little screw was still on the frame. If it had popped, good luck finding it and I would have been fucked. Out of my good eye, I saw a guy looking for a bay with his hot blonde girlfriend/wife/mistress and I waved him over.

You need to repay the kindnesses you get, people!

They took over my bay and I went off to the side to figure out how to see straight. I remembered I had a tool that could clean the grooves on my golf clubs. In a pinch, it functioned perfectly as a screw driver!

With a fresh set of eyes, I walked back to the golf course to get the round started. There was another putting green there and I practiced while I waited for the folks I’d be playing with. To my dismay, the greens were now super fast. WTF, Anaheim?

I was paired up with two guys with heavy Texas accents and an older white dude. The two Texans were friends and rode together. They were a lot of fun! As they played the course, they popped out the beers, the pot vape, and blasted the tunes!

Ian Fleming once wrote, “Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.” I cannot agree more.

As I had done for previous rounds, I had written down on the scorecard my target score for each hole. I’ve mentioned before that since my goal is to shoot under 100, I can double bogey the 9 toughest holes by score index and bogey the rest. I wrote down a target score for each hole.

I started off with a 6 on the first hole, which was above my target score, but I met my target on 2 and made up a stroke on 3. After 4 holes, I was even with my target. So far so good.

The fifth and sixth holes were both sevens and both above my targets. Things looked positive when I went under my target at 7 but quickly unraveled with a Snowman Eight on 8 and a 6 on the Par 3 Ninth.

I scored a 54 on the Front Nine. One of the tips I’ve read to get better is to not keep score until the end of the round, but I’ve discovered that doesn’t work for me. I knew I wasn’t playing well and I needed to know exactly how badly I was doing so I could get better quickly. Given the 54, I needed to score in the 40s to salvage this round and get anywhere near 100.

As I have mentioned before, I play better in the Back!

I promptly got another Snowman on 8.

After that, though, I settled down and started scoring. I met my target on 11 and got a legitimate Par on 12, the second toughest hole in the course!

I hit my target score again on 13. Now the 14th is an interesting hole. It is a severe dogleg right that plays 356 if you follow the contours of the layout. However, a powerful hitter can cut the corner and possibly reach the green from the tee. The phrase, “The Tiger Line” was probably born here as I’m sure that’s exactly what he did when he played this course.

I was playing the hole as designed but ended up hitting my tee shot so far right, I ended up using the Tiger Line. Of course, I didn’t hit it nearly far enough, but I could see how he could and how it would work well.

I continued my good play the rest of the round and ended up with a 47 on the back, matching my Texan friends who were two flights above me literally and figuratively. They were high as fuck is what I’m saying.

My overall score was a 101, just one above my target. Not a bad recovery after a bad start.

PROS

I was proud of myself for improving as the round progressed and being mentally strong enough to overcome obstacles.

The guys I played with were an absolute blast.

The Par on 12 got me a Skin and I won $6!

CONS

The score didn’t lower my handicap as you’ll see below.

OVERALL RATING:

I originally thought that thanks to this 101, my handicap index would be lowered. However, it has remained at 32.7! I looked into it and figured out why. Last time, I said to you that I thought my last round was my best round ever thanks to something called a Scoring Differential. Turns out I was right.

Per the USGA web site:

A Score Differential measures the performance of a round in relation to the relative difficulty of the course that was played, measured by the Course Rating™ and Slope Rating® . The result of the daily playing conditions calculation (PCC) is also included in the Score Differential calculation, which may provide an adjustment if course and/or weather conditions significantly impacted scores on that day.

A Score Differential is calculated using the following formula:

(113 / Slope Rating) x (Adjusted Gross Score – Course Rating – PCC adjustment)

The Course Rating indicates the difficulty of a course for a “par” or scratch golfer. For example, if a course has a par of 72, the Course Rating might be 71.4. This is the score the scratch golfer is expected to shoot on the course. The higher the number, the harder the course.

The Slope Rating measures the relative difficulty of a golf course for players who are not scratch players compared to those who are scratch players. The average is 113. It measures how much harder it is for a hacker like me to play versus a scratch player. Like with the Course Rating, the higher the number, the harder the course.

A PCC adjustment takes into account playing conditions. If it is wet and miserable like my last round, you might get an adjustment. However, a minimum number of golfers have to post scores that day, so if there are too many pussies that don’t want to play in the rain, you don’t get any adjustment. This is also why golfers are supposed to post scores to the GHIN app on the day they play.

A player’s handicap index is basically the average of the best Scoring Differentials. The lower the Scoring Differential, the better. The number of rounds that you have played determines how many scores are used in the average.

For a regular player that plays and posts a lot, the handicap index is calculated by averaging the lowest eight. The table below shows how many scores are counted in order to calculate your handicap index.

Since I only have 8 scores posted, my calculation is based on an average of the lowest two.

On the day I played, “Dad” Miller had a Course Rating of 66.3 and a Slope Rating of 111 when playing from the White tees, which I was. Btw, different tees have different ratings so it is important which tees you play from.

Doing the math, (113 / Slope Rating=111) x (Adjusted Gross Score= 101 – Course Rating=66.3 – PCC adjustment= 0) becomes (113/111) x (101-66.3) becomes (1.018) x (34.7) becomes 35.3.

As a point of comparison, my previous score of 102 had a Scoring Differential of 31.1. So that 102 was actually better than this 101. Since 35.3 is only my third best Scoring Differential and not my second, it doesn’t help to lower my handicap index. As I keep posting scores, though, it will.

Sorry for the math. To make up for it, Rikki will now present the next exciting chapter in the golf cart girl story!

See you next time.