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
