Saturday, September 10, 2005

The Schott Heard Around the World

i hate golf.

it's such a cruel game ... it gets in your head and ruins your confidence ... it's about 100,000% harder than the pros make it look ... and it's the only sport that makes the average guy pay a nice chunk of change to engage in a couple hours of self torture.

but there's something about it that keeps you coming back. today is a perfect case in point.

yesterday i went out to the tayman park course here in town and shot a nice relaxed 18 holes with the course pretty much to myself. i was relaxed and unconcerned with my score. i used the time as good therapy ... taking a break from work, worries, and crazy decisions i'm dealing with. i focused only on keeping my swing nice, slow, relaxed.

i went out again today and paired up with a couple different groups as i made my way around the course. i had a few decent shots, but some of the old competitiveness and frustration creeped in. before i knew it i was standing over each ball in the tee box with self-defeating thoughts in my head. "my grip doesn't feel right," "it's going to go right," "was that the tenth or eleventh ball i've lost today?"

so for the most part, it was the exact opposite of yesterday, and by the 18th hole i was ready to take a chunk out of the golf cart with my pitching wedge. so i stand at the tee, elevated about 100 feet above the fairway, a dogleg right with bare dirt and trees between me and the ideal landing spot. as was getting to be my habit today, i shanked my tee shot to the right. it somehow cleared the dirt and trees, but was somewhere in the rough between the 18th fairway and the 3rd green.

the guy i was playing with hit a perfect drive - a bomb down the middle that left him with 80 or 90 yards to the pin. as he drove his cart over to his ball, i finally found mine in the shaggy grass way off to the right about 160 yards from the green with a tree with leafy branches overhanging right between me and where i wanted to be. i couldn't even see the green from where i was.

and then it happened. i walked up to the ball, took a little practice waggle, and had a rip at the ball with a 7-iron.

instead of going over the tree (which, i admit, was what i was trying to do), the ball started off really low and fast, screaming right underneath the overhanging leaves. if you've ever swung a golf club you can probably picture the kind of shot i'm talking about. it stayed on a low trajectory for the first 50 yards or so, then started climbing with backspin, on a perfectly straight line toward the flag. i ran up a little knoll to where i could see the green. i couldn't believe it when the ball thunked onto the green about 10 feet short of the flag and bounced softly toward the hole. the greens were pretty fast today, though, and the ball ended up rolling past the hole and down the slope, finally settling in the back fringe about 20 feet away.

nevertheless, it was the shot of my life, without question. but what made it even better was that, after my partner miffed his approach and three-putted to a double-bogey, i drained my putt for birdie, shrugged like it happened all the time, and walked to my car.

do you see now why this is such a cruel game?

4 Comments:

Blogger annette said...

no.

:)

2:43 PM  
Blogger Ben said...

Update: i went to play again on sunday and met up with the same guy i was playing with on saturday. he got an eagle 2 on a par 4, draining a 110 yard second shot to a highly elevated green. we're going to have to partner up more often ...

7:19 AM  
Blogger annette said...

update!

6:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I echo the sentiments of Annette...how about an update...pretty please?

2:52 PM  

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