Match with Two High School Players

5-4-11
    May the 4th be with you.  May day!  May day!  May day!  We are in crunch time at school.  It’s report card testing, end of year field trips, and stress, stress, stress.  I can do it, though.  We will do it.  It will all get done.
    I have finished Chapter One of Tom’s book.  I sent him the first part of Chapter One to see if what I had done was what he had in mind.  I will send him the rest of Chapter One tonight when I get home.  Danielle and I are in my classroom.  It’s 7:32.  She has homework to do, and it has to be done on a PC because she is using Publisher.  Also, when she is done, she needs to print to a color printer, so here we sit. 
    No news from D.K.  I have it in my mind to e-mail her again.  I want to ask her to please give me her permission to do an article and to give me an idea A.S.A.P.  May really does get busy with school, so I need as much time as I can get in order to do a quality article.  Also, the summer institute is starting here at the end of May, so once again the sooner the better.
    As I mentioned in a previous post, I escaped with a victory

against two of the older boys on the golf team one Friday.  I got a good lead when I started playing against just one of them.  I’ll call him Mike (not his real name at all, but that will work for this story).  I told him we should play a game.  I always have to play some sort of game when I play golf now.  It started with Eric, and then it continued with Bruce and C.J. And now I can’t play golf without some sort of game going on, even if I have to play against the Bogey Man when I play by myself. 
    Mike did not know a game, so I suggested match play.  He did not know how it worked, so I explained it to him.  I told him we would only play nine holes, so it might end early on before all nine holes were done.  The scorecard is at home, but this is how I remember it happening. 
    I won the first hole, hole #1 with a bogey.  He had a rough start.  I won hole #2 with a bogey.  He had a double after ending up in the ditch there. 
A tournament was taking place on the front nine and a group came up on us fast on hole #2, so after that hole we moved to the back and hole #15. 
    I stayed two up on that hole after we both tied with a bogey each.
    On #16, I had a good look at a birdie, but I missed my putt.  I called my tee shot, though.  I said over the tree and let the wind blow it into the hole. It almost went into the hole.  It was a little long and it blew past the hole instead.  We both had pars, so I remained two up.
    Then Carl showed up (once again not his real name at all, but for the blog it works).  Mike and I had left to play pretty early, and he thought Carl was not coming at all since he had been sick all week long.  He walked over to us, though, and we all three started to play together on hole #17.  Carl wanted in on the game, so I told him the game and then suggested he and Mike both take me on.  He was happy with that idea.  Carl likes to play against and beat coaches any time he can. 
    I ran into some trouble on this hole, so I conceded after hitting it into a bush two times in a row.  Carl was on the green close to the hole in five shots, and my score was getting higher and higher, so I explained what I was doing, asked them to pick up their golf balls and their bags and walk to the next hole.  I was only one up now, and we had four holes left to go if we could do it before the end of practice.  Mike told me he had never been able to play nine holes during practice, from 4:00 to 6:00.  I told him it probably had to do more with the other players he was playing with.  Mike is pretty good, and he has more experience than the rest of the golfers on the team. I see them looking up to him. 
    On the next hole, I had a terrible drive, a slice that ended up over the ditch on hole #9.  I thought it was in the ditch and that I would have to take a drop, but Carl was nice enough to point it out on #9.  It was mine!  I made a great swing with my utility club from there and I got my ball below the green with my second shot.  A nice pitch put my ball just a few feet from the hole.  My par putt would have put me two up with only two to play, but I missed on the right side.  Mike got a bogey, too, so we went on to go play #10 and #11 together.  They (Carl) won hole #10, so we were even.  It was past 6:00 slightly, so I told them whoever wins hole #11 wins the match. 
    It was here I got nervous and lost confidence, a terrible thing to have happen to the coach, the one who is supposed to be teaching and showing how to do things right.  They did not notice, of course, it was only inwardly that this happened, but it happened nonetheless.  Mike smashed a drive straight through the wind, a guaranteed fairway or maybe a little long.  Carl helped my uneasiness by slicing his tee shot into the wind and sailing his ball over to the beginning of hole #10’s fairway.