Category: Sports

Nooo!

It has begun! Today I got out to the county course for nine holes. Five very good holes, where I just relaxed and focused on a smooth, fluid swing; four not so good holes, where I hit a few real clunkers, which I’ll attribute mostly to rustiness and getting a little uptight. There’s nothing like those holes where you bomb it down the middle off the tee, pop it onto the green, and finish off a couple of good putts. And the serendipity of heading out to the county course alone is fun, too. Today I was paired up with a guy who teaches at Julliard Music School and tours the country singing cabaret tunes. He’s opened in Atlantic City and Vegas for people like Don Rickles and Ray Romano, and sings at restaurants that might be fit right into a Sopranos episode. Our foursome also included a Japanese guy who spoke hardly any English and was impeccably dressed in proper golf attire. Only at a NYC metro area public course!

I watched the last few innings of Detroit’s fantastic ALCS win over Oakland tonight. It reminded me of the 2000 ALCS, when the Yankees beat Seattle to clinch the series. I was at Yankee Staduim for that game, with my father and brother, with the bleacher creatures in left field. I can still picture David Justice’s monstrous, clutch home run sailing into the New York sky. I can still feel the stadium shake as we celebrated the championship. It was one of the great moments of my life. Sigh. Wait till next year.

This morning we played Ballyowen. A guy we were paired up with had a caddie. On one of the back nine par 3’s, the caddie advised us to aim for a little rise just to the back of the green. I hit a perfect 9-iron just to that spot, the ball curved in from behind the pin, and stopped just a bit more than a foot short of a hole-in-one. Best golf shot I ever hit!

In golf, one of the first signs of improvement is when you “break 100” — score lower than 100. Most recreational golfers don’t usually break 100, even though a score in the 90’s isn’t a “good” score by any objective measure, but I would consider it “good” for me. This has been one of my goals since I started playing golf a couple of years ago. So today I inched a little closer — I shot a 98 — but that score included two really bad holes where I took a double par. My “real” score was probably just under 105, which for me actually isn’t awful. One of those bad holes was the 9th, a par 3. I got my tee shot into the air but it faded right and landed in a greenside bunker. Shouldn’t have been a disaster, but then I got uptight and played bunker ball — skulling three bunker shots over the green and into the bunkers on the opposite side. Ugh! That rattled me, and on the next two holes I hit some really ugly shots, including a succession of embarrassing dribbled fairway woods and another bunker burner on the par 5 11th hole. But, to my credit, I calmed down and had three pars and three bogeys after that, including a very nice up and down out of the greenside bunker on 18. Slowly, slowly, I’m starting to hit some better shots and to put together decent holes. Now I have to avoid those mental meltdowns and put it all together.

I’m watching the Yankees and Red Sox as I type. Finally, life is renewed. There is something odd about seeing Randy Johnson on the mound at Yankee Stadium, but hey, that’s why it’s good to be a Yankee fan!