2nd Excerpt From My Golf Diary-Part 2

2-27-22

        I am doing another excerpt this month due to the fact that I haven't played any golf.  In this one, I play in Pinon Hills Classic, and I tell what happened...

Written on 8-2-02.

Well, I did it!  I competed in my first ever golf tournament all by myself.  This is truly not a team sport.  I felt very alone both days.  It didn’t help that Eric was out of town and didn’t get to play in it either.  

On Saturday, I didn’t feel as alone because of the two guys I was playing with.  I played with two other gentlemen, Bill and Phil.  Bill was older than I was, and he had a very short back swing.  For the most part, he hit it straight, just not very far.  He is a retired dermatologist.  Bill has two sons, both married, which tells you about how old he is.  

Phil is...

Navajo, but I don’t know what he does.  He said he has five children!  He ended up placing third with the third best net score.  He had an out-to-in swing path that clipped the ball very consistently, but not a lot of distance for him either.  He was the better of the two, though.  He shot a 93 to my 91 on Saturday. 

Bill was very nice.  I wouldn’t choose another person to play with in my first tournament.  He was polite, cheerful, helpful, and he played worse than I did.  Seriously, I really appreciated his cheerful demeanor and advice.  On the back nine, he was saying, “Pin it up!” before my shots to the green.  He even advised me to take a free drop because my ball was on some soppy and muddy grass.  I didn’t know I could get a free drop for that.  I still am not sure if it is allowed, but it helped me hit that green in regulation.

The rules were mostly followed, but there were exceptions.  Even I got a break.  The first example was when Bill teed off from outside the markers on the first tee.  He must have really been nervous.  I was about to tell him, but he had the quickest routine I have ever seen.  Phil and I didn’t penalize him for it, though.  Later, Phil caused his ball to move.  I didn’t see him do it, but I definitely saw the ball rolling away from him where he had hit it into the rough.  Bill wrote it down on the scorecard to remind us to ask when our round was over.  We never asked, but I am certain that that was a penalty.

On Sunday, I played with three different guys.  It was less friendly playing with them, and I felt like an outcast.  They were all older than I.  They were also more skilled than my two partners from the day before.  We were all placed in the last group according to our scores from Saturday.  Since I had shot a 91 the day before, I was tied for the lead after Saturday’s round!  

I rode with Greg, who was visiting his daughter and son-in-law.  He was from Texas.  He was a girls’ basketball coach for twenty years.  He smoked cigarettes the entire round and I noticed that his pre-round meal was a cheeseburger when I was putting on my sunscreen before the round.  The other two players were Don and Mike.

What a brutal round of golf!  I was both physically and mentally exhausted when I was done.  Our round took just over five hours!  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why it was taking us so long to play.  My guess is that it was four guys playing tournament golf trying to get the lowest score they could each get.  Part of it was because of the times one of us would hit into trouble.  The group behind us hit into us at hole #10.  I guess Mike got upset and hit it back.  On the next hole, the head pro, Chris, came out to talk to us, but he was very nice, and we didn’t get warned for slow play.  

I got in some serious trouble on two of the par fives, #9 and # 17, the #1 handicap hole.  On #9, I pulled my drive into the rough, and then hit a provisional ball thinking it was lost.  After some searching, Mike found it.  It was in some branches, so I took an unplayable lie, and to make a long story shorter, ended up with a nine.  On #17, it was worse.  I hit a decent drive, but hooked my second shot into the rough again!  I took another unplayable lie, but had to go over all the same junk just to get back on the fairway.  I chunked it with my 8-iron into the middle of a huge tree, and the worse part was I could still see it.  It was then that Greg gave me a break on the rules, I think.  I still regret it, but Don and Mike were already on the green!  That had made Greg very upset.  I was too freaked out by my dilemma to really be upset with them, though.  He let me just drop it onto the sand at a spot where I could punch out to the fairway.  Finally!  From there, I hit it into a trap still some fifty yards from the hole.  It was there that I hit probably my best shot of the tournament, a long bunker shot.  I really thought it was going to hit the lip right in front of me, because the ball was so close to the edge.  It didn’t though, and I ended up just behind the hole, just off the green.  From there, I double-putted for a ten!  Yes, a ten!  After that, I was able to compose myself and get a nervous double bogey on the last hole.  Phew, what a relief.  At that point, I was just happy that it was all over.  I knew I had blown any chance for a prize with my score of 99 on Sunday.  I was wrong, though!  I placed third with the third best gross score!  Saturday’s score must have really helped.  

I won $100.00 to spend in the pro shop.  I really wanted to use it for green fees and a range pass, but they would only allow me to use it on merchandise.  I bought a Pinon Hills blue shirt, some new Sun Dog sunglasses, and four Callaway golf balls, two of which I gave to Kyle for his play at his tournament at the Country Club.  When I asked him how he had done, he said, “I just got a piece of paper.”  So, I gave him the golf balls as a prize.