Don't Think!
Two rounds last week to report on. To be sure, there's no danger of having to change the name of my little blog. I'm still a very bad, horrendous, stinking-awful golfer. But I comfort myself by looking on the interweb for some statistics that say that roughly half of all golfers are as bad as I am (meaning we shoot around 100-110. Not counting Mulligans or "practice shots" or gimmes or screw-its. But I guess I'm not the only bad-golfer out there, which is a little comforting. A little.
So I had made a tentative date with my buddy Alan to play a round last Sunday. I figured I'd go out on Friday and play a practice round to get into shape for my first round of the year not playing alone. It did not go well.
That's not entirely true: My first shot off the tee was textbook. Straight, long, beautiful, satisfying. Got a bogey on that first hole, which always puts me in a good mood. But I got a 10 on the second hole (not the first time on that hole,) which always puts me in a bad mood. The next hole was also awful, spraying shots every which way but straight. But the next hole, a par three, I got a birdie. Let me rephrase that, in case you missed it: I GOT A BIRDIE!!!!!!!!!!!!! In the immortal words of Joe Castiglione, the voice of the Boston Red Sox, Can You Believe It? My first birdie. You always remember your first. I chose an 8-iron for the short par 3, hit it perfectly and it landed on the green near the hole, and started rolling towards the cup, and for a hallucinatory, earth-shattering moment I thought it was going in for an ace. But it stopped a foot short, and I managed, hands a-shaking, not to miss a 1-foot putt and got a frigging birdie. Fortunately, only the actual birdies in the surrounding trees were witness to me jumping up and down and pumping my fists in the air, Tiger-like. I wish I'd had a bottle of champagne, I would have downed the whole thing.
Oh, man, highlight of my season so far.
The rest of the round was nothing short of embarrassing. I stopped scoring after 5 and concentrated just on not tossing my clubs into the woods and giving up on golf entirely, forever. When I finished I looked at my scorecard on the little steering wheel of the golf cart, and in the big empty space for holes 5-9 I wrote in big capital letters FUCK THIS. I left it there for the next person, as inspiration.
I should say, in my own pathetic defense, that 48 hours earlier I had gotten my second covid vaccine shot. The day after the shot I felt pretty lousy, tired and sore-armed (my wife had a temp of 99 and was in bed all day.) but I really felt all right on Friday and went to play anyway, because I'm a Tough Guy. And see what happened. So I have an excuse. Covid. Stupid covid.
Then Sunday rolled around. Alan works at the Brattleboro Retreat, and asked me to pick him up there on the way to the course. I walked into the Admissions building to meet him and wondered if maybe after the round I'd be walking in there again, this time as a patient.
We had a good time, though, and I think I acquitted myself pretty well, holding up my stellar reputation as a bad-golfer. He's a good-golfer, or at least better than I. He played a lot as a younger man, even participating in the occasional tournament and holding a respectable 18.5 handicap. But a bad shoulder had kept him off the links for a couple of years, and he hadn't actually swung a golf club since 2019. But I guess it really is like riding a bicycle; once learned the body remembers what to do. He scored an enviable string of six bogies over the first 9 and finished the round with a fine 93. But I held my own and scored a 105 (not counting, of course, a couple of Mulligans and practice shots,) so I would say I didn't completely embarrass myself. And it's such a fun game! Alan is a pretty correct guy, hard worker, family man, responsible type. But he dropped almost as many f-bombs as I did during the round, and lubricated his game with three cold ones purchased from the cute beverage girl who toodles around the course selling beers and snacks and flirting with the players. We chuckled at each other's bad shots and praised each other's strokes of genius, looked for the other's lost balls, and generally had a wonderful time.
Bless him, on two occasions I was putting and he was on the far side of the hole holding the flag, and I hit it way, way too strongly and somehow his foot just slipped and he stopped my ball from rolling into the rough, saying, "Oops, how did that happen? Oh well." He also took almost as many Mulligans as did I.
He did have that one quality I continuously strive for, consistency. His shots were controlled, he never panicked, he didn't hit the ball that much further than I do but he tended to hit it straighter and not hit awful 30-footers as I do way too often. He three-putted a lot, which kept me company, but chalk that up to not playing for a couple of years. In short, he was the golfer that I aspire to be, consistent, good but not spectacular, scoring in the mid-90s. I'm sure if he were to play a lot more he would be a lot better than me and would get back to that enviable 18.5 handicap.
Just a couple of details from the afternoon to relate to you, dear reader. One is that for some reason my bunker play this year has been championship quality. On only one occasion have I failed to get out of a bunker. Hasn't always been a perfect shot but I've managed to dominate my sand wedge to the point where I don't break down sobbing every time I land in the sand. Second, and this one's big -- but first I should provide a quick backstory:
Back in the day when I was principal cellist in the Barcelona Symphony in Spain, I had a stand partner who, before we had a fistfight backstage after a concert, was a pretty good and supportive friend. I'll be honest, I often struggled in that job; I was the Peter Principal incarnate, really, and Vincent, before he turned into a gold-plated asshole, was often helpful. The best advice he had to offer was the following: "Don't Think." Which was easy for him, since he hadn't had a coherent thought since the early 80's, but in actuality was very good advice. When playing cello, as with playing golf, thinking is often our enemy. We get caught up in how to play the note perfectly and rattle off that passage of 16th notes or that tricky solo, we over-analyze our backswing, we try to force our way past difficulties, we have doubts before an octave shift or an awkward chip. In other words, we think way, way too much. In Barcelona I would often pencil "Don't Think" in the music before a difficult passage; on Sunday my main swing thought was "Don't Think!" And it worked! Just about every time I told myself not to think I hit a good shot. The bad shots were the ones where I had doubts, tried to force, told myself that I had to hit a perfect 4-hybrid on this hole or all would be lost.
Don't Think.
Also, hit through the ball. That too. Those two things gave me good and consistent results.
So we played the whole course, 18 holes, just like real bad-golfers. I hit an astonishingly good tee shot on the tricky 17th then followed it up with an astonishingly bad second shot which went to 2:00 instead of 12. Alan had trouble with the driver all day but hit an all-star drive on 18. Perhaps I should try drinking three beers over the back 9 sometime. I hit several fine wedge shots to gain the green, which surprised me. The wedge is a funny club. When you are 60 or 70 yards off the green you hit it almost like you would hit a 3-wood off the tee, give it a good full swing, and it goes up up up in the air and miraculously somehow finds the green all on its own. How it does that I don't understand at all, but I'll take it.
Just one other observation: I really must stop thinking about this blog whilst playing. I play a hole then as I approach the next tee I start thinking of pithy things I might write and, while I often chuckle to myself at my devilish and wry sense of humor, it does often distract me from my game. Don't Think.
After my FUCK THIS round on Friday I seriously thought about giving up the game forever, donating my clubs to the local thrift store and never watching the Golf Channel ever again. But I'm glad I played with Alan on Sunday, because despite it being bad-golf it was good fun and restored my enthusiasm for the game, as long as I don't think.
Hit 'em straight! And Don't Think!
I loved reading this! There is a moment during every round where I swear I'm going to quit the game. I think everyone has that. I can't believe it, but sometimes I find myself missing the old BCC course. Fellows Balls looks like a joy too. Keep swinging! Talk to you soon!
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