"But it's a beautiful day"

 Among bad-golfers, it's scripted that when you complain about how terrible, how stinking bad, how horrendous you're playing, you look at the beauty of the golf course and the pretty white clouds scudding across the lovely blue sky, and say "Well, the important thing is that it's beautiful out and we're having fun." This is bullshit. 

Okay, it's a nice day. The clouds are ever so pretty, and the green of the course is indeed attractive. But who gives a flying fatootie, really? I care about playing well. I want to hit satisfying thwacks and see the ball flying in a nice straight line towards the green. I want to not 3-putt. Sure, it's a nice day, but it would be a nice day if I was mowing my lawn, too, but that doesn't make it fun to mow my lawn. 

Thursday was one of those lovely days. And my bad-golfing reached new levels of stench and rottonness. I started out with two sleeves of new balls. I thought that would be enough. After completing the first two holes, I was down to two balls. First two shots on the first hole went wide left into the woods, though to be fair the rest of the hole went well with one stellar chip shot. First shot of the second hole went high in the air and plopped into the water. (See previous post for the approximate trajectory of that shot. I've got to stop doing that!) Second shot wasn't much better but at least I could see where it landed. Tried to lay it up going up the hill but it arced off into the woods. Two holes, four lost balls. Third hole, tried teeing off with my 3-iron which is usually pretty reliable to go straight. Instead, the ball flew off to the left, hit a tree, then bounced off a rock and flew straight up, briefly entering earth's orbit before coming back down and disappearing somewhere in the forest. 

One left. I considered the shame of going to the golf shop, mid-round, and buying more balls, and decided that that wasn't going to happen, that if I lost this last one I would simply fit a paper bag over my head and slink back to my car and pretend this day never occurred. So I put the ball smack in the middle of the fairway and hit a pretty good shot towards the green. On my way there, along came the pretty girl in the drinks cart, with whom I enjoy flirting. She hoped I'd buy a drink, but instead I said, "You don't happen to have any golf balls for sale, do you?" She looked sad and said "Noooo," but then said, "Wait, wait, I might have one!" And indeed, after digging around in the detritus of her cart she came up with a nice clean golf ball. How about that! Saved by the cute drinks girl! I asked her to keep an eye out for any lost balls in case I saw her again and she chuckled and said she would do so. 

So I played on. Got to the par-3 fourth hole. There was a gentleman hovering around the green, but he waved for me to go ahead and play. "Ok," I shouted, "But keep your head up, I have no idea where it's going!" Then I pulled out my 7-iron and hit an absolutely gorgeous shot that bumped on the green, landing about 10 feet from the hole. Go figure. The guy gave me a thumbs up. I was more surprised than he. Got to the green and chatted with the nice gentleman, whose face was all slathered with sunscreen and made him look a bit Star-Wars-y, like a customer at that bar with all the creatures. But he was nice enough, a Member, just out hitting balls, playing three or four each hole and practicing putting. That's when we had the required conversation about how nice it was to be outside and who cares about how much we suck. Yeah, dude, fuck that. I don't care about nice, I just want to play like Bryson. 

As I was approaching the green I noticed a golf ball sitting in a little dip below the green. I asked him if this was one of his, and he said, "No, it was already there, I thought it might be one of yours." Sure enough, it was the one from my tee shot, still sprinkled lightly with space dust, just sitting there waiting for me. 

Good, so I'm up to 2 balls again. 

Five, another pop foul, but I recovered it, then hit a hybrid to get it toward the green. It went into some fairway trees and disappeared into some tall grass. It's still there. I looked and looked for it, in vain. So back down to one.  God, what a round. I had stopped scoring after two holes and was thinking of it as a practice round, to be instantly forgotten. Just then my savior, the drinks girl, trundled up in her cart. I still didn't want to buy anything, but asked her if she had found any balls for me. She said, "Noooo....wait, wait" and sure enough, pulled out a filthy, soiled Srixon. It had probably been in the woods for three months. In fact, it looked a lot like a Srixon I lost back in May. 

So I finished the sixth, played the seventh without sinking a ball in the pond (a minor miracle,) in fact hit a couple of my finest shots of the day, including a 6-iron that I could hear hissing as it flew away from me. 

Lost one more on eight, but still had my lucky Srixon, with which I attacked nine. Hit a good drive, for a change, then a good second shot, one poor chip into the sand but then a phenomenal wedge out of the bunker and managed a miraculous double-bogey. 

To be fair, what with work and the nearly constant rain we've been having, I hadn't swung a golf club in about three weeks and was pretty rusty. I had meant to arrive at the course early enough to take a few swings on the range to warm up, but I failed to do that, and it showed. 

Also, and this is probably the main cause for my lousy round, I forgot to put on my golf shoes before I went out. Stupid! I looked down at my feet on the first green and saw my dirty old sneakers instead of my charming, old-school golf shoes, and I knew then I was in big trouble. I'll never do that again. 

But it was a beautiful day, that's for sure.