29th Excerpt From My Original Golf Diary

Written on 12-14-01.

    I was able to play in Phoenix after our interview with the DOD.  I had another first, a rather incredible first at that!  I scored three birdies in one round.  In all my rounds, I have only been able to get one birdie per round, and sometimes none at all.  I was thrilled to get two, but three?!  I was ecstatic!  I am up to eight birdies this year now.  Let me see if I can remember and type them all here quickly.  I know I got one at the long par five #5 at Hidden Valley.  That was one of the first.  I also got one at the very next hole, but on a different date.  I made a long putt playing with Eric.  Then two holes after that one but on a different day, I made a beautiful pitch after a bad drive on that short hole #8 and made that downhill putt.  That’s three.  I also got one at Civitan on hole #3.  I knocked a pitching wedge into a strong wind from about 100 yards out and landed it three feet or less from the hole.  That’s four for sure.  I also count making the birdie putt on hole #18 during the Aztec Football Fundraiser Scramble as one of my birdies, even though I just made the last shot on that one.  It was a long putt from off the fringe with some tournament pressure weighing in on me.  That makes five, and now I just got three more in one round!  I will type in the details later, but they were all on par threes as this was an executive nine that I was playing on.  The only bummer is that there were no witnesses but me, but I know they were all legitimate.  Hey, I am really up to nine this year!  I was just reading some previous entries and I forgot the one when I was playing with Guy, Daryl, and AM up in Lakewood at the Foothills course!  One more and I will have matched last year’s total number.  And it’s only December!  Can’t wait to go out and play some more and hopefully get another one, or two… or three more.

Happy Anniversary, Belinda! Life is Great!

Written on 11-23-14.

    I look back at my written reflection on the Club Championship, and I think…I’m such a whiner.  As I sit here, though, downstairs up at the cabin home on the first weekend of Thanksgiving break, I have nothing but positive things to think and write about.
    B is taking a nap on one couch, and I am sitting on the medium red futon/couch.  She and I are the only ones down here.  The only other couch down here, the only empty one, is our old dirty white one with the tan stripes.  It has a pullout mattress and a decent chocolaty colored cover on it that we bought years ago from Target for around $200.00 (to cover the dirty white and tan stripes) to keep it from completely embarrassing us before we bought our new living room furniture.  That old thing reminds me once again of...

28th Excerpt From My Original Golf Diary

10-15-01

     I am talking with Guy on the phone right now.  We regularly talk about golf.  I was telling him about how Eric and I played golf this past weekend, two days in a row actually!  That is rare considering our wives don’t normally allow it, but Friday we had Parent/Teacher conferences, so we got to leave school a couple of hours earlier than usual.  We got to play at Civitan.  I hadn’t played there for a long time.  Like I had said, we played on Friday after conferences.  Then we played again on Saturday, eighteen holes both times.  Highlights were five pars in a row and another birdie!  I also tied my best score there, a 32!  Or did I score a 31 once? I will check my scorecards to see if I did. No, I haven’t.  I also scored six pars in another set of nine holes.  I played very well, very consistently.  I also got a par on the very difficult ninth hole, which is 173 yards or so.  I beat Eric on all nine holes, except the last nine, where we tied with a 36.  On that nine, I scored a six; however, on hole number two, all because of four putts!  YUCK!

11-17-01

    Hello again.  I just finished playing today, and wanted to tell about another birdie I got.

Hidden Valley-Hole 8

    This is the same short par four where I made the long downhill putt I wrote about just a little bit ago.  I pulled my drive pretty badly, bouncing it off the cart path and landing it near the green of hole #12, the raised par three.  From there I hit one of my best pitches with my pitching wedge.  It landed on the green about eight feet above the hole.  I rolled it right in from there for a three.  I had a witness, some guy waiting to tee off on #13, but he didn’t know it was a birdie putt and I have no idea who he was.  Some very steady playing today preceded that birdie.  I ended up with one birdie, five pars, and five bogeys.  I scored a 45 on both the front nine and the back nine.  They let me play the back nine first.  I played alone.  Danielle chose to go to the Fall Festival at McCoy instead of playing with me.  I guess games and prizes are more exciting than golf to her, and I guess I can’t blame her considering she is six years old.  Ha 
    I played at Curt’s golf course with Guy, Curt, Daryl, and James last weekend.  That was great fun, too!  Curt could only play the front nine because he had to go to announce a high school football game.  Guy, the two boys, and I continued on to the back nine.  I shot a 91, which I was very happy with.  My goal was to shoot in the low nineties, or get my handicap in the high teens by the end of last summer.  That is about where I am at right now. 
    I won another prize!  Sort of.  Dad challenged Guy, Curt, and I to see who would score the lowest.  The winner would receive one of Dad’s lottery tickets worth one dollar.  If it would have been a winner, it was worth about four million.  I...

Goodbye, Dear Tom

    Wow!  What a busy month.  I had the Club Championship (fail), and I had the training in Sedona (success).  I was also able to successfully move all of my parent-teacher conferences to this final week of October, the week of our Halloween party and our one community service field trip for this month to the Good Samaritan Center.  I have survived and thrived through most of it. 
    After playing so poorly (the bum knee did not help) in our championship, though, I wanted to get away from golf for a while, and so I did.  Now, I would love to get back out there again.  
     I have heard some sad news from my little golf world recently, however.  Our head pro at Hidden Valley has decided to take a new job in Florida.  I am happy for him, though.  He has more friends and family out there.  I am bummed for Hidden Valley.  Through his leadership and expertise, our little course has flourished and improved.  I know he had some input for the hiring of our new superintendent who has turned the greens from bumpy and unpredictable to smooth and readable.  I have been especially impressed with how well the girls on our golf team did with his coaching, and he was the major impetus for bringing the First Tee to Hidden Valley.  That culminated with the successful invitation of our very own Ray Torres to attend the First Tee Tournament at Pebble Beach recently.  Wow! 
     So, goodbye dear Tom.  I wish you well when you get to Florida, but I know they will appreciate you there as much as we have appreciated you here. 

New Title

Dear Golf,

I miss you.  Know that I will never forget you and that I will come back to you.

Sincerely,

Pat

P.S. (I have a new title that can be added to my long list of monikers, and that is a BIG reason why I have not been playing or writing about you lately.  After returning from a training in Sedona, Arizona, I can now say I am an official, certified, national Time to Teach Trainer.)

P.P.S. (For the record, I did give you an outside chance during my trip.  I brought my wedge and my putter and some golf balls along in our new Ford Escape.  I never had a chance to use them, but at least I got to see them every time I got something out of the back.)

More about this later...