The quest for adequacy

Ridgecrest Golf Course, Nampa, ID
April 5, 2008, 108 (par 72) +36



The round of my life was well within my grasp.

Throughout a blustery, chilly day at Ridgecrest Golf Course, I had played some of the least damaging golf of my young career. My drives, when not landing on the women’s tee box, were straight and true. My iron play, when not unconscionably awful, was meaningful and dependable. My putting, albeit for a rather unfortunate four-putt, was brilliant.

Making the turn toward the clubhouse, I was within striking distance of a score I would not be ashamed to mention at the dinner table. I was so close I could taste it, and it tasted like affirmation.

Naturally, my quest for relative immortality failed, whiffing on opportunity like my gargantuan attempt at a long drive on the #1 tee box. But even having the chance to put myself into my own record book was exciting. It made me glad I have low standards.

To be within striking distance of respectability was a personal victory, not to mention astonishing. I had succeeded in areas of the golf course where I had never succeeded before. Case in point: five-foot putts. These little terrors had cost me great amounts of grief and strokes over the years, but on Saturday, I owned them like I own three copies of Heavyweights on DVD.

Things were going great for me throughout the front nine and well into the back. I was a new man, teeing off with reckless abandon and thrusting mighty fistpumps into the air after every heroic eight iron. Then reality hit.

Through fourteen holes, I had managed to put aside all of my golf inadequacies and play like a different person. After the fifteenth hole, I wanted to go home.

The fifteenth, in and of itself, was not difficult. It was a short par four with a dogleg to the left and a green protected by water, and I could double-bogey it in my sleep. Well, maybe triple bogey.

My troubles came from looking ahead.

The evil that awaited me on the 17th hole, I knew all too well. The big, bad seventeenth was a vertical ascent into the seventh level of golf hell with a steep incline, a disastrously small green, and little to no margin for error. And I love my margin for error! In my illustrious history, I have averaged a nine on the hole, not including the multiple occasions when I simply gave up.

Standing on the tee box for the fifteenth, I could see my nemesis towering over me across the way. It was intimidating and menacing, and the only things I could think about were the varying ways that I would blow my perfect day once I reached it.

Turns out, I would do myself in far before I ever got to the seventeenth.

My troubles began with my tee shot on the 15th hole. Despite its great potential, the shot, which began tall and mighty, eroded into a lagging and wayward drive that plopped down into the dry bed of the empty water hazard. Still, I thought I could handle it.

I couldn’t.

Playing my way out of the muddy pit (which I am not sure is entirely legal, judging from the fact no one else was doing it and the marshal followed us for the rest of the round) was a bad decision. And like most of my bad decisions, it ended with a bogey divisible by three.

After the drive, I hacked my second shot two feet forward, blasted my third immediately sideways, powered my fourth onto the playing surface, and scuttled a fifth well over the green. Then the putting commenced. When all was said and done, all my furtive club clamoring collaborated into a quintuple-bogey nine.

So much for my game of the century.

The fact that I lost my cool well before I planned on losing my cool was disappointing. If I was going to collapse (and odds were good that I would), I wanted to do so on the most difficult hole on the course. Struggling through the easy 15th hole was not in my plan.

Of course, neither was shooting under 110, so I guess I can’t complain.

SCORECARD
Driving: Only semi-embarrassing
Short game: Rather long, actually
Putting: Less is more…somehow
Overall: A career day in a less-than-spectacular career

Fringe Benefits

Purple Sage Golf Course, Caldwell, ID
March 8, 2008, 113 (par 71) +41

There are so many parts of a golf course that I have not had the opportunity to properly appreciate. Like the middle of the fairway.

Saturday’s round of disaster led me to another hidden treasure of the golf course, and following an afternoon of fruitless strokes, I might have been better off never to have discovered it.

The fringe has never registered with me before, probably considering how happy I am just to arrive at the green (usually upwards of five shots later). I guess it the fringe exists to reward golfers who get their balls close to the putting surface but not quite on it. The grass is shorter, the lies are better, and the chances of hitting a successful shot improve. At least, that’s the way I think it is supposed to work.

My experience on the fringes at Purple Sage Golf Course went a little more costly.

My round started off with a bang—a bang that sounded more like a splash. On the first two holes, I found water—cannonballing a fairway iron on hole one and duffing a 3 iron into the ditch five feet in front of me on hole two. Amphibiously speaking, I was batting 1.000.

My luck got better on subsequent holes, which were coincidentally water-free. My drives were suspiciously straight and long, and my irons and putter finally decided to show up. But then the fringe attacked.

With confidence well in hand, I approached the seventh hole, a rather long par four. After a workable drive, a towering three wood, and a weak-sauce 8 iron, I hit a high, lofting pitching wedge in the general direction I was aiming, near the green.

Believing that I had scored a reprieve from hacking in the rough, I was discouraged to discover that the fringe where my ball rested resembled a topographical map of grassy clumps. What was up with that?! The deep rough would have been a kinder, gentler lie than the Armageddon of horticulture currently forming the environs of my double bogey shot! Bummer.

Fortunately, I remembered a trick to playing from the fringe that I was taught in golf class: “Your arms look like spaghetti noodles.” No, wait. That was constructive criticism of my driving. “Putt the ball harder than you would think.” That was the fringe advice.

And if there is one thing I do well, it is swing harder than I should. So with my ball nestled in the highlands of the fringe, I smacked my putter into the unsuspecting ball, sending it to the other end of the green, passing the pin at 35mph on its way. Oh well. I was off the fringe at least.

I carded a nine on the hole, which was actually my worst score on the front side. Through some sort of semi-miracle, I was doing alright. My drives were obeying, my irons were moving the ball forward, and my putting was saving face. The kid who routinely four-putted was nowhere to be found, except on Hole 5. That sucker was tricky.

Still, I ventured to the back side with a 57, a good 21 strokes over par. The chances of lowering that number on the back were not looking good, considering I was sucking wind, freezing my ears off, and constantly fixated on what was for dinner. Do you think Tiger Woods has the same problem?

Things were going fine until the vengeful fringe returned. Clubbing my ball down the rough next to the fairway on the par five 12th, I finally got ahold of mostly ball with a burly three-wood hack, sending the scornful orb very near the green. In a fair world, I would get to shelve my frantically failing irons and test fate with the flat stick. It looked like I would be putting for a seven.

But, sadly, golf does not operate in a fair world. There my ball was, six inches from the redemptive green, wadded between two tufts of grass and wedged under a giant leaf. I would have preferred the dandelion patch to its immediate left.

With double bogey in sight, I knew that I had to concentrate to maintain a score that I was probably a little too presumptive to assume. I gripped my putter like I would a bottle of Roundup, swung it back like a pendulum, and sent my grass-stained Titleist screeching across the green and a good 50 feet past the cup. Fortunately, it skidded all the way through the fringe and landed in the rough. I considered it a victory.

Moments later, I was in the fringe battle again. In a twisted case of déjà vu, my ball was fringe-lounging 10 feet from the hole, literally minutes after I had just sent fringe play back a decade with my uncalculated brute force.

My plan this time was to cut back on the muscles and approach the approach with finesse. Well, my dainty attempt at holing out went quite for naught. The pitter patter of putter to ball caused a dribbling stroke that barely rolled off the fringe and hardly cut down any distance between point A and the hole. Nevertheless, I was putting, so “in your face, fringe!”

The rest of the round went by without event, unless you consider cracking the head off a driver, scouring for lost balls in a nearby neighborhood, throwing clubs into trees, and discovering new and exciting ways of carding triple bogies exciting. I don’t. I often experience worse on the driving range.

Thankfully, once I got fringe play out of the way, the rest of the course was smooth sailing. I am used to being in the rough, in the sand, and lying two from the women’s tee box. Those situations are as commonplace to me as three-putts.

It was that awful fringe that really threw me for a loop. Experiencing a part of the golf course that was quite alien to me proved far more difficult than I had realized. I had never blown a golf game on the fringe before. It was kind of refreshing.

Maybe next time, I’ll test the middle of the fairway.

SCORECARD
Driving: Straight and long, with the exceptions of holes 1,3,6-8, 12-15, 17, and the par 3s
Short game: Half of my 113 strokes
Putting: Still owes me reparations for the past three years
Overall: The fringe is not my friend

Three's Company

McCall Golf Course, McCall, ID
July 4, 2007, 60 (par 35, nine holes), +25

I live for par three holes.

Their general existence demands that I put my driver away (always a good idea) and knock around my irons for what is designed to be fewer shots than normal. Generally, I let myself believe that I will get a seven on every single hole that I play. For par fives, this is dicey. At par fours, for some reason, this is even dicier. But par threes? Piece of cake.

In some bizarre alternate universe must live McCall Golf Course, for my foolproof system of hackery betrayed itself to the extremes. The par fours and fives played meekly; the par threes ate me alive.

Their torturous layouts and my sheer awfulness at playing them put a generous burden on my exponentially growing scorecard. I had survived the first three holes with relative (for me) success, not losing any balls and not making a fool out of myself in any of my usual ways.

Then the par threes hit, and they hit hard.

The first was an uphill, bunker-laden beauty that played a lot harder than it looked. Of course, most holes play harder than they look when you yak your drive off into the forest. I did just that, only epically so. After my drop, I plopped a weak pitching wedge into the sand trap, tunneled out very nearly into the next trap, then pitched and putted my way to an emasculating seven.

I had put the massacre behind me by the time I got to the second par three. This one looked far easier than the first as there were no sand traps and no water hazards. My tee shot was better than most—a high, fading eight iron that stuck just off the right side of the green. Never mind the flag was on the left; I was safe.

But any good feelings were soon sent packing, more than likely for an all expenses paid vacation with my pride and dignity. My pitch onto the green, often an object of complete disdain, went all of two inches, deciding ultimately to roll back into the hole from where it started. Goodbye par.

I smacked the next one well short of the hole and lined up for a 15-foot putt to save four. I slid it well left and equally as well short. Goodbye bogey.

The penultimate stroke happily found its way to the bottom of the hole, all too content in its utter spoiling of a good score. Hello, two over par.

The course, it seemed, was able to kick me while I was down in all sorts of different ways. The first par three slammed me with its creeping foliage, unnecessary amounts of sand traps, and aggravating elevation. The second one built up my confidence from the tee box and then let me slowly tear myself apart limb from limb, pitch by horrendous pitch.

When I reached the third and, thankfully, last par three, I was eager to see what way the course might choose to torture me this time. Beating me over the head with hazards and impossible shots won in a landslide over watching me self-destruct.

The hole was set up not unlike one of Dante’s levels of hell. It was terribly long, with foreboding marshland guarding the front and right of the green, forcing a blind shot over anal retentive reeds and snobby pines. From the tee box, I could see nothing but forestry, and—not unlike many holes—I had no idea where I was aiming.

It didn’t much matter because I duffed my drive into the weeds 20 feet to my right. My next shot was better if only because it cleared the knee-high grasses immediately in front of me. The pitiful slice found its way to the out of bounds right of the hole where it remains to this day. After dropping, I outright failed on my chip before three putting for an inevitable seven.

Collectively on the three par threes on the front nine, I collected nineteen strokes. The par on the front nine was 35, so going into the final hole—after adding up my demure score on every other hole to the bloated count of the par threes—I was needing to hole out in negative nineteen strokes. I got a six.

It was nice of the par fours to let the par threes tear me apart for a day.

SCORECARD:
Driving: Allowed me to familiarize with Mother Nature
Irons: Hit one beautiful eight iron, equivalent to a monkey spelling onomatopoeia
Short game: Came up short more often than my pants in fifth grade
Putting: Adequate to the point of my not being ashamed
Overall: Two’s company, but three’s a pain in my rear end.

Fore-Lorn at the U.S. Open

The 2007 U.S. Open will be a test of skill and patience for the world’s top golfers. With undulating greens and deep, thick rough, players will have their work cut out for them, and a winning score well over par is a very real possibility.

Oakmont Country Club, site of this year’s Open, is said to be one of the most difficult courses in the United States. In fact, the course’s website comes right out and says it:

“Oakmont remains perhaps the most difficult course in North America, with 180 deep bunkers, hard and slick greens that slope away from the player, and tight fairways requiring the utmost precision.”

That doesn’t sound like a golf course. That sounds like a level of hell.

A closer look at golfer purgatory reveals that there are certain holes that simply are not fair.

Number eight is a terrifying par three that reaches nearly 300 yards. It is protected by a 100-yard long bunker that is named after the world’s largest desert: Sahara.

The par five number 12 is nearly 670 yards, and it is home to 20 evil sand traps. The course report recommends that a golfer use a three-wood to hit the sloping fairway, followed by a long iron to place the approach between bunkers, then a wedge shot onto the green, which tilts away from the fairway at a completely unfair angle. If anyone is capable of completing that hat trick of shots, he is the best golfer in the world…and he is cheating.

The finishing hole is a 484-yard par four that didn’t get enough hugs as a child. With bunkers to the left and bunkers to the right, accuracy and dumb luck are essential. The green resembles a crumpled burger wrapper and has no hole. Golfers will be putting forever.

Vijay Singh believes that a score of 10 or 12 over par may win this year’s Open. Tiger Woods’ strategy is to “not make bogeys.” Jon Daly would prefer a night at home with his wife over teeing it up at Oakmont. And yet, they all will be trying their best to tame the Open beast.
I will be watching from the relative safety of my couch, and I will love every minute of it.

You see, every time I hit the links, I want nothing more than to emulate Tiger or Phil or Kevin Costner’s character from Tin Cup. But it just isn’t happening.

My drives have a mind of their own, my irons never hit their targets, and my putts breed like rabbits. I spend more time in the rough than I do in the fairway, and I read greens about as well as I read Chinese.

This weekend at the Open is the best chance my game has of resembling that of a pro golfer. It will be refreshing to see the best golfers in the world struggling through their rounds. If I’m lucky, I might even see someone break a club, break an arm, or break 90. For once, Ernie Els and Co. will know what it is like to be Joe Golfer, complete with four putts and dirty words.

In fact, these big-timers could probably learn a little from my many golf mistakes. I may just be the supreme authority on bad shot recovery, courtesy of the frequency by which it happens to me.

Deep rough: Position your feet a little more than shoulder width apart, grip your five iron tightly, close your eyes, and swing as hard as you can. If done correctly, you should have no idea where your shot is going or where it went.

Sand: Dig feet deep into the trap for stability, hold sand wedge head high and drive it through the sand below your ball. If the ball is still in the trap, repeat but swing harder.

Long putts: Address your ball, look up at the hole once to get your bearings, wind up, smack your ball, and pray that it ends up closer to the hole than where you started. Repeat until done.

Of course, being millionaire golfers with swing coaches and such, these guys probably have their own ways of escaping trouble. In normal events, we don’t get to see them use their stroke-saving maneuvers often enough. This weekend, though, they will have ample opportunity to show off their recovery skills.

Seeing Tiger swinging from under a tree will be exciting because I’ve been there before. Watching Phil take two strokes getting out of a fairway bunker will be nice because I’ve spent at least that long in the same situation. And catching Justin Rose carding an eight will be sweet because I average a snowman on most holes.

One thing’s for sure, playing Oakmont may be hell but watching will be heaven.

Five Irony

Jug Mountain Golf Course, McCall, ID
May 26, 2007, 131 (+59)

With its breathtaking views and picturesque location, Jug Mountain Golf Course was one of the most dazzling places I had ever played. It had deep blue lakes, towering pines and perfectly manicured fairways and greens, all set to the backdrop of the smoky Cascades.

How ironic, then, that the beautiful mountain landscape around me was in such contrast to the hack job that is my golf game—irony that, not unlike many of my wayward drives, was completely lost on me.

Golf balls and contrasting metaphors were not the only things that I lost on my latest golf outing. Jug Mountain, in all its beauty, proved to be an evil, evil place, robbing me of misplaced confidence and, for a good stretch on the back nine, my will to live.

The fact that I actually had high hopes for my latest golf outing was probably a good sign that I was doomed. For starters, I am not a good golfer, and any faint hopes I had of being such were unfounded and incredulous. Lying, even to myself, was never my strong suit.

Also, believing in myself gets me nowhere on the golf course. And by nowhere, I mean in the deep rough or water hazard. Such is life when you have no desirable golf skills whatsoever.

Apart from my talking the talk and certainly not being able to walk the walk, I had other problems, namely a large, black raincloud directly over the course. All day, the rain had fallen off and on, as inconsistently as my long irons find the green in one stroke. We ventured out on the course in the hopes that the worst was over. Unfortunately, the bad weather decided to hang around to see if someone (me) could actually four-putt from 15 feet (I could and did).

Amidst scattered showers, I hacked and slashed my way through the first three holes with a mediocre, yet predictable triple bogey average. The fourth hole was easily the highlight of my day. With a nasty-looking lake protecting the right side of the fairway, I cringed as I approached my drive, the thought of a wet slice at the forefront of my mind. Surprisingly, I hooked my first shot into the fairway, then launched my pitching wedge to the back of the green. Two putts later, I told Mother Nature where to stick it and carded my first par of the day.

My joy was fleeting, however. Only one hole later, I was gardening with my five wood in the midst of what seemed to be a sagebrush, sapling and tree trunk casserole. Safely back into the rough I so often call home, I sent my three wood screaming down the side of the fairway. Literally. It slipped out of my hands. Fortunately, it clanged into a tree several yards in front of me, knocking off several branches and adding several strokes in the process.

On number seven, my five iron and I went camping in the forest for a good 15 minutes, trying to free my poor range ball from the moss and roots. When I reached the fairway five strokes later, the heavens opened up as if I had wronged them terribly in another life. Their revenge was sweet as it took me four more strokes to find the bottom of the cup…and three puts to get there.

The first hole on the back nine tested my grip once more as I sent my driver soaring into a waist-high batch of reeds. The rain had apparently seen enough. It gave up its seat to my sorry symphony of swings so that the sun could have a few good laughs over the final nine.

Two holes later, I was faced with the daunting task of hitting my drive uphill over a patch of wild mountain grasses and trees. I’d like to say that I dribbled my drive several yards in front of me out of respect for the course and because I had a plan for the hole. It just so happened that my plan involved scoring an eleven on the par five.

On the 14th, the head snapped off of my driver. This moment just about drove me to tears as I had a closer relationship to that piece of metal than I did several of my friends. I’m still not over it.

My downward slide continued on the fateful final turn. I sent several good drives off in the distance, thanks to a brilliant relief effort by my three wood, but when I approached the fairway to admire my accuracy, my balls were nowhere to be found (please resist the obvious pun). It was as if the course had changed shapes as my ball was mid-flight, rendering a potential fairway hit moot and out of bounds. As to be expected, I did not recover from these added strokes nor did I manage to maintain any sense of composure.

With my tail between my legs, soon to be joined by some pretty serious chaffing, I drudged toward the car a beaten man. I had nearly doubled par. I had nearly lost every ball I brought. And I had nearly broken down on the tee box. It was a tough, defeating day.

As we piled into the car, I cast a humble glance back at the tormenting course. The willowy aspens and colorful wildflowers danced in the evening sunlight, and it was all framed perfectly by my soggy golf bag, crusty five-iron and sawed off driver shaft.

Finally, I was able to see the irony.

Ooh, and the ball I hit from the fairway on number nine. Sweet!

Scorecard:
Driving: R.I.P: driver; R.I.P: accuracy
Irons: One shot into the rough, three shots out
Short game: Average distance: four feet sideways
Putting: Irrelevant
Lost balls: 13 and then I lost count
Overall: Just like in a blowout, all my clubs got to play

It's All Uphill from Here

Indian Lakes Golf Course, Boise, ID
May 18, 2007, 57 (par 35) +22

Golfing at Indian Lakes Golf Course is unlike any course you will ever play—in a bad way.

Well-manicured greens give way to shoddy, bumpy carpet. Soft sand traps are replaced by mushroom-infested wastelands. Deep rough is deep weeds. In a nutshell, the course is an unkempt city park with tee boxes and ball washers.

Ideally, this would play right into my hands, and after one hole, it looked like it would do just that. I tend to golf better on the courses that are not so, how can I put this, playable. My game is out of the realm of normal golf, and it tends to fit well on courses that are abnormally poor. The first hole was a perfect example.

My drive was a low, leaning rocket that started well left and came back well into the middle of the fairway. It was my best slice of the day. I followed that up with a pitching wedge into the rough several yards in front of me and chased that with a grounder onto the back of the green. Putting from 10 feet away, I slid my ball to the lip of the cup where it hung for a second, contemplated the virtues of giving me my first par in recent memory, and fell to the bottom with a decisive and fulfilling plop. Par.

I was, for one hole, for 325 yards, for 8 minutes, a scratch golfer.

The opening par could have been a good sign of things to come, but it was actually the high point of my evening.

For all the bad things that this course had going for it, the worst might have been its trees.

For the next eight holes, I felt like I was in that scene from Lord of the Rings where the trees are alive and talking and going to war to save Middle Earth, only here they were going to war to against my Titleist 2 and whoever was filming it was not going to make millions at the box office.

At various times I was hitting through trees, over trees and around trees. Even when I was on the green, I could see the trees huddling behind me, plotting some sort of nefarious deed to put me deeper over par.

On the par 5 fifth, I had delusions of grandeur that I might be able to hit my Perfect club from the adjoining fairway (where my original drive happily traveled) onto the green and three putt for my second par of the day. It was delusional to think so because I have never been able to hit my Perfect club any better than my 12 other imperfect ones, and I simply do not have the space or the vocabulary to explain here the reasons why.

Nevertheless, I struck the Perfect club perfectly and sent a screamer right toward the green. I also sent said screamer right toward a pine tree 30 yards in front of me. Tree and ball collided with a loud thwack, and I stuffed my Perfect club into my bag with a loud “doggone it.”

Later on the sixth, I saved a wayward drive with a five iron back toward my rightful fairway. Upon walking up to my ball, I saw it was sitting squarely in front of a wide-trunked pine that I swear did not exist until that very moment. With the fear of God and the fear of my ball ricocheting off of the tree and into any number of exposed body parts not least of which being my face, I swung hard with eyes wide shut. Fortunately I mishit it, and it bounced off the side of the tree a few feet into the rough.

I gained revenge, however, on the next hole when by fate or chance or my own poor accuracy I was in front of yet another tree. Faced with the option of going over or around, I did the manly thing and snatched my pitching wedge out of its bag. One fell swoop later, and my ball was soaring over the top of the tree, smirking as it flew (or maybe that was me smirking; I can’t remember). Granted, it landed 15 feet away on the other side, 50 yards short of the green, but it sure did feel good.

With my scorecard rapidly getting out of hand, I thanked daylight savings time that the sun was slowly going down. I went 7, 8, 10 on three straight holes, wiping away any false hope that I was a good golfer after my opening par.

Still, I had one hole to redeem myself as we walked up to the ninth. My drive did not hook, slice, or embarrass, but it did make its way a much shorter distance than I expected. Well back in the fairway, I slammed a five iron high and far and smack dab onto the middle of the green! No tree could touch it; no sprinkler could spoil it. With one shot I had erased eight holes of miserable lies, weak greens and stubborn flora. My blow was a blow for all golfers who had ever seen a good start spoiled. My five iron looked that course in the eyes and said, “Give me back this guy’s dignity and his $15.00! I’ll take things from here!” And it did.

Of course, I three-putted from 15 feet for a bogey.

The trees and sand trap mushrooms found it pretty funny.

SCORECARD:
Driving: Not bad when parking the truck is my worst driving of the night
Irons: One long five iron makes 10 weak ones look better
Short game: My pitching wedge failed me in ways I never thought an inanimate object would
Putting: The hidden weight to my 250-pound scorecard
Lost balls: 1
Overall: I’ll be boycotting Arbor Day for the foreseeable future.

Day at the Beach

Ridgecrest Golf Course, Nampa, ID
May 11, 2007, 115 (+43)

It began as a beautiful day—most golf days do. Where they go from there is anyone’s guess. Kind of like my fairway shots. Although on this particular day, those shots generally found the bunker.

The theme of Friday’s round was beach party. No, it wasn’t like MTV Spring Break on the beach with Carson Daly and B-spears and hundreds of underage pop wannabes freak dancing on the boardwalk. It was much closer to that family vacation to the Oregon coast with mom, dad, and little brother who keeps knocking down your sand castle no matter how many times you tell him to mind his own business and go touch a jellyfish.

The amount of time I spent in some bunkers would have been ample to build said sandcastles, and the wild swings I took would have been suffice to knock them all over. Hole 5 was the first time I hit the beach. I did it with a beautiful looking five iron, which made me feel better about my new sandy home. But with one mighty swing of my pitching wedge, I said, “Thanks for the lemonade, but I really must be leaving” and willed my way from in the trap to three-putting for triple bogey.

It was a thing of beauty.

It also happened to be the high point of my beach play.

Two holes later, I was back in the bunker. Laying three, I needed to hole out to get my par. Shot selection went like this: Sand wedge three feet back into the bunker, sand wedge 12 feet over the green, lots of raking, putt, putt, putt, three-over.

Wherever there was sand, I seemed to find it. I’ve never been particularly unsympathetic toward sand traps, mostly because I rarely was in them. I have a theory on this: sand traps are placed so as to punish slight miscalculations by those trying to reach the green or fairway. I, being the type of golfer that I am, tend to make gross miscalculations, generally to the adjoining fairway, so these intended punishments are rendered completely mute. My game is like the bizzaro sand trap kryptonite.

Considering that I was actually playing pretty well Friday would help to explain why I found myself in the sandbox as much as I did. My drives were still fairly regular shanks, but they were shanks into the right places. My 5-iron was long and straight, relative to how it’s usually inadequate and all over the place. Even my putting was not a sheer waste of time.

After nine holes, I was playing some of the best golf of my short-lived golfing career. Heading into the clubhouse, I was at 54—on pace to set a career scoring mark…career low.

I had a hot dog for lunch, and it was not delicious. Quite the opposite, in fact. It did, however, make it easier to blame my sluggish start to the back nine on its altogether disgustingness. On the 11th, a fairly straightforward par 4 with a plunging ravine off to the right, I recorded my worst score of the afternoon. A lost ball led to a panicked drop shot into the bunker, which led to a powerful blast over the green entirely, which led to my getting up and down and up again before finally tapping out. Quadruple bogey, but I wasn’t complaining.

In fact, I didn’t have much to complain about all day. It was the first golfing I had done this year, so I expected the normal amount of rust. Overall, I feel that I outdid myself. No weak grounders to the women’s tee, no two-foot flubbers from the rough. And I went 10 holes before losing a ball.

Not even the 18th hole and its golden shores could dampen my mood. Fittingly, I was into the sand trap again on the last hole. And also fittingly, I was out in two sand explosions of my wedge.

Dumping sand out of my pants after the round, I reflected upon how great things would have gone had those awful sandboxes not existed. My 115 could have been a 110 or perhaps even (gasp) a 105. I might have had a par or an honest bogey or (gasp) single green in regulation. It could have been the greatest round of my life.

Quickly, I was brought back to the all-too-real here and now by piercing pain up and down my arms. Sunburn.

It wouldn’t have been a day at the beach without it.

Scorecard
Driving: More slices than a Pizza Hut.
Irons: Monster five irons, respectable 8s, even a cameo by Mr. 4-iron
Short game: Started with a bang, ended with tears
Putting: 2 3-putts plus 0 1-putts equals good enough
Lost balls: 4
Overall: no more trips to the coast until my arms stop peeling