"But if I didn't double bogey...."

[ryebread442]

Ah the "What if..." game. I remember last August I ended up with an 80, my lowest round ever and all I could think about was the 16th hole. I topped my hybrid and then hit my next shot into the woods for a triple (left me thinking "What the hell? I was playing great!"). After the round I was thinking: "Just one less stroke on 16." even though I had back to back chip-in birdies on 13 and 14 (one of which I shouldn't even of had since I tried to do something different).

[Paradox]

Ah the "What if..." game. I remember last August I ended up with an 80, my lowest round ever and all I could think about was the 16th hole. I topped my hybrid and then hit my next shot into the woods for a triple (left me thinking "What the hell? I was playing great!"). After the round I was thinking: "Just one less stroke on 16." even though I had back to back chip-in birdies on 13 and 14 (one of which I shouldn't even of had since I tried to do something different).

but hitting good shots are what we are SUPPOSED to do. Getting rewarded for those comes with scoring well. But saying "if I, you, we, hadn't made that mistake on such and such hole..." is just saying "if my game were a little bit better, that score would have been something to be VERY proud of".

[Fourputt]

Had a round last year where I inferred just the opposite of the OP's intent. I would say "I shot 80 with a quad bogey on the 3rd hole." I was not so much saying that without that hole I'd have broken 80, but saying in spite of that hole I still managed to shoot 80, and with that sort of a start it could have been so much worse.