I didn’t think so.

In my last blog post I talked about game management. Yesterday’s round drove the lesson home in style.

My driver woes are still with me. I got in a couple of nice whacks, but most of the time I still maintain I could have done better teeing it up with my pitching wedge. Yesterday’s Child was a combination of toppers and 90-degree slicerrific horror. Let me explain: I don’t slice. Most of the time I hit it either straight (maybe not straight where I was aiming, but still straight) or with a nice little draw; my mis-hits are hooks.

Except with the driver.

Don’t ask me to explain why that club, alone of the tools in my bag, still confounds me so. It just does. I stubbornly insist on dragging it out, hole after hole, trying something new each time in the hopes of alighting on “it,” the key change that will get my pumpkinhead-on-a-stick smacking the ball like it ought. I need some quality range time, preferably with “my” pro, but my lifestyle already has me time-squeezed getting in actual rounds before the short season ends (and trying to get my money’s worth out of my membership dues). It’ll come.

But, guess what? I really don’t need it. Why? I can be a demon of recovery.

Take a typical hole yesterday, a par 5, hard dogleg right, and a big pond guarding the green. I topped my driver shot (again) and spun it forward maybe 60 yards before the rough killed it. Did I sink into a miasma of shame and despair, forcing myself into the mindset where my next shot just had to make up lost distance?

Nope.

I looked to the 150 marker. There it was, a very makable distance, and the spot from where I could make the green in regulation anyway–or in one over, which is my current goal when playing. No problem! Pressure eases off, I pick my go-to club for second shots out of the rough (4-iron), and boom. I was so relaxed, hit the ball so nicely, it made it inside the 100 marker. How can anyone be unhappy with that? Inside 100 in two on a par 5? That’s money where I come from. And I did it with a crappy tee shot. If you’re playing at home, I bounced my gap wedge off the back left of the green (the pond in front of me got into my head and I gave the approach shot a bit too many Cheerios), chipped back on, and two-putted for bogey. I will take a bogey any day!

All this really came together yesterday, and I’m tickled to report that, for the first time in my misbegotten golf “career,” I broke 100. I hit the clubhouse carding a solid 93, and I’ve never been happier.

What driver?

A couple of years ago I posted a lot of golf-related stuff here, including some intense play-by-play descriptions of games wherein I was trying to learn something, to follow that haunting call every golfer (and wannabe) hears to “get better.” It’s been a long time since I felt motivated to yak here about the game, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Today I feel like doing so, and there it is.

Yesterday I played a new and unfamiliar course with my smallish weekly league for our mid-season outing. I ended up with one of my better 18-hole scores to date (104, if you must know, and my 36 handicap brought it down to a 68 which was good enough to win the prize for low net), and I most emphatically do not owe that outcome to the purity of my ball striking. No, in fact all but maybe two of my tee shots with driver were pitiful: I would have fared batter had I teed off with a pitching wedge, at least I know I can clear 100 yards with that handy club. For reasons I still have not discovered I manage to slip that enormous 460cc club head almost completely under the ball and send it flying about a zillion miles straight up and maybe 50 yards forward. Not cool, no?

The important thing to note is that this time I didn’t let it get me down. No, not because of the cooler full of beer in the cart basket, though that helped. What turned the game around for me was realizing I just needed to apply some good course management and work with what I had.

See, given your typical Central New York golf course, played from the white tees, you’re looking at between 330 and 380 yards for any given par 4 hole, and maybe 450 for a par 5. What I realized is that once I get inside 150 yards I have numerous clubs that I can use to get onto the green in one or two more shots (depending on accuracy for any given attempt). That means that I only need to account for around 200 yards of distance from the tee before I get into my comfort zone. Let’s say I hit driver for 80 yards because of another sky ball: that means I only need 120 yards for my next shot and I’m in the zone! From there I can land it on the third shot and have a chance at par or bogey, or miss the approach, chip on, and have a shot at bogey or double. If I can get away from a testy hole with a double, that’s a win for me!

See how the stress and anxiety could just melt away? I was able to relax, smack my second shot (normally using my trusty 4 iron because fairway woods are another mystery nut I have yet to crack) well within 150, and press on.

It worked!

I stuck with the driver (stubbornly trying to puzzle out what to do differently) until the last couple of holes. On the last few holes of the round I finally gave up trying to make friends with the big dog, and switched to hitting my 16 degree hybrid off the tee. Only the aforementioned stubbornness prevented me from taking that sensible step much sooner in the round. I have another 18 holes coming up tomorrow and methinks the driver will stay sheathed until I can get someone (preferably a teaching pro) to look at why my driver swing is so drastically different from the (pretty decent, I must say) swing I use with my irons. If I can start getting 180 yards or better reliably off the tee? Look out, PGA!

Heh. Okay, maybe not. But I’d be liking it.

WARNING: locker room humor follows…

• Rock Hudson – a putt that looked straight, but wasn’t.
• Saddam Hussein – from one bunker into another.
• Yasser Arafat – butt-ugly and in the sand.
• John Kennedy Jr. – didn’t quite make it over the water.
• Rodney King – over-clubbed.
• O.J. – got away with one.
• Princess Grace – should have used a driver.
• Princess Di – shouldn’t have used a driver.
• Condom – safe, but didn’t feel very good.
• Brazilian – shaved the hole.
• Rush Limbaugh – way to the right and out of bounds.
• Keith Olbermann – see above, but for lefties.
• James Joyce – a putt that’s impossible to read.
• Ted Kennedy – goes in the water and jumps out.
• Pee Wee Herman – too much wrist.
• Sonny Bono – straight into the trees.
• Paris Hilton – a very expensive hole.
• Tiger Woods – wrong hole.
• Dubya – wrong course.

First, witness Phil Mickelson’s birdie putt on the par 5 #2 during the final round of the 2010 Masters:

Surely somewhere up on a gilded cloud a group of deities in plaid slacks was sharing a belly laugh!

And, just to show that these golf gods giveth as well as taketh away: eleven holes later…

Surely divine hands (with golfing gloves on the right) had to be involved, no?

What say you?

But there’s a limit.

I cheered for Tiger when he made great shots during this past Masters. I groaned in sympathy when his shots went awry, and said words of encouragement that I knew meant nothing but which made me feel like a proper fanboi. When the wheels seemed to be coming off his metaphorical wagon I felt badly for him and wanted him to pull it together and carry one of his famous last-ditch charges.

Then came the final round 14th. I can’t actually fault him for missing what should have been for him an easy birde putt: stuff happens. It’s what happened after that spoke volumes to me. Instead of pausing, re-grouping, gathering that famed steel focus and tapping in for par, he sulkily slapped the ball towards the hole with barely a pause, and turned in a bogey for a critical hole. On the final day. Of the Masters. When he was still theoretically in contention.

The kind of consummate professional whose performance can help me overlook his personal foibles does not put on little sulky tantrums on a national stage, nor discredit the prestige of a venue like the Masters with such a display. The CBS coverage all but ignored him after that, and good for them: why give Tiger more of a stage for such behavior?

Then on the 18th, with people who normally could be expected to jeer or just sit in stony silence instead offering him ovations, he achieved one of golf’s nicest feelings: a solid, well-played birdie on the big stage. Did he celebrate it, and what was (given his struggles) actually a damned good round? No, he just waved dismissively at the hole, like “so what?”

The “icing on the cake” for me was the mercifully brief post-round interview. Rather than gratitude for his reception after such damning revelations of his sordid behavior, rather than some Buddha-like acceptance of the fact that only someone with his gifts could turn in a top five performance at a major after five months away from the game, rather than owning up to the fact that his outbursts on the course (while certainly cleaner language-wise than in the past) shows his claimed spiritual centering needs work, he instead opted to whine that he didn’t win. Now he’s going to take his marbles and go home to sulk and decide when he’ll compete again.

I’m done.

Good on Phil for a virtuoso workshop in precision approach (if not outright trick) shooting, a hearty salute to “Westy” for hanging tough to the very end even when it seemed Mickelson could do no wrong, massive kudos to Choi for playing like a well-designed machine, and crazy props to Kim for showing the world that he’s growing up and into his promise as one of golf’s future greats. More kudos to others who covered themselves in glory this past week: Couples, Watson, Poulter, Barnes, and too many others to mention. It was a truly great event.

And that’s what I’m going to remember about this year’s Masters. Tiger who?

The Golf Digest Hot List is a Joke (And We’re Not Laughing) at Addicted2Golf

Step right up!

By Its Size I Could Not Guess,
The Awesome Strength It Does Possess.
But Since I Fell Beneath Its Spell,
I’ve Wandered Through The Fires Of Hell.

My Life Has Not Been Quite The Same,
Since I Chose To Play This Stupid Game.
It Rules My Mind For Hours On End,
A Fortune It Has Made Me Spend.

It Has Made Me Yell, Curse And Cry,
I Hate Myself And Want To Die.
It Promises A Thing Called Par,
If I Can Hit It Straight And Far.

To Master Such A Tiny Ball,
Should Not Be Very Hard At All.
But My Desires The Ball Refuses,
And Does Exactly As It Chooses.

It Hooks And Slices, Dribbles And Dies,
And Even Disappears Before My Eyes.
Often It Will Have A Whim,
To Hit A Tree Or Take A Swim.

With Miles Of Grass On Which To Land,
It Finds A Tiny Patch Of Sand.
Then Has Me Offering Up My Soul,
If Only It Would Find The Hole.

It’s Made Me Whimper Like A Pup,
And Swear That I Will Give It Up.
And Take To Drink To Ease My Sorrow,
But The Ball Knows … I’ll Be Back Tomorrow.

– author unknown