My Nemesis/My Love

It's a hot day at the golf course.  Maybe I'm not drinking enough water because I'm about to step on the 13th tee and I'm already exhausted.  The group ahead of me, a bunch of old timers smoking cigars, has already waived me through.  I tee up my ball, take an easy practice swing and launch my best drive of the day, a high fade that settles into the right side of the fairway.  I have a decent round going today and I think to myself: a par would be terrific right about now. Nevermind that I haven't even bogeyed this hole in weeks. A poor second shot. A mediocre third.  What is it with this hole?

Look on the back of any scorecard and you'll find a few small numbers that tell you the level of difficulty of the golf course.  Without going into complicated math, one of the numbers is called the slope rating.  If you know what you're looking for, it's a fairly easy way to tell whether your game suits a particular course.  In other words, it tells you how hard the golf course may be.

Theoretically, experts from the United States Golf Association visit a golf course about once every ten years and rate a golf course based on a number of factors;  for example, they take into account the length, topography, and elevation of the course.  They consider the size of the greens and the width of the fairways.  Are the holes straight or doglegs?  Is there a beautiful pond, preferably fronting a short par 3, that likes to collect new golf balls? How tall is the rough? Are there lots of deep sand bunkers? Are there convenient trees to hit your ball into?  And what about that hole that lines up next to the busy road, the one where you wait for cars to stop coming, hoping it's not the one time in your life when you'll pull a shot left of the fairway, over the fence, and through the windshield of a passing truck.

According to the USGA, a course of average difficulty has a slope rating of 113.  My home course ranks as a whopping 106, which is to say that it's an easier than average course, according to the USGA's experts.

And they're correct, of course.  The holes are not terribly long. The number of sand traps can be measured on one hand.  Bodies of water are mostly out of play.  It's difficult to lose a golf ball. The rough isn't too rough. Yes, there's that pesky sand trap just in front of the green on the 3rd hole.  And number 5 is a tougher dogleg than it looks.  Sure, the green on number 7 can be tricky.  There's that branch that grows out into the fairway on the eighth hole.  And that old oak tree on the par 5 12th, so perfectly placed short and right of the green that I nearly always end up behind it somehow.

But collectively, it's a not a difficult golf course.  Just 17 holes of slightly less than average difficulty, which I've grown to love. 

Then there's the par 4 13th hole, a hole so well designed and so difficult that a bogey seems like a great success. It's a frustrating hole for a number of reasons.  It's far more difficult than any other hole on the course;  but it's really frustrating because it's the only hole on the course where I've never shot par.  Every day when I approach the tee box, I ask myself: is today the day? The day when I'll finally get it in the hole in 4 strokes?

My playing partner Wolf says it's become my white whale.
 
It's the longest par 4 on the course at 425 yards.  The tiny map on the back of the scorecard doesn't tell the whole story.  It's true that it's a mostly straight hole. But at the end of the fairway, you'll find the green is elevated nearly three stories above the rest of the course, which presents additional challenges. 

According to the course's website, its name is Old Smokey, as in On Top of Old Smokey, I assume.  As in good luck getting your ball on top of the hill on your second stroke. My players partners and I call it the Hill Hole.  Some days I call it a lot worse.

A par on the hill hole would start something like this:

1. Relax, because you have a pretty decent round going already.  Nevermind that this could be a turning point in your round if you score a 7 or worse. Just hit a good drive.
2. Nice drive.  Now grab that 5 wood and swing away.  No need to lay up. Nevermind all those trees at the top of the hill to the left of the green. Forget about those woods that will eat your ball if you miss to the right.  Oh, the cup is cut into the side of a hill on the edge of the green?  No problem.  You mean you can't see the flag from the bottom of the hill?  See those 3 trees way up there behind the green?  Aim at the middle one.  Hope you get a good bounce.

I wish it were that easy.  Usually my ball ends up on the top of the hill, left of the green, facing a nerve-wracking downhill chip into the slimmest green on the course. Or worse, what happened to me last week when I somehow managed to hit a low drive that clipped the ladies tee markers and flew directly into the air and ended up behind me. I average more than a double bogey on the Hill Hole. Just once, I want to par it. Just once.

Which brings me back to the final way in which the USGA rates its courses.  After taking into account all of the feasible obstacles a course presents, one final rating category must be considered.  The USGA ratings manual explains it well:  Psychological: "Psychological is the evaluation of the cumulative effect of the other obstacles. The location of many punitive obstacles close to a target area creates uneasiness in the mind of the player and thus affects his or her score."

Maybe it's just in my head.  It's just a big hill, right? Nothing scary about that at all. Nothing to worry about. I'll keep that in mind on the course tomorrow because I'm looking for revenge.  My latest score on the 13th hole?  Triple bogey 7. 

The hill hole wins again.

Golf Stats. Life Stats.

All the golf books say to do it.  Entire websites are devoted to it.  In his book Breaking 90, Johnny Miller offers up this tidbit about the usefulness of golf statistics, even for the average golfer: "There are two steps in building the consistency required to shoot scores in the 80s.  First, you need to keep track of the parts of your game that work well and those with which you struggle."  He then goes into mind-numbing detail about his personal method of marking scorecards during his heyday in the 70s, even bragging about how elaborate his personal system was. 

So, I listened to Johnny Miller.  There are worse things a struggling golfer can do.

As the snow begins to melt in Indianapolis, I'm stuck staring at a database of golf statistics from last season, trying to decipher the data, obsessing about what I hope to accomplish in the coming golf season. 

A few highlights from my 2010 golf season:

1.  I played 658 holes of golf and finished the season at 904 strokes over par. Ouch.
2.  I walked no less than 111 miles over the course of the season.
3. I hit 42% of fairways.
4. I made 7 birdies, nearly all of them on par 4 holes and never on a par 5.
5. The stats say my putting is better than my driving.
6.  My best 18 hole score of the year was an 86. My worst? 115 (It was on a course I'd never played before, early in the year, I had a weird pain in my left hip, it was a little bit muggy outside, I think the hot dog I ate after the front 9 was bad, etc.)
7. I make a par every 5.88 holes I play.
8. My record in match play was 1-6.
9. I played 11 different golf courses.
10. One time, the gods were happy and I played 13 holes in 3 over par.

Miller says the whole point is to become more familiar with your game and how to plan practice time more effectively.  And what have I learned? Don't sweat the par 3s, because I play them much better than I thought I did.  Watch out for par 5s.  A bogey ain't so bad. Golf stats are boring.

So, I've been thinking... 

Let's assume athletes use statistics as a way to gauge improvement or decline.  What are the rest of us to do?  How do we know when we're on the road to self-improvement in our everyday lives? Should we be keeping life stats to see how we're doing?  What would make for a statistically pleasing existence?  To get us started, I've tracked some statistics from my own life over the past week:

1. Miles driven: 87
2. Papers graded: 96
3. Turkey sandwiches eaten: 4
4. Occasions on which I exchanged pleasantries with the Fed-Ex guy: 2
5. Trips to gym: 1
6. Times I stood in front of the bedroom mirror in my underwear and mimed a golf swing: 19.
7. Weird golf dreams where it's the first day of the golf season, I'm late to the course, and my golfing buddies are already there decked out in old fashioned golf knickers, linen caps, and matching vests: 1.

Ben Franklin was doing this sort of thing years ago, of course.  Franklin called it the Thirteen Virtues, a list of self-written rules he hoped to follow in order to arrive at what he called "moral perfection."  If followed closely, a person could expect to become sincere, industrious, frugal, humble, and chaste, among other noble qualities.  Franklin himself carried around a chart and marked when he broke a rule.  

After spending a week focusing on each virtue, Franklin offered these encouraging words to all would be stat trackers: "I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it."

No doubt I'll be a better golfer this season than last.   Better why? Because I understand where I'm going:  straight to the range to practice my driving.  The stats say it's the weakest part of my game.

Up to a Considerable Point...

"Up to a considerable point, as I see it, there's nothing difficult about golf, nothing. I see no reason, truly, why the average golfer, if he goes about it intelligently, shouldn't play in the 70s."  --from Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf

Yes, Mr. Hogan. Whatever you say.

I think we must assume that "going about it intelligently" includes some form of instruction--lessons from a local golf pro, reading a trove of instructional books from the local library, watching hours of the Golf Channel, trying out the latest tip in Golf Digest. 

My own history with golf instruction is ridiculously brief: 

1.  The summer after fourth grade, my best friend's father takes me to the local public course, previously the home of a cow pasture and much dust.  He hands me a club and offers two pieces of advice: "It's not a baseball bat.  And you're not Superman." Much fun ensues.

2.  In 10th grade, I join the junior varsity golf team at school. Why? Some of my friends did it. We talked
about girls a lot. We got to play for free 5 days a week. I had nothing else to do? I borrowed a set of clubs from a friend who'd never used them. My parents bought me a golf bag for Christmas.

3. One afternoon, the high school golf coach, a sun-tanned ex-pro from Florida, emerges from the bar at the country club where we practiced and where he was a member.  "Today we're learning how to chip." Groans.
An hour later, with little success, he mumbles and sends us off to the course. 

4. One day at golf practice the coach watches me tee off.  "Are you really holding that thing like a baseball bat?" he asks.  He teaches me a proper grip that afternoon after practice.

5. After that, it's all books.  Books about proper mechanics, the swing plane, the mental game.  I've read sections of instructional golf books that even teach the best way to hit off of pine needles, a cart path, or even out of shallow water, if necessary.

Right now, I have seven golf instructional books checked out from the library. I've had four of them since May.  I've renewed one of them 14 times. Desperation? Perhaps.

Most are helpful, if only in small ways.  A little book called When Bad Things Happen to Bad Golfers--which wins the award for best cover: a frustrated golfer standing knee deep in water--reminded me of proper ball position with each club.  Breaking 90 with Johnny Miller has brought me back to my first golf lesson: You're not Superman. Hit the shot you know you can make.

Then there are ridiculous books like Golf in the Zone. It promotes many goofy things, most notably: 1. Avoiding coffee.  2. Listening to relaxing music on the way to the golf course. 3.  If you're an extrovert, "Punch the air, jump about, or give a roar of delight" after a good putt.

As a result of reading all of these books, I have a better idea of what's wrong with my swing (my backswing is too upright?) and I have a better idea of how to fix it. But, I fear my golf swing is a collection of parts, not yet its own.  It's a little like one of those sculptures you see at junk shops--an ash tray made out of bottlecaps and wax, a birdfeeder constructed from Diet Coke cans and toothpicks. It looks like something you've seen before, just a little curious.

I'm a goal-oriented guy.  One goal for the 2011 golf season? Read less. Practice more.

Work in Progress

It's a Thursday night in late June, nearly sunset, an extraordinary summer evening.  I'm walking up the 17th fairway, hurrying to finish my round before sundown, when I see them:  A young father, not much older than myself and his son, about eight years old.  They're getting ready to tee off on the nearby 15th hole. I watch as the father chooses a club for his son, lets him take a jerky practice swing, and points at the target in the distance.  The son hits the ball with all his might, a 50 yard screamer down the fairway, turns and high-fives his father.

I've heard this story before:  How a father picks up his son from kindergarten early on a Friday and drags him to the driving range to hack his first balls.  How that Christmas he buys a junior set of golf clubs, wraps it himself, and hides it from view behind the Christmas tree.  How the next summer they will talk their way onto the back nine of the local course just before sundown to secretly play a few holes. 

It's a good story.  But it isn't my story.

Though I have learned a great many lessons from my own father, he did not teach me the game.  I'm a self-taught golfer, never having had any formal lessons.  It's not something I'd wish on anyone wishing to play golf regularly.  Go take some lessons. Do it the easy way.  Still, it's a good feeling knowing that my own golf swing, both its faults and successes are my own.  No one has ever taught me to take a proper divot or explained to me the proper position of my right knew during the backswing. And that's okay. I figure it out, bit by bit, working on one thing at a time.  One day, I spend time working on my grip.  The next day, I work on my hip turn.  It's a formula that's worked well for my developing golf game, a formula I also followed with sorting out my own life after I got married too young, became a father, then got divorced.  One thing at a time. Day by day. Practice makes perfect. Insert your own cliche here.

My daughter is nearly 7 now.  Will we ever be out on the links, just the two of us, playing the 17th hole, just trying to beat the sundown?  We'll see.  I don't need to know the answer right now. It's part of me trying to be more patient, like when I go to the driving range and hit 75 straight 9 irons, knowing that one day, those monotonous practice shots will serve me well.

I'm left with the following question:  Has golf taught me patience, a humility that I can carry over into my own life?  Or has my life taught me patience, a perseverance that will positively impact my golf game?  Does the answer even matter?

I'm Better Than I Used to Be

To begin, 5 truths about my golf game:

1. When I hit what feels like a perfect shot, it almost always fades to the right.
2. I am not a stylish golfer, decked out in the newest microfiber collared shirts or pleated slacks, white belt.
3. Since May, I have played no less than 45 rounds of golf; my handicap has dropped 8 strokes.
4. I have found more balls than I have lost.
5. Golf is full of catchphrases and cliches, often imitating life's small lessons; nonetheless, they are mostly true.

It's 14 degrees tonight in Indianapolis.  Not exactly golfing weather, though with the season of golf I've had over the past 7 months, I can hardly complain.

After years of false starts and disappointing rounds, small bursts of steady golfing with the promise of regular golfing buddies, I've finally done it.  Settled down. Found a regular group of guys to play with.  No longer do I feel like a golf vagabond, playing a course here and there for a few years and then moving on to a different public course in a different state. It's nice.

For example, I can tell you that on my home course there is a hump on the back left portion of the 16th green, a fantastic place to hit an approach shot with a 5 iron if you want the ball to hold the green. I can also tell you how you never want to be above the hole on the 5th green, how there's a perfectly place old oak tree next to the green on the only par 5 on the back nine.  Jack Nicklaus and his disciples preach that we should visualize shots before we play them, that if we see each shot develop in front of our eyes then somehow our bodies will automatically understand what to do. I can visualize the sweeping drive from the tee, the slight fade with my 5 iron that will settle onto the green, stopped from rolling only by that generous hump at the back of the green. But that doesn't mean I can do it. Nevertheless, I think about those shots, the ones I might one day string together for a glorious par. I think about them all of the time.

One of my playing partners calls it The Fever.

What he means is that we've been playing so much golf, we're hopelessly hooked. We're intelligent, interesting, well-spoken men, but we talk in code, and nearly always about golf. We avoid work to watch cheesy online golf videos.  We text message silly taunts about the week's match. Just last night, in an effort to discover if I have the correct size grips on my golf clubs, I dug a plastic ruler out of my desk drawer to carefully measure the distance between "my dominant wrist crease and the web of my longest finger."  The good news? My grips fit just fine.

This past May, the faculty at the community college where I teach decided to gather for an after graduation drink at a local hole-in-the-wall pub.  It's no different than your local watering hole: ample fried food, a decent selection of American beers, several TVs on the wall. It so happened that the TV nearest our group was turned to the end of a golf tournament, no doubt being played somewhere in Florida.  One drink led to another, which led to another.  We were academics glad the semester was over. We'd have drunk a whole barrel if we'd had time. Naturally, we slurred our way into a conversation about golf.  Eagerly, I asked around if anyone played, a question I've been asking people for years in hopes of finding playing partners. Luckily, someone spoke up.

He immediately stated that he wasn't any good, but that he'd once shot a 39 over 9 holes and that he'd love to have someone to play with some time.  The semester was over and our schedules were free.  We tentatively scheduled a day to play at the end of the next week.   I was ecstatic.  But would this end up like other times? The times when I'd invited friends or friends of friends or strangers to play a round only to be stood up in the end?

I hadn't touched a golf club in nearly a year , but something told me this was going to be different.  Something told me I'd better find my clubs and hit the driving range. And where exactly were my clubs? In that storage unit I'd been meaning to clean out? Under some boxes in the garage, maybe?