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Thought Number 1: I suck at golf.
Thought Number 2: I really enjoy playing golf. I got out of work at noon today and went to a small 9-hole public course today. You pay one price to play as much as you want. Most people go around twice to get in a full 18 holes, but you can go around for 27 or even 36 is you want. I find that a few hours after I finish playing a round, all I want to do is go back and play more to improve on what I just did.
Thought Number 3: I think I might be getting better at the game. Golf is more of a mental game than I ever realized before. In baseball, football or basketball, even if I got discouraged by a bad play or a strikeout, I was always able to play out of it. Now I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but for me, a bad shot or two in golf becomes a mental landslide. A bad shot gets me nuts and I try too hard to make up for it with the next shot. So I get all nervous and grip the club too hard, forget to keep my head down, and shank a shot into the woods. Along the same lines, if someone is waiting for me or even just watching me, I get all worked up and shank one into the woods. On two different occasions today, I was waved through by slower players. Both times, I rushed, got all nervous and hit bad shots (one into the woods, the other into the road.) You really have to create a pre-shot routine and stick to it on every shot. I hit more good shots today than bad shots. I had three really dreadful holes that inflated my score into its usual triple digits. But I feel now that those three horrible scores were a result of mental mistakes rather than really bad technique. This sport, more than any other I've played, translates bad concentration into poor physical performance.
Thought Number 4: I think for really bad golfers like me there should be some type of score adjustment for number of balls lost. When I first started playing golf, I made sure that I had at least a full box (15) of golf balls. Usually, I had two full boxes. Today, I lost only three balls. When you have a high handicap (and I have no idea what my handicap really is - I just know it has to be high) I think that you should get a bonus for losing so few balls.
On the second hole today, I got close to the green so I looked in my bag to pull out my pitching wedge. And it wasn't there. WTF? Where is it? Once I accepted the fact that I didn't have it, I improvised some shots with a sand wedge - a club I don't use very often. And I made some really good shots with it. I may never use a pitching wedge again. As I was playing, it occurred to me that I may have lost the club at that course the previous Friday. (I've been trying to play every Friday afternoon lately. I want to be much improved by the time Bill, my brother-in-law, starts his golf outings this spring.) After my first time around the 9 holes, I stopped in the clubhouse and asked if they had any lost clubs. They did, and my club was one of them.
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