A few days ago I wrote about being stressed out with bills and my inability to balance the household budget. Well, t hat was a few days ago and I’ve calmed down a bit. Things seem a little more under control right now than they did “way back then.” Some of this has to do with lots of new expenses like graduate school and mechanic pre-school as well as our current backlog of things to do but not right away like new glasses, car maintenance issues and maybe even getting a new vehicle to the family arsenal. Long story short is that after getting paid… I feel a lot better about everything.
In golf news, I am hitting the ball very well. Yesterday I was in charge of golf practice since we had a varsity tournament elsewhere and the other assistant had some personal business going on. Despite the whining I had to deal with of playing Romeo’s North back nine, everything went fine. This was my first time playing with our new batch of freshmen. All in all I was impressed by their patience. They do not hit the ball well at all. I would categorize their game with one word: Awful So I had resolved to play 10-13 with them so that they could see that I knew the game and I could start to give them some pointers. As I was being overly nice and complementary towards them, my round started off terribly with a double bogey on the easy par 3 10th hole. On 11 I drove the ball very long down the right and was unlucky to hit a tree and bounce out into the 3rd holes rough. This left me with a very poor position for my 2nd shot on the par 5. But I felt pretty good about punching out through the trees and did so with ease. My approach trickled off the back to about 15 feet from the cup and I easily got up and down for a par. So, 2 over after 2 holes was a bit annoying when I was approaching the 12th tee. As the freshmen took their time I walked up and blasted my tee shot down the fairway about 310 yards. The 4 of the were impressed that I hit it that far and then they proceeded to hit it about half that. I think one student had already hit his ball 4 times to get to mine and it took about 10 minutes to get everyone up to my drive. I was sitting about 240 yards short of the green with a little wind in my face. But since I was in the fairway and there wasn’t anything to lose, I decided to pull the 3 wood and give it a go. Normally, I would have hit a 6 iron to about 130 yards for an easy par… But what the heck. So I lined up and swung nice and easy. As I released the ball I could feel that I made solid contact and was happy to see it floating down my target line perfectly. One freshmen said shortly after I hit it, “man, you hit that right at it.” But I was convinced that it was short of the green so when they asked if I was on the green I just assumed I had come up short. Well, lo and behold I had nearly holed it out for an albatross! It was about 3 feet below the hole and I easily tapped in for an eagle. That was my first one of those is a little while.
Later in the day I had agreed to play with a guy from the church who I knew was awful. He lived up to the billing easily. It was only his 3rd round of golf and with that in mind, he didn’t do a bad job. Mechanically, he’s not bad. He just needs to work on it some more and put some of the tips I gave him into practice on the range. He’s one of those guys that could easily break 100 with a little concentration and some practice. For a beginner I was really impressed that he didn’t get embarrassed or frustrated too much when he made bad shots. He also had a fantastic drive and 2nd shot on the last hole to finish with a putt for par. (He 3 putted for double bogey) As for me, I continued to hit the ball very well and even drove the first green. This was the 2nd time I had done something jaw dropping in a day! More impressive to me was that I was able to control the ball very well. Even when I got into trouble I was able to make adequate recovery shots and left myself with a birdie or par putt on every hole.
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