Wonder of wonders

 I was surprised as anyone when I had what was, for me, a not-too-awful, pretty decent round of golf yesterday. Mind you, for a good-golfer it would be an embarrassment, but for this bad-golfer it was a pretty enjoyable day. 

The day started out inauspiciously. I decided it would be fun to go somewhere I hadn't been in a while, and set off on I-91 south to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Thought I'd go to a place I hadn't been to since accompanying my dad there some 35 years ago, the little Oak Ridge Course in Gill, Mass. After a couple of wrong turns I finally found it, on a little rural road. As I pulled in, it seemed awfully quiet, and there was a notable lack of golf carts outside the humble little clubhouse. Well, turned out that Richard and Janet Giverson, the course's owners since 2003, went bankrupt in 2018 and bailed out of the golf business (not before they sold a bunch of memberships for the 2018 season and promptly split with the money.) Anyway, when I pulled up there was nothing but a couple of dusty cars in the parking lot and one forlorn frisbee golf player. 

Discouraged, I decided to head for the primo, number-one golf course in the area, the fine Crumpin-Fox Club, also right there in Bernardston. Oddly, the villages of Bernardston and Northfield, Mass, neither one more than a wide place in the road, used to boast three separate golf courses, of which Crumpin-Fox (the Crump) is the finest; indeed it's the best in the whole region - you have to go to Stratton Mountain to find a similarly stellar course. So I toddle into the clubhouse and inquire at the desk about playing nine holes. "I'm sorry, we don't have a nine-hole rate," sniffed the lady at the desk haughtily. "If you'd like you can pay the full 18-hole rate but just play nine. Sniff." I asked what the 18-hole rate was, and she informed me, "That would be one hundred ten dollars." $110!!! Seriously? "Thanks, but I'll pass, you snooty, sniffing snobby lady," I said. 

Still discouraged, I decided to try the third Northfield golf course, the Northfield Country Club, just outside midtown Northfield. I've played there before, including a couple times with Dad, and it's a very lovely course, extremely hilly, with a couple of really nice par threes that you have to clear a big old pond to reach the green. 

"Well," sniffed the clubhouse dude, (what's with all these snooty sniffing Northfielders, anyway? They're all like Eagletonians to Brattleboro's Pawnee) "I've got two singletons heading out in half an hour, I can put you with them, or you can wait an hour and a half and go out by yourself." Neither option appealed to me. I just couldn't face playing bad-golf with two people I didn't know. They would probably have been Northfield versions of Bryson DeChambeau, driving the ball 842 yards, holing out from fairway bunkers, sinking 49-foot putts one-handed, leaving your bad-golfer embarrassed and humiliated as I searched for balls I'd lost in the middle of fairways. (I've done that.) That just wasn't the plan for this day. 

So, snubbed and totally rejected by the Commonwealth, (Massholes!) I decided to simply slink back to the comfortable confines of my very own home course and play nine holes that I've played over and over again. 

I should add that the day before, an absolutely beautiful day, I forced myself to go to the range and practice. I hadn't been to the range in a while, and the past couple rounds showed my lack of practice. I had a very good practice sesh, and in fact I think I fixed, in my bad-golfer way, the big problems I've been having with my swing. (This is going to get a wee bit technical, so non-golfers can skip to the next graph.) I think I had been getting too handsy in my backswing, letting my wrists break at the top of the backswing in order to get the club parallel with the ground and give myself a bit more club speed. This was screwing up my swing. The club was waggling at the top and coming down all wrong, hence the clubface was not aligned and the swing was hobbled before it even started.

So I decided to simplify everything with my hands on the backswing and try to get the same angle of the club by bending more at the waist so my back is almost facing the target when I begin the downswing. This helps me pivot correctly, keeps the club under control and keeps the clubface from twisting and turning. I think. Anyway, it worked on the range and I got some great shots off, including two or three tremendous shots off the tee and even giving the hybrids some consistency. 

 So with that in mind I teed off the first hole and hit a beauty, about 180 yards, straight as an arrow, as fine a shot as I'm capable of doing. Second shot went a bit awry but the third, a wedge from 80 yards, was also picture perfect and put me on the front fringe of the green. Of course, being me, I three-putted (I did that a lot; gotta head back to the club and practice putting some more.) Second hole I sprayed the first two attempts off the green, one far left and one far right. Fortunately I had plenty of backup balls, no running out of balls this time out! I channeled J.D. Martinez and took a deep breath, shoulders up then relaxed, and focused on my left arm and keeping my wrists still, and hit a whopper up the middle. Bad tee shot on three and a lost ball, and I was irked, and after giving up on finding the ball I just turned the golf cart around and went back to the tee box and tried again and played the hole well, including an absolutly perfect bump-and-run onto the green that frightened the hole and practically gave me a heart attack.  Then a shot right onto the green on the par-3 fourth. for a bogie. Another gorgeous tee shot on five, and only my stupid 3-putt prevented me from a par or bogey. A bogey on six, thanks to a textbook hybrid second shot that gained the green.

 Another bogey on the massive seventh hole with another extraordinary hit off my 5-hybrid. Oh, I thought I'd play two balls on that hole, just because, and of course I hit one into the water. I said, to myself and the birds, "I'm sad." I went down to the water's edge where I thought it had gone in and peered into the drink. You know the scene in Lord of the Rings where Gollum is leading Frodo and Sam through the nasty scary marsh and Frodo falls in and there are all those horrible ghosts? That's what that pond is like. The undead spirits of hundreds of golf balls (many of them mine) haunt that pond. So I peer in, and sure enough, there's my golf ball, a couple of feet into the water, sitting forlornly on the bottom contemplating its watery fate. So I reach in with my club and snag it and pull it to safety. Did I feel something dark and evil grabbing at my club when I reached in? Yes I did. But I retrieved my preciousss ball and popped it into my pocket, and I could hear it singing for joy. I didn't bother hitting it again, since I had just hit a glorious hybrid shot on my first ball from about 190 yards out right onto the green in three. Nice thing about hitting the green in regulation, you can mess up and three-putt and still walk away with a bogey. Also bogeyed eight, which made five bogeys for the day, the best outing I've had in ages. 

I still have some work to do to get to my goal of a bogey round, but I feel like I've turned a bit of a corner here and can put some of the horrendous golf I've played this year behind me. 

And who needs Massachusetts? (Sniff)

Hit 'em straight!