Lifetime Eagle #8!

8-8-10

   Great news!  I scored a new eagle yesterday when I played with C.J.  We played eighteen holes at Hidden Valley.  Here’s how it happened…

Hidden Valley-Hole #11-Eagle #8 of My Lifetime and Birdie/Eagle #18 of 2010

   I teed off with my 5-wood, my usual choice for this hole.  It was a nice drive, but I wasn’t sure if it would end up on the fairway or slightly off of the fairway on the left side.  When I got to my ball, I found out it was just off the fairway, maybe ten feet away.  I saw the 100-yard marker, and I could clearly see (in my mind) the 100-yard circle coming through my ball, so I chose my sand wedge.  Since the flag was on the front, I was thinking it would be approximately 90 yards to the hole.  The day before I had tried to hit down on a ball that was in the taller grass and ended up shanking it out of bounds.  For this shot, I reminded myself to simply let the club do the work.  Another thing that made this swing so beautiful, so relaxed, was that we had played holes #10 and #11 earlier that day, and I had already earned a par on each one.  I had just bogeyed #10, so C.J. and I decided we would keep the par scores I had earned when we started.  So, I counted this as a free score in my head, a score that might or might not count.  It was like a free swing, so I swung freely...
 And then I counted this score.  The ball flew high and straight, and I knew it would be close.  I thought, “I’ll have a short putt for birdie upcoming.”

   The ball landed about three steps away from the hole on the right side.  It landed softly, rolled a bit, and then disappeared.  It was so fun to watch from so far away.  This is the longest shot I have ever made!  First I saw my ball moving on the green near the flag, and then the little white thing was gone.  

   Billie and C.J. were my witnesses.  Billie was sitting on the patio taking a break after playing the front nine with us.  He shouted out that it was like a hole-in-one, so I should buy him a beer.  I carried nothing with me over to the green, which was a fun and funny thing to do (no putter and no wedges).  C.J. offered to lend me some cash to buy Billie a beer, so I took him up on it.  Later, when we were done playing, I paid him back and bought him a beer as well.

   C.J. was closer to the green when my ball fell in, so he got a great view of it.  He very kindly walked back to me to give me a high five.  He was just as happy and impressed as I was, maybe more.  I was in a bit of shock.  I gave my wedge a slight toss in the air after I realized what had happened.  It was just great fun!  It was a mini-celebration, and it made the rest of the round more enjoyable.

   To make things even better, C.J. and I won the game that we had set out to play.  We played the Bogey Man again, and this time we beat him soundly.  On the front nine, we beat him by giving him only four strokes, the goal we had set for each nine.  On the back, we destroyed him, beating him by going only one over par for a 36.  C.J. had a birdie on hole #16, which also helped tremendously.  His 7-iron put his ball just four feet past the hole, and slightly on the left side, and he left no doubts with his putt, rolling it quickly and confidently into the hole.

   I haven’t mentioned what I’ve been reading lately, so here’s a quick update.  I read the book Payne at Pinehurst, and I enjoyed it.  I liked how it’s about Payne’s final major, and I enjoyed hearing the details behind the victory.  I am also reading The Diary of Anne Frank.  I am almost done with it.  I checked out a couple of books with “diary” in the title since I have my own diary, and I was curious how others were written.  Another book I checked out is Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  That’s next on the list.

   I learned some things about Anne Frank.  First, I discovered that she was a fine writer for such a young girl.  I enjoy reading it partly because it is so well written.  I didn’t know that she stayed in isolation with seven other people, and that she shared a room with a dentist, so it was not just her family.  It was more than just Miep who helped her and her family; they had help from others as well.  I also did not know that she had a difficult and tumultuous relationship with her mother.  She very rarely says anything nice about her mom, and most of what she does say is pretty condemning stuff, but she says plenty of nice things about her father.

   I am stopping now, so I can read some more, maybe even finish it up tonight.  I plan on getting a lot done tomorrow, so I can go play golf as guilt-free as possible on Tuesday, the official last day of summer for Belinda and me since teachers report to work on Wednesday.  I plan on cleaning my parts of the house, working out, and going to my school to get things going there. 

Until next time…