How to Score a Hole-in-One?

Happy Presidents' Day!  

    The following post was written earlier this month, but Bruce and I played just two days ago with Steph, my good friend and co-teacher from the Bisti Writing Project, for the first time.  She told us that she recently scored her second hole-in-one at hole #12 at Pinon Hills.  Good for her!  Bummer for us, though.  Some day.     

    Bruce e-mailed me later in the week to remind me of a celebration at Rubio’s of a dear teacher and friend who had died recently after...

a long off and on again battle with cancer.  It was a nice get-together, and we shared some wonderful memories.  We will all miss her very much, but I can honestly say I had not seen her for many years.  When I saw the attachment with her picture, I gasped.  I thought it might be bad, and it was, but the smile was exactly the way I remembered it.  We did correspond by e-mail recently.  She had followed my brain surgery story at Caring Bridge this past summer, so we caught up a little bit after I was better.

    I asked him how the rest of the round went.  He said he was just one over after seven holes.  Then C.J. skunked him on the last two with a one-club game again.  I have learned not to challenge C.J. with one club.  I asked Bruce what it felt like to be just one over after seven holes because I don’t think I have ever done that.  No, I know I haven’t.  I think he misunderstood me, though, because he replied by saying it felt great after the way his scoring went on the nine we played together.  I didn't mean how did it feel for just that day; I meant how did it feel, well... period.  He also wrote that C.J. is so deadly with one club due to his chipping and putting with his hybrid.  I agree.
    C.J. has a friend he plays with sometimes named Banister.  He relayed a story via e-mail about how Banister got a recent hole-in-one.  Sadly, the three of us have not scored one yet.  This is what C.J. wrote:

    If a hole-in-one could be ugly...this was kind of ugly...kb was mumbling and grumbling the minute he topped it...2 feet off the ground, hit the ground running, rolled at least 50 yards before rolling onto the green, then all away across the green (pin back of green) before disappearing into the cup!

    I would still take it if it happened to me.  It’s a game of targets.  It is still written on the scorecard as a 1, so it doesn’t really matter how the ball gets in the cup.  That’s what I rediscovered when we played today.

More on that later...