Member/Member: BLECH

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:38:49 GMT

Well, no great way to say this, so I'll come on out and say it: I was not quite up to snuff today in our member/member tournament. Definitely operated as the weak link in the team, shooting a full 7 shots above my handicap and spending the first six holes getting almost no points for the team. Paul played his best there at the beginning while I was sucking, but his efforts were for naught.

At the end, I had 7 double's, 6 pars, and 5 bogies. I felt great about the pars, having a nice stretch of holes there, but the doubles were the killer. I could not chip for the life of me -- the greens, which were as hard as a rock, got into my head and I was gunshy on almost every chip. Oh well.

Overall, Paul and I did much better than we did last year, but still, not quite up to our potential.

Golf Redux

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:07:19 GMT

So over the past few weeks I have tried to settle down and focus on being "calm" during golf. I shot my career best 83 and then a few days later a 91, and again a 91. The problem is consitency -- I ain't got none. Essentially what happens is that if my game is on, I can shoot a really great score, but if I'm off, I am way off and I lose balls galore. I'm not really sure how to fix that and get it under control.

Paul would argue that "if 91 is your worst score now, that's great" and I guess to some extent there is truth in that, but what I really want is consistency. My handicap is the product of really bad rounds and really good ones, but not a real indicator of which golfer is going to show up that day. Paul knows what range his score is going to be on any given day -- I would love to have that kind of game saavy.

Benching myself from golf

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 01:06:14 GMT

Probably a long time in coming, but I am giving serious consideration to taking a break from golf for the next month or two. I put a lot of effort into getting better this summer, and my hard work culminated today in a humiliating defeat of 8 and 7. I popped up a ton of tee shots, removing myself from hole after hole. You can't be a guy when you give him a stroke on every hole by throwing away your tee shot...you just can't.

Today I:

Popped up 4 drives.
Lost 2 balls in hazards.
Hit zero fairways in 11 holes. Seriously -- not a single fairway.
Hit zero greens.

So, anyway -- it may be time to step away for a bit and think about why I play and what my goals are.

Team Rick and the Member/Guest

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:07:45 GMT

It was a lot of golf this past week. First we had the MSN Tournament where I played with Paul, Dan, and Kevin. As a team, we did really well and unfortunately some other teams did even better and we ended up, I believe, in 4th place.

Starting on Thursday, we had the Member/Guest tournament at the Plat. Rick Liotta joined me (thus Team Rick), and my main impression of the entire experience is: wow, we exceeded my wildlest expectations. Rick and I won our Flight pretty handily. We scored more points than another other team in any other flight, and we didn't lose a single match (we pushed one, but that's not losing.

Rick really carried us for the first half of Friday. I was playing like complete dog poo, and Liotta was on fire. So much on fire that people questioned his handicap. Liotta was hitting irons an insane distance and hitting the fairway over and over again. It was a beautiful thing.

In our second match on Friday, things were getting pretty grim. We had seesawed back and forth with our opponents and I had managed to remove myself from hole 14 by topping two drives in a row. Liotta noticed that I was hanging back on my right side and he mentioned it to me. When we approached 15, I told myself that I didn't care what happened to the ball, I just wanted a nice divot and to get through it. For those who don't know...I am hole 15's bitch. I snap hook more irons into the crap there than any other hole -- it contributes, on average, 2 shots to my handicap. So our opponents tee off first. One is in the bunker and I frankly can't remember what the other guy did, but it wasn't a stellar shot, that much I remember. I then step up with my 9i and stand over the ball, breathe in, try to relax and tell myself to get through the ball. I swing and off it goes, starting right of the pin as I wanted, and slowly drawing towards it. It lands and runs right at the hole at which point Liotta is screaming: GO IN GO IN, and boom, it does. A few girly screams later, people cheering from the other fairway, and the wind completely falling out of the sails of our opponents, and we were back to being in the match.

That's now 3 holes in one, each in July, three years in a row. I can't explain it -- it's bizarre, but that's how it is.

We then proceed to trade some on the next hole, I manage to make a key putt on 17 to win the hole, and we end that match all square.

I felt I did a much better job on our third round actually contributing some holes and not letting Rick have to take all the pressure...I still had a lot of issues topping the ball...something I have to work on a ton.

Saturday came along and we had a shotgun start. We played against these two older gentlemen, Tom and Harry, who were an absolute joy to play. Tom wasn't very long off the tee, but he was quite accurate and if his putting had been on, he would have made us work more. Rick and I both played reasonably well and we got through that match with 7.5 points. When we returned to the clubhouse we found that we were still ahead, but that the group closest to us were going to play Tom and Harry...we thought we were doomed. We went into our last round and both of us did not play to our best ability, but we managed to win enough holes and get some luck on our side to win the match 1 UP. That gave us 6.5 points and left us in a good spot. As we drove back to the clubhouse, we saw Tom and Harry and they told us they had pushed on their round, so that was it: we had won our flight! Suh-weet. We were onto the horse race.

The horse race is an interesting thing. EVERYONE who won their flights had to tee off, then one by one you all play until you're on the green, etc. What was amazing is that nobody sent one OB. I hit before Rick and pulled my 3i a bit, but I was okay on the left side in the rough. Rick stripped his 2i to the left fairway. He hit the green, I landed next to the green, and we got out of the hole with a par. Three teams that didn't play as well got eliminated and we moved onto our second playoff hole.

I hit my drive high and right, landing at the base of a tree on the top of a knoll. Rick also pushed his tee shot right into the rough. I was forced to hit a 9i layup to about 190. Rick decided to go for it and took out a 3 wood to blast out of the rough. Unfortunately, that turned out to be not a great play, and Rick's ball fell into the crap. Ugh. So now I had to play more conservatively as 190 is not a strong distance for me. I hit my rescue, which faded to the right of the greenside cart path. Rick dropped and nuked an iron (he was doing that all day) too far right over the top of my ball and almost into the crap, but landed safe. I now hit my 4th shot as a high lob wedge into the green, missing slightly right and just off the green in the second cut. I chip up, falling a bit short of the hole. Now I have the big test. I have a 3' putt, breaking slightly left to right. if I make it, we move on to hole 3, if not, I am in a chip off. I step up to the putt and unfortunately didn't hit it hard enough, the break took over and I missed it to the low side. I was pretty broken up inside about that -- Rick had carried us for the first part of day 1, and I here I was not able to make a 3' putt that was pretty simple. So now I had to make a chip off. It's between myself and one other guy. He turns his back so he can't see what I do, I chip up to 10', which I felt was okay, but not great (thought the ball was going to turn toward the hole and it didn't), and then the other guy chipped closer. We were done. Then it was time to go cheer Paul and Chris on.

I feel really good about how far we made it, but I still am stung by the fact that I had two chances to keep us going and I muffed up both of them. I honestly believe we would have been in that final group with Paul and Chris if we had make it past that hole...but it wasn't to be. Maybe next year.

Random Musings: Golf

Member/Member: BLECH

Golf Redux

Benching myself from golf

Team Rick and the Member/Guest