18th Excerpt From My Original Golf Diary-Part 2-Rest of the Spring Break in VA

Continued from 6-18-03.

 

I have written a lot in the journal that happened after Virginia, but I really need to finish writing about Virginia before I get that in here.  So, here goes…  

        On the second night after playing Pinecrest that morning, Guy and I went to a driving range.  We hit two jumbo buckets of golf balls, and I mean JUMBO.  I told Guy about my swing thought to try and help him out, but I don’t know that it did him any good.  He has a very upright swing and a left arm that bends in the follow-through, and I wish he would get clubs fitted to him with a pro’s help.  He’s so tall and he looks really stooped over the ball.  We used my video camera, because I had brought it to film stuff like the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial for my class, and Guy’s house for Mom and Dad.  

        I was amazed at what I saw in my swing, though.  Impact looked better than it ever had from a side view.  I was hitting down and through the ball and my hands were ahead of the clubface.  From the rear view, though, it was a different story.  My swing was very...

flat, and I was somehow getting it square to hit it straight at impact.  I was really bringing the club in low and to the inside, though.  

        I really wished I had Guy video my sand wedge swing.  We had challenged each other by picking different targets, but after that we had so many balls left that I was doing my “tempo” drill, hitting four or five golf balls in a row, just to get rid of them.  For about four sets, I hit some of the best shots in my life.  I was hitting four or five in a row, and they were all going right to the target I had picked out some 110 yards from where we were.  It was off the artificial turf, but they were such nice swings.  I was hitting right down and through the ball and the biggest thing I remember was the consistency.  Distance was good, aim was good, tempo was good, and I was breaking a sweat, so my swing and I felt loose and warm and flowing.  It was a great feeling! 

The last day we played at Algonkian Golf Course.  It was kind of like Hidden Valley in that you wouldn’t even think there was a golf course nearby until you drive right up to it.  It was the most beautiful of the three we played that week.  I didn’t play great, but some holes really stand out as well-played.

I earned a routine par on hole #4.  Nice drive, nice approach, and two putts.  The not-so-routine part about it was that I had exploded on the hole before that one.  That one was an extremely long par four and the most difficult hole on the course, and I screwed it up badly.  I tried to hit a big drive with my driver, and I yanked it left into the trees.  Then I tried to advance it instead of just punching out and taking my medicine.   After a hike in the forest and a few more swings that caused some damage to some more trees, I finally got it into the trap next to the green where Guy was patiently waiting.  I finally succeeded to get the ball in the hole with a grand total of nine shots.  This was the worst hole of the trip, but it could have been worse.  

I still ended up winning the match after that disaster.  We played match play, and we kept on tying hole after hole.  It was brutal.  I wanted to make sure I beat him badly, but we kept on tying.  After the par on hole #4, we were even.  Then we tied the next three holes until I got par on the par three #8 with a nice chip.  He was on the green in one on that hole, but three-putted after watching me make my par.  I made a lot of crucial putts just to stay even with him on the holes before that one.  One was a “trickly” and long “down-hiller” for a bogey to halve hole #7, a par four.

After the par on the par three, we tied again for the next four holes!  On hole #10, though, we stopped to admire a small fawn, with a reddish brown coat and little white spots on its back.  It was beautiful, and it wasn’t afraid of us even though we were less than twenty feet away.  I told Guy it was like heaven, but it couldn’t have been heaven, because in heaven our scores would have been much, much lower and I would have been beating him by a larger margin.  ha  

I said something profound during this round.  I said golf was like a game of targets.  You always pick out targets and try to hit them.  Sometimes you hit them and sometimes you don’t.  The nice thing about golf is that you eventually get to hit your final target, the hole, on every hole.  That makes it quite satisfying.  Every hole you play, you can, and eventually will, hit the ultimate and final target, the hole.  You can’t say that about archery.

Holes #16 and #17 were very satisfying to me.  I hit each target in the number of shots you are supposed to hit them in.  #16 was a long par three at 215 yards.  I was exhausted!  I had played a lot of golf, and we had walked and carried our bags on each course while I was there.  We had sopped around in the mud for three days, too, and I know we hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep because we stayed up pretty late each night.  Not as late as I used to stay up when I visited Guy and played video games, but pretty late.  Guy always went to bed after I did, though, because he was doing his evaluations for work, so he must have been really tired.  We also got up early to do our workouts in the morning each day.  So, when I came to this hole I was so tired, but I gathered all my strength and concentration to try and finish well, and I did!  I hit my 5-wood, and just smashed it all the way onto the green.  It was a great shot!  From there, I had a long putt for birdie, and I put it within four or five feet.  I made that for a satisfying, target-hitting three!

On #17, I was energized by my par on #16, so I tried my driver, but I pulled it left into the mud and the trees.  Great!  More mud!  I hit one of the best recovery shots of the trip from there, however.  I used my trusty 4-iron, which had lost its emblem on the first day on the second hole at Herndon, and whacked a low penetrating shot that rolled up on the green on the far right side.  I couldn’t aim for the left side where the flag was, because the trees were in the way.  I was proud I got the distance right because the ball was in the mud, and if I had really hit a full swing I would have ended up way over the green.  It was a toe-up, toe-up mud/punch shot.  Very neat!  Anyway, I double-putted for par on that one, too.  

        On #18 we lost my first ball, but Guy said I didn’t have to take a penalty because of the group behind us.  I did anyway, but didn’t go back to the tee box because that group was coming up fast.  I think I would have gotten another par, though if we would have found my first ball.  I dropped and got it in the hole in four more shots from where I had dropped it.  I hit another great low punch from out of the mud and onto the green, but this time with my 5-iron.  I think I just used muscle memory from doing the same thing on the hole before.  

Playing with Guy was like a dream come true.  I wished I could have stayed one more day, but I was trying to get back to be able to meet B and the kids in Moab for the last weekend of spring break.  It wasn’t meant to be, though.  I got stuck on I-70 just twenty minutes out of Denver in a huge snowstorm that stranded a bunch of cars.  I was lucky to get my chains on and make it back home to Mom and Dad’s.  It cleared up later, but by then it was too late to head out again.  I ended up just leaving for Aztec on Saturday, and meeting up with my family at home.  All in all, it was a great spring break for golf and being with Guy!