I saw Ai Miyazato hit 1 shot at the 2013 Wegmans LPGA Championship, a beautiful fairway wood on the 11th hole at Locust Hill, her 2nd hole of the final round and 20th of her day. At the time, I had no idea she had just doubled the difficult downhill 10th, or would fail to birdie the par 5 but would go on to make her 8th, 9th, and 10th birdies of the day over the course of the back 9 to move from +5 to -2 and into contention yet again in Pittsford, or would falter over her final 9 with 3 bogeys and only 1 birdie to extend her streak of non-wins at LPGA majors to 34 starts.
Nope, I was with onechan at the time, following Paula Creamer, Lydia Ko, and Jennifer Rosales. We had wandered over from the 17th fairway to the 11th against onechan's wishes because I had figured out that Ai-sama's group had just hit their drives, but she made the best of the situation by calling out "Gambatte-ne!" to Ai-sama before she started sizing up her 2nd shot. The wave we got from my favorite golfer was one of my high points of the day, but for onechan it was just one of many cool moments, like the chances she and imoto got to ride a shuttle bus, the smiles she got from Paula Creamer (whom she had followed for 15+ holes during last year's final round) at different times while she and I followed her for most of the back 9 of the final round, the golf ball Mika Miyazato rolled to her on the 1st tee a little while later after onechan had seized the opportunity to send a "Gambatte-ne!" her way, the signatures she got from Kristy McPherson, Moira Dunn, Ya Ni Tseng, and others on her floppy pink hat towards the end of the day, the chance to see Ai-sama again at our favorite Korean restaurant in Rochester early that evening, or, her favorite moment, when Paula stopped to ask her her name, age, and favorite color.
Sure, I could have gone straight to find Ai-sama on the front 9 when we first arrived at Locust Hill and the girls were having fun at the play area and Wegmans loot tent with their mom, but by the time I realized what a great 3rd round she was having, I had already committed to following Chie Arimura (who got it to -2 with 19 holes left to play, but doubled 18, tripled 4, and sprinkled 3 other bogeys into her final round to plummet out of contention), Michelle Wie, and Shanshan Feng on the back. I had thought the Full Metal Archivist would take both girls to follow imoto's favorite player, Ji-Yai Shin, when she and Amy Yang and Sarah Jane Smith had hit the 11th tee, so that I would get more time with the Arimura threesome, but the FMA wasn't handling the heat well and understood the flow of play worse, so had ended up tiring the girls out walking up and down the 10th and 18th hills after they had gotten bored with the free shopping and eating. As a result, I had to backtrack back to the loot tent sooner than I expected go meet up with them and decide what to do next, which was for imoto and the FMA to camp out in the shade by the 17th green while onechan and I caught up with Paula's group. By the time onechan and I returned to 17 from doing just that, the FMA and imoto had taken the opportunity to follow Shin's group up 18, gotten Shin's autograph and a ball from Yang, and booked down the hill again and crossed Jefferson Road to rendezvous with us.
Again, I could have had us all wait for Ai-sama's group to reach us there at 17, but Mika Miyazato, Caroline Hedwall, and Belen Mozo rolled in just as we got settled in and onechan and I decided to follow them on 18 and 1, before peeling away back up the #2 and #3 hill to get back to the FMA and imoto, who was getting stir-crazy at the 17th green (but had gotten a chance to see Ai-sama, which is more than I could say!). Given that Mika was -2 on her final round, had just missed a short birdie putt on 17 (I just realized it would have been her 9th in her previous 21 holes!) and made a great up-and-down from about 100 yards out on 18, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I could always get the ladies situated by the putting green to collect as many autographs and balls as they could while I caught back up with Mika and then followed Ai-sama for her closing holes on the front. But even that plan didn't work out all that well, as the FMA was feeling exhausted by the time onechan and I got back to the 17th green and needed to get out of the sun, so we wasted almost an hour trying to figure out where to pick up the shuttle to take us back to the back-up media lot before realizing we were better off hitting the loot tent and just staying on the course as long as the FMA and girls could hold up. By the time we made it back to the putting green area, and I could look for Mika's group, they were finishing up #6, so all I got to see was Mika missing 2 short birdie putts in a row on 7 and 8 and making a great par save on 9 to preserve her 72 (she had been done in by a bogey on 1, a double on 4, and those 3 missed short birdie putts I saw). After taping the Japanese media's interviews with Mika, I was all set to finally backtrack to Ai-sama's group, when I thought I'd better drop by the putting green on the way to see how everyone was doing.
And that's when my plans went out the window. Turns out while I was awkwardly interviewing Mika in English, onechan had incited imoto to make a dash across the empty putting green, so by the time I got there, the FMA was furious, onechan was crying, and imoto was trying to blend into the background to minimize the trouble she was in with her mom. A volunteer graciously brought ice cream bars for the girls and we got them away from Golf Channel's interview booth, but the damage had been done. One look at the FMA's face was enough to convince me I wasn't going back out on the course. No way I would get a chance to see Tiffany Joh or Ayako Uehara or Mina Harigae hit a shot or 2 as I made my way back to Ai-sama's group. No way the family could even hang out together in the 9th- or 18th-green grandstands and watch the rest of the groups come in. Nope, it was time to back up my wife's disciplinary strategy, get everyone back to the car and into a restaurant, and get us all fueled up, cooled off, and calmed down.
So, yeah, not only did I miss Ai-sama, but I didn't even know there was a playoff going on until the end of our meal (and I didn't even find out its results until after we got home, woke the girls up for a quick bath and teeth-brushing, and got them to bed). But what a meal it was! It started with us getting seated right behind Se Ri Pak, waving hi to Ai-sama midway through our meal as she and her manager Takumi Zaoya walked into the restaurant, trying hard not to react as Ji-Yai Shin joined Se Ri a few minutes later and Amy Yang walked right by us, and it ended with us convincing the girls not to bother the Hall of Famer or the former world #1s, or the sure-to-break-through-soon star. Sure, imoto made more visits than strictly necessary to look at the fish in the ornamental display at the front of the restaurant (and try to catch Ji-Yai's eye!), and onechan decided as we were leaving to bring me with her to the bathroom area at the back of the restaurant (passing by Ai-sama's table in the process), but we didn't initiate contact with any of the players. It was actually Zaoya-san who started talking to onechan and I as we were passing by them on the way to leaving the restaurant. Ai-sama was relaxed and friendly, but I was embarrassed and incoherent and onechan had lost her voice, so I missed a chance to have a real conversation with them, although I did accidentally find out that she wouldn't be playing the Manulife in Waterloo.
So it was all worth it, right? Well, of course! Not to say I won't do things differently in the future, like maybe bring the ladies on a Saturday afternoon after Japanese school and come alone on Sunday, or stay overnight Saturday so the girls could get their fixes with their favorite players on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and plan to split up so I could focus on covering the closing hours of the tournament. But this year was different, and not just because of the washed-out Thursday round or the 36 holes on Sunday. We needed to be together, for reasons I won't go into here. And except for one big mistake and blow-up at the end of the day, the girls had a great time and the family had another memorable vacation in Rochester. They got to see a decent proportion of the 76 women trying to be the best on the planet that day, focus on a couple of players they both really admire, and spend some quality time with their parents and each other. Sure, the FMA suffered and I sacrificed, but it was definitely worth it. We even got to visit an Asian market before we hit the Thruway, although not the Korean market we usually love to raid when we're in Rochester.
Maybe someday I'll break down and get a smartphone, so I won't have to rely on walking by the many electronic scoreboards or hiking back to the media center to fire up my Chromebook to find out what's going on outside my immediate vicinity. Maybe someday onechan and imoto will be more interested in the actual golf than in being fangirls, so they'll learn something they can apply to their own games. Maybe someday the FMA will enjoy walking the golf course more, so she can appreciate the sport more. But given what we had and where we were and how young the girls still were, last Sunday may not have gone according to plan or supplied me with all the golfy and bloggy material I was hoping for, but it was still a great day!
Showing posts with label narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label narrative. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Blazing Saddles and Transatlantic Postmodernism
[Note to my regular readers who come here for women's golf coverage: I'm airing Mel Brooks's 1974 film Blazing Saddles tonight as part of SUNY Fredonia's American Studies film series "Myths of the American West," so decided to share a draft of my opening comments here at Mostly Harmless (which is, after all, "for fun"). I'm aware of the 5-car collision that has lead to my favorite golfer Ai Miyazato withdrawing from this week's LPGA event (and onechan's favorite Paula Creamer being a likely WD candidate) and obviously wish them and everyone else involved in it a full and speedy recovery.]
[Note to my non-regular readers who are coming here after watching Blazing Saddles (or missing it): Hope you enjoy this post and are curious enough after reading it to browse around for other posts here that you may find interesting!]
I was four years old when Blazing Saddles was first released in American theaters and until Shannon McRae--the director of American Studies at SUNY Fredonia and organizer of the program's film series "Myths of the American West"--took seriously my half-joking suggestion to include it in the series and invited me to introduce it, I had never seen it in its entirety until this month. In a semester when I'm teaching American Identities, Introduction to African American Literature and Culture, and Critical Reading, I'm particularly pleased to take Shannon up on her kind offer, and offer a few comments as a new viewer of a movie that's been well-known (even to me) for decades, comments that will hopefully be as useful to students in my classes this semester as everyone else who braved the rains to make it out here tonight.
Growing up, I put Blazing Saddles in the mental category of comedies too raw for me to watch, a remarkably capacious category that in the '70s and too far into the '80s included everything from Monty Python to Mad magazine to Saturday Night Live to just about every famous stand-up comedian of the time. If this reference helps people place where I was at, probably Benny Hill was the rawest thing I got access to before graduate school. Yes, I grew up in a small town in central NY and failed to take advantage of 2nd grade in Palo Alto and 7th grade in Chapel Hill. Nevertheless, I was obsessed with everything comical and comics-al. In high school I started a cartoon series called The Gray Area that, despite its being far too derivative of The Far Side, was seen, nay loved, by regular readers of the Pennysaver and other fine local publications for far too many weeks. Me, I loved everything from Gilligan's Island to Scooby Doo, from Diff'rent Strokes to The Facts of Life, from Benson to Newhart, from Doctor Who to The Greatest American Hero, from Airplane! to Ghostbusters, from The Muppet Show to The Tracey Ullman Show, from Tom and Jerry to Rocky and Bullwinkle (in reruns, duh) to Calvin and Hobbes to Mork and Mindy, from any DC comic Ambush Bug appeared in (even though I was almost exclusively a Marvel fan) to the animated version of The Tick. Sure, I hated the Smurfs and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but otherwise I was pretty easy to please. And I was a fan of The Simpsons before The Simpsons was The Simpsons, man! (It goes without saying from the title of this blog what my favorite was, though!)
All of which is to say that when I go to grad school in the early 1990s I was perfectly primed to understand and appreciate what many still misunderstand and denigrate even today as a French theoretical import: postmodernism. As someone who saw The Simpsons parody of the end of The Graduate long before I ever saw The Graduate, who loved it when Beavis and Butt-head were watching a Johnny Cash video and decided it was gangsta rap, and who came of age in a hip hop culture rife with allusion and remixing and pastiche, I didn't have to think twice about Jean-Francois Lyotard's notion of "incredulity toward metanarratives" as a core characteristic of postmodernism.
So it's all too easy and obvious now for me to look back at Blazing Saddles and see it as yet another exemplar of American postmodernism. It's certainly not an original point to make, as a quick google search will show you (I recommend posts by Mark Bourne and Mike Sutton on this aspect of the movie). But what is originality, anyway? Just another stinkin' metanarrative--right, JFL? Perhaps it's slightly more original to claim that Mel Brooks and Monty Python were engaged in a transatlantic comedic one-ups-man-ship that was perfectly postmodern. In the same way that Brooks and his co-writers, including Richard Pryor, were playing with myths of the American west and poking fun at founding narratives of the modern United States, Monty Python was taking on English legends of the Holy Grail and western icons of Christianity--and at roughly the same time. Check me on this. And, as you watch Blazing Saddles tonight, consider some of the debates over postmodernism that occupied so many western intellectuals in the last third of the 20th century: is postmodernism all sound and fury, signifying nothing? is it, in the final analysis, the laugh track of late capitalism? are its politics of race and gender and sexuality and [fill in the blank] reactionary, liberatory, laughable, nostalgic, or what? is postmodernism a thing of the past, and if so, how do we react to it today (and what comes after that post-?) if not, if we are still living in and with postmodernism, what does Blazing Saddles compare to in contemporary and recent culture?
There's so much more to be said--about what light Blazing Saddles may shed on black-Jewish relations in the late civil rights era, for instance--but I think it ought to wait until after the movie. Don't you?
[Note to my non-regular readers who are coming here after watching Blazing Saddles (or missing it): Hope you enjoy this post and are curious enough after reading it to browse around for other posts here that you may find interesting!]
I was four years old when Blazing Saddles was first released in American theaters and until Shannon McRae--the director of American Studies at SUNY Fredonia and organizer of the program's film series "Myths of the American West"--took seriously my half-joking suggestion to include it in the series and invited me to introduce it, I had never seen it in its entirety until this month. In a semester when I'm teaching American Identities, Introduction to African American Literature and Culture, and Critical Reading, I'm particularly pleased to take Shannon up on her kind offer, and offer a few comments as a new viewer of a movie that's been well-known (even to me) for decades, comments that will hopefully be as useful to students in my classes this semester as everyone else who braved the rains to make it out here tonight.
Growing up, I put Blazing Saddles in the mental category of comedies too raw for me to watch, a remarkably capacious category that in the '70s and too far into the '80s included everything from Monty Python to Mad magazine to Saturday Night Live to just about every famous stand-up comedian of the time. If this reference helps people place where I was at, probably Benny Hill was the rawest thing I got access to before graduate school. Yes, I grew up in a small town in central NY and failed to take advantage of 2nd grade in Palo Alto and 7th grade in Chapel Hill. Nevertheless, I was obsessed with everything comical and comics-al. In high school I started a cartoon series called The Gray Area that, despite its being far too derivative of The Far Side, was seen, nay loved, by regular readers of the Pennysaver and other fine local publications for far too many weeks. Me, I loved everything from Gilligan's Island to Scooby Doo, from Diff'rent Strokes to The Facts of Life, from Benson to Newhart, from Doctor Who to The Greatest American Hero, from Airplane! to Ghostbusters, from The Muppet Show to The Tracey Ullman Show, from Tom and Jerry to Rocky and Bullwinkle (in reruns, duh) to Calvin and Hobbes to Mork and Mindy, from any DC comic Ambush Bug appeared in (even though I was almost exclusively a Marvel fan) to the animated version of The Tick. Sure, I hated the Smurfs and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but otherwise I was pretty easy to please. And I was a fan of The Simpsons before The Simpsons was The Simpsons, man! (It goes without saying from the title of this blog what my favorite was, though!)
All of which is to say that when I go to grad school in the early 1990s I was perfectly primed to understand and appreciate what many still misunderstand and denigrate even today as a French theoretical import: postmodernism. As someone who saw The Simpsons parody of the end of The Graduate long before I ever saw The Graduate, who loved it when Beavis and Butt-head were watching a Johnny Cash video and decided it was gangsta rap, and who came of age in a hip hop culture rife with allusion and remixing and pastiche, I didn't have to think twice about Jean-Francois Lyotard's notion of "incredulity toward metanarratives" as a core characteristic of postmodernism.
So it's all too easy and obvious now for me to look back at Blazing Saddles and see it as yet another exemplar of American postmodernism. It's certainly not an original point to make, as a quick google search will show you (I recommend posts by Mark Bourne and Mike Sutton on this aspect of the movie). But what is originality, anyway? Just another stinkin' metanarrative--right, JFL? Perhaps it's slightly more original to claim that Mel Brooks and Monty Python were engaged in a transatlantic comedic one-ups-man-ship that was perfectly postmodern. In the same way that Brooks and his co-writers, including Richard Pryor, were playing with myths of the American west and poking fun at founding narratives of the modern United States, Monty Python was taking on English legends of the Holy Grail and western icons of Christianity--and at roughly the same time. Check me on this. And, as you watch Blazing Saddles tonight, consider some of the debates over postmodernism that occupied so many western intellectuals in the last third of the 20th century: is postmodernism all sound and fury, signifying nothing? is it, in the final analysis, the laugh track of late capitalism? are its politics of race and gender and sexuality and [fill in the blank] reactionary, liberatory, laughable, nostalgic, or what? is postmodernism a thing of the past, and if so, how do we react to it today (and what comes after that post-?) if not, if we are still living in and with postmodernism, what does Blazing Saddles compare to in contemporary and recent culture?
There's so much more to be said--about what light Blazing Saddles may shed on black-Jewish relations in the late civil rights era, for instance--but I think it ought to wait until after the movie. Don't you?
Friday, October 22, 2010
Recommended Reading: My Fantasy Fiction Students at sf@SF
Back in the day, Mostly Harmless had an expansive definition of "fun" (as its perpetual tag line, "for fun," and long links list over there on the left remind me every time I visit the site), which included science fiction, fantasy, anime, music, tv, films, theory, and politics, as well as golf. Fortunately, I've got a couple of academic/pop culture blogs, sf@SF and American Identities, that allow me to sound off on most of those topics when inspiration hits me and I don't feel like cross-posting it here. More important, though, they allow me to showcase some of the work my students have been doing in my courses.
Well, the time has come for my Fantasy Fiction students to start sharing their response essays with the world (or that portion of it that makes it to sf@SF!). And that's where my Mostly Harmless regulars come in: I'm asking you all to point your own intertubey (and other) networks at the most interesting essays from my students this semester. I think you'll see from the 1st post that their topics, views, and writing will be worth your time!
Well, the time has come for my Fantasy Fiction students to start sharing their response essays with the world (or that portion of it that makes it to sf@SF!). And that's where my Mostly Harmless regulars come in: I'm asking you all to point your own intertubey (and other) networks at the most interesting essays from my students this semester. I think you'll see from the 1st post that their topics, views, and writing will be worth your time!
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Utica City Amateur: Before, During, and After
The Utica City Amateur is my favorite golf tournament to play. I did it 3 straight years following the end of my college golf career and 8 years in a row late in grad school and early in my professorial career, but this year was my 1st in the last 6 to return to competitive golf and this past weekend the City Am was my debut. I had pretty high expectations coming into it, having made the 1st-day cut 3 of my previous 4 attempts, having good memories of the host course Valley View, and having gotten in about as much golf during the 1st 2 weeks of July as I had the previous 5 years. At the same time, I was also pretty worried, having gotten stuck in the high 70s on the Easiest Course in the World, having lost some confidence in both my swing and my short game in the process, and having to rely on 6-year-old memories of a course that requires a lot of local knowledge and ability to adjust to changing conditions.
So I was happy I was free to come to Clinton a couple of days before the best-ball portion of the event to practice and play with my dad (who was also my college golf team coach). It was my best chance to break out of the skills and scoring plateau I seemed to be stuck in. We decided to play Skenandoa before the City Am and Seven Oaks after it. It would be a good test of where my game stood a month before the qualifier for the NYSGA's Men's Mid-Amateur event. Skenandoa was where my college golf team did most of its practice rounds and Seven Oaks (Colgate University's home course) was not only the site of various competitions and qualifiers I had participated in since junior golf, but a course that I played virtually every summer weekend during my teen years.
Before
All the problems that I moaned about at the end of the 1st week of July reared their ugly heads last Thursday evening and Friday morning, as I played the easier front side at Skenandoa twice in a row and utterly failed to take advantage of it. Although I hit 10 of those 18 greens, I made only 1 birdie, 3-putted 2 of the greens I hit, and had only 2 1-putts over the other 8 holes, so it should be no surprise I shot an 82 with 35 putts. But while my irons and short game were suffering, I started really feeling it with my woods and 3-hybrid. By the time I was finishing the front the 2nd time around, I was locked in with my driver, which I had really been struggling with the week before. All of a sudden, my mind was absolutely empty during my preshot routine; I was focused completely on my target and trusted my swing, so I didn't need to go through any kind of mental checklist or remind myself with either a swing thought or "feeling" (see Ruthless Golf for that very useful tip). It was just choose a target, picture the shot (including the trajectory--low-medium-high; fade-straight-draw--yup, I was that dialed in), take my stance, and go! By the time I played the tougher back 9 for the 1st time, my drives were going just as I pictured them, only longer. I was finally feeling the clubhead, keeping my tempo slow and smooth, and finding the sweet spot almost without exception. And at some point that day the good vibes translated over to my irons. Even though I hit only 4 greens on the back, I was in much better control of my distance and ball flight on my approaches. The result was real birdie opportunities (I stuck a 9-iron to a back-left pin position on the short par-4 10th which was guarded by a trap short left and a creek right behind and to the left of the elevated green; I faded a 4-iron just past the pin on the long par-3 12th; I faded a 3-hybrid to the long par-3 17th against the wind, holding it on the same quadrant as the pin; and made the 1st putt and missed the next 2), along with much easier chips to save par. As a result, I only had 2 bogeys (both caused in part by pulled drives, the 2nd of which forced me to punch out from the trees) for a 37 with 13 putts.
Why my swing clicked so well last Thursday is still a mystery to me. Probably the biggest factor was having my dad look it over, check my alignment, and offer observations on my game and tactics. There's nothing that beats a tune-up from the person who taught you the game, attended every lesson you ever took, and knows your swing inside and out. But almost as influential was just watching his swing and his approach to the game, both the parts I liked and the mistakes I saw him making (both physical and mental). He turns 70 next May, but since he had a lesson with a local assistant pro a little while ago, he's been hitting his drives farther than I've seen him hit them in years. He's been taking full advantage of his 3-, 4-, and 5-hybrids and while his wedge game isn't as consistent as I remember it being he still sticks a fair number of pitches and 3-quarter swings with them. We shot a net 65 at Skenandoa the day before the gross best-ball event in the City Am. We were ready!
During
And then the rains came, both overnight and most of the morning before our shotgun start at Valley View Friday afternoon. Because it was pouring in the late morning, my dad and I had no chance to hit balls or work on our wedges at the Skenandoa driving range; plus, we only had a half hour on the Valley View putting green before heading out to the 2nd tee (a reachable par-5 and the last easy birdie hole until the medium-length par-4 15th). Like Seven Oaks, Valley View is a Robert Trent Jones course, so it has a good number of long par 4s and short par 5s, and it's filled with big, long greens with lots of undulations. But unlike Seven Oaks it also has sharply uphill holes (the long par-4 3rd, the short par-4 10th, and the medium par-3 14th) and downhill ones (the long par-4 7th, the short par-4 11th, the short par-5 17th). There's hardly a level area on any fairway, what with the elevation changes and the tilts, hills, and bumps on almost every hole. And the greens are tricky and grainy: everything is faster when you're putting in the direction of the reservoir and slower when you're putting away from it; wherever you are on the course, everything breaks toward the reservoir. The rains introduced 4 problems for me: (1) less roll off the tee (so the course wouldn't play as short as it usually did); (2) more uncertainty on what kind of approach shot to hit (punch it to land short of the green and bounce on or hit it high in an attempt to hold the usually very hard greens?); (3) more difficulty in judging the speed of each green (as they retain and drain water at different rates); and (4) lots more gear to be ready to deal with any more rain that might decide to come on down (and which would exacerbate problems 1-3).
While our playing partners handled all this well--they made 8 birdies and tied for 2nd with a 65 on the par-71 course--my dad and I kept putting ourselves in position and failed to convert. Over and over again, we were leaving uphill and against-the-grain birdie putts woefully short. I wasn't hitting my irons as pure as I had been that 2nd day at Skenandoa, but I still hit 12 greens and had at least decent birdie chances on most every one. On the day, I had 14 pars, a bogey, and only 1 birdie (and not on the 1st par 5--a 3-hybrid went all the way to the back of the 125-foot 2nd green when the pin was in front and I 3-putted for par when my 1st putt got hung up on the very top of the last undulation I needed to traverse--20 feet short of and higher than the pin!--but on the 2nd one, when I got up and down from just behind the back fringe in 2). And even on the 2 holes I was completely out of (I tripled the 7th when I pulled my drive into the creek running down the left side of the hole and tripled the 14th when I skulled a bunker shot into the woods behind the green), my dad made a great par save and an awesome birdie on those holes. Although he got off to a slow start, he carried us from the 14th through 1st holes (even though he missed a short birdie putt on 17, he was -1 over his last 6 holes--and it was raining pretty hard for the 1st 2 of them). So in the end, even though I only shot a 77 with 33 putts, we ended up with a respectable 70.
Heading into the 1st day of the individual competition, then, I was feeling pretty good. The weather forecast was better and I figured my putting was due to come around, given how many times I had played Valley View and the time the greens had had to dry off. Although I was no longer in the zone with my irons, my driving was strong and I hadn't missed a putt of 6 feet or less all week. All I had to do was play it safe at the start of my round, get it going in the middle, and finish strong. My foursome was starting on the par-3 6th, so the easy stretch from 14 through 2 would come in the heart of my round, and I figured my momentum and accuracy off the tee would carry me through the tough last 3 holes going up the big hill and into the woods. I knew the course would be set up short and easy the 1st day (and long and tricky the 2nd), so my goal was simply to break out of the high 70s and see how low I could go from there. My previous low was a 73 in 2001 and I didn't see any reason why I couldn't beat that this year.
But the winds that came up that morning and stuck around all day played havoc with my game plan. Although they made the 3 closing par 4s on the front shorter, they made my approach shots to front pins tougher. And although I focused on my short irons in my warm-up at Skenandoa that morning, I was focusing on 115-to-135 yard shots, whereas my 1st 2 drives put me about 100 yards out, 1st sharply downhill and then sharply uphill. So after a weak birdie attempt on the opening par 3 made me settle for par, I then fluffed 1 wedge and chunked the other--and could get up and down with my recovery pitches only once. From there, I pushed a drive way right and didn't handle my recovery punches well, missed a great birdie opportunity on 10, chunk-pulled a punch 7-iron with the ball well above my feet on 11 that led to my 3rd bogey of the day, hit a grounder instead of a punch 9-iron into 12 and was lucky to come away with a green in regulation and a 2 putt, and pushed my 3-hybrid almost into the right bunker on the long par-4 13th, forcing myself to make a great par save after a tentative and pulled pitch-chip with my 58-degree wedge.
Then things went from bad to worse. I shanked a 5-iron under a pine tree on the par-3 14th and could barely chip out sideways, pulled another short pitch, got a bad bounce, and doubled the hole. Then I pulled my drive on the medium par-4 15th almost into the trees, quit so bad on a punch 8-iron I had to draw into the green that I got another lucky GIR via a grounder, then proceeded to 3-putt for a bogey that left me at +6 through my 1st 10 holes, zero confidence in my irons, and an absolutely terrible mood heading into the 3 short finishing holes and 2 short opening holes that I now needed several birdies on to give myself enough of a cushion to still shoot a 75. My mood wasn't improved when I pulled a wedge on the 16th and needed to sink a tough 4-footer to save par after being surprised by how slow the downhill, with-the-grain 20-footer actually turned out to be.
But at least that was the low point of my round. Because when we got to the 17th tee, there were 3 teams waiting there, 1 just teeing off, and another on the green. During the 45-minute wait before we teed off, I calmed down, tried to nap, chatted with some people I knew, ate some food, stretched, and decided to play my last 8 holes as if they were part of a new round. Even though I eventually pushed my drive a little into the right rough 190 yards above the green, I actually hit a great 4-iron fade that even stayed on the green instead of rolling over the back, gave my 25-foot eagle putt a good run (but still left it a foot short), and tapped in for birdie when all 3 of my playing partners (who all ended up making the cut) missed out on their chances. So I had the honors on the short par-3 18th and the pin was exactly where I had envisioned it, front left on the sunken green that would funnel a push to the left and act as a backstop if you were to go a little long. With a right-to-left wind slightly at our backs, I planned to bring a 7-iron in from the right edge of the green, figuring that if it didn't draw as planned it would bounce left to the pin anyway. Instead I hung it out further right than expected, it failed to draw, the wind didn't move it, and it got stuck in an elevated yet blind bunker I had not only never come close to hitting but had even forgotten was there! A skulled sand shot and a terrible 3-putt later and I was +7 with only 2 birdie holes left to go. I figured the highest the cut would go maybe to +5 and probably would end up at +4 (I had shot a 76 and missed the cut back in 1991). So somehow I had to play the 1st 5 holes in at least -2 when my best start ever was E--including the time I had birdied 16, eagled 17, birdied 18, 1, and 2, and just missed a birdie on 3 in a best-ball with my dad at an early-2000s City Am. If I couldn't do it with that kind of momentum, how could I do it when my irons were a huge question mark and putts longer than 6 feet looked impossible to sink?
It being desperation time and all, I figured I had to go for broke. I would fire at every pin and force my irons and putter to respond. So of course I pushed my drive right on the 1st hole. Although they had removed the tree that guarded the right side of the green, it was still a downhill, right-to-left sloping fairway to a green protected by 2 big mounds on each side and a pin tucked back right behind the 2nd mound on the right. And I was in the right rough, about 105 yards from the pin. Normally I might hit a hard wedge to the middle of the green to protect against going over in case I caught a flyer, but this time I decided to try to land a 9-iron past the pin and to the left to avoid any kind of big kick from the mound or the right edge of the green--and somehow I executed the shot, sucking it back a little to be right below the hole with a 5-foot uphill barely left-to-right putt to get back to +6, which I canned. On 2 I hit a decent drive, but because the wind had picked up and I landed in a soft spot on the fairway, I had a 3-wood in to a pin that was about 10 feet from where my 3-hybrid the previous day had ended up. If I could get that 3-wood anywhere on the green, I would have a great chance to claw back to +5, just as I had when I hit a good approach on the other par-5 on the course, the 17th hole. Unfortunately, instead of hitting a slight draw I pushed it well right of my target. Still, I expected to be in the right bunker or even past or to the right of it, pin high or so in the right rough. Instead, I ended up next to a tree 30 yards or so short of the very front of the green. Probably my ball had hit it and dropped straight down. But at least it was a great lie, sitting up in the light rough right next to a cart path, so I decided not to take relief from it, even though I would be standing on it when I took my stance. Unfortunately, I swung a little too hard at it right at the bottom of my swing and flew it too far--way too far! It kicked off the back left fringe and bounded over the back of the green, down a hill, ending up near a tree just a few feet short of a service road that separated the 2nd green from the 3rd tee (and 7th green). It was an impossible up and down, even after a great 58-degree wedge that ended up only 12 feet past the pin on the correct tier.
And from there my chances were basically nil. I kept firing at pins, hitting a 3-hybrid 20 feet to the right of and a little past the front-left pin on #3, punching a 7-iron 35 feet short of the back-left pin on #4, and taking a driver on the narrow 5th hole, leaving myself 105 yards to the pin on #5 and 20 feet short left when I pulled my approach and it got trapped on the wrong tier. 2 2-putts and 1 3-putt later--which included my 1st miss from 6 feet or less and a donated ball to the golf gods of the woods in response--and my 1st individual tournament in 6 years was over: a 79 with 36 putts. I was simply unable to recover from my slow start, my AWOL irons, my disastrous par 3s on the back. Despite hitting 7 of my last 9 greens (after hitting only 3 in my 1st 9 holes) and making 2 birdies, I played those holes in +3 and took 20 putts (including a 2-putt birdie)--not nearly sharp enough. I hadn't been able to adjust to the speed and the grain of Valley View's greens, much less the wind or the pressure of playing with golfers who were longer and better than me. The young guy from Rome Country Club with whom I shared a cart shot a 70 and could easily have made it a 66 (or a 76, if his short putting hadn't been so solid); the 5-time champion who had tried the Senior Tour, injured his wrist, and gotten reinstated as an amateur scraped it around for a 74 (he would come back with a 69 on Sunday when the course was set up tougher and finish T3); the recent college grad had a bad day and still held it together for a 75. As it turned out, if I had only played the last 9 holes in E, I would have made the cut. Instead, I had the moral victory of overcoming the shame and humiliation I was feeling over my 1st 10 holes, the thrill of almost making every shot matter in a do-or-die situation, and the frustration of all my preparation coming down to 1 pushed 7-iron and 1 too-strong half-wedge. Oh, and we ate a great meal at a good Japanese restaurant and saw a good movie (Inception) afterwards that Saturday night, so the day wasn't a total loss. Just a deep deep disappointment.
After
When it was clear that Louis Oosthuizen had the Open Championship in hand, my mom and dad and I decided to take another shot at the front at Skenandoa before I would leave on Tuesday morning. My dad's swing had imploded the day before and he hadn't even broken 90, despite having hung right with me in all our preparatory play. I was even after 2 and thinking about how much more calm and serene normal rounds were than tournament golf when my irons and my equanimity disappeared over the last 7 holes, when I only hit 1 green and got 1 up and down and lost to my dad by 1 shot with my 3rd-straight round where I failed to break 40 on that stupid side. So I was in no condition, in my head or with my game, to handle the challenges of Seven Oaks today. We got lucky in 1 sense, as we never got rained on and all the lighting in the area avoided Hamilton, NY. But when you're +16 after 11 holes when you've only hit 2 greens and where everything that could go wrong did, you're not exactly in the frame of mind to count your blessings. Fortunately, I hit 6 of my last 7 greens and managed to 3-putt only 2 of them for a 49-42-91, my worst round since my 1st time playing Turning Stone's Kaluhyat course in August 2003 (a 93) and most demoralizing since I shot a 91 in the 2002 Mid-Am, the only time I ever made it through qualifying in my life.
It's not that I hit the ball that much worse than I had at the Easiest Course in the World, Skenandoa, or Valley View. In fact, I was driving the ball great today. It's just that Seven Oaks puts more pressure on your approach shots, makes your recovery shots more difficult (even if you miss the fringe just by a foot), and exposes every weakness you may have in your putting stroke and ability to read greens. 2 triples, 3 doubles, and 39 putts were my welcome back to a course that had changed so much since I had last played it in 2003. Tons of trees had been removed, especially around the 1st and 2nd greens and the left side of the 13th hole; the fairways were almost as short as the greens on the Easiest Course in the World but were so overwatered my drives were practically plugging in them; and the greens were probably the fastest I had ever putted (definitely faster than the Locust Hill putting green for the LPGA Championship). For awhile, I was afraid I wouldn't break 100; even when I started clubbing myself better, picking better targets, and missing my irons slightly less badly down the stretch, bad putting prevented me from breaking 90. But I'm not kidding that with the game I brought that day I could have broken 75 at the Easiest Course in the World and at Valley View and broken 80 at Skenandoa.
And even at one of the low points of my life in golf, there were still some cool moments. On the short par-5 7th, which has a creek meandering through the entire landing area, even if you want to cut off the dogleg from off the tee, I hit 2 solid 3 hybrids and chunked my punch 8-iron 25 feet short-left of the pin for my 2nd GIR of the day. After my dad made a 40-footer from the fringe for birdie, and our 2 rivals in the 6-hole high-low net match we were playing made birdies, too (the 1st by banging a 25-foot chip into the flagstick and the 2nd by sinking a 30-foot putt on a line almost directly opposite mine), I had no choice but to sink my birdie putt on top of them. Plus I almost hit the par-5 18th in 2, threading the needle to leave my 3-wood in a neck of fairway much smaller than the huge green--to the left of the pond, short of the trap, past the trees short left, and to the right of the rough (and the road) all along the left--in an effort to put pressure on my dad and his playing partner in the last 6-hole match (they both got strokes and my partner and I didn't).
So even though the bottom line is that even after all my preparation and practice, I plunged off the high-70s plateau instead of climbing beyond it this past week, I'm still in a good position to make this one of my best seasons ever. I have a month to start getting used to going low again (only 5 of my 39 9-hole scores have been 37 or lower and my low of 36 is 1 worse than 2009, 1999, 1998, and 1991; 2 worse than 2008, 2004, 2000, and 1992; 3 worse than 2003, 2001, 1997, and 1993; and 4 worse than 2002), get my feel back with my irons and wedges, and improve my putting on faster greens. It's only a matter of time before I start taking advantage of the opportunities my driver is giving me this season, gain the same confidence with my short irons and wedges that I have with my fairway woods and 3-hybrid, and feel the same way about 10- and 20-foot putts as I do about 5-footers. The better my game is, the better I'll be able to handle the pressure and the emotions that make tournament golf so different from playing a match against yourself virtually alone on an easy 9-hole course. But it's back to that for the time being.
[Update 1 (7/20/10, 9:33 pm): Yup, shot a 76 at the Easiest Course in the World this evening. Lots of bogeys, but an eagle and 3 birdies almost made up for them. Just had to slow down and relax on my irons--started hitting them much better!]
So I was happy I was free to come to Clinton a couple of days before the best-ball portion of the event to practice and play with my dad (who was also my college golf team coach). It was my best chance to break out of the skills and scoring plateau I seemed to be stuck in. We decided to play Skenandoa before the City Am and Seven Oaks after it. It would be a good test of where my game stood a month before the qualifier for the NYSGA's Men's Mid-Amateur event. Skenandoa was where my college golf team did most of its practice rounds and Seven Oaks (Colgate University's home course) was not only the site of various competitions and qualifiers I had participated in since junior golf, but a course that I played virtually every summer weekend during my teen years.
Before
All the problems that I moaned about at the end of the 1st week of July reared their ugly heads last Thursday evening and Friday morning, as I played the easier front side at Skenandoa twice in a row and utterly failed to take advantage of it. Although I hit 10 of those 18 greens, I made only 1 birdie, 3-putted 2 of the greens I hit, and had only 2 1-putts over the other 8 holes, so it should be no surprise I shot an 82 with 35 putts. But while my irons and short game were suffering, I started really feeling it with my woods and 3-hybrid. By the time I was finishing the front the 2nd time around, I was locked in with my driver, which I had really been struggling with the week before. All of a sudden, my mind was absolutely empty during my preshot routine; I was focused completely on my target and trusted my swing, so I didn't need to go through any kind of mental checklist or remind myself with either a swing thought or "feeling" (see Ruthless Golf for that very useful tip). It was just choose a target, picture the shot (including the trajectory--low-medium-high; fade-straight-draw--yup, I was that dialed in), take my stance, and go! By the time I played the tougher back 9 for the 1st time, my drives were going just as I pictured them, only longer. I was finally feeling the clubhead, keeping my tempo slow and smooth, and finding the sweet spot almost without exception. And at some point that day the good vibes translated over to my irons. Even though I hit only 4 greens on the back, I was in much better control of my distance and ball flight on my approaches. The result was real birdie opportunities (I stuck a 9-iron to a back-left pin position on the short par-4 10th which was guarded by a trap short left and a creek right behind and to the left of the elevated green; I faded a 4-iron just past the pin on the long par-3 12th; I faded a 3-hybrid to the long par-3 17th against the wind, holding it on the same quadrant as the pin; and made the 1st putt and missed the next 2), along with much easier chips to save par. As a result, I only had 2 bogeys (both caused in part by pulled drives, the 2nd of which forced me to punch out from the trees) for a 37 with 13 putts.
Why my swing clicked so well last Thursday is still a mystery to me. Probably the biggest factor was having my dad look it over, check my alignment, and offer observations on my game and tactics. There's nothing that beats a tune-up from the person who taught you the game, attended every lesson you ever took, and knows your swing inside and out. But almost as influential was just watching his swing and his approach to the game, both the parts I liked and the mistakes I saw him making (both physical and mental). He turns 70 next May, but since he had a lesson with a local assistant pro a little while ago, he's been hitting his drives farther than I've seen him hit them in years. He's been taking full advantage of his 3-, 4-, and 5-hybrids and while his wedge game isn't as consistent as I remember it being he still sticks a fair number of pitches and 3-quarter swings with them. We shot a net 65 at Skenandoa the day before the gross best-ball event in the City Am. We were ready!
During
And then the rains came, both overnight and most of the morning before our shotgun start at Valley View Friday afternoon. Because it was pouring in the late morning, my dad and I had no chance to hit balls or work on our wedges at the Skenandoa driving range; plus, we only had a half hour on the Valley View putting green before heading out to the 2nd tee (a reachable par-5 and the last easy birdie hole until the medium-length par-4 15th). Like Seven Oaks, Valley View is a Robert Trent Jones course, so it has a good number of long par 4s and short par 5s, and it's filled with big, long greens with lots of undulations. But unlike Seven Oaks it also has sharply uphill holes (the long par-4 3rd, the short par-4 10th, and the medium par-3 14th) and downhill ones (the long par-4 7th, the short par-4 11th, the short par-5 17th). There's hardly a level area on any fairway, what with the elevation changes and the tilts, hills, and bumps on almost every hole. And the greens are tricky and grainy: everything is faster when you're putting in the direction of the reservoir and slower when you're putting away from it; wherever you are on the course, everything breaks toward the reservoir. The rains introduced 4 problems for me: (1) less roll off the tee (so the course wouldn't play as short as it usually did); (2) more uncertainty on what kind of approach shot to hit (punch it to land short of the green and bounce on or hit it high in an attempt to hold the usually very hard greens?); (3) more difficulty in judging the speed of each green (as they retain and drain water at different rates); and (4) lots more gear to be ready to deal with any more rain that might decide to come on down (and which would exacerbate problems 1-3).
While our playing partners handled all this well--they made 8 birdies and tied for 2nd with a 65 on the par-71 course--my dad and I kept putting ourselves in position and failed to convert. Over and over again, we were leaving uphill and against-the-grain birdie putts woefully short. I wasn't hitting my irons as pure as I had been that 2nd day at Skenandoa, but I still hit 12 greens and had at least decent birdie chances on most every one. On the day, I had 14 pars, a bogey, and only 1 birdie (and not on the 1st par 5--a 3-hybrid went all the way to the back of the 125-foot 2nd green when the pin was in front and I 3-putted for par when my 1st putt got hung up on the very top of the last undulation I needed to traverse--20 feet short of and higher than the pin!--but on the 2nd one, when I got up and down from just behind the back fringe in 2). And even on the 2 holes I was completely out of (I tripled the 7th when I pulled my drive into the creek running down the left side of the hole and tripled the 14th when I skulled a bunker shot into the woods behind the green), my dad made a great par save and an awesome birdie on those holes. Although he got off to a slow start, he carried us from the 14th through 1st holes (even though he missed a short birdie putt on 17, he was -1 over his last 6 holes--and it was raining pretty hard for the 1st 2 of them). So in the end, even though I only shot a 77 with 33 putts, we ended up with a respectable 70.
Heading into the 1st day of the individual competition, then, I was feeling pretty good. The weather forecast was better and I figured my putting was due to come around, given how many times I had played Valley View and the time the greens had had to dry off. Although I was no longer in the zone with my irons, my driving was strong and I hadn't missed a putt of 6 feet or less all week. All I had to do was play it safe at the start of my round, get it going in the middle, and finish strong. My foursome was starting on the par-3 6th, so the easy stretch from 14 through 2 would come in the heart of my round, and I figured my momentum and accuracy off the tee would carry me through the tough last 3 holes going up the big hill and into the woods. I knew the course would be set up short and easy the 1st day (and long and tricky the 2nd), so my goal was simply to break out of the high 70s and see how low I could go from there. My previous low was a 73 in 2001 and I didn't see any reason why I couldn't beat that this year.
But the winds that came up that morning and stuck around all day played havoc with my game plan. Although they made the 3 closing par 4s on the front shorter, they made my approach shots to front pins tougher. And although I focused on my short irons in my warm-up at Skenandoa that morning, I was focusing on 115-to-135 yard shots, whereas my 1st 2 drives put me about 100 yards out, 1st sharply downhill and then sharply uphill. So after a weak birdie attempt on the opening par 3 made me settle for par, I then fluffed 1 wedge and chunked the other--and could get up and down with my recovery pitches only once. From there, I pushed a drive way right and didn't handle my recovery punches well, missed a great birdie opportunity on 10, chunk-pulled a punch 7-iron with the ball well above my feet on 11 that led to my 3rd bogey of the day, hit a grounder instead of a punch 9-iron into 12 and was lucky to come away with a green in regulation and a 2 putt, and pushed my 3-hybrid almost into the right bunker on the long par-4 13th, forcing myself to make a great par save after a tentative and pulled pitch-chip with my 58-degree wedge.
Then things went from bad to worse. I shanked a 5-iron under a pine tree on the par-3 14th and could barely chip out sideways, pulled another short pitch, got a bad bounce, and doubled the hole. Then I pulled my drive on the medium par-4 15th almost into the trees, quit so bad on a punch 8-iron I had to draw into the green that I got another lucky GIR via a grounder, then proceeded to 3-putt for a bogey that left me at +6 through my 1st 10 holes, zero confidence in my irons, and an absolutely terrible mood heading into the 3 short finishing holes and 2 short opening holes that I now needed several birdies on to give myself enough of a cushion to still shoot a 75. My mood wasn't improved when I pulled a wedge on the 16th and needed to sink a tough 4-footer to save par after being surprised by how slow the downhill, with-the-grain 20-footer actually turned out to be.
But at least that was the low point of my round. Because when we got to the 17th tee, there were 3 teams waiting there, 1 just teeing off, and another on the green. During the 45-minute wait before we teed off, I calmed down, tried to nap, chatted with some people I knew, ate some food, stretched, and decided to play my last 8 holes as if they were part of a new round. Even though I eventually pushed my drive a little into the right rough 190 yards above the green, I actually hit a great 4-iron fade that even stayed on the green instead of rolling over the back, gave my 25-foot eagle putt a good run (but still left it a foot short), and tapped in for birdie when all 3 of my playing partners (who all ended up making the cut) missed out on their chances. So I had the honors on the short par-3 18th and the pin was exactly where I had envisioned it, front left on the sunken green that would funnel a push to the left and act as a backstop if you were to go a little long. With a right-to-left wind slightly at our backs, I planned to bring a 7-iron in from the right edge of the green, figuring that if it didn't draw as planned it would bounce left to the pin anyway. Instead I hung it out further right than expected, it failed to draw, the wind didn't move it, and it got stuck in an elevated yet blind bunker I had not only never come close to hitting but had even forgotten was there! A skulled sand shot and a terrible 3-putt later and I was +7 with only 2 birdie holes left to go. I figured the highest the cut would go maybe to +5 and probably would end up at +4 (I had shot a 76 and missed the cut back in 1991). So somehow I had to play the 1st 5 holes in at least -2 when my best start ever was E--including the time I had birdied 16, eagled 17, birdied 18, 1, and 2, and just missed a birdie on 3 in a best-ball with my dad at an early-2000s City Am. If I couldn't do it with that kind of momentum, how could I do it when my irons were a huge question mark and putts longer than 6 feet looked impossible to sink?
It being desperation time and all, I figured I had to go for broke. I would fire at every pin and force my irons and putter to respond. So of course I pushed my drive right on the 1st hole. Although they had removed the tree that guarded the right side of the green, it was still a downhill, right-to-left sloping fairway to a green protected by 2 big mounds on each side and a pin tucked back right behind the 2nd mound on the right. And I was in the right rough, about 105 yards from the pin. Normally I might hit a hard wedge to the middle of the green to protect against going over in case I caught a flyer, but this time I decided to try to land a 9-iron past the pin and to the left to avoid any kind of big kick from the mound or the right edge of the green--and somehow I executed the shot, sucking it back a little to be right below the hole with a 5-foot uphill barely left-to-right putt to get back to +6, which I canned. On 2 I hit a decent drive, but because the wind had picked up and I landed in a soft spot on the fairway, I had a 3-wood in to a pin that was about 10 feet from where my 3-hybrid the previous day had ended up. If I could get that 3-wood anywhere on the green, I would have a great chance to claw back to +5, just as I had when I hit a good approach on the other par-5 on the course, the 17th hole. Unfortunately, instead of hitting a slight draw I pushed it well right of my target. Still, I expected to be in the right bunker or even past or to the right of it, pin high or so in the right rough. Instead, I ended up next to a tree 30 yards or so short of the very front of the green. Probably my ball had hit it and dropped straight down. But at least it was a great lie, sitting up in the light rough right next to a cart path, so I decided not to take relief from it, even though I would be standing on it when I took my stance. Unfortunately, I swung a little too hard at it right at the bottom of my swing and flew it too far--way too far! It kicked off the back left fringe and bounded over the back of the green, down a hill, ending up near a tree just a few feet short of a service road that separated the 2nd green from the 3rd tee (and 7th green). It was an impossible up and down, even after a great 58-degree wedge that ended up only 12 feet past the pin on the correct tier.
And from there my chances were basically nil. I kept firing at pins, hitting a 3-hybrid 20 feet to the right of and a little past the front-left pin on #3, punching a 7-iron 35 feet short of the back-left pin on #4, and taking a driver on the narrow 5th hole, leaving myself 105 yards to the pin on #5 and 20 feet short left when I pulled my approach and it got trapped on the wrong tier. 2 2-putts and 1 3-putt later--which included my 1st miss from 6 feet or less and a donated ball to the golf gods of the woods in response--and my 1st individual tournament in 6 years was over: a 79 with 36 putts. I was simply unable to recover from my slow start, my AWOL irons, my disastrous par 3s on the back. Despite hitting 7 of my last 9 greens (after hitting only 3 in my 1st 9 holes) and making 2 birdies, I played those holes in +3 and took 20 putts (including a 2-putt birdie)--not nearly sharp enough. I hadn't been able to adjust to the speed and the grain of Valley View's greens, much less the wind or the pressure of playing with golfers who were longer and better than me. The young guy from Rome Country Club with whom I shared a cart shot a 70 and could easily have made it a 66 (or a 76, if his short putting hadn't been so solid); the 5-time champion who had tried the Senior Tour, injured his wrist, and gotten reinstated as an amateur scraped it around for a 74 (he would come back with a 69 on Sunday when the course was set up tougher and finish T3); the recent college grad had a bad day and still held it together for a 75. As it turned out, if I had only played the last 9 holes in E, I would have made the cut. Instead, I had the moral victory of overcoming the shame and humiliation I was feeling over my 1st 10 holes, the thrill of almost making every shot matter in a do-or-die situation, and the frustration of all my preparation coming down to 1 pushed 7-iron and 1 too-strong half-wedge. Oh, and we ate a great meal at a good Japanese restaurant and saw a good movie (Inception) afterwards that Saturday night, so the day wasn't a total loss. Just a deep deep disappointment.
After
When it was clear that Louis Oosthuizen had the Open Championship in hand, my mom and dad and I decided to take another shot at the front at Skenandoa before I would leave on Tuesday morning. My dad's swing had imploded the day before and he hadn't even broken 90, despite having hung right with me in all our preparatory play. I was even after 2 and thinking about how much more calm and serene normal rounds were than tournament golf when my irons and my equanimity disappeared over the last 7 holes, when I only hit 1 green and got 1 up and down and lost to my dad by 1 shot with my 3rd-straight round where I failed to break 40 on that stupid side. So I was in no condition, in my head or with my game, to handle the challenges of Seven Oaks today. We got lucky in 1 sense, as we never got rained on and all the lighting in the area avoided Hamilton, NY. But when you're +16 after 11 holes when you've only hit 2 greens and where everything that could go wrong did, you're not exactly in the frame of mind to count your blessings. Fortunately, I hit 6 of my last 7 greens and managed to 3-putt only 2 of them for a 49-42-91, my worst round since my 1st time playing Turning Stone's Kaluhyat course in August 2003 (a 93) and most demoralizing since I shot a 91 in the 2002 Mid-Am, the only time I ever made it through qualifying in my life.
It's not that I hit the ball that much worse than I had at the Easiest Course in the World, Skenandoa, or Valley View. In fact, I was driving the ball great today. It's just that Seven Oaks puts more pressure on your approach shots, makes your recovery shots more difficult (even if you miss the fringe just by a foot), and exposes every weakness you may have in your putting stroke and ability to read greens. 2 triples, 3 doubles, and 39 putts were my welcome back to a course that had changed so much since I had last played it in 2003. Tons of trees had been removed, especially around the 1st and 2nd greens and the left side of the 13th hole; the fairways were almost as short as the greens on the Easiest Course in the World but were so overwatered my drives were practically plugging in them; and the greens were probably the fastest I had ever putted (definitely faster than the Locust Hill putting green for the LPGA Championship). For awhile, I was afraid I wouldn't break 100; even when I started clubbing myself better, picking better targets, and missing my irons slightly less badly down the stretch, bad putting prevented me from breaking 90. But I'm not kidding that with the game I brought that day I could have broken 75 at the Easiest Course in the World and at Valley View and broken 80 at Skenandoa.
And even at one of the low points of my life in golf, there were still some cool moments. On the short par-5 7th, which has a creek meandering through the entire landing area, even if you want to cut off the dogleg from off the tee, I hit 2 solid 3 hybrids and chunked my punch 8-iron 25 feet short-left of the pin for my 2nd GIR of the day. After my dad made a 40-footer from the fringe for birdie, and our 2 rivals in the 6-hole high-low net match we were playing made birdies, too (the 1st by banging a 25-foot chip into the flagstick and the 2nd by sinking a 30-foot putt on a line almost directly opposite mine), I had no choice but to sink my birdie putt on top of them. Plus I almost hit the par-5 18th in 2, threading the needle to leave my 3-wood in a neck of fairway much smaller than the huge green--to the left of the pond, short of the trap, past the trees short left, and to the right of the rough (and the road) all along the left--in an effort to put pressure on my dad and his playing partner in the last 6-hole match (they both got strokes and my partner and I didn't).
So even though the bottom line is that even after all my preparation and practice, I plunged off the high-70s plateau instead of climbing beyond it this past week, I'm still in a good position to make this one of my best seasons ever. I have a month to start getting used to going low again (only 5 of my 39 9-hole scores have been 37 or lower and my low of 36 is 1 worse than 2009, 1999, 1998, and 1991; 2 worse than 2008, 2004, 2000, and 1992; 3 worse than 2003, 2001, 1997, and 1993; and 4 worse than 2002), get my feel back with my irons and wedges, and improve my putting on faster greens. It's only a matter of time before I start taking advantage of the opportunities my driver is giving me this season, gain the same confidence with my short irons and wedges that I have with my fairway woods and 3-hybrid, and feel the same way about 10- and 20-foot putts as I do about 5-footers. The better my game is, the better I'll be able to handle the pressure and the emotions that make tournament golf so different from playing a match against yourself virtually alone on an easy 9-hole course. But it's back to that for the time being.
[Update 1 (7/20/10, 9:33 pm): Yup, shot a 76 at the Easiest Course in the World this evening. Lots of bogeys, but an eagle and 3 birdies almost made up for them. Just had to slow down and relax on my irons--started hitting them much better!]
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Sakaki Rides a Dolphin in the New Savanna
Hey kids! I've set up a new blog, just around the corner. It's called New Savanna. And it's got photos and writing AND, a longish piece about a dolphin ride that I couldn't post at That Other Place. It's got about 10 seconds or so in Azumanga Daioh, one of the cutest anime series ever (for tweeners, I suppose).
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Wegmans Is Back, Baby!
Great news from one of Hound Dog's regulars who linked to the following report that the LPGA and Wegmans have agreed to a multi-year deal. Here's the LPGA's announcement.
You know what this means: more Constructivist family trips to Rochester in June!
You know what this means: more Constructivist family trips to Rochester in June!
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
PGA Tour Update: Kevin Roman Makes PGA Championship
Kevin who? Well, you can find his name on the PGA Championship pairings sheet alongside Louis Oosthuizen's and the "Legends Reno-Tahoe WINNER" (that would be John Rollins, and yes, I had to look it up) going off the 10th at 9:15 am Thursday and the 1st at 2:25 pm Friday. Don't be fooled by the Tour's claim that he comes from Georgia's version of Area 51, though. Nope, he's a Utica, NY native, through and through (OK, New Hartford, which is basically an exurb of Utica--or is it New York Mills, where he went to high school?). And he's blogging his PGA Championship experience. He seems to think he's playing with Matt Kuchar instead of Rollins--and, lo and behold, he's right. (The Tour and the PGA of America ought to compare notes once in a while.) If you're interested in how he qualified, dear reader, click on (and on and on and on). Me, I'm going to dredge up what I remember about Kevin from our central NY days.
He seemed to be a few years older than me when I first started playing junior golf, which back then made a big difference (turns out he's less than a couple of years older!). He was always friendly and funny, but I was pretty shy back then and didn't get to know him well. I remember him being super-long--and that was back before the ball revolution I've written about here before. But he also struck me as more interested in having a good time--on and off the course--than in developing his talents. Turns out that practical joker persona of his masked an intense love for the game and dedication to practice. The course I associate most with him is Utica's Valley View, a hilly, tree-lined Robert Trent Jones, Jr. design across the street from a reservoir, where he was an assistant pro when I competed in Utica City Amateurs in 1991-1993 (that last year he qualified for the U.S. Open) and 1997-2004 (although he must have left for Area 51 sometime around 2002). Even after he turned pro, you could tell he would have teed it up in a heartbeat if he could--he loved competition that much.
Other than that, there's not much to add, except to wish him luck. He certainly has the talent to do more than just make the cut. Let's see if he can do better than fellow Utican Moira Dunn has in majors this year!
[Update 1 (8/13/09, 3:43 pm): Welcome, Devil Ballers and assorted yahoos! I always appreciate the links from Jay Busbee. I'm well aware of how Kevin played today. I'm rooting for a big comeback tomorrow.]
[Update 2 (5:13 pm): This is awesome. Jay Flemma did an excellent profile of Kevin, too! Wonder how I never knew he played against both Moira and Kevin? Blogoramaville is truly a small world.]
He seemed to be a few years older than me when I first started playing junior golf, which back then made a big difference (turns out he's less than a couple of years older!). He was always friendly and funny, but I was pretty shy back then and didn't get to know him well. I remember him being super-long--and that was back before the ball revolution I've written about here before. But he also struck me as more interested in having a good time--on and off the course--than in developing his talents. Turns out that practical joker persona of his masked an intense love for the game and dedication to practice. The course I associate most with him is Utica's Valley View, a hilly, tree-lined Robert Trent Jones, Jr. design across the street from a reservoir, where he was an assistant pro when I competed in Utica City Amateurs in 1991-1993 (that last year he qualified for the U.S. Open) and 1997-2004 (although he must have left for Area 51 sometime around 2002). Even after he turned pro, you could tell he would have teed it up in a heartbeat if he could--he loved competition that much.
Other than that, there's not much to add, except to wish him luck. He certainly has the talent to do more than just make the cut. Let's see if he can do better than fellow Utican Moira Dunn has in majors this year!
[Update 1 (8/13/09, 3:43 pm): Welcome, Devil Ballers and assorted yahoos! I always appreciate the links from Jay Busbee. I'm well aware of how Kevin played today. I'm rooting for a big comeback tomorrow.]
[Update 2 (5:13 pm): This is awesome. Jay Flemma did an excellent profile of Kevin, too! Wonder how I never knew he played against both Moira and Kevin? Blogoramaville is truly a small world.]
Monday, July 13, 2009
Dear Media: This Ain't Reality TV
In one of my last updates to my not-quite-live-blogging the final round of the U.S. Women's Open, I had occasion to ask,
Whether it was Leonard Shapiro hoping for a Cristie Kerr win or Michael Arkush bemoaning a Paula Creamer moving day implosion, something fishy was in the air this week, and it wasn't just those doing the color commentary who were the source of it. Consider who among the following 3 pairs of golfers captured the imagination and attention of the national media in the Sunday game stories you read today.
Yeah, yeah, beyond the fact that it's always the blonde American LPGAers who get the word count from the U.S. media, I get it that Kerr and Lincicome have each won a major recently and that Creamer may well be the best player on tour without one. Yes, Suzann Pettersen also made a late birdie to join Creamer and Miyazato as co-leaders in the clubhouse until Lincicome, Kim, and Kung surpassed them, so it's not just the Taiwan-born, Korean, or Japanese players who fall outside the media spotlight. And yes, I'll even confess to feeling the same things that lead to these kinds of oversights: I was disappointed 2 Sundays ago when Morgan Pressel's dramatic comeback on Eunjung Yi at the Farr came just short.
But a 1st LPGA win for my #11-ranked Super Soph is less of a story than my #2-ranked Junior Mint coming back from a mini-slump this season to get her 2nd career win and 1st major with a walkoff birdie on women's golf's biggest stage. And the fact that she beat Kung, Kim, Miyazato, and Pettersen is just as significant as the fact that she beat Kerr, Lincicome, and Creamer.
I'm off to take out my frustrations on the course--for the 1st time since last August, so I'm pretty excited. Maybe in the meantime someone in the national media will prove me wrong and find a compelling way to frame what really happened at Saucon Valley rather than focusing only on the news that's "fit to print" in their eyes. And maybe everyone will realize that the LPGA's future doesn't rest on one individual or nationality, that the point of sports is the thrilling competition itself.
Yeah, and maybe I'll break 75 on The Easiest Course in the World today.
[Update 1 (12:09 pm): Well, I couldn't even break 80 today (the rust on my 30-to-90 yard game was something fierce!), but I got to catch up with one of my golfing buddies from years ago and we had a fun 3 and a half hours. Nice to come back to find that Jay Busbee's got my back (and a link to a very good Brian Murphy piece)!]
[Update 2 (12:18 pm): Also a nice overview from Amy Ellis Nutt out of the Newark Star-Ledger. Have I misunderestimated the national media?]
[Update 3 (12:30 pm): But the basic question remains: will the national media be able to get the story right? My benchmark is whether they understand the tournament and final round as well as long-time LPGA bloggers Hound Dog and Bill Jempty.]
[Update 4 (1:15 pm): The smaller-market golf writers are doing a good job. Here's Mark Wogenrich out of PA's Lehigh Valley, Andrew Shay out of Bethlehem, and Gerry Dulac out of Pittsburgh. But Mike Kirn of the Philadelphia Daily News, Joe Juliano of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Michael Whitmer of the Boston Globe did just fine. Still, the SI guys only focus on Creamer's and Kerr's collapses--the rest is on who will replace Bivens. (More on that in another post.)]
[Update 5 (7/14/09, 12:30 pm): John Strege gets it right, as usual.]
When is the national media going to realize that sports are different than a reality tv show and that their job isn't to script an event but to report on it?
Whether it was Leonard Shapiro hoping for a Cristie Kerr win or Michael Arkush bemoaning a Paula Creamer moving day implosion, something fishy was in the air this week, and it wasn't just those doing the color commentary who were the source of it. Consider who among the following 3 pairs of golfers captured the imagination and attention of the national media in the Sunday game stories you read today.
- Cristie Kerr and Candie Kung: the last leader in the clubhouse--and her disappointing bogey on the 71st hole of the tournament--were almost completely eclipsed by the focus on Kerr's struggles with her game.
- Brittany Lincicome and In-Kyung Kim: the player who was actually tied for the lead late on the back 9--and who bogeyed the final hole to fall out of a tie with Kung--gets eclipsed by a player who made a charge early on the back but fizzled from 15 on.
- Paula Creamer and Ai Miyazato: both players made late birdies to become the 1st leaders in the clubhouse (at +4) to actually put a little pressure on those in the final pairings, but you'll only find out about 1 of them if you rely on the national media.
Yeah, yeah, beyond the fact that it's always the blonde American LPGAers who get the word count from the U.S. media, I get it that Kerr and Lincicome have each won a major recently and that Creamer may well be the best player on tour without one. Yes, Suzann Pettersen also made a late birdie to join Creamer and Miyazato as co-leaders in the clubhouse until Lincicome, Kim, and Kung surpassed them, so it's not just the Taiwan-born, Korean, or Japanese players who fall outside the media spotlight. And yes, I'll even confess to feeling the same things that lead to these kinds of oversights: I was disappointed 2 Sundays ago when Morgan Pressel's dramatic comeback on Eunjung Yi at the Farr came just short.
But a 1st LPGA win for my #11-ranked Super Soph is less of a story than my #2-ranked Junior Mint coming back from a mini-slump this season to get her 2nd career win and 1st major with a walkoff birdie on women's golf's biggest stage. And the fact that she beat Kung, Kim, Miyazato, and Pettersen is just as significant as the fact that she beat Kerr, Lincicome, and Creamer.
I'm off to take out my frustrations on the course--for the 1st time since last August, so I'm pretty excited. Maybe in the meantime someone in the national media will prove me wrong and find a compelling way to frame what really happened at Saucon Valley rather than focusing only on the news that's "fit to print" in their eyes. And maybe everyone will realize that the LPGA's future doesn't rest on one individual or nationality, that the point of sports is the thrilling competition itself.
Yeah, and maybe I'll break 75 on The Easiest Course in the World today.
[Update 1 (12:09 pm): Well, I couldn't even break 80 today (the rust on my 30-to-90 yard game was something fierce!), but I got to catch up with one of my golfing buddies from years ago and we had a fun 3 and a half hours. Nice to come back to find that Jay Busbee's got my back (and a link to a very good Brian Murphy piece)!]
[Update 2 (12:18 pm): Also a nice overview from Amy Ellis Nutt out of the Newark Star-Ledger. Have I misunderestimated the national media?]
[Update 3 (12:30 pm): But the basic question remains: will the national media be able to get the story right? My benchmark is whether they understand the tournament and final round as well as long-time LPGA bloggers Hound Dog and Bill Jempty.]
[Update 4 (1:15 pm): The smaller-market golf writers are doing a good job. Here's Mark Wogenrich out of PA's Lehigh Valley, Andrew Shay out of Bethlehem, and Gerry Dulac out of Pittsburgh. But Mike Kirn of the Philadelphia Daily News, Joe Juliano of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Michael Whitmer of the Boston Globe did just fine. Still, the SI guys only focus on Creamer's and Kerr's collapses--the rest is on who will replace Bivens. (More on that in another post.)]
[Update 5 (7/14/09, 12:30 pm): John Strege gets it right, as usual.]
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Walking the Wegmans with Onechan
No, this is not a post about taking my 5-and-a-half-year-old daughter to the grocery store. Sorry to disappoint you.
What this is about is the road trip a jet-lagged onechan and I took to the Rochester area to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Wegmans LPGA tournament at Locust Hills Golf Club. We got to hook up with my mom and dad for a little while, follow Mika Miyazato and then Ai Miyazato, play in the Sports Zone, meet Meredith Duncan, face off in Wii golf, and avoid every single drop of rain that fell on Pittsford that weekend. What I didn't get to do was try out the LPGA's new blogger media-credentialing process (I missed the deadline the 1st half of our visit to the Full Metal Archivist's family in Japan), follow the range of players I wanted to, or hang with Momoko Ueda on the driving range (yes, she missed the cut but worked hard on her game all weekend).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning, which is my crazy decision to take a pre-school girl who fell asleep from noon to 8 pm Friday and stayed up till 5:30 am on Saturday on a 2-hour drive to walk as many holes as we possibly could on a rain-delayed moving day. At least I had the sense not to try to take her 3-year-old sister, imoto, along with us. She had been enough of a handful when she was 2 that I couldn't envision taking a more mobile, articulate, independent (to put it nicely), louder, faster, and sleepier (last night was the 1st dinner she had since returning to the States late last Thursday) girl to an LPGA event. Now, the Futures Tour event in Syracuse at the end of the month, that's another story. But I'll save her 2nd LPGA experience for next year. Assuming there is a next year. (Check Dave Hackenberg's excellent piece on this week's event for context on the LPGA's shrinking schedule.) Anyway, my worries about onechan proved to be unfounded. She entertained me on the drive up telling stories about Foxy, a character she just made up. Apparently he gets into a lot of trouble and is often sad or lonely, but onechan told the stories in a gleeful voice and loved to come up with abrupt endings that she found hilarious. Uncle Bill Benzon and Grandpa Bob should be proud!
Speaking of Grandpa Bob, I had to question his judgment for suggesting that we meet at the pro shop rather than at the 17th green, right near where the shuttle buses let you off, not to mention the Sports Zone and the food dome. Sure, thanks to our oversleeping we missed all the early morning groups finishing their 2nd rounds, but onechan had to handle a long walk across the street and up the 10th fairway to see him and Grandma Joy for the 1st time since well before we had left for Japan in late May. As it turned out, though, both the walk itself and the search for my folks (we circled the pro shop twice before we found them) were totally awesome. Onechan was carrying a fairly large plastic baby doll, which she had dolled up for the event by drawing in blue ink flowers in the little hair she had, earrings, nail polish, and lipstick, and as she was getting a lot of "Aww, cute" looks from fans, players, and caddies, I decided to make a bet with her that she would be the only kid with a doll or toy we'd see all day. Trying to find evidence to win our bet turned out to be a fun game for her. As for me, I was struck by how intimate a setting a golf course is for a sporting event. I was walking by pros whose faces looked familiar but whom I couldn't quite place ("Is that Mika Miyazato? Or maybe Ji Young Oh?"). Some players I definitely knew: Vicky Hurst, Jane Park--and of course Ai Miyazato, who just happened to be at the putting green when onechan and I made it to the pro shop area. As Ai-chan was leaving, I was able to say, "Kyoo gambare!" (Go for it today!) to her. I don't know if she remembered onechan or me from last year, but she looked down at the short American wearing a hat bought in Okinawa that said "Island Boy" in kanji and kneeling down by a young girl wearing a flower print dress we'd bought in Hawaii in the middle of my Fulbright year, smiled, and said "Thank you," very sweetly.
Not long after that, we ran into my mom and dad and they had plenty of stories for us. My mom, who is a champion talker, told me how they had run into Karrie Webb while the 3rd-round pairings were being organized, so of course she told her about how big a fan onechan is of her and how I had invented Carrie Mi, Karrie Yoo, and Keri Hu (still useful devices for teasing onechan and imoto out of a desire to be carried!). My dad was psyched that a lesson on the driving range had shortened my mom's Mi Hyun Kim/Sakura Yokomine-like backswing and flattened its plane so well that she was carrying her driver around 150 yards (sadly, the lesson didn't carry over to the course when they got back to Clinton). And we played the game of "Who is that...?" as we got our food, walked over to tables by the 10th tees, and perused the pairings sheet I had gotten from a volunteer as we had been looking for my folks. (He got me on Katherine Hull, and I mistook Na Yeon Choi for Eun-Hee Ji.) He told me how impressed he was by Vicky Hurst ("She could be a center for a women's basketball team") and how Cheyenne Woods's game was much better than he had expected. (Guess who they had followed on Friday!)
So, yeah, with players going off the 10th tee while we were eating--I got a good look at Aree Song's swing (not a lot of shoulder turn there), for instance--and the 1st tee right around the corner, my dad's idea of meeting at the pro shop to follow some early groups was a good one. And when I saw that Mika Miyazato was going off 2 groups ahead of Ai-chan--and that Na Yeon Choi was in the former group while Se Ri Pak was in the latter, not to mention that Amanda Blumenherst was in the threesome between them--I immediately pitched my idea that we follow Mika as long as onechan could handle it, then rest to wait for Ai-chan and follow her as long as possible before resting and watching the leading pairings play through. Best laid plans, of course: my parents were too tired from their Friday outing to make it past the 4th tee before they headed out for home, while the second onechan realized that the front 9 circled back to the clubhouse, she was more interested in getting to the Sports Zone across the street than making it to the 8th green to hang out for 45 minutes. And of course I kept us as far away from the greens as possible, not trusting onechan not to blurt out whatever thought happened to come into her mind at any moment. So I didn't get to see Mika actually make a downhill curling 15-footer for birdie on the uphill par-4 2nd, or, for that matter, Ai-chan's short birdie putt on the short par-4 4th hole fail to drop.
But I did get to see her call her caddie over to swat a black fly that had been pestering her as she was setting up for her putt. And I did get to see every shot that Mika and Na Yeon played between the 1st and 4th tees, and every shot Ai-chan and Se Ri played from their approaches to the 3rd green to their tee shots on the par-3 7th. I can't go into the amount of detail that I did last year, but I do have some general impressions. Mika has a very powerful swing, particularly through the ball. Her tempo's a little quicker and less rhythmic than Ai-chan's, but overall she's a little more aggressive and athletic. I had heard from Q-School interviews that she's a short hitter, but I'd say her length is average, plus she has the capacity to hit it longer than usual when she wants to. I expected her to be well behind Choi and Reilley Rankin, but she was even with them more often than not (although probably b/c they were dialing it down to avoid the rough). As for Choi, she parred every hole we saw, but never gave herself great birdie chances. I came away confirmed in my thinking that both are going to be major talents on tour. But of course most of my attention was on Ai-chan, and I noticed that she had a little tendency to break her wrists early on her backswing, which may have contributed to her pull on the downhill 6th. Other than that, her game was as strong as I expected it to be. Even while struggling--she had to make 2 6-to-9-footers to save par and missed 2 birdie putts of about that length--and dealing with jet lag (I don't care how accustomed to international travel you are, you still feel it for 10-15 days after you settle into a new time zone), she was completely calm, self-contained, and focused. She didn't chat a lot with her caddie or other players, just followed her ball and hit her next shot without making a big fuss about it. Very similar demeanor to Se Ri Pak, now that I think of it, although Pak was definitely longer, of course.
But that's about all I have for observations on the players, as most of my attention was actually focused on keeping onechan happy and quiet. Whether it was playing rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese, of course) or having little races with her between shots and holes when other groups weren't nearby (I let her win all of the latter, but she beat me 7 games in a row in the former, and I was really trying!), assuring her we'd make it to the Sports Zone (eventually), carrying her on my back a few times (including all the way up the par-5 8th's fairway), or getting pro shop staff to open up an "out of order" real bathroom for her b/c once again she was afraid of the port-a-potties, this was a full-time job. It was a lot easier when my folks were still hanging with us. My mom took her to look for frogs by the creek and pond on #2 and gave her a pad of paper and markers (which she used to good effect, although, unfortunately, not to the intended purpose--to get autographs), while my dad asked her questions and told her about the players. I can't say that onechan was particularly into my explanation of what to do off the tee on a dogleg or why you're not allowed to put your club on the ground when it's not in a water hazard but is behind the red line surrounding it, or particularly happy not to be following Karrie Webb and Natalie Gulbis on the other side, but she never whined, she never talked loudly, she never moved (much) while a player was hitting, she loved it that Carri Wood was playing with Ai-chan and Pak, and she won our bet when she found a young Japanese family near the 7th green with twin 2-year-old boys who had a kuma (bear) stuffed animal with them on their stroller.
And the Sports Zone! When I asked her this morning what she remembered about the tournament, that's the first thing she mentioned. She went through the inflated maze/obstacle course that was too wet for her last year, climbed to the top of the 15-foot climbing wall that was too scary for her last year, and, on Sunday, actually practiced chipping outside and putting inside (including a lesson with Meredith Duncan, who's a real sweetheart). I won't get into how onechan chipped in for a birdie on the 2nd hole of the Wii golf they had set up inside or how I hit 3 sand shots into the water hazard and took a mercy 9 on that par-3, or all the fruit juices and ice cream flavors we tried out in the food dome, but I will brag a little about how many times onechan hit the target when practicing those pitch shots.
So even though I didn't get to follow Seon Hwa Lee or In-Kyung Kim on Saturday, hang at the putting green as players finished their rounds, take onechan to the driving range on Sunday, where Momoko Ueda was working hard with caddie, or follow Ai-chan for awhile in the final round (we went straight to the Sports Zone this time and the weather looked threatening by the time onechan was all exercised out), we had an absolutely fantastic time at the Wegmans. I got a great reminder that a classic course like Locust Hills, with its tight, tree-lined fairways, small, tiered greens, and elevation changes, could be a great challenge with just the light breezes that were turning approach shots into exercises in judgment, precision, and finesse. Sadly, these are qualities that seem to be lacking in LPGA HQ these days. With the Corning gone and the Wegmans seemingly in trouble, I'm wondering if there's a Route 390 curse or if Carolyn Bivens is taking the LPGA seriously off course. It's all well and good to move into bigger domestic and international markets, but why not hold 40+ tournaments a year and keep the mid-market, community-based events by offering a reduced fee structure for them?
What this is about is the road trip a jet-lagged onechan and I took to the Rochester area to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Wegmans LPGA tournament at Locust Hills Golf Club. We got to hook up with my mom and dad for a little while, follow Mika Miyazato and then Ai Miyazato, play in the Sports Zone, meet Meredith Duncan, face off in Wii golf, and avoid every single drop of rain that fell on Pittsford that weekend. What I didn't get to do was try out the LPGA's new blogger media-credentialing process (I missed the deadline the 1st half of our visit to the Full Metal Archivist's family in Japan), follow the range of players I wanted to, or hang with Momoko Ueda on the driving range (yes, she missed the cut but worked hard on her game all weekend).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning, which is my crazy decision to take a pre-school girl who fell asleep from noon to 8 pm Friday and stayed up till 5:30 am on Saturday on a 2-hour drive to walk as many holes as we possibly could on a rain-delayed moving day. At least I had the sense not to try to take her 3-year-old sister, imoto, along with us. She had been enough of a handful when she was 2 that I couldn't envision taking a more mobile, articulate, independent (to put it nicely), louder, faster, and sleepier (last night was the 1st dinner she had since returning to the States late last Thursday) girl to an LPGA event. Now, the Futures Tour event in Syracuse at the end of the month, that's another story. But I'll save her 2nd LPGA experience for next year. Assuming there is a next year. (Check Dave Hackenberg's excellent piece on this week's event for context on the LPGA's shrinking schedule.) Anyway, my worries about onechan proved to be unfounded. She entertained me on the drive up telling stories about Foxy, a character she just made up. Apparently he gets into a lot of trouble and is often sad or lonely, but onechan told the stories in a gleeful voice and loved to come up with abrupt endings that she found hilarious. Uncle Bill Benzon and Grandpa Bob should be proud!
Speaking of Grandpa Bob, I had to question his judgment for suggesting that we meet at the pro shop rather than at the 17th green, right near where the shuttle buses let you off, not to mention the Sports Zone and the food dome. Sure, thanks to our oversleeping we missed all the early morning groups finishing their 2nd rounds, but onechan had to handle a long walk across the street and up the 10th fairway to see him and Grandma Joy for the 1st time since well before we had left for Japan in late May. As it turned out, though, both the walk itself and the search for my folks (we circled the pro shop twice before we found them) were totally awesome. Onechan was carrying a fairly large plastic baby doll, which she had dolled up for the event by drawing in blue ink flowers in the little hair she had, earrings, nail polish, and lipstick, and as she was getting a lot of "Aww, cute" looks from fans, players, and caddies, I decided to make a bet with her that she would be the only kid with a doll or toy we'd see all day. Trying to find evidence to win our bet turned out to be a fun game for her. As for me, I was struck by how intimate a setting a golf course is for a sporting event. I was walking by pros whose faces looked familiar but whom I couldn't quite place ("Is that Mika Miyazato? Or maybe Ji Young Oh?"). Some players I definitely knew: Vicky Hurst, Jane Park--and of course Ai Miyazato, who just happened to be at the putting green when onechan and I made it to the pro shop area. As Ai-chan was leaving, I was able to say, "Kyoo gambare!" (Go for it today!) to her. I don't know if she remembered onechan or me from last year, but she looked down at the short American wearing a hat bought in Okinawa that said "Island Boy" in kanji and kneeling down by a young girl wearing a flower print dress we'd bought in Hawaii in the middle of my Fulbright year, smiled, and said "Thank you," very sweetly.
Not long after that, we ran into my mom and dad and they had plenty of stories for us. My mom, who is a champion talker, told me how they had run into Karrie Webb while the 3rd-round pairings were being organized, so of course she told her about how big a fan onechan is of her and how I had invented Carrie Mi, Karrie Yoo, and Keri Hu (still useful devices for teasing onechan and imoto out of a desire to be carried!). My dad was psyched that a lesson on the driving range had shortened my mom's Mi Hyun Kim/Sakura Yokomine-like backswing and flattened its plane so well that she was carrying her driver around 150 yards (sadly, the lesson didn't carry over to the course when they got back to Clinton). And we played the game of "Who is that...?" as we got our food, walked over to tables by the 10th tees, and perused the pairings sheet I had gotten from a volunteer as we had been looking for my folks. (He got me on Katherine Hull, and I mistook Na Yeon Choi for Eun-Hee Ji.) He told me how impressed he was by Vicky Hurst ("She could be a center for a women's basketball team") and how Cheyenne Woods's game was much better than he had expected. (Guess who they had followed on Friday!)
So, yeah, with players going off the 10th tee while we were eating--I got a good look at Aree Song's swing (not a lot of shoulder turn there), for instance--and the 1st tee right around the corner, my dad's idea of meeting at the pro shop to follow some early groups was a good one. And when I saw that Mika Miyazato was going off 2 groups ahead of Ai-chan--and that Na Yeon Choi was in the former group while Se Ri Pak was in the latter, not to mention that Amanda Blumenherst was in the threesome between them--I immediately pitched my idea that we follow Mika as long as onechan could handle it, then rest to wait for Ai-chan and follow her as long as possible before resting and watching the leading pairings play through. Best laid plans, of course: my parents were too tired from their Friday outing to make it past the 4th tee before they headed out for home, while the second onechan realized that the front 9 circled back to the clubhouse, she was more interested in getting to the Sports Zone across the street than making it to the 8th green to hang out for 45 minutes. And of course I kept us as far away from the greens as possible, not trusting onechan not to blurt out whatever thought happened to come into her mind at any moment. So I didn't get to see Mika actually make a downhill curling 15-footer for birdie on the uphill par-4 2nd, or, for that matter, Ai-chan's short birdie putt on the short par-4 4th hole fail to drop.
But I did get to see her call her caddie over to swat a black fly that had been pestering her as she was setting up for her putt. And I did get to see every shot that Mika and Na Yeon played between the 1st and 4th tees, and every shot Ai-chan and Se Ri played from their approaches to the 3rd green to their tee shots on the par-3 7th. I can't go into the amount of detail that I did last year, but I do have some general impressions. Mika has a very powerful swing, particularly through the ball. Her tempo's a little quicker and less rhythmic than Ai-chan's, but overall she's a little more aggressive and athletic. I had heard from Q-School interviews that she's a short hitter, but I'd say her length is average, plus she has the capacity to hit it longer than usual when she wants to. I expected her to be well behind Choi and Reilley Rankin, but she was even with them more often than not (although probably b/c they were dialing it down to avoid the rough). As for Choi, she parred every hole we saw, but never gave herself great birdie chances. I came away confirmed in my thinking that both are going to be major talents on tour. But of course most of my attention was on Ai-chan, and I noticed that she had a little tendency to break her wrists early on her backswing, which may have contributed to her pull on the downhill 6th. Other than that, her game was as strong as I expected it to be. Even while struggling--she had to make 2 6-to-9-footers to save par and missed 2 birdie putts of about that length--and dealing with jet lag (I don't care how accustomed to international travel you are, you still feel it for 10-15 days after you settle into a new time zone), she was completely calm, self-contained, and focused. She didn't chat a lot with her caddie or other players, just followed her ball and hit her next shot without making a big fuss about it. Very similar demeanor to Se Ri Pak, now that I think of it, although Pak was definitely longer, of course.
But that's about all I have for observations on the players, as most of my attention was actually focused on keeping onechan happy and quiet. Whether it was playing rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese, of course) or having little races with her between shots and holes when other groups weren't nearby (I let her win all of the latter, but she beat me 7 games in a row in the former, and I was really trying!), assuring her we'd make it to the Sports Zone (eventually), carrying her on my back a few times (including all the way up the par-5 8th's fairway), or getting pro shop staff to open up an "out of order" real bathroom for her b/c once again she was afraid of the port-a-potties, this was a full-time job. It was a lot easier when my folks were still hanging with us. My mom took her to look for frogs by the creek and pond on #2 and gave her a pad of paper and markers (which she used to good effect, although, unfortunately, not to the intended purpose--to get autographs), while my dad asked her questions and told her about the players. I can't say that onechan was particularly into my explanation of what to do off the tee on a dogleg or why you're not allowed to put your club on the ground when it's not in a water hazard but is behind the red line surrounding it, or particularly happy not to be following Karrie Webb and Natalie Gulbis on the other side, but she never whined, she never talked loudly, she never moved (much) while a player was hitting, she loved it that Carri Wood was playing with Ai-chan and Pak, and she won our bet when she found a young Japanese family near the 7th green with twin 2-year-old boys who had a kuma (bear) stuffed animal with them on their stroller.
And the Sports Zone! When I asked her this morning what she remembered about the tournament, that's the first thing she mentioned. She went through the inflated maze/obstacle course that was too wet for her last year, climbed to the top of the 15-foot climbing wall that was too scary for her last year, and, on Sunday, actually practiced chipping outside and putting inside (including a lesson with Meredith Duncan, who's a real sweetheart). I won't get into how onechan chipped in for a birdie on the 2nd hole of the Wii golf they had set up inside or how I hit 3 sand shots into the water hazard and took a mercy 9 on that par-3, or all the fruit juices and ice cream flavors we tried out in the food dome, but I will brag a little about how many times onechan hit the target when practicing those pitch shots.
So even though I didn't get to follow Seon Hwa Lee or In-Kyung Kim on Saturday, hang at the putting green as players finished their rounds, take onechan to the driving range on Sunday, where Momoko Ueda was working hard with caddie, or follow Ai-chan for awhile in the final round (we went straight to the Sports Zone this time and the weather looked threatening by the time onechan was all exercised out), we had an absolutely fantastic time at the Wegmans. I got a great reminder that a classic course like Locust Hills, with its tight, tree-lined fairways, small, tiered greens, and elevation changes, could be a great challenge with just the light breezes that were turning approach shots into exercises in judgment, precision, and finesse. Sadly, these are qualities that seem to be lacking in LPGA HQ these days. With the Corning gone and the Wegmans seemingly in trouble, I'm wondering if there's a Route 390 curse or if Carolyn Bivens is taking the LPGA seriously off course. It's all well and good to move into bigger domestic and international markets, but why not hold 40+ tournaments a year and keep the mid-market, community-based events by offering a reduced fee structure for them?
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Of Countries and Bodhisattvas
“Hey Kong!”
“Yeah Jump!”
“Didja hear about Onechan and Imoto?”
“No, what happened to them? I haven’t seen them in awhile.”
“They’ve gone to Japan!”
“Japan? What’s Japan, Jump?”
“I don’t know, Kong. I thought you’d know.”
“Sorry, I don’t know, Jump. But maybe Japan is a country, like Norway and Tibet and Nigeria and Argentina and America.”
“America? That’s where we live, Kong. America is a country? I didn’t know that. You learn something everyday.”
“Yeah, America is a country, and so is Japan. And all those other places. Countries have houses and roads and trees and schools and bridges and cities and mountains and lawns and fields and rivers and airports and flowers and candy and trucks and busses and cars and lakes and dogs and fish and lots of stuff.” And after saying all of that Kong was all out of breath. “Wheeuuw.”
“That makes sense, Kong. I heard they were going to visit their grandparents,” said Jump.
“I hope they have a good visit.”
“Me too.”
And so the two friends just sat there together, thinking and being happy together. And then Jump thought of something. “And you know what else?”
“No, tell me Jump. What else?”
“I just heard from Sparkychan. She’s studying to be a bo bo boadi . . . I’m having trouble saying it, Kong, it’s a big word. Something about boadi and sat, boadisat . . . “
“I know”, said Kong. “Bodhisattva!”
“Yeah, that’s it. Bodhisattva! That’s what Sparkychan said. But what’s a Bodhisattva?”
“I’m not sure, Jump. I think it’s someone who is strong and good and patient and kind and loves everything.”
“Everything? Are you sure about that, Kong? ‘Cause everything is an awful lot.” Jump was very puzzled by this. Wouldn’t you be?
“Yes, everything. Including rats and dirt and thunder’n lightening and germs.”
“Wow, sounds real strange Kong. Anyhow, Sparkychan told me she was having a good time, but it’s hard, and sometimes she misses Onechan and Imoto and Haatochan. And even doggie, even doggie.”
“We’ll have to tell them the next time we see them, Jump.”
“Yes we will, Kong, yes we will.”
And so the two friends talked and laughed and looked at the pictures and thought about Onechan and Imoto and their trip to Japan.
“Yeah Jump!”
“Didja hear about Onechan and Imoto?”
“No, what happened to them? I haven’t seen them in awhile.”
“They’ve gone to Japan!”
“Japan? What’s Japan, Jump?”
“I don’t know, Kong. I thought you’d know.”
“Sorry, I don’t know, Jump. But maybe Japan is a country, like Norway and Tibet and Nigeria and Argentina and America.”
“America? That’s where we live, Kong. America is a country? I didn’t know that. You learn something everyday.”
“Yeah, America is a country, and so is Japan. And all those other places. Countries have houses and roads and trees and schools and bridges and cities and mountains and lawns and fields and rivers and airports and flowers and candy and trucks and busses and cars and lakes and dogs and fish and lots of stuff.” And after saying all of that Kong was all out of breath. “Wheeuuw.”
“That makes sense, Kong. I heard they were going to visit their grandparents,” said Jump.
“I hope they have a good visit.”
“Me too.”
And so the two friends just sat there together, thinking and being happy together. And then Jump thought of something. “And you know what else?”
“No, tell me Jump. What else?”
“I just heard from Sparkychan. She’s studying to be a bo bo boadi . . . I’m having trouble saying it, Kong, it’s a big word. Something about boadi and sat, boadisat . . . “
“I know”, said Kong. “Bodhisattva!”
“Yeah, that’s it. Bodhisattva! That’s what Sparkychan said. But what’s a Bodhisattva?”
“I’m not sure, Jump. I think it’s someone who is strong and good and patient and kind and loves everything.”
“Everything? Are you sure about that, Kong? ‘Cause everything is an awful lot.” Jump was very puzzled by this. Wouldn’t you be?
“Yes, everything. Including rats and dirt and thunder’n lightening and germs.”
“Wow, sounds real strange Kong. Anyhow, Sparkychan told me she was having a good time, but it’s hard, and sometimes she misses Onechan and Imoto and Haatochan. And even doggie, even doggie.”
“We’ll have to tell them the next time we see them, Jump.”
“Yes we will, Kong, yes we will.”
And so the two friends talked and laughed and looked at the pictures and thought about Onechan and Imoto and their trip to Japan.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Doggie Goes to Japan
Another great story from Grandpa Bob!
Doggie Goes to Japan
One day, doggie went for a walk looking for fun. He heard from some kids who were playing that onechan and imoto were going to Japan. “I’ll go to Japan, too,” he said to himself, “and surprise them. Besides I heard the noodles are very good there!”
So Doggie went to the airport to buy a ticket to get on an airplane to Japan. He was surprised when the ticket man told him they only sell tickets to people. “No dogs allowed!” the man said sternly.
Doggie didn’t think this was fair. Why shouldn’t dogs be able to go to Japan on an airplane?
But then the ticket man felt bad that he had been mean to Doggie. He said, “If you go to the next counter, you will find “Hide a Bone” Airlines. They sell tickets to dogs. In fact, they sell ONLY to dogs. It’s an airline for dogs!”
Doggie went to the next counter and asked for a ticket to Japan but didn’t know what to do when the ticket man there asked him for money. Doggie didn’t have any money! What was he to do?
Then he had a great idea. “If you give me a ticket,” said Doggie, “I will go for walks with you when I get back and play ball with you, too.” The man thought that was a great idea and gave Doggie a ticket to go to Japan and another one to go home with. Doggie got on the plane and slept most of the way to Japan.
When he got to Tokyo, he ate noodles along with a bone. He loved the food and everyone was nice to him. Then he saw onechan and imoto coming out of the airport with their mom and dad. He went to play with them and thought he would have a really good holiday in Japan!
One day, doggie went for a walk looking for fun. He heard from some kids who were playing that onechan and imoto were going to Japan. “I’ll go to Japan, too,” he said to himself, “and surprise them. Besides I heard the noodles are very good there!”
So Doggie went to the airport to buy a ticket to get on an airplane to Japan. He was surprised when the ticket man told him they only sell tickets to people. “No dogs allowed!” the man said sternly.
Doggie didn’t think this was fair. Why shouldn’t dogs be able to go to Japan on an airplane?
But then the ticket man felt bad that he had been mean to Doggie. He said, “If you go to the next counter, you will find “Hide a Bone” Airlines. They sell tickets to dogs. In fact, they sell ONLY to dogs. It’s an airline for dogs!”
Doggie went to the next counter and asked for a ticket to Japan but didn’t know what to do when the ticket man there asked him for money. Doggie didn’t have any money! What was he to do?
Then he had a great idea. “If you give me a ticket,” said Doggie, “I will go for walks with you when I get back and play ball with you, too.” The man thought that was a great idea and gave Doggie a ticket to go to Japan and another one to go home with. Doggie got on the plane and slept most of the way to Japan.
When he got to Tokyo, he ate noodles along with a bone. He loved the food and everyone was nice to him. Then he saw onechan and imoto coming out of the airport with their mom and dad. He went to play with them and thought he would have a really good holiday in Japan!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Doggie Goes to the Moon
Thanks to teh wondars of the intertubes, we got to read another story from Grandpa Bob before the girls went to bed.
***
Doggie Goes to the Moon
By
Grandpa Bob
One day, doggie decided to go for a walk. He was looking for fun. Soon he came to some stores. One had a TV in the window. The TV showed a space ship landing on the moon. A man in a space suit got out. He had a golf club and ball. He hit a golf shot on the moon!
Doggie said, "That looks like fun! I want to play golf on the moon, too."
Doggie ran as fast as he could to the Spaceport. The Spaceport was where rocket ships left earth to go to the moon. But the man at the Spaceport wouldn't let Doggie in. "Dogs can't fit in the seats and we have no dog food for you to eat on the rocket ship," he said.
Doggie was sad. He really wanted to play golf on the moon. He slowly walked home and didn't even wag his tail.
On the way home, he passed onechan's and imoto's house. They saw him and asked him to come in for ice cream. They asked Doggie why he was so sad and he told them. But onechan and imoto knew how to make him happy again!
Onechan had a picture of the moon. Imoto had a toy rocket ship. They pretended Doggie was a passenger on the rocket ship. They gave him ice cream to eat while he "pretend flew" to the moon. Then they put him on the picture of the moon. They put a golf club in his mouth and put a ball on the picture. Doggie hit the ball. It rolled far!
Now Doggie was happy! He had played golf on the moon--thanks to onechan and imoto!
THE END
***
Onechan told me what happened after the ending!
Onechan: Imoto used magic and Doggie went into the picture of the moon.
Me: What happened next?
Onechan: That's it! Now can we do that Sparkychan falling all the way to us one?
What can I say? It was right before bed time, after all!
***
By
Grandpa Bob
One day, doggie decided to go for a walk. He was looking for fun. Soon he came to some stores. One had a TV in the window. The TV showed a space ship landing on the moon. A man in a space suit got out. He had a golf club and ball. He hit a golf shot on the moon!
Doggie said, "That looks like fun! I want to play golf on the moon, too."
Doggie ran as fast as he could to the Spaceport. The Spaceport was where rocket ships left earth to go to the moon. But the man at the Spaceport wouldn't let Doggie in. "Dogs can't fit in the seats and we have no dog food for you to eat on the rocket ship," he said.
Doggie was sad. He really wanted to play golf on the moon. He slowly walked home and didn't even wag his tail.
On the way home, he passed onechan's and imoto's house. They saw him and asked him to come in for ice cream. They asked Doggie why he was so sad and he told them. But onechan and imoto knew how to make him happy again!
Onechan had a picture of the moon. Imoto had a toy rocket ship. They pretended Doggie was a passenger on the rocket ship. They gave him ice cream to eat while he "pretend flew" to the moon. Then they put him on the picture of the moon. They put a golf club in his mouth and put a ball on the picture. Doggie hit the ball. It rolled far!
Now Doggie was happy! He had played golf on the moon--thanks to onechan and imoto!
THE END
***
Onechan told me what happened after the ending!
Onechan: Imoto used magic and Doggie went into the picture of the moon.
Me: What happened next?
Onechan: That's it! Now can we do that Sparkychan falling all the way to us one?
What can I say? It was right before bed time, after all!
Friday, February 20, 2009
Haato-chan's Concert
Here's another Haato-chan story from onechan.
***
Onechan: Ummm, Haato-chan is playing the violin and then she wanted ice cream. And then she said, "I want to eat dinner." And then I said, "Not yet, Haato-chan." And then she said, "I want you to read a book." And then she said, " Why did you love me?" And then she said, "Why are we here?" And then I said, "That's why, to keep us safe."
Me: Is the story over?
Onechan: Yup.
***
Now it's imoto's turn to type:
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,bnbbbbb由良らせせせせせせせせせせせせせせせせせの野の野の野の野の野の野の野の乗る気めけ毛毛家くけ毛家なくここここここここ個々氏とちママ区規定スイス巣喚起かすはひかすすいてなんのすいかくきはしとししまみみそささききはしは
***
Now it's onechan's turn to type:
くのに桃身ひねね桃みみみみひよこまりまみき
どれみ
ももこ
***
Onechan: Ummm, Haato-chan is playing the violin and then she wanted ice cream. And then she said, "I want to eat dinner." And then I said, "Not yet, Haato-chan." And then she said, "I want you to read a book." And then she said, " Why did you love me?" And then she said, "Why are we here?" And then I said, "That's why, to keep us safe."
Me: Is the story over?
Onechan: Yup.
***
Now it's imoto's turn to type:
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,bnbbbbb由良らせせせせせせせせせせせせせせせせせの野の野の野の野の野の野の野の乗る気めけ毛毛家くけ毛家なくここここここここ個々氏とちママ区規定スイス巣喚起かすはひかすすいてなんのすいかくきはしとししまみみそささききはしは
***
Now it's onechan's turn to type:
くのに桃身ひねね桃みみみみひよこまりまみき
どれみ
ももこ
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Hello America
Onechan wants to tell the story of how Haato-chan came to live with us.
***
Onechan: She was a very little bear. Sparky-chan picked her up in the store.
Me: What happened next?
Onechan: Haato-chan went to school, and was in a play, and that's how she got sick. No, no, no, not sick. She wanted ice cream. Why does that say, "No, no, no"? I didn't say that.
Me: Yes, you did.
Onechan: And that's how she fell asleep.
Imoto: Dat's how she falled sleep.
Onechan: And that's why she likes onechan.
***
We'll have more Haato-chan stories for Uncle Bill soon! Onechan can't wait to tell the story of how she got sick.
***
Onechan: She was a very little bear. Sparky-chan picked her up in the store.
Me: What happened next?
Onechan: Haato-chan went to school, and was in a play, and that's how she got sick. No, no, no, not sick. She wanted ice cream. Why does that say, "No, no, no"? I didn't say that.
Me: Yes, you did.
Onechan: And that's how she fell asleep.
Imoto: Dat's how she falled sleep.
Onechan: And that's why she likes onechan.
***
We'll have more Haato-chan stories for Uncle Bill soon! Onechan can't wait to tell the story of how she got sick.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
QSMS Has Come Early in Japan...
...at least for fans of the Pretty Cure franchise. Behold the trailer for the March 20, 2009, release of Precure All Stars DX, a movie that brings together the casts of every season of onechan's formerly favorite anime...if you dare!
Hat tip: moetron, which is breaking teh intertubes today, apparently.
Oh, and onechan can't take the fighting in Pretty Cure any more--runs out of the room screaming, usually. It seems the magical girl genre has become a lot more Dragonball in recent years. Speaking of which:
Why even try turning anime into live action? Meh.
Hat tip: moetron, which is breaking teh intertubes today, apparently.
Oh, and onechan can't take the fighting in Pretty Cure any more--runs out of the room screaming, usually. It seems the magical girl genre has become a lot more Dragonball in recent years. Speaking of which:
Why even try turning anime into live action? Meh.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
V-Day: On Clubs, Grooves, and Balls
Picking up where Geoff Shackelford left off a little while ago on this new rules change for grooves in irons and wedges, I've got a tangentially-related story to tell. It involves me shooting an even-par round of 34 on the back 9 of the Easiest Course in the World for only the 10th time in my life while playing 2 very different kinds of golf balls concurrently. But it's really a personal history of golf equipment. And a meditation on the difference between competitive golf and social golf. And a report on the mental side of the game. Yeah, it's that kind of tangentially-related story. Sorry.
There is a relation, nevertheless. The revolution in golf equipment that this rules change is a very partial response to came about midway through my playing career, as I finished playing college golf. As I've been keeping my key golf stats from 1984-2004, back when I was playing regularly and, at the beginning and end of the span, regularly playing tournament golf, I have some data to back up my memories. And, I think, to support the case that the rules change won't have a big impact on scoring for anyone but the most elite amateurs and professionals.
When I first started playing golf seriously in high school, my woods were made of wood, my irons were forged, and my ball was a Titleist DT. I was a short hitter, made shorter by the fact that I didn't like the driver in my set and instead used a 2-wood off the tee. So I relied on my fairway woods, wedges, and putter to keep my scores respectable. I was the classic kind of precision/finesse player, which served me well on Hamilton College's short, par-35 9-hole course that I played most often, but didn't travel all that well all that often to Colgate University's Seven Oaks, the Robert Trent Jones-designed gem in central NY that I played with my dad and brother on the weekends. I didn't begin to experiment with metal woods until college and eventually settled on one of the original TaylorMade Burners for my driver (which looked like today's 7-woods), but it still didn't change the kind of player I was all that much. In fact, when I played shorter courses, I switched to balata Titleists, which didn't fly as far as the DTs I was used to but which gave me greater touch around the greens, helped me stop my irons sooner on approach shots, and generally allowed me to better work the ball because of their softer covers and higher spin rates. I was still such a short and low-ball hitter that I vividly recall switching to a different metal driver (a hand-me-down from my younger brother, who had moved on to a newer model years before) the week before I was to play Bethpage Black from the back tees in the ECAC Championship, in hopes of carrying the ball further off the tee. (That didn't work out so well; I couldn't reach most of the fairways, had to hack out of the heavy rough usually still short of my playing partners, and usually faced a difficult fairway wood shot to the green that would more often than not find its way back into trouble. I went 102-98 and finished dead last.)
So although I dropped my scoring average at Hamilton from just under 50 in 1984 to just under 40 in 1990 (and my personal bests each year from 43 in '83 to 35 in '90) and at Seven Oaks from around 90 in 1987 to around 83 in 1990 (and my personal bests from 84 in '87 to 77 in '90), I remained the same kind of golfer throughout the 1980s. I never averaged more than 6 greens in regulation, never came close to averaging a birdie a round, and hardly ever shot 37 or below for 9 holes. In fact, I didn't shoot an even-par 9 until 1990, when I did it twice at Hamilton (one of them coming in the best 18 holes of my life on that course, a 71 with 26 putts, many of which I still remember today).
All that changed fairly dramatically when I switched to the new, larger-headed Titleist driver. I started hitting the ball higher and carrying it much further--and the results were striking. I went from averaging 5.83 greens in regulation in 1990, the previous best summer of my golfing life, to 7.45 in 1991, from .857 birdies per round to 1.062, and from a 39.7 scoring average at Hamilton to 38.5. Most important, I went from shooting 37 or better only 6.5% of the time to 14.8% of the time. The next season, although my GIR went down and my scoring averages levelled off, I averaged 1.32 birdies per round, shot even-par on 5 9-hole rounds, and went under par for the first time with a 34 in mid-July. Even though I would focus on my graduate studies year-round from fall 1992 to spring 1998, I still spent enough time in Clinton in 1993 to lower my Hamilton scoring average another stroke, to 37.43, and shoot my first 33 there; even afterwards, I was able to keep my game respectable while going from averaging over 40 rounds per summer down to less than 7 between 1994 and 1996.
During that time away from competitive golf, 2 major changes occurred, 1 physical and the other technical. I started using Nautilus equipment regularly. As my body changed, I was forced to change my swing, which had been very lower-body, hip-turn, and timing-oriented, to take advantage of my increased upper-body strength. More important, I needed to simplify my swing into something that would be easier to repeat with fewer repetitions. Particularly late in my grad school career, when Tiger was tearing up the amateur circuit and people were beginning to show that his big shoulder turn coupled with a less pronounced hip turn helped him hit the ball so far, I was putting the finishing touches on a set-up and swing that hasn't really changed all that much since. And as I started to play again more regularly in the summer of 1998 after I finished my dissertation--coming close to 30 rounds again for the 1st time since 1993--I moved to Fredonia and discovered the Easiest Course in the World.
Don't get me wrong, Hamilton is a pretty easy course. With 3 par 4s under 325 yards, 3 longer par 4s between 385 and 425 yards (2 of them downhill), 1 short and 1 long par 3 (both uphill), and a short par 5, it has a lot of birdie holes, despite being hilly and having its fair share of trees and water in play. By contrast, the Easiest Course in the World has no water in play, no sand traps, and tree trouble on only a few holes, plus it's very flat. Although it's a couple of hundred yards longer than Hamilton, and has just as tiny greens, it's significantly, well, easier. Only 4 of its 18 holes are really difficult pars (and 3 of them come on the front, which has more birdie holes than the back), its 3 par 5s are all reachable in 2 when the course isn't soaking wet (and for longer hitters than me, even then), and its fairways are wide, rough low, and greens slow. The second I saw it, late in the summer of 1998, I knew I could break 70 there. It took me 3 years to do it--a 68 in late August 2001--and I've only done it 5 times since then, with a low of 66 the following August. But it's definitely the kind of course where I expect to have a chance to go under par almost every time I tee it up--particularly during that stretch between 1999 and 2004 when I was averaging almost 60 rounds a year.
It's no coincidence that I broke 70 for the first time in 2001, for that's the summer that I switched to the Titleist Pro V1. Not only did it go further than the DT--much further--but it was almost as soft as the balata balls I had given up playing in the early '90s. Combined with a shift to a TaylorMade driver, my switch to the Pro V1 allowed me to really attack golf courses for the first time in my life. 2001 was the 1st year my scoring average went under 80, my birdies per round went over 1.37, my GIR average went over 7.5, and I shot 37 or better more than 20% of the time. My best season came the following year, when my scoring average reached its career low of 77.23, my birdies per round a career high of 1.542, my GIR a career high of 8.14, and I shot 37 or better 36.1% of the time. I think it's fair to say that I benefitted from changes to the ball more than any other advancement in golf technology. I went from carrying my drives 200-230 yards in high school to 225-240 yards in college to 240-260 yards in this next phase of my competitive golfing career. And it's not like the changes mattered only on easy, short courses. Playing in the Utica City Amateur at Valley View 7 years between 1991 and 2000, I shot 76 or better once in 14 tries. In the next 4 years I did it 5 times out of 10, with a low of 73 in 2001. I qualified for the New York State Mid-Amateur tournament for the 1st (and only) time in 2002, by which point I had lowered my handicap to a 2.
Admittedly, my putting also improved during this period, due in no small part to my switch to an Odyssey White Hot putter that really fit my eye--and loads of off-season practice during long western NY winters and frozen and muddy springs. My total putts and putts per green in regulation reached career lows during this period. But that could also be an effect of the switch to the Pro V1, not just because I was hitting my approach shots closer to the green and to the hole, but also because I was probably rolling that ball better than others. In 2003 I got married and in 2004 onechan put a dent in my sleep schedule, so my performance dropped off a bit before I basically gave golf up between 2005 and this summer, but I can say for sure that switching from forged irons to Callaway Steelheads in an effort to get more length and accuracy out of my iron play--as well as to specialized wedges (52-degree and 58-degree Vokeys)--as I did in the middle of this stretch, did not have the desired effect. My GIR actually went down and my putting average actually went up, while my birdies per round rate once again fell below 1.35. It was frustration with this step back that made it easier for me to step away first from competitive golf, then from all golf, until this summer.
Late this May was virtually the 1st time I touched my clubs since 2005, when I played all of 4 and a half rounds, so my expectations were very low. I was shocked to find myself making solid contact from my 1st time out. By my 3rd time, I was actually 1-over in my 1st 8 holes before utterly collapsing in the wind. Which brings me to my story. The par-34 back 9 on the Easiest Course in the World has 4 fairly tricky starting holes but 5 fairly easy closing holes. It's flat and wide open, with even fewer trees than on the front, but its greens are tiny and the wind is always up. It's the closest to links golf I've ever played and it's given me fits: I've only shot 1 34 there in 2000, 6 in 2002, and 2 in 2004.
The day I shot my 10th 34 there at the end of last month was the windiest of any of the rounds I've played this year and among the windier days I've played in my life. It was the first time I decided to play by myself and to challenge myself by pitting a 4-year-old Pro V1 against a newer Callaway ball. It was a brief experiment, as I switched to a Nike distance ball that I found near where I lost the Callaway on the 4th hole. But putting my normal ball up against a rock like the Nike ball taught me a lot about my swing and short game that day. The rock definitely went longer and straighter. I actually got over the 2nd par 5 on the front with a 5-wood on my 2nd shot--a hole I rarely reached in the past unless the course was dryer than it had been that day. But I also had a lot less feel around the greens with it. I blew my chip on that hole, a simple little downhill run shot of about 40 feet, a full 15 feet by the hole and missed the birdie putt. For awhile these factors cancelled each other out. I was 3-over with the Pro V1 between the 5th and 12th holes and 1-down to the rock after a 6-foot birdie putt with it on a long par 3 actually found the bottom of the cup. But my 5th 1-putt in a row with the Pro V1 on the next hole, a long par-4 that I tripled with the rock after being right near the green in 2, turned the tide. Even though I hit the remaining 5 greens in regulation with the rock, I was 1-over during that stretch, thanks to 3-putts on a par 5 I hit in 2 and also on the very next hole, a short par 3 with a sloping green. Even though I hit 8 of 14 greens with the rock, I had 27 putts. With the Pro V1, by contrast, I only hit 5 greens in that same stretch (thanks to the wind playing havoc with my approach shots), but I only had 21 putts. I hit 3 greens in a row on the middle of the back, finally making a birdie putt on the very same par 5 I 3-putted with the rock, so I was 1-under on the back heading into the final 2 holes. And I was well aware that I had never gone under par on the back in my life.
This summer I've actually been drawing the ball off the tee, something unheard of in my early-season high school and college days, when bad timing would lead to weak fades and slices as my arms would lag behind my hip turn. But my other early-season nemesis--wedge problems on pitches between 15 and 75 yards--reared its ugly head on the 17th hole. My previous rounds had been sabotaged by fluffed, chunked, even skulled partial-swing wedges and even that day my putter had bailed my pitches out quite often. On 17, I hit my best drive of the year, a nice little draw that started out over the right rough, which the wind helped bring back to the middle of the fairway about 50 yards short of the pin. So of course I fluffed my 3-quarter-swing 52 degree wedge--I decelerated out of fear I had taken too long a backswing. But my short game was so good that day with the Pro V1 that I easily got up and down (tying the rock when I missed a short birdie putt with it).
All I needed was a par on the long 18th, a slight dogleg right with a strong left-to-right helping wind that day, to go under par on the back for the 1st time in my life. So of course I popped up my drive and then missed the green with a 5-wood that the wind pushed further right than I expected (I thought I could draw it in against the prevailing wind), leaving myself a tough chip that I couldn't get within 10 feet of the back left pin. Just like the other 2 birdie chances I couldn't convert on that side, I missed the par save for my 1st bogey with the Pro V1 since the 8th hole. I had made putts of all kinds in that stretch, including an insane 30-foot downhill-sidehiller, but couldn't get any of those 3 in my last 5 holes to fall. The 8th 33 of my life was not meant to be, I guess.
But why didn't I collapse in the wind this time like I had earlier that month? How could I have shot 1 of the best 9-hole rounds of my life in only my 4th or 5th round of the season, a season in which I played every other week rather than every other day? I have to attribute it to getting a better feel for the characteristics of the Pro V1 while playing in a match against the Nike ball. The match itself helped me keep at bay just about all the nervousness that might usually be associated with a run at a 32 or a 33. But it was really the contrast between the 2 balls themselves that helped me the most. On my full swings, I had to choose different clubs on my approach shots (the Nike ball was a half-club to a club longer than the Pro V1), align myself very differently (in anticipation of the lesser wind effect with the Nike ball), and make subtle adjustments to my swing itself. On my pitches, chips, and putts, I felt so much more comfortable with the Pro V1 in the midst of my struggles with the rock. I can't go into any more detail without getting too technical or sounding too mystical, but the bottom line is that after I played through my 2nd foursome on the 9th, I could devote my concentration entirely to the contrasting playing characteristics of the 2 balls.
To pull this tangent back to something approaching a circle, if I had to rank the most significant technological innovations in my golfing career, my list would look like this:
1) Balls
2) Drivers
3) Putters
4) Irons and Wedges
I'd probably rank hybrids #3 if I had been playing any golf the last few years. I definitely want to get a 3-hybrid and retire the Callaway 3-iron, which has been a huge disappointment, but playing as little as I have I've had little inclination to do so. So if I'm playing competitive (or any) golf 6 years from now, I'll probably take the opportunity to upgrade my entire set: move on to Mizuno irons and wedges (the brand I ended up not going with when I made my big failed iron switch earlier this decade), try to find the right mix of woods and hybrids to go with the new irons, and probably try out the new putters while I'm at it to see if I like any better than my White Hot #2. Or maybe by then I'll just be playing virtual golf on the Wii. Who knows? All I know is that if the new rules hurt the longer, wilder players in any way, shape, or form, I'm for them, but I just don't see them having much of an impact on my game.
There is a relation, nevertheless. The revolution in golf equipment that this rules change is a very partial response to came about midway through my playing career, as I finished playing college golf. As I've been keeping my key golf stats from 1984-2004, back when I was playing regularly and, at the beginning and end of the span, regularly playing tournament golf, I have some data to back up my memories. And, I think, to support the case that the rules change won't have a big impact on scoring for anyone but the most elite amateurs and professionals.
When I first started playing golf seriously in high school, my woods were made of wood, my irons were forged, and my ball was a Titleist DT. I was a short hitter, made shorter by the fact that I didn't like the driver in my set and instead used a 2-wood off the tee. So I relied on my fairway woods, wedges, and putter to keep my scores respectable. I was the classic kind of precision/finesse player, which served me well on Hamilton College's short, par-35 9-hole course that I played most often, but didn't travel all that well all that often to Colgate University's Seven Oaks, the Robert Trent Jones-designed gem in central NY that I played with my dad and brother on the weekends. I didn't begin to experiment with metal woods until college and eventually settled on one of the original TaylorMade Burners for my driver (which looked like today's 7-woods), but it still didn't change the kind of player I was all that much. In fact, when I played shorter courses, I switched to balata Titleists, which didn't fly as far as the DTs I was used to but which gave me greater touch around the greens, helped me stop my irons sooner on approach shots, and generally allowed me to better work the ball because of their softer covers and higher spin rates. I was still such a short and low-ball hitter that I vividly recall switching to a different metal driver (a hand-me-down from my younger brother, who had moved on to a newer model years before) the week before I was to play Bethpage Black from the back tees in the ECAC Championship, in hopes of carrying the ball further off the tee. (That didn't work out so well; I couldn't reach most of the fairways, had to hack out of the heavy rough usually still short of my playing partners, and usually faced a difficult fairway wood shot to the green that would more often than not find its way back into trouble. I went 102-98 and finished dead last.)
So although I dropped my scoring average at Hamilton from just under 50 in 1984 to just under 40 in 1990 (and my personal bests each year from 43 in '83 to 35 in '90) and at Seven Oaks from around 90 in 1987 to around 83 in 1990 (and my personal bests from 84 in '87 to 77 in '90), I remained the same kind of golfer throughout the 1980s. I never averaged more than 6 greens in regulation, never came close to averaging a birdie a round, and hardly ever shot 37 or below for 9 holes. In fact, I didn't shoot an even-par 9 until 1990, when I did it twice at Hamilton (one of them coming in the best 18 holes of my life on that course, a 71 with 26 putts, many of which I still remember today).
All that changed fairly dramatically when I switched to the new, larger-headed Titleist driver. I started hitting the ball higher and carrying it much further--and the results were striking. I went from averaging 5.83 greens in regulation in 1990, the previous best summer of my golfing life, to 7.45 in 1991, from .857 birdies per round to 1.062, and from a 39.7 scoring average at Hamilton to 38.5. Most important, I went from shooting 37 or better only 6.5% of the time to 14.8% of the time. The next season, although my GIR went down and my scoring averages levelled off, I averaged 1.32 birdies per round, shot even-par on 5 9-hole rounds, and went under par for the first time with a 34 in mid-July. Even though I would focus on my graduate studies year-round from fall 1992 to spring 1998, I still spent enough time in Clinton in 1993 to lower my Hamilton scoring average another stroke, to 37.43, and shoot my first 33 there; even afterwards, I was able to keep my game respectable while going from averaging over 40 rounds per summer down to less than 7 between 1994 and 1996.
During that time away from competitive golf, 2 major changes occurred, 1 physical and the other technical. I started using Nautilus equipment regularly. As my body changed, I was forced to change my swing, which had been very lower-body, hip-turn, and timing-oriented, to take advantage of my increased upper-body strength. More important, I needed to simplify my swing into something that would be easier to repeat with fewer repetitions. Particularly late in my grad school career, when Tiger was tearing up the amateur circuit and people were beginning to show that his big shoulder turn coupled with a less pronounced hip turn helped him hit the ball so far, I was putting the finishing touches on a set-up and swing that hasn't really changed all that much since. And as I started to play again more regularly in the summer of 1998 after I finished my dissertation--coming close to 30 rounds again for the 1st time since 1993--I moved to Fredonia and discovered the Easiest Course in the World.
Don't get me wrong, Hamilton is a pretty easy course. With 3 par 4s under 325 yards, 3 longer par 4s between 385 and 425 yards (2 of them downhill), 1 short and 1 long par 3 (both uphill), and a short par 5, it has a lot of birdie holes, despite being hilly and having its fair share of trees and water in play. By contrast, the Easiest Course in the World has no water in play, no sand traps, and tree trouble on only a few holes, plus it's very flat. Although it's a couple of hundred yards longer than Hamilton, and has just as tiny greens, it's significantly, well, easier. Only 4 of its 18 holes are really difficult pars (and 3 of them come on the front, which has more birdie holes than the back), its 3 par 5s are all reachable in 2 when the course isn't soaking wet (and for longer hitters than me, even then), and its fairways are wide, rough low, and greens slow. The second I saw it, late in the summer of 1998, I knew I could break 70 there. It took me 3 years to do it--a 68 in late August 2001--and I've only done it 5 times since then, with a low of 66 the following August. But it's definitely the kind of course where I expect to have a chance to go under par almost every time I tee it up--particularly during that stretch between 1999 and 2004 when I was averaging almost 60 rounds a year.
It's no coincidence that I broke 70 for the first time in 2001, for that's the summer that I switched to the Titleist Pro V1. Not only did it go further than the DT--much further--but it was almost as soft as the balata balls I had given up playing in the early '90s. Combined with a shift to a TaylorMade driver, my switch to the Pro V1 allowed me to really attack golf courses for the first time in my life. 2001 was the 1st year my scoring average went under 80, my birdies per round went over 1.37, my GIR average went over 7.5, and I shot 37 or better more than 20% of the time. My best season came the following year, when my scoring average reached its career low of 77.23, my birdies per round a career high of 1.542, my GIR a career high of 8.14, and I shot 37 or better 36.1% of the time. I think it's fair to say that I benefitted from changes to the ball more than any other advancement in golf technology. I went from carrying my drives 200-230 yards in high school to 225-240 yards in college to 240-260 yards in this next phase of my competitive golfing career. And it's not like the changes mattered only on easy, short courses. Playing in the Utica City Amateur at Valley View 7 years between 1991 and 2000, I shot 76 or better once in 14 tries. In the next 4 years I did it 5 times out of 10, with a low of 73 in 2001. I qualified for the New York State Mid-Amateur tournament for the 1st (and only) time in 2002, by which point I had lowered my handicap to a 2.
Admittedly, my putting also improved during this period, due in no small part to my switch to an Odyssey White Hot putter that really fit my eye--and loads of off-season practice during long western NY winters and frozen and muddy springs. My total putts and putts per green in regulation reached career lows during this period. But that could also be an effect of the switch to the Pro V1, not just because I was hitting my approach shots closer to the green and to the hole, but also because I was probably rolling that ball better than others. In 2003 I got married and in 2004 onechan put a dent in my sleep schedule, so my performance dropped off a bit before I basically gave golf up between 2005 and this summer, but I can say for sure that switching from forged irons to Callaway Steelheads in an effort to get more length and accuracy out of my iron play--as well as to specialized wedges (52-degree and 58-degree Vokeys)--as I did in the middle of this stretch, did not have the desired effect. My GIR actually went down and my putting average actually went up, while my birdies per round rate once again fell below 1.35. It was frustration with this step back that made it easier for me to step away first from competitive golf, then from all golf, until this summer.
Late this May was virtually the 1st time I touched my clubs since 2005, when I played all of 4 and a half rounds, so my expectations were very low. I was shocked to find myself making solid contact from my 1st time out. By my 3rd time, I was actually 1-over in my 1st 8 holes before utterly collapsing in the wind. Which brings me to my story. The par-34 back 9 on the Easiest Course in the World has 4 fairly tricky starting holes but 5 fairly easy closing holes. It's flat and wide open, with even fewer trees than on the front, but its greens are tiny and the wind is always up. It's the closest to links golf I've ever played and it's given me fits: I've only shot 1 34 there in 2000, 6 in 2002, and 2 in 2004.
The day I shot my 10th 34 there at the end of last month was the windiest of any of the rounds I've played this year and among the windier days I've played in my life. It was the first time I decided to play by myself and to challenge myself by pitting a 4-year-old Pro V1 against a newer Callaway ball. It was a brief experiment, as I switched to a Nike distance ball that I found near where I lost the Callaway on the 4th hole. But putting my normal ball up against a rock like the Nike ball taught me a lot about my swing and short game that day. The rock definitely went longer and straighter. I actually got over the 2nd par 5 on the front with a 5-wood on my 2nd shot--a hole I rarely reached in the past unless the course was dryer than it had been that day. But I also had a lot less feel around the greens with it. I blew my chip on that hole, a simple little downhill run shot of about 40 feet, a full 15 feet by the hole and missed the birdie putt. For awhile these factors cancelled each other out. I was 3-over with the Pro V1 between the 5th and 12th holes and 1-down to the rock after a 6-foot birdie putt with it on a long par 3 actually found the bottom of the cup. But my 5th 1-putt in a row with the Pro V1 on the next hole, a long par-4 that I tripled with the rock after being right near the green in 2, turned the tide. Even though I hit the remaining 5 greens in regulation with the rock, I was 1-over during that stretch, thanks to 3-putts on a par 5 I hit in 2 and also on the very next hole, a short par 3 with a sloping green. Even though I hit 8 of 14 greens with the rock, I had 27 putts. With the Pro V1, by contrast, I only hit 5 greens in that same stretch (thanks to the wind playing havoc with my approach shots), but I only had 21 putts. I hit 3 greens in a row on the middle of the back, finally making a birdie putt on the very same par 5 I 3-putted with the rock, so I was 1-under on the back heading into the final 2 holes. And I was well aware that I had never gone under par on the back in my life.
This summer I've actually been drawing the ball off the tee, something unheard of in my early-season high school and college days, when bad timing would lead to weak fades and slices as my arms would lag behind my hip turn. But my other early-season nemesis--wedge problems on pitches between 15 and 75 yards--reared its ugly head on the 17th hole. My previous rounds had been sabotaged by fluffed, chunked, even skulled partial-swing wedges and even that day my putter had bailed my pitches out quite often. On 17, I hit my best drive of the year, a nice little draw that started out over the right rough, which the wind helped bring back to the middle of the fairway about 50 yards short of the pin. So of course I fluffed my 3-quarter-swing 52 degree wedge--I decelerated out of fear I had taken too long a backswing. But my short game was so good that day with the Pro V1 that I easily got up and down (tying the rock when I missed a short birdie putt with it).
All I needed was a par on the long 18th, a slight dogleg right with a strong left-to-right helping wind that day, to go under par on the back for the 1st time in my life. So of course I popped up my drive and then missed the green with a 5-wood that the wind pushed further right than I expected (I thought I could draw it in against the prevailing wind), leaving myself a tough chip that I couldn't get within 10 feet of the back left pin. Just like the other 2 birdie chances I couldn't convert on that side, I missed the par save for my 1st bogey with the Pro V1 since the 8th hole. I had made putts of all kinds in that stretch, including an insane 30-foot downhill-sidehiller, but couldn't get any of those 3 in my last 5 holes to fall. The 8th 33 of my life was not meant to be, I guess.
But why didn't I collapse in the wind this time like I had earlier that month? How could I have shot 1 of the best 9-hole rounds of my life in only my 4th or 5th round of the season, a season in which I played every other week rather than every other day? I have to attribute it to getting a better feel for the characteristics of the Pro V1 while playing in a match against the Nike ball. The match itself helped me keep at bay just about all the nervousness that might usually be associated with a run at a 32 or a 33. But it was really the contrast between the 2 balls themselves that helped me the most. On my full swings, I had to choose different clubs on my approach shots (the Nike ball was a half-club to a club longer than the Pro V1), align myself very differently (in anticipation of the lesser wind effect with the Nike ball), and make subtle adjustments to my swing itself. On my pitches, chips, and putts, I felt so much more comfortable with the Pro V1 in the midst of my struggles with the rock. I can't go into any more detail without getting too technical or sounding too mystical, but the bottom line is that after I played through my 2nd foursome on the 9th, I could devote my concentration entirely to the contrasting playing characteristics of the 2 balls.
To pull this tangent back to something approaching a circle, if I had to rank the most significant technological innovations in my golfing career, my list would look like this:
1) Balls
2) Drivers
3) Putters
4) Irons and Wedges
I'd probably rank hybrids #3 if I had been playing any golf the last few years. I definitely want to get a 3-hybrid and retire the Callaway 3-iron, which has been a huge disappointment, but playing as little as I have I've had little inclination to do so. So if I'm playing competitive (or any) golf 6 years from now, I'll probably take the opportunity to upgrade my entire set: move on to Mizuno irons and wedges (the brand I ended up not going with when I made my big failed iron switch earlier this decade), try to find the right mix of woods and hybrids to go with the new irons, and probably try out the new putters while I'm at it to see if I like any better than my White Hot #2. Or maybe by then I'll just be playing virtual golf on the Wii. Who knows? All I know is that if the new rules hurt the longer, wilder players in any way, shape, or form, I'm for them, but I just don't see them having much of an impact on my game.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Sparkychan in GrandpaLand: Doggie Finds a Toy
Sparkychan was alone in Grandma and Grandpa's house, and she was scared. It had been hours since onechan and imoto had left with their parents and Gojochan to go back to Dunkirk, and she still didn't know why they had left her behind. She was busy hiding under their dada's old bed when, all of a sudden, she heard the phone ring. Maybe it was onechan and imoto! But Sparkychan was disappointed to hear Grandpa say, "Well, hello, Alyak!" She wanted to hear from her girls, not their cousins. But then she heard Grandpa say, "Sure, I'll tell you another Doggie story!" Sparkychan loved stories. So she tiptoed carefully to the door of dada's old room, the better to hear the story that Grandpa told Alyak.
***
Doggie Finds a Toy
By
Grandpa Bob
One day, Doggie went for a walk. He was looking for some fun. But, at first, he did not find fun.
When he turned a corner, he didn’t see a big puddle and fell in. He got all wet! Then he shook himself to get dry and splashed a squirrel! The squirrel got mad and threw a nut at him. Doggie ran away!
Then Doggie saw a cookie. He wanted to eat it. But it belonged to a little boy. The little boy wouldn’t give Doggie any of the cookie. Doggie ran away again!
Then Doggie saw another dog. He asked the other dog to play. But it wasn’t a friendly dog. It told Doggie to go away. Doggie ran away. He was sad. He had no one to play with.
But then he saw a toy lying in the street. It was a pretty doll in a red dress. Doggie loved it. He pretended it was a puppy and he was the daddy. He had fun playing with the toy doll.
Then he thought that maybe the toy was lost. Maybe it belonged to someone else. He decided to find the real owner.
But how would Doggie find the real owner? He thought Aki might know. So he went to Aki's house! Guess what! The toy was Aki's. Aki said, ”That is Sparky! I dropped her when I went for a walk.”
Aki and Aya were glad to see Sparky. They thanked Doggie. Mommy and Daddy gave Doggie, Aki, and Aya cookies. Doggie was very happy. He had had fun after all! He even slept over at Aki's house!
***
Even before Grandpa got off the phone with Alyak, Sparkychan felt much better. If Sparky could be found, so could Sparkychan. Until that happened, she should try to make new friends at Grandma and Grandpa's house. And maybe have an adventure or three....
***
By
Grandpa Bob
One day, Doggie went for a walk. He was looking for some fun. But, at first, he did not find fun.
When he turned a corner, he didn’t see a big puddle and fell in. He got all wet! Then he shook himself to get dry and splashed a squirrel! The squirrel got mad and threw a nut at him. Doggie ran away!
Then Doggie saw a cookie. He wanted to eat it. But it belonged to a little boy. The little boy wouldn’t give Doggie any of the cookie. Doggie ran away again!
Then Doggie saw another dog. He asked the other dog to play. But it wasn’t a friendly dog. It told Doggie to go away. Doggie ran away. He was sad. He had no one to play with.
But then he saw a toy lying in the street. It was a pretty doll in a red dress. Doggie loved it. He pretended it was a puppy and he was the daddy. He had fun playing with the toy doll.
Then he thought that maybe the toy was lost. Maybe it belonged to someone else. He decided to find the real owner.
But how would Doggie find the real owner? He thought Aki might know. So he went to Aki's house! Guess what! The toy was Aki's. Aki said, ”That is Sparky! I dropped her when I went for a walk.”
Aki and Aya were glad to see Sparky. They thanked Doggie. Mommy and Daddy gave Doggie, Aki, and Aya cookies. Doggie was very happy. He had had fun after all! He even slept over at Aki's house!
***
Even before Grandpa got off the phone with Alyak, Sparkychan felt much better. If Sparky could be found, so could Sparkychan. Until that happened, she should try to make new friends at Grandma and Grandpa's house. And maybe have an adventure or three....
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