I left spending some time with my mom yesterday and played golf at 5pm. I checked the tee sheet earlier and knew the course was wide open. The rain had subsided and the sun was beaming. I arrived at the first tee box at 5:07 and hit a high archer that landed in the right fairway on 1. I was off.
If you pay for a country club, you aren’t going to get the value from the amount of money it costs with relation to the amount of rounds you play. You’d have to be retired. Yesterday, however, there is hardly an amount of money I wouldn’t pay to have a course to myself. You arrive at every tee box and drive with no delay. I yell “fuck” as loud as I can when I miss my 2 footer on 11 for bogey. No one hears it. I chipped in on 4 for bogey and there are no spectators. Lord only knows the horror of making a hole in one under these conditions. I blast my music, spit sunflower seeds in the rough (never the green) and enjoy the game of golf for those brief hours. Life for me is about as good as it gets.
What’s funny is the pressure I put on myself to have a good round. I’m currently playing at a 12 and my goal is to hit single digits. In order to play do this, there is not a ton of room for error at my skill level. Bogey golf doesn’t cut it anymore. A bogey is consider an average hole and making pars is the new standard. Getting up and down from off the green, sand saves, and putts longer than 3 feet are going to have to start happening. Duffs and OB is unacceptable off the tee. It’s hard to have fun when you put this type of pressure on yourself but that’s the game.
My round yesterday got off to a great start when I birdied the 2nd hole with a 20 footer and then chipped in for bogey on 4 which just as easily could have been a triple. After carding a 39 on the front, I hit a tee shot OB on 10 that 99 out of 100 golfers would have played with no one looking. My ball was on the outside of the white stakes and I used my provisional for a triple. The aforementioned 2 footer hurt on 11. On 15, I was 50 yards out in the fairway and took a triple after I launched my approach over the green. On 17, another triple after a poor lob shot from deep rough and 4 putting. On the flip side, I had 7 pars and a birdie with some great 6-10 footers dropping on the round. Such is the game. I finished with an 87 (85 Ghin) and took that 12.7 down to a 12.4.
I finished the round in 2 hours walking the entire course. Technically it was an 1 hour and 55 minutes. I lost one ball which meant little time wasted seaching. I spent a few seconds longer putting going to the other side of the hole multiple times. I only practice swing on shots that seem out of the ordinary or if I’m trying to etch a swing thought that helps me hit quality shots. I’ve been using a push it out to the right and high hands as of late. This round in particular was the epitome of golf for me. No one out there but me and the game. It’s what I consider fun.
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