Written on 8-15-18.
It’s a Wednesday evening here at home, and Belinda is at TRX. Good job, Belinda! Those workouts feel like two workouts in one. She and I have been working out consistently; it’s just the eating that hasn’t been perfect. We’ve done intermittent fasting, but for a while there, it was either fasting…or fast food. Not a good combination, I’m certain. Fasting is good. Fast food is bad. I am learning that it’s not what I eat, however, that is so important. It’s more when I eat. By not eating anything until noon every day, and not eating dinners at all, or eating a light dinner earlier than usual, I’ve lost weight. I was down to 212.8 yesterday. Presenting at Carver Elementary for Time to Teach with this lighter weight will feel great this Saturday.
On to golf…
Bruce, C.J., and I played on Monday. I invited Don, and he accepted, but then he dropped out at the last minute due to back problems. Bummer. We forced Bruce to choose the game, because he hasn’t played in a while, and he picked the points game.
By the end of the front nine, Bruce was leading 41 to 26 to 10. I had the 26, and I had earned 12 points on #3 after doing everything right. I hit the fairway for one point, the green in regulation for two points, and I got the par and the win for holes #2 and #3 after Bruce and I pushed the points from #2 with two pars. I got eight more points on #9 when I got the green, a par, and another win. Then things really got heated up on the back nine.
Bruce and I pushed the points from #10 to #11 with two pars again. Then we both got birdies on #11.
Aztec Municipal Golf Course-Hole #11-Birdie #33 of 2018
That’s two times this year I’ve driven this green. The last time, I barely missed my slippery downhill eagle putt from seven feet away. This time, I had to...
putt across the green from the left side to the right. Bruce was just off the green on the right side, and he chipped it to four feet away to earn his birdie. My putt was on track for an eagle, but it stopped just short. We pushed the points from this hole and #10 to the next hole with our two birdies.
We both earned pars on #12, too, so the points were really beginning to pile up. We both had a super 3, 3, 4 start, so we were both one under after the first three holes on the back. On #13, Bruce had a putting malfunction, though. His par putt went through the hole and popped out on the other side. Then he stroked his next putt a bit too hard again, so it popped out once more, but this time it looked like a kid who had pulled himself out of a swimming pool and plopped his butt right on the side of the pool. It was weird. He came over to congratulate me for winning a ton of points, but he forgot about C.J. and his pop on that hole, so the points were actually pushed to #14.
After the first four holes, I had forced the points to the next hole four times, three times with Bruce and once with C.J. Then I took a breather. Bruce and C.J. pushed the points on #14 and #15. My par putt on #15 just barely missed, lipping the hole and stopping right next to it. I asked it to turn, but it didn’t hear me, or it didn’t listen like it did on hole #9.
We all got pars on hole #16, but we did it in different ways. I missed the fairway and the green. C.J. hit the fairway, but he missed the green. Bruce did it the boring way by hitting both.
Then Bruce and I earned pars again to push the points one final time before the last hole. I helped push the points on the back nine six times! I really wanted to win those points on that final hole, and I nearly pushed them again. I nearly chipped in for a par to a pin on the front right side from the thick grass just past the bunkers. My ball clacked against the stick and shot out to the right, a little more than a foot away. My bogey, despite my recovery after hitting my tee shot in the ditch, was not enough to tie C.J. on the last hole. He earned a bogey with a pop to gain a net par and win all of the pushed points from the entire back nine. Or, that’s what we thought.
We stopped to add everything up to see if he had taken second place behind the eventual winner, Bruce. Bruce ended with 76 points. C.J. earned 30 points on that last hole, so his total for the round ended up being 51 points. We mistakenly added my points wrong, though, so I thought I had lost with only 47 points. C.J. smiled and gave a fist pump in the air when he saw he had passed me up. I was happy for him. He deserved it after he had won the last hole.
I was frustrated to take third after Bruce and I had tied with our stroke play score of 37, just 3 over. How did that happen? Well, as it turned out, it didn’t. When I looked at it again tonight, we forgot to add my six points for my two pars on #16 and #17, so I really ended with 53 points. I won’t tell C.J., though. He was so happy when he saw he had enough points to surpass my score, and I ended up beating him again today with the same game anyway.
Thinking I had lost the last time, I chose to play the same game without Bruce around to get in our way today. I really thought I was going to play alone, because I had texted and e-mailed C.J. last night to let him know I was going to play today instead of Thursday, because we are heading for Colorado Springs tomorrow for a Time to Teach meeting on Friday morning at Widefield High School. When I arrived at the course, I got a text from C.J. saying he was on his way to the course at 9:07. I was going to track my strokes gained again (or give it another attempt), but when I heard he was on his way, I chose not to do it. It takes time and focus for each shot. So, I waited.
I stretched at the first tee. I took practice swings. I pitched my ball to the old practice green (mostly weeds now) and then back to the teeing ground. I let a guy named Richard play through. He said his clubs were stolen out of his car on his driveway in Durango, so he wasn’t used to his driver. I think he was nervous, because I was watching him. I wasn’t. I was looking for C.J. I didn’t even see Richard’s tee shot.
Then I saw that familiar plain white Ford truck pull into the parking lot. Finally! It was getting close to 9:30. Not that I was in a hurry, but when I’m ready to tee off, I’m eager to get going. He didn’t come over to meet me right away, though. Hmmmm. I let a couple tee off before us, and I told them that I was waiting for my buddy. I pitched some more. I took more practice swings. I stretched. Then I called Ty to see if he saw C.J. He said he had come in and walked out. Hmmmm.
Then I walked up the hill to see if he was heading my way. He wasn’t. He was on hole #10! What was he doing over there? I walked to the pro shop, borrowed a cart key, and I went to see what was up. He was on the green by the time I got to him. We gathered up his clubs and his cart and drove the cart back. I returned the key, and we were off.
He apologized. He didn’t see me on the #1 tee. He didn’t see my truck. He hadn’t received my text that said I would wait for him. He thought I hadn’t even come to play, but in the end, it all worked out. We got going close to 10:00.
It was wonderful. It was much cooler today than it’s been all summer, and we even had a bit of rain, a very tiny bit of rain, but hey, it was rain. Once again, it came down to the last hole, too.
After the front nine, I was ahead 36 to 26. We fell into a pattern where we were taking turns winning holes. I was winning the even holes, and he was winning the odd ones. We pushed the points from #9, though, after we both got bogeys. We pushed with bogeys again on #10, and I joked that we might end up pushing all the points on the back nine to the last hole again like last time. I burst that bubble, though, on hole #11 when I made an eight-footer for par. He struck back on hole #13 with a par/net birdie. I won hole #14 with a rare par there. He took #15 and #16, and then I got a par and a green in regulation on #17. After all of that, I had 63 points, and C.J. had 56. It was anybody’s game still.
He hit the fairway. My ball, another one of Bruce’s Kirkland balls, was lost forever in the ditch. Not a good start. His second shot put him in a great position to get on the green. I blasted my ball with my utility club to a spot just past the fairway, around 60 yards from the hole. He ended up in the bunker with his third shot. My ball landed left of the flag, leaving me a downhill eight-foot putt on a sandy green. He blasted out of the bunker to the super wide collar. He only needed two shots from there to earn his bogey and a net par. I had to make my putt. If he got the par and the win with his fairway point, we would have tied. Thankfully, I made my putt for par, redeeming myself after getting a bogey in the previous round. Surprisingly, he missed his short putt for his bogey, so he ended with a double and a net bogey. I had earned six points with the par and the win, and he had earned one point only for the fairway, so the final score was Pat: 69, C.J.: 57. Phew!
I am taking a break from golf now. I will be back at it next week, but Belinda and I leave tomorrow for my Time to Teach training on Saturday at Katie’s school, Carver Elementary, in Colorado Springs.
Until next time…
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