Sunday, February 4, 2018

The Mother-In-Law Putt

Written on 1-30-18.

     Here it is, the brink of the end of January, and I’ve only had two posts to my blog this month.  What have I been doing?

Written on 2-1-18.

     As soon as I wrote the above entry, I realized I had only posted twice to this blog last month, and my unspoken goal is to always post four times per month, so I got busy copying and pasting an excerpt from 2002 my original golf diary.  In that excerpt, I had just lost to Rocky and Eric at Civitan, but I was proud of how I had followed my routine on my putts for par, and how I could have faltered, but I didn’t, so the match was extended over and over again.
     Today, I am sitting in a booth just to the left of the entryway of the Village Inn in Farmington.  Our new 2018 GMC Canyon is getting some upgrades today, so I walked over here for brunch.  We used my birthday as an excuse to get all of these accessories, but they are also all fun, useful things that will extend the life of our truck.  B and I like to take care of the things we own, for sure, and this is another example of that.  We bought...
floor liners, mud flaps for the front and rear, a keyless entry (for convenience), and the HUGE purchase was a hard cover that rolls and secures the bed.  Buying that was like buying an extra trunk for our truck; we’re going to love locking stuff in there for long road trips, and it will be comforting to know the stuff in there will be protected from the elements, too.

On to golf…

     When I played with Randy, Roger, and Mike the other day, we somehow got onto the topic of mother-in-laws.  I asked Roger how his family was doing, so it flowed out of that conversation.  We were on hole #14’s green, and Roger wondered how we got on that subject.  Apparently, things are not so great with his (she smokes, and it sometimes causes friction in his marriage, too), and he flubbed a chip that barely got onto the green during the conversation.  
I joked that I now knew how to rile him up if we were ever in a serious competition, not that I would.  We laughed.  My putt from just off of the green went well past the hole; the greens were so dry and fast.  I was left with a free throw’s length for my par putt, and nowhere near an easy one either.  It was mostly straight, but the greens were doing some unpredictable things with our golf balls.  
     While I was lining up my putt, Mike teased me by asking how things were with my mother-in-law.  Being on the receiving end of that inquiry made me think what a loaded question that was.  I didn’t stop and reboot, though.  I let it go, realizing this putt now represented my relationship with Jess.  Yikes!  Well, it ended up going right in.  I walked right over to get my golf ball out of the hole, and I said, “I love my mother-in-law.  We have a great relationship.”
     We all laughed again, and we headed over to the tee box on #15.
I played yesterday by myself.  Bruce said he couldn’t, and Eric is doing some anti-cancer face treatment.  C.J. never replied.  I’ve seen his wife, Lynne, more often than I’ve seen him recently.  The weather is just too good right now, especially for January/February.  Today and tomorrow, it will be close to 60 degrees again.  Yesterday, the warm weather was fine for nine, but it got blustery when I was close to making the turn, so I stopped.  I had to go do some stuff for our Ford Escape anyway.  I didn’t play too well, but I did manage another birdie.

Aztec Municipal Golf Course-New Hole #8-Birdie #2 of 2018             

     This was a weird birdie.  I had two tremendous drives in a row, including the longest I have ever had on hole #7.  That drive went all the way up to just past the 137 yard marker.  It sailed high above the tree that is on the right side of the fairway.  I know the breeze from behind and the harder ground helped, but this was a pure swing.  It helped me get my first par of the round.

     When I came to this hole, I nearly repeated the feat, my ball stopping near 140 yards out, and that was into the wind this time.  I chose my 9-iron for my approach, but I flubbed it, hitting just behind the ball.  I cursed.  The hole was in the sweet spot, so I knew I had blown an opportunity for an eagle.  I walked up to my ball and switched to my pitching wedge, and this was the shot that set everything straight again, this was the one I envisioned with my 9-iron.  My ball landed on the top of the green, rolled forward, slowed down, and then trickled into the bowl.  I thought it was going to be either really close or maybe even in the hole.  It was really close.  I tapped in from just over a foot for my weird birdie.

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