My Journey in Writing, Ranting, and Woodworking

A few minutes ago I was thinking about the round of golf my father and I played today. I am not sure if it was the worst score I have posted in the last 10 year, but it might have been. I was abysmal. The rating of abysmal was only attained because of the stellar finish on three of the last four holes.

The day began as many do, when one is a golfer, filled with optimism. We arrived at Beaver Creek with twenty minutes to spare, and when we checked in were told that the previous group had called in and canceled. Fantastic break, we could head straight to the first tee. Beaver Creek is my favorite course, and the one which I have played more than any other over the last 15 years.

From the white tees, the lap around the course is 6259 yards. When I first started to play the course, the trees were newly planted, now they have grown considerably and developed a rather unpleasant attitude to the little white balls which I kept hitting among them. There is an old saying in golf, ‘The trees are 90% air.” This may be true, as the leaves don’t really impede the flight of the ball. The branches do however. I didn’t track the number of trees I whacked the ball into, but I can say that if I did it 10 times, which I am sure I did, that I hit a statistically unbelievable 80%. It seems much more likely that the famous old saying is bunk.

My best ever 18 at this course, when the trees were younger, included an eagle on 7, and was an 84. The course is a par 72, and on that wonderful day, I was only 12 over par. It still gives me the warm fuzzies to remember my triumph. Today it took me 4 holes to get to 13 over par. I did par the 5th hole, which I tried to remember when we were playing the 9th, and I noticed that I could easily fling myself onto Highway 141, and end the suffering. I did not fling myself into the path of an oncoming SUV, but instead hacked at the ball until I got a 9 on the last hole of the front nine.

I couldn’t figure out why I was playing so poorly. I hit the ball left and right, but seem unable to hit it straight. So onto the 10th, after a hot dog and coke at the turn. I decided to try to get the ball in the fairway, not that I hadn’t been trying, but I was going to use my 4 iron, and hope it improved my chances. The thwack of the iron against the ball told me I had hit it flush, and sure enough, it landed 125 yards from the green, center of the fairway. I hit a towering 9 iron into the green and it was pin high, but a little bit off to the left, a poor example of a chip shot and the two puts later and I had a bogey, which normally isn’t something to celebrate, but considering I had already had a 12 on a par 5, it didn’t seem so bad.

Perhaps I was going to have an ok back nine. This thought crossed my mind and I got a par on the 11th hole. The 12th hole was excruciatingly painful walk. Three holes later I was questioningly my manliness and scanning the horizon for another major thorough fare for which to fling my sad excuse of a golfing body.

After 14 holes of trying, and mostly failing to fix my swing, I decided to get my driver out and swing away. Up until this point I had been trying to swing at about 80%, in an attempt to maintain some sort of control on the shots. The harder I tried to take it easy and fix things, the worse it got. So on 15, with a reasonable wind at my back, looked down the 533 yard fairway, and let it rip. The ball sailed off towards the horizon, straight as an arrow, and came to rest near the 200 yard marker. For the non-golfer, this means that I hit my drive 333 yards, which is pretty good.

I hit a 4 iron into the green, missed just to the right, almost chipped in for eagle. In the end, I two putted for a par. The 16th hole need not be mentioned, as I have blocked it from my mind. The 17th hole was a par 3, I hit a towering 8 iron, again swinging at 100% and it too flew straight and stopped 8 feet short of the pin. Two puts later and I had yet another par.

On the 18th hole, I hit a 280 yard tee shot, also straight, and then a beautiful half swing sand wedge to about 3 feet from the pin, which I tapped in for birdie. Two pars and a birdie on the last 4 holes. When I got home I didn’t remember the total score, which was 103, but instead chose to revel in the few successes.

The 18th held another distinction, in that my father also birdied it. He hit a nice drive then a great pitching wedge to reach the green in regulation. His 30 foot birdie put was a thing of beauty, and easily won the shot of the day. It was even better than my drive, because as everyone knows, ‘Drive for show, putt for dough’.

Though we both put up numbers which were considerably north of what we had hoped, we had fun, enjoyed the beautiful day, and vowed to work on our games more this year.