That hardly seems possible. Having not played much over the previous 3 years the thought of playing twice in a week is a complete novelty.
The truth is I really love golf. If I ever won the lottery I’d buy a golf course and live right in the middle of it. When I retire (just 40 years from now!) I’ll be that crazy guy in the golf cart who plays all day and drives his cart home.
Sunday I played with a co-worker at Steele Canyon. The company for the round was clearly the best part of that day! That type of golf course doesn’t match my style of play. It’s a novelty course which is unbelievably hard. Lots of elevation change from the tee, blind shot after blind shot unless you are in the landing area the designer envisioned, and greens that are elevated and sloping. Even when I’m playing my best this type of course eats me up. I wonder what the course designer was thinking when he made this course? “I want a course that costs a lot of money, makes people lose a tons of balls, and reminds people that they need a day job to support their golf habit.” We had a great time but the course was much harder than I was ready to thrive at! I never play well in a scramble because I’m always hitting shots that don’t fit my game… for whatever reason I just never got anything going. Maybe when I get in better golf shape I’ll go back and it won’t be so hard?
Yesterday, I got invited to play with Kevin. I really like playing with Kevin… we can relax and just have a good time. Plus, he likes to play stroke play… something I enjoy much more than best ball. We met at a little course called Cottonwood. This course is much more to my style of play. It’s pretty much wide open. And even when there are trees and stuff you can almost always muster a recovery shot. The greens are big and its a course that is forgiving! That’s really the only hope I have for having fun on a golf course right now.
I don’t know if I’m finding my game just yet, but last night there were shadows of it reappearing. A few shots actually did what I expected them to do. I’ve wrestled to have a draw on my shot without resulting in a hook… or even worse, a snap hook. As usual, iron play is returning before the woods. I feel kind of stupid pulling out a 3 or 4 iron off of every tee. But I’d much rather be 200 yards out in the fairway than “maybe 260, maybe 60… it could go anywhere.” In order to get those shots in play I’ll need to spend some time at the range. Yet there were a few holes yesterday where I strung together some shots and got things going.
Eleven. That’s the number that sticks out to me. I took an eleven on a par five. That is the result of not playing within the limits of what I can do right now. I got buried off the tee and tried to play a recovery shot over a maintanence shed and a line of trees. I hit that shot as good as I could… just not high enough and it clipped a tree and ended up OB. I hit another tree with my next shot. Then tried to make up for it and hit a shot fat. You know its bad when you are lying 9 on the rough next to the green.
On the course you try to foget an eleven as soon as possible. But when I’m thinking I need to work on my short game or go to the range and hit a bucket… eleven is a good number to remember. That and the knowledge that I had to chip and putt for par on the last hole to break 100. That’s a long way from grinding out the boring 82′s in Romeo.
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