I’ve moved… and I’m moving

This will be the last post on this blog.

OK, Not to worry. I’ve moved the whole thing over to my new Web site at www.thedailydivot.com. It’s part of my new 2008-2009 plan to move closer to a goal of working at home. I’m going to relearn some of the web and graphic design stuff I’ve forgotten over the years and build a portfolio to start attracting writing and design clients.

My family is in a bit of a transition right now. We’re selling off most of our possessions and moving back to the lower 48 to be closer to family and friends. The move should be good for my golf game as well. We’re taking a long vacation beginning in September that will be journaled on my blog www.benstuart.wordpress.com.

But rest assured that anything golf related will find it’s way on the new and improved dailydivot blog.

Back in the saddle

It’s been a while, but we’ve been busy selling all of our earthly possesions and preparing for the move. So I haven’t had much time for golf. But that’s going to change today - I’m playing for the first time in weeks.

The weather here in Alaska has been absolutely MISERABLE for golf this summer. We’ve had more rain and cold so far in June and July than in the last 20 years. Even old-timers are bitching about our lack of summer. To give you an idea about how bad it is, according to weather.com the temperature in Homer in July topped 60 degrees just four times - including today, with the high for the month, a balmy 63.

Even more reason to get out of Dodge. The plan in August is to get everything sold, and I do mean everything, and then head down south in early September. It’s going to be amazing to be able to take some time off, although I can’t seem to find a way to do NOTHING, like I probably should be doing.

To that end, I’m starting another blog, primitivegolf.wordpress.com, which will lead itself to a book I’m working on. Expect to see it soon.

Back to golf - I’m playing an 18-hole event at our little par-3 course in town, and I’m going to try an experiment. First nine holes, try my absolute hardest to concentrate on every shot. Really grind it out. On the back, just let it flow and not worry about outcome.

Let’s see what happens.

Independence

A new chapter in this golf quest of mine has begun over the last couple of weeks - although very little of it has had anything to do with golf.

The decision to leave Alaska after this summer has been made official, meaning I will be gainfully unemployed in about three days and my wife’s last day is sometime in late August. It has been a long-time in the works as we’ve batted the idea around for about three years. But we’re finally in a place financially to be able to do it now, and with our son as young as he is, we figured it was a perfect time to make a change.

Also, with the economy the way it is and gas prices as high as they are, we thought it was the perfect time to quit our jobs and go on a road trip! We plan on heading south sometime in late August to move closer to our pacific northwest relatives and start looking for the next best place to land.

It’s an exciting, and scary, time for us on many levels as we’ll have the opportunity to take an extended vacation this fall and visit some friends we haven’t seen in quite a while.

As far as golf goes, it’s obviously taking a bit of a backseat right now as we sort out new jobs, a new place to live and find a new community. Thankfully the places we are most interested in have great golf courses nearby, so in the long-term it’s going to be great for my game. I’ve been given the green light to play a bit during our road trip as well. I’ll keep this blog updated with the courses I play.

Speaking of golf, my family was in town last week and I took my father up the road to the nearest 18-hole course in Kenai for a fun round with a buddy.

Tee to green, I had my best game of the year. Putting was an entirely different story.

Here are some crazy stats from the front nine. I hit six of seven fairways. Five of nine greens and had no penalty strokes. I also had 20 putts and shot a 45!

It’s hard to paint a picture with words about what the greens were like. For starters, they were not made of grass. Some of the tee boxes looked better than the greens. They were impossibly slow because they had so much sand on them that your ball got covered in sand on its way to the hole. It was also raining, which didn’t help and the ball was hoping four inches sideways on some putts due to grass patches here or there.  I only three-putted twice, but anything outside of three feet was impossible to hole. It goes to show how important putting is to scoring.

There is an old article on Golf Digest about breaking 80 that makes the case that GIR and putts are the two biggest factors for scoring. I have to say I agree, and according to the chart, if I would have had a normal putting round and repeated my front nine performance tee-to-green, I could (and should) have shot in the mid-70s! Instead, I ended up shooting a 93. Hit only one green on the back and finished with 37 putts.

I was actually scoring better on holes where I slightly missed the green, chipped up within three feet and hit my puts. I did that twice on the back.

All that being said, it was a good day. We saw some brown bear tracks in one of the bunkers, something I don’t know if I’ll see again. And my dad and I got to play likely our last Alaska golf round.

And who knows, the next time we play, maybe it’ll be on a course with grass on the greens.

Finding my short game

About 50 of us diehards played in a solstice tournament Saturday to celebrate the official start of summer. The great thing about golf in Alaska is that you can play at all hours. We didn’t start the 18-hole scramble until 7 p.m. and didn’t get done until about 12:30 a.m.

Our team finished tied for fourth at even par, just one shot out of the money, but I played one of my better rounds in a while and had a great time.

It’s hard to determine what your actual score would be in a scramble format, but I know I contributed three solo birdies and chipped in for a fourth on a partners tee shot. If I would have been playing a stroke play event at that course, those three birdies would have set a personal record!

The first birdie was the most dramatic. I hit my 7-iron tee shot a little fat, right in the front of the green just beyond the fringe. The chip shot was fairly easy, uphill, 30 feet, with a slight break. All I did was pick a spot about halfway to the cup and try to hit it. The ball came out perfect, took one bounce and then started tracking right at the pin. It had a little too much speed though and hit the pin and bounced out on the lip. It hung there for a while - kinda like Tiger’s famous shot at the 16th at the Masters - then dropped. The cheers from my group were classic - It’s got a chance…. oh no… oh yes! Fun and High-5s all around. I hadn’t holed a chip in about a year, I told them.

The next birdie came about five holes later on a super-short short hole. I hit a perfect flop wedge to four feet and drained the slight left-to-righter.

I contributed to a birdie on the next hole, playing my partner’s shot, I chipped it in again from about 20 feet out. Shaking my head, I told my partners I hadn’t holed a chip in at least six holes. They thought that was pretty funny, albeit a cocky golf statement. But if you can’t enjoy the good shots….

My final birdie of the night came on another short hole. I hit another perfect wedge to about 5 feet and hit the putt. Nothing special, just a good, solid 2.

Now granted, it seems easier to score when you are playing in a scramble, as you have backup on almost all of your shots. But on the three birdies, I made it a point to hit my second shots first so as not to get a read by watching the other player’s shots. I really wanted those birdies and got them. More and more, it seems, aspects of my game are getting better relatively quickly. I feel I’m making small break-throughs and getting glimpses of a solid game sometime in the near future. All it takes is time.

On another note, I think I learned something about my swing by watching Stewart Cink win the tournament yesterday. They did one of those swing vision slo-mo cameras of his swing and I noted some similarities with my move. For starters, we’re both about the same height and weight. Also, I’ve noticed in my natural swing that my clubshaft angle is steeper coming into the ball than it is at address. I’ve wondered if it was a problem that would need attention. But watching Cink, I noticed he did the same thing, in fact it was pointed out by the commentator. He also said his bad misses we’re big hooks (just like me) and when he is playing well he hits nice high fades with just about all of his clubs (again, just like me).

Of course, he is an incredible pga player that can hit the ball a mile on a string and I’m a weekend hacker. But, if anything, it shows me, I think that my swing, with a little tweaking here or there, is sound enough to get my handicap down where I want it to be. It’s all positive news, I think. And it will allow me to focus more on my short game, which seems to be getting better quickly.

Minor breakthrough

I got into contention at yesterday’s par-3 men’s club, missing the top spot by one stroke, for the first time in two years. And I really owe it all to  two things.

First off - I’ve begun to learn about MY swing, instead of trying to match it with those I see in magazines or on tv. The more I’ve learned, the more repeatable it has become. As a fairly tall golfer, 6′3″, my natural ball flight has tended to be a slight fade, which I’ve started to realize can be a great go-to shot under pressure. I can still hit a draw when I need to, but it’s harder for me to control how much it draws on any given shot. All day yesterday I aimed left of the pin and faded it back to the middle. On my misses, it finished in the right fringe. The main problem I had yesterday was hitting my wedges with too much spin. I spun the ball off the small green four times in 18 holes.

Second - I chipped the ball well for the first time this year. Once I figured out how much my ball was going to roll on the still furry and bumby greens at our local course, I started hitting my chips and pitches stiff. I got up and down more than half the time, which on the course we play IS the difference in score.

I still had two three-putts - one from a mental lapse in concentration and the other from a horrible bounce on an insanely tricky green.

All in all I was happy with how I played. I shot a 31 on the front and 33 on the back of the par 27 course for a 64. That just one week after shooting 68.

Why I play golf

One of the first questions Fred Shoemaker asks his readers in his book Extraordinary Golf is why they play golf. It seems like an easy question to answer, until you honestly look at yourself and your game.

Saturday, I think I figured out exactly why I play. I went up the road to Kenai to play 18 with a golfing buddy, hoping to shoot better than I did last month when we played together. That day, I shot 101 on the tight and tough course. It’s rated 72.7 from the whites with a slope of 139 despite being only 6413 yards long.

On Saturday, I shot 94.

But the seven shot difference in my score isn’t the reason I play golf, I’ve decided. In fact, score doesn’t have much to do with it at all.

Sure, lower scores are better than higher scores. But I know I don’t play enough right now to shoot low, especially on a tough course that has had a rough winter and has greens that are in pretty miserable shape.

No. I play golf for those times during a round where you hit shots just like you planned them in your head. Where you imagine the future, and then make it a reality, in the present. It happened a couple of time on Saturday. I hit a 285 yard drive uphill on number 6, for instance, that split the fairway, leaving me a wedge in, and followed it up with a 250 hybrid on the next hole.

But it was a cut iron earlier in the day that I’ll always remember.

I had driven the ball in the right rough about 165 yard to the green on the uphill 425 yard par 4. And when I got to the ball, realized that I had a tree between me and the hole. The idea in my head was to cut the shot left of the tree and chase it up, and I pictured the shot flying high and stopping quickly at the pin.

I opened my clubface, pointing it to the target, and opened my stance left of the tree, then just swung along my feet line. The ball started right on line, left of the green and then slowly curved right just like it did in my mind. I sat there watching the ball, then looked at the green, then looked at the ball again knowing I hit the perfect shot.

The ball hit, I thought,  on the front of the green and then started tracking right toward the pin. Then, when it got to the hole. IT DISAPPEARED.

I looked at my buddy and he looked back at me. Did I just hole out that shot?

That walk up to the green, and the shot that created it, is why I play golf. It’s the feeling of hope, of anticipation of doing something that seems superhuman in a sport that reminds you how human you really are.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hole the shot. The green sloped away on the back and it ran to the back edge out of view from the fairway. And, of course, I three putted for a bogey on the tricky and bumpy greens.

But that shot, and a few others on Saturday are like a window to me of a game I could have with more play and more practice. It’s why I started this trek and why I play the game.

Trying my best?

It’s taken six days to post after my last golf outing because I needed the time to digest what happened. I played in my first men’s league Thursday round in a couple of years and, for the most part, had a pretty good time. But a nagging conversation at the end of the round threw me for a loop.

Here’s what happened. I played at a little par three course with the course’s builder (an older retired teacher) and a couple of other older gentleman. The greens are still in bad shape, so putting was a challenge and I kept leaving just about every putt short.

I bogeyed the first, birdied the second (sunk an 18 footer) and got a par on the third. I then bogeyed four of the final six holes to finish the front side with a 31. Not great, but not horrible as I usually play better on the back side.

Well, on this day, that wasn’t the case. I actually shot 10 over on the back, leaving about 5 putts short even though I kept telling myself to hit the ball. I even hit about 2/3 of the greens, just never could get up an down when I needed to.

I get done and we are chit-chatting and I start laughing at my score. I show this guy how I shot four over and then 10 over and try to laugh it off as me being rusty.

The man doesn’t smile, but instead just looks straight in my eyes, like he was mad at me.

“You gave up on the back,” he said. “You are a better golfer than 10 over.”

As I was saying my reply, I knew it was a lie. “I tried my best,” I said, trying to convince myself it was true.

“You were huh?” he said.

Now I’ve always thought I was my own biggest critic. I though I was always harder on myself than anyone else could be. But this old man, nearing the end of his playing days, showed me that actually I’ve built up a list of excuses in my head long enough to cope with any setback on the course.

This man, by the way, beat me by four strokes that day. He also holds the 9-hole and 18-hole course record at the place and has shot 5 under for nine holes there.

If I am going to reach my goal of getting down to scratch, I’m going to have to start taking myself and my golf game seriously. The point was driven home later in the day when the prize for the lowest score of the day was announced. It went to this local pro who I’ve never seen before.

We shot identical 4-over front nines.

The difference was he beat me by 9 on the back.

It seems I have a decision to make. Either I get that competitive fire back that I once had, or I resign myself to play golf casually for the rest of my life.

The road begins today.

Cashing in a reality check

There’s nothing like a good dose of reality, especially when it comes from a spouse, to get you thinking. I got a spoonful yesterday on the way to the range.

With the Alaska State Amateur just a little over five weeks away, I’ve been trying my best to get my game in shape. Balancing work, kid-watching and all the trappings of an Alaska summer, however, has limited my time to the range once a week and one round per week at the local par 3.

Funny how I thought I would get a lot better by playing such limited golf, but I convinced myself, somehow, that I would quickly shape up to the level of play that I had in college while working at golf courses and playing every single day.

I was talking to my wife about my handicap and the upcoming tournament and I made the comment that I would rather finish third or fourth in the Class B flight (for handicaps 8.2 to 12.9) than win my Class C with my 17.7 handicap (13 to 18.9). The worry, I thought, was winning the class C and being considered another sandbagger.

Right on cue she says - Oh, I don’t think you are going to have worry about winning.

OUCH!

After driving to the range with my tail between my legs, I started realizing what she meant. It wasn’t mean-spirited, she’s been with me when I’ve played some pretty good golf. It’s just that my current life situation doesn’t allow me the time it takes to get remarkably better in a short period of time.

At the range, I hit some great shots - 275 yard drives that finished on target, wedges that stuck the greens close - but I also hit some wild ones. My game, right now, is full of variables that I don’t have the time to narrow down. It’s like sculpting a statue by removing all the excess material.

I still maintain that I have the potential there to be a scratch player - but it’s covered up with about 10 years of limited play, alternate priorities and a desk job that has killed my fitness level.

I think I’ve found the right chisel for the job, I know were I want to be and how to get there. It’s just going to take some time to do the chiselling. Only then will my game resemble anything like art.

Shank you very much

I can pretty much tell when my swing starts to  get better. I start hitting the shanks. It happened last week out at a little par 3 where I played a quick nine with about three balls each hole. It seems I’d hit the green two out of three times and shank one off to the right somewhere. It was good practice for my 50 yard pitches, but a little head-scratching.

Take No.9 - a 131 yard  shot between trees with trouble (OB) left. It was a windy day and blowing left to right, so I aimed left edge and let the wind shape the shot with the PW.

First ball - 10 feet short on a perfect line.

Second ball - 5 feet to the pin.

Third ball - shank about 40 yards short and right of the green.

Fourth ball - 7 feet from the pin.

I’ve been working on staying more stable during my backswing and just swinging through the ball.

On the plus side, I’m hitting it long and pretty straight w/o much effort. On the negative side, I still seem to be standing too close to the ball some times, or my new swing is throwing the club farther from my body, hence the shanks.

When I concentrate on my posture and setup, the ball goes about where I want it to. When I get lazy, all sorts of things happen. With six weeks to go before the Alaska Am, it’s time to work this little shanking problem out.

Better than a bogey golfer…

… but not by much.

I received my USGA handicap yesterday and it came in as a 17.7.

That means all I have to do is cut 16.7 strokes off my index in two years to make it into the US Open qualifier for 2010.

It’s comical to think of achieving that when you put it in numeric terms like that, but it’s not entirely impossible either. A little work on the short game, putting and driving the ball straighter and I could easily cut 6-10 shots off my latest rounds.

That’s my goal for this summer -Work on pitching, chipping, putting and straighter driving - that and find a way to play golf more than 4 months of the year. From a mathematical standpoint, I could drop my handicap rather quickly with just a couple good rounds in the 80s and I’m hoping to be back in that range by the time of the Alaska State Amateur in mid-July.

Wish me luck.