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