Category Archives: golf proverbs

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The Perfect Golf Shot

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I played 27 holes this weekend. My 9 holes yesterday were played in windy, cool weather and I got a 50 for my efforts. It was notable for a par on the treacherous second hole which has a tilted green. I hit 5 of 7 fairways yesterday but three putts and botched approaches made life difficult.

Today, I hit the reset button and armed with a new 58 degree wedge from Callaway, I set out solo onto an empty course. The picture above is from the first hole. My drive was directly into a 20 mile per hour wind which made the 48 degree weather a touch more miserable -hence the absence of players on an otherwise very golf-worthy Sunday morning. The drive was in the left rough off the first cut, leaving me 200 yards out on a sidehill lie that left the ball below my feet. I tried to play a duck hook around the tree, but I lost my balance and lucked out by having the ball settle on a steep upslope with line of site to the green.

The first hole at Wakonda is officially a par 4, but it really is a par 4.5, and with the wind, it was a stretch to make par. I was 150 yards out and the pin was in the middle of the green -the green tilts to the right and I had to land the ball center or left to get to a makable par putt.

The wind was going a sharp right to left and the green is a good 20 feet above me. The ball is on the upslope. I chose to fade a 5 iron -the upslope would take some of the distance off and the fade into the draw cross wind would straighten the shot, I hoped.

It is always here on number 1 where I have my most intense golf moments -where concentration and visualization becomes very clear and I decided to pour myself into this shot. I set up aiming slightly to the left of the pin and practiced a fade swing, trying to keep my head still and my shoulders in line with the slope. The shot I had in mind was “locked in” and the actual shot became the apotheosis of my mind’s vision.

The ball launched after a clean hit -this is so important on wet, sodden grass, and the ball kept climbing and going straight -this despite my having hit a near slice. The winding motion of the ball that normally creates a slice now was creating more lift with the right to left wind. The ball landed on line with the pin and I knew the ball would be 10 feet from the cup with a straight uphill putt (image -right).

I missed the putt by a hair, but still made a 5 which on this day was fine. I ended up with a  47 on the front -a great round given that I had great difficulties with my initial approach. After 18, I hit 10 of 14 fairways, but made only one green in regulation -this will require work. Despite this, I am still in bliss from the perfection of that approach on number 1.

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The Circle of Certitude

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The circle of certitude is the area defined by the radius within which you have a 90% chance of making it into the cup within 2 shots. For the average bogey golfer, this is about 10 feet. For the single handicapper, this is anywhere near the fringe. For a tournament pro, this circle is out at the wedges. To win major tournaments, this circle spans the 150 yard marker.

In daily life, we have many such circles of certitude where results are likely to occur. It may be only as far as the arm’s reach, or the driveway. Careful cultivation of friends and communication skills brings this circle out to across town, state, nation, and globe.

Cast your circle of certitude wide. Live with no doubt.

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Purgatory

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purgatoryIf the Old Testament, hellfire Christians are correct, then the best I can expect is to be in a line with quadrillions of people ahead of me, a line that includes Gandhi, Socrates, the Buddha, the entire pre-Columbian Aztec nation, most everyone who has ever lived in Marin County, aborted fetuses (each wearing an original sin pin on a simple gray smock), spilled semen (reconstituted as hopping demi-beings with whiplike tails, wearing half a black tee shirt with Onan in globby white letters), and a couple of my high school teachers. We’re all waiting to get processed and sent down a large hole in the clouds. We entertain each other with stories about our lives. I’m surrounded by a couple of billion demi-people who claim some relationship to me…

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High Expectations

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IMG_0205There is a golfer who has written a book about breaking par (link) in the span of a year from a state of hack. I am a fan of windmill tilting, and I have preordered the book. The author is on Twitter probably by order of his publicist, but his genuine reticence to go full tilt shill convinced me of his genuine qualities.

I think for someone with a reasonable swing, going from bogey to par golf is an achievable goal if it is dissected as a process, much like making a good pot of coffee, a perfect pancake, or repairing a ruptured aneurysm. I fancy that I can make my swing work on occasion.

Of course, unlike the previously mentioned procedures, golf involves a great deal of emotional baggage. A round of golf can reveal emotional subtext like nothing else except for maybe Thanksgiving dinner with the family.

You see the flashes of perfection like the fluttering of angel wings at the periphery of your vision. The ball sometimes flies as if guided by Providence. These shots out of our dreams are glimpses of our better selves.

As much as I try to put bad shots out of my mind, I think the key to the next level is getting the good shots out of my mind -or at least the most recent good shot. I will concentrate on blocking out the past and on facing the present situation -it’s natural as breathing in my profession, so I must strive to apply it in my avocation.

If you double after a birdie, you’re still one over for two holes where typically you’d be two over, so what’s the problem? I think the birdie is as much the problem as the double bogey, and my goal for this year is to focus on the present -the address, the stance, the takeaway, the rhythm, the swing, the follow through, and keeping my head still. The cosmic injustice of double bogeys following birdies will have to be stowed away for discussion after the match.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” -Master Yoda.

Competition is an integral part of golf. Keeping an accurate handicap is the only honorable way to level the playing field. I proudly carry my most recent handicap card and keep a USGA Rules of Golf in my bag. It also means competing with my neighbors in our annual HAC series of tournaments, and entering in the tournaments in my club. Will keep you posted.

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The Husband Keeper

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Login and face the music like a man

Login and face the music like a man...husband-man

One Monday on Facebook,

Me, status update: Working for a living.

My Sister-in-Law, comment: yes but at least you get paid for it.

My Sister-in-Law is an out of work Yale MBA currently staying at home with two small children. They live on the west coast with its inherent expenses.

Me, comment: I’d rather get paid for my thoughts on golf, technology, and the future. Or for thoughtful, heroic roles in important epic feature films. Or for inventing something on the scale of post-it notes. By the way, your work is not gratis.

  • Cook- 2000/mo
  • Chauffeur -2000/mo
  • Nannyx2 2000/mo
  • Sugar baby 1500/mo
  • Consultant -1000/mo
  • Cleaner -1000/mo
  • Gardener -1000/mo
  • Tutors 2500/mo
  • Room/board for all these people 3500/mo

I can go on. This is with no benefits -health or retirement.

My Lovely Wife, J, comment: Do you want a bill?

Me, comment: Yikes!

Sister in Law, comment: kee kee…

Guess now that you’ve convinced me I’ve earned it, I can afford to redecorate, treat myself to those spa treatments, and toss in that Marc Jacobs handbag I’ve been eyeing. I think we may also need to add Psychologist, Nutritionist, Hair Stylist and Health Care Professional to the list…

Me, comment, exeunt: You go girl. It doesn’t apply to J because she employs me.

This exchange made me think, which is the first step into getting into big trouble. Why do do women want to get married and stay married? If you look at the job description, the housewife takes on at least 5 or 6 essential jobs, goes through great deal of risk to have children, and starts having incredible headaches after about five years of marriage.

If the husband was the first domesticated animal (link), the husband-keeper was the first pet owner. Some husbands are useful and clever like the sheep dogs in that Samsung commercial (link). Others are more like those giant dogs people get when they’re small and cute, but are horrified soon to find that the dog eats food bought in fifty pound sacks and lays turds bigger than theirs. They’re messy, they’re high maintenance, and they’re horny.

So what do you do about a problem dog? You “fix it.” And that is what the husband keeper does to the problem husband. The fix involves:

  1. limiting access to non-family activities with the guys (hunting, fishing, golfing!) that increases testosterone driven pack behavior
  2. letting them overeat (to make them less appealing to other women and by increasing body fat, increase relative estrogens and brooding behaviors while tamping down on demon testosterone)
  3. making them drive ungainly automobiles that have the profile of pregnant women (minivans, Priuses, Lexus anything). Through  about a million years of monogamy, the original savage brute is transformed into the domesticated house-husband.

Being married, I clearly benefit by not having to employ an army of assistants while getting a leg up on unmarried people with the help of my wife. I am presentable because of my wife. The unattached, middle-aged man has the shelf life of a can of anchovies -more than a few years, but not more than about five to twenty. Being unmarried, unattached, or sadly widowed in your sixties or later is a formula for showing up sallow, unshavened, unpressed, and unwashed -a homeless man. There is good data to show that longevity is associated with marriage. Most guys who run off on their wives and families immediately turn around and get married and start another family -what were they running from?

What benefit does a woman get? Pride in ownership? Someone to kill varmints? I have very little insight into this question. I did kill a mouse in my NY apartment in 2003 -last time I did something tangibly useful for my wife. It is shocking to me that we are nearing our 15th anniversary and I look at my wife and nothing has changed about her and us. And maybe this two-happy-bugs-preserved-in-amber-for-a-billions-years thing is it: it is not one person’s benefit or the other’s, but the sum of the whole. By getting married, we enter a time compression bubble where one year can feel like seven but fifteen can feel like one. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, I am hers and she is mine.

Now about that Porsche.

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Live Forever

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The hyperbaric chamber reached mythical status when it was found that Michael Jackson slept in one at the height of his fame. Once the patient is sealed in the tank, the pressure in the tank is sent up to several atmospheres with increased levels of oxygen. This is useful in treating decompression sickness (the bends), carbon monoxide poisoning, and maybe some nonhealing wounds.

It sits in an unused part of the hospital, but I can understand its charms. It has a sci-fi movie feel to it, and the only way to talk to the person inside is via a telephone -COOL! It makes you think of pharoahs, pyramids, and immortality. It’s just a plexiglass pressure tank. 

Why do people want to live forever? It’s a supreme form of egotism. I rather like the view that being subjected to life is much like playing a round of golf on a municipal course on a sunny Saturday in the spring. It takes patience, a bit of smiling when you don’t want to, and the reflexes to duck when you hear “fore.” If this is life, then heaven is an championship caliber course in prime condition empty behind and ahead of you, with your favorite chosen companions, your stalwarts, playing by your side. 


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The 25 Things About Me

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southpark

This is a chain letter circulating around Facebook -this is my contribution. My soul has been bared. 

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

25 things about me

1.Imagination -my imagination tends to run amok. Ally MacBeal was a bit jarring to watch because on some levels, my brain works in a similar fashion.
2.Navel gazing -I am a chronic self examiner. Combined with number 3, blogging and Facebook suits me like swamp water does for a frog.
3.Exhibitionism -Yes. I am a bit of an exhibitionist,. Not in the trenchcoat with no pants way, but more in the need for getting everyone’s attention. But I have a purpose!
4.Food -Food, good food, obsesses me to the point that I have to force myself to view food as a bodily function and not the center of my day. Spam is the pearl of American food, by the way. I can be seduced with food. I prefer savory over sweet. 
5.Bloody mindedness -I have a masochistic streak. My personal motto was set at four, when I declared to my whiny cousin Eugene, “Namja neun ch’ah muh ya deh.” which loosely translates to “a man must persevere.” Stoicism appeals to me, even though I may unstoically complain of its absence. Once, out of boredom, I pulled out 5 of my remaining baby teeth at age 10.
6.I can’t talk about number 6. It involves the Plaza Hotel, the Harvard Club of Boston, Locke-Ober, The University Club, the Four Seasons of New York…There I said too much. They might be reading this.
7.Doing things from scratch -I enjoy creating things from elemental items. For a cucumber and tomato salad, I grew these items along with the chives and then became flustered over not being able to make the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and coarse pickling salt. I then contemplated making the bowl out of the clay from the deeper soil of the garden. The longer the process and the shorter the reward, the greater the appeal. I like to fish with flies that I’ve tied myself, and dream of catching fish in Central Park with just the items from a sewing kit from one of the hotels. 
8.Narcissism -I tend to personalize everything. You are me, and he is me, and we are me, and we are all together -isn’t how that song goes?
9.Golf -I play golf in my mind when I’m not thinking about myself or what I’m going to eat next. I’m a big baby.
10.Rules -I like structure insofar as it draws lines for me to cross, if I can.
11.Impatient -I am not terribly patient.
12.Grand Gestures -I am a bit of a primitive or a throwback in my love and appreciation of grand gestures. Think Taj Mahal or the Defenestration of Prague -actually scratch that last one. 
13.Mongols -Yes, I love anything Mongolian. I would love to live in a yurt with forty horses and my clan in tow going from pasture to pasture. 
14.Chimpanzees -I can sit and watch them all day for weeks on end if given the opportunity. Their inner workings are so mysterious.
15.Women -I can sit and watch them all day for weeks on end if given the opportunity. Their inner workings are so mysterious. 
16.Minorities -The Yakuts, the Kipchaks, the Tai Dam, the Hmong, the Hottentots, Parsis, everyone Stalin moved around, the Piraha, remnant hunter gatherers of the world, Central Asian Jews, the Celts, the list goes on and on. Fascinating stuff. 
17.The Encyclopaedia Brittanica -I used to read it obsessively.
18.Scouting -I was an avid cub scout, but made the mistake of not going beyond Webelos. The ethos of scouting has always been a part of my worldview. 
19.Fishing -I can usually catch fish. A good skill to have. 
20.The Next Thing -My To-Do list is a branchy, multiply bifurcating clade of the next shiny, neat thing to figure out or do. I enjoy constantly remaking my environment.
21.School -If I hit Powerball, I’m going back to school forever. 
22.Anchovies -I really enjoy the salty, super fishy flavor of anchovies on the side with a freshly made Caesar’s salad.
23.Writing -If I had to do it all over, I would have put more effort into writing and storytelling. 
24.Love -I am a believer in true, romantic love. The kind that gives you strength, perspective, and a clear vision.
25.Purgatory -If the Old Testament, hellfire Christians are correct, then the best I can expect is to be in a line with quadrillions of people ahead of me, a line that includes Gandhi, Socrates, the Buddha, the entire pre-Columbian Aztec nation, most everyone who has ever lived in Marin County, aborted fetuses (each wearing an original sin pin on a simple gray smock), spilled semen (reconstituted as hopping demi-beings with whiplike tails, wearing half a black tee shirt with Onan in globby white letters), and a couple of my high school teachers. We’re all waiting to get processed and sent down a large hole in the clouds. We entertain each other with stories about our lives. I’m surrounded by a couple of billion demi-people who claim some relationship to me…

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The 100th Conversation

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couple001It is established, at least to my mind, that a person can only have a hundred meaningful conversations in the course of a relationship, and it is folly to run through them in the first several years of said relationship. In postponing these conversations, you maintain some semblance of mystery and self-hood. The process of having one of these results one of the participants being spiritually absorbed, to the one-hundredth part, by the hungrier party. This is usually the woman who is the devourer. It is never a bright thing to allow oneself to be spiritually phagocytized.

I was recently eating lunch with my son G at Gateway Market, our local version of Whole Foods, and I saw this couple in earnest conversation. What could he be saying that left the young lady in such a serious pose? I could imagine this:

Marty: “You know, you were the best of the lot.”

Rose: “What do you mean.”

Marty: “I figured I had these criteria when I was single and looking around. Looks, money, intelligence, personality, and cooking ability.” 

Rose: “Oh. What are you saying, I was a compromise.”

Marty: “No, you are the complete package, sweetums.”

And that would be it. Marty has no where to go but down. This picture was taken probably about ninety minutes after the start of the conversation. 

Rose: “So you mean there were prettier girls?”

Marty: “In one sense, sure, but that’s when you break down looks by face, boobs, legs, and ass. Any one woman may predominate in one category, but might be completely zero in other more important categories.”

Rose: “So you made a conscious choice? You had a spreadsheet!”

Marty: “No honey, when I saw you, I knew you were the one…”

As G and I smacked away at our food, the Titanic was sinking right before us. Here was the human condition at a yuppy café in Des Moines. 

Rose: “What kind person are you! Do I know you! How can you reduce a woman down to parts like a chicken -drumstick, thigh, breast and wing? How dare you sum me up by personability and money and the ability to make a soufflé!”

Marty: “Snookums, I was just making conversation.”

This is why the couples that last 50-75 years together sit in resplendent silence. Our life spans are far beyond what nature had intended. Nature had intended that we be run down by hyenas at the ripe old age of 20. My advice: shut up!

What honey? I’m talking to the people in the computer again. About nothing…

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You should be so grateful

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This video is like cold water in my face because I am this person that the comic is talking about -I have become childish and churlish about having to wait for things, I expect instant gratification. I get put out when I don’t get that gadget delivered in 24 hours. I used to order sandwiches from kozmo.com ten years ago during the internet heydey and get it delivered to my apartment in 5 minutes. I have high expectations of my technology, and this bleeds into the people sphere. Twenty years ago, I had my first computer, and it was not networked. It was a Coleco Adam, and had 128k of memory, and a cassette tape drive. There were no real programs for it except for a wordprocessor that I used to type out my college essay. Otherwise, I programmed things myself using the Basic programming language that came with it. I programmed a thing called Life, that had the interesting property of mathematically modeling population growth graphically (link here for Wikipedia file). Now I have a ultraportable laptop with a 7 hour battery life that I can blog from anywhere on the planet with a WiFi link (Amazon link) that costs 390 bucks. It’s a little bit slow, but it feels like a little slice of the future.

Getting so impatient for perfection in our gadgets and life processes makes us forget to be grateful for life itself. In golfism as in life, to want is to suffer, so want for nothing and you will not suffer. I am grateful for my long suffering wife and my beautiful son. I should be so grateful.

Now about that 911 Turbo Cabriolet…

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Holding and winning from the center

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Wakonda No. 1, May 2008

Wakonda No. 1, May 2008

The middle of the fairway is a good place to be. On Wakonda No. 1, the reward for going long and left is a shorter approach to an elevated green with the tree being the obvious risk. If you can jack it 270 yards on the fly, going over the tree and drawing the drive is a given as it will leave you a pitch to the green. Leaving yourself the right for a bailout area isn’t so bad because you may have better luck hitting a hybrid 3 or 5 wood on the flat versus an uphill lie 6 iron. But there be hazards to the left and to the right.

Iowa, in the center of the country, proves to me time and again that moderation, competence, and overall reasonableness are desirable qualities in these increasingly troubled times. If each month can be thought of as a hole in a round of golf, the country played June through October giving up two strokes to OB on each hole.

Remember, this round doesn’t end after 18, and when you’re caught in one of those hellish tailspins, the first thing you do is NOT increase the risk/reward -essentially going to the ATM and doubling down your bets. You give yourself a couple of gimmes -remember, three consecutive seven irons will get you onto most par 4’s and 5’s in three strokes -the key is keeping it in the center, sticking to what works, and regaining your confidence. 

Letting the banks fail, letting central government fail, letting the auto industry fail versus creeping socialism, rising taxes, and protectionism -these are the hazards to the right and to the left. I have no idea what would be the right thing to do at this time, but history has shown that Americans have a basic decency and optimism that seems to transcend the various cultures that have added to America’s tapestry. This is a country that won a two front world war, sent a man to the moon, and proved that it is not afraid to elect a reasonable sounding man of color in the worst of times. 

It is the center that must hold for us to prevail. Otherwise, you will see the rich retreat to well armed enclaves while everyone else fends for themselves in a dystopian America of foragers, permanent campers, and flea market barterers -check out Russia c. 1995. 

Check out this link which discusses how the Republicans lost golfists like me.