mirv

i think it qualifies as racism, albeit vaguely. my thinking on it is, okay, when you're mad (as stevie obviously is) and you're talking smack about the person who made you mad, you aren't going to use positive or neutral descriptions for them. you don't say "that college educated brown haired male! boy, he makes me mad." you pick something you don't like about them, something that you can use to condescend to them. if they aren't very well educated and have a stuttering problem, you're going to say "that stuttering moron." so given that, i'm inclined to think stevie was saying "black" in a negative, condescending connotation. my two cents, anyway.

i'm very naturally competitive. i think that's my main motivator. coupled with that, i try to keep company with golfers who are better than i am. two of my favorite people to play with are both scratch players, and i very, very rarely beat them, but it keeps my competitive drive sharp and keeps me trying because i see it as a goal, being able to beat them. it also really helps to highlight where i went wrong during the round. i can hit the ball every bit as far as they can, i can (usually) make contact that is just as clean as crisp as anything they hit, but the big difference is when they miss, they only miss by a few yards, ie, the flag is on the left side of the green and they landed on the right side. my misses aren't quite so acceptable. as far as breakthroughs, i honestly can't recall any one thing that suddenly turned it around for me. it was just practice, practice, practice and my body gradually learning the motions that it needs to make in order to deliver the club back to the ball squarely, although i will say this: confidence is EVERYTHING. if you find yourself standing over the ball and having thoughts like "am i aiming left? i feel like i'm aiming left..." or "gosh, i hope i don't shank this one" or "i hope i have enough club," then the odds are very heavily stacked against you making the swing you need to make. my best shots come when i step up to the ball and, if i think anything at all, it's just simply a "yup. i feel a good swing coming up." and mind you, i'm not talking about giving yourself a pep talk before each shot and trying to induce confidence. it's pure confidence that you get from practicing and playing enough that when you walk up to your ball, you look at your target and you think "psh. i've hit this shot a thousand times already. i know this shot. i've got it in my bag."

if it's above 35 degrees and i have a chance to play, december 31 will be my last round of golf for the year. and my friends and i play what we refer to as "the polar open" every year on january 1 (unless it's sleeting or just absolutely unbearably cold).

this bothers me too. i'll give people a putt if their ball stops a foot or less away from the hole, but that's about it. i was furious with myself yesterday because i had a 6 footer for par, missed it 2 feet past, then somehow missed THAT putt as well. my dad tried to say "aw, that was good," but i shook my head and said "no. the pros would have to make that putt, and if i ever expect to get any better, i have to make that putt too. it's a double."

haha, i've seen situations like this. a friend of a friend played along with us a couple of times in years gone by, and this guy was at least a 25 handicap. so one day, on the first hole, he manages a fairly decent tee shot, and then manages to hole his approach. so he's starting off at -2, and he's pretty pumped. "maybe this is the day i break 80!" he says. next hole, double bogey on a par three. then a triple. i don't remember what came after that, but if memory serves, he didn't have any more pars or birdies, let alone eagles, for the rest of the round. poor guy. golf is a cruel mistress.

i took up golf at 24 and made leaps and bounds the first few years. believe it when people say the hardest strokes to shave off your game are the last few (going from mid 70s to scratch or lower). i've been plateaued at about a 5-6 handicap for two or three years now, and it's certainly not from a lack of trying. first year or two, i typically shot 95, then suddenly, BOOM, i was mid-80s. a year after that, i was more around 80 on a regular basis. now i'm usually 77-79. i got used to my game improving 5+ strokes a year and thought "shoot, at this rate, i'll be on tour in 5 or 6 years!" eh, yeah, didn't quite pan out, haha. i still improve every year, but it's to the point now that i'm improving maybe 1 stroke a year instead of 5-7/year like when i started because it's no longer just a matter of "i need to straighten out my driver" or "i need to focus on my short game more." now it's just a matter of not hitting that one 7-iron approach thin, leaving that one chip too short, pushing that one drive into the trees, sending that one putt 6 feet past the hole and leaving a tricky comeback... just a handful of completely random bad shots mixed with with the 70 or so perfectly acceptable shots. just enough to leave me trapped somewhere in the middle of the single digit void. i entertained (and still do occasionally entertain) ideas about trying to become a teaching pro, but until i can shoot within 2-3 strokes of par dang near every time on any given course, i don't really expect it to become reality. but that being said, i wish the best of luck to you, and don't be discouraged when you hit a plateau. or several of them. and don't be let people tell you it CAN'T be done, because it can. but just know it's going to take a phenomenal amount of work and patience (ben hogan reportedly hit approximately 600 balls a day in his prime to stay on top of his game), a pretty decent amount of money (equipment, balls, membership at a course somewhere, entry fees into tournaments...), and no part of it will be easy.

i need to find a solid, consistent setup to the ball. 8 years of guessing has turned into a malformed setup and it's proving difficult to change.

well hey there, fellow arkansan. there are several of us floating around here per the member list, but i don't know how active any of the others are. where in the natural state do you hail from?

77 on a par 70 today. we played four more holes afterwards and i was 2 under for those 4 holes... so if you wanted to look at the final picture, i was +5 for 22 holes.

despite less than stellar driving, managed a 73 today on a short (5200 yards) par 70, with even par on the front nine and +3 on the back.

an abysmal 90 today. i don't get it. i've played 72 holes in the past week and i've shot 75, 87, 73, 90. i wish my swing would decide if it's going to work or not so i can either go ahead and give it up or start playing tournaments. i don't seem to have a middle ground anymore, it's either almost-scratch or total hacker.

i'm about a month shy of being 32 and have only been in relationships for probably 6-7 years of my life. i'd say overall, i'm a Lot happier single than i am in a relationship. i enjoy the freedom of it, and being able to avoid all the annoying hassles that seem to come with relationships. a friend of mine, his girlfriend calls him literally every 15 minutes when they're apart to tell him.... NOTHING. "i'm going to wal-mart now." "okay honey, love you." 15 minutes later, "i'm at the gas station now." "okay babe, thanks for telling me, love you." i was like, what the hell was THAT, man? did you ask her to give you updates every 15 minutes? "no, she just sorta does it... it'd probably hurt her feelings if i told her to stop." i don't need any of that, thanks. also, girls tend to get all insulted and confused and hurt when they realize they have to share my top priorities slot with things like golf and playing music. last relationship i had, she liked the music part, but hated the golf part. knew pretty quick that wasn't going to work out...

nice. :) my first was also on a driveable 260 yard par 4, although i didn't catch it very well so i found myself about 30 yards short of the flag. managed to hole it out with an easy wedge, though. that was 2 years ago, i guess, and i've managed 6 more since then (though no more on that particular hole). oddly enough, only 2 of my 7 total eagles have been via putts and the rest have been holed out from the fairway.

yes, that would be quite a drag. i've been behind people who were obviously in the 20-handicap range who took forever to line up and swing, but i can't recall any of them not waving me through pretty quickly (fortunately). also, i agree whole-heartedly that people hitting from the wrong tee box eats up a lot of time and kills the pace. i never once stepped onto the tips until i regularly shot in the 80s from the whites. i felt like i had to earn my place on the back tees, but evidently a lot of other golfers don't follow that idea. my dad used to always want to hit from the same box as me, and he's lucky to hit a drive 220 yards. finally i told him, dad, you're dooming yourself to shooting 100+ if you play back here with me. get up there on the front tees (1300 yards shorter than the tips at our regular course) and see what you shoot. so he reluctantly goes up there and shoots 79 for the round. after that he pretty much stayed up there, though if we're playing with a group, his pride takes over again and he thinks he needs to hit from the back with the rest of us. i pulled him aside, again, and said "dad, nobody here is going to think any less of you for hitting from the reds, especially if you shoot in the 70s. just get up there and play your game." he's stubborn as a mule, though, and always hems and haws and says something like "well, i'll just try it back here and see how i do." and invariably, he cards a 98 or 100 and slows everything down.

two courses semi-private courses have been shut down here in central arkansas, though one was bought and re-opened as a private club. it seems like the city-owned courses in little rock are doing okay, and private clubs seem to be doing alright, but the public munis outside little rock look like they're struggling a bit. a lot of them, while still open, don't seem to have the money to maintain the courses like they want/need to.

granted it's early in the week yet, but i had a pretty fine wedge this afternoon. par 4, doglegs pretty sharply to the right with a pretty decent sized pine tree at the turn. i had half-topped my tee shot and had that pine tree directly between myself and the green with about 100 yards to go. i took my gap wedge, sailed the ball over the tree and watched the ball land and check up 6 inches from the cup for a tap-in birdie.

73 on a par 70 this evening. thought i had a good chance at 70, walking onto the 17th tee only one over par, but i took a very foolish bogey on 17, and then tried to force a birdie on 18 and took another bogey there.

i played with a guy last week who was a scratch player, and he had a set routine that he went into before every single shot. for anything other than a putter, he would take three practice swings, look at the target, look at the ball, look at the target, look at the ball, swing. for putting, he would look at his line behind the ball, look at his line on the opposite side of the cup, look at it from the the low side of the line, three practice strokes, putt. even though this guy was scratch and shooting well, it was slow going because he never ever varied from his routine. so no, i don't think handicap makes much difference in pace. some people play fast (like me), and some people don't.

75 from the tips (6600 yards) today. got off to a really shaky start... i don't know how i managed to only be 3 over par for the first 5 holes because i was all over the course. settled down around the 5th hole and really got my irons together. had three birdie putts from 6-7 feet but missed them all. :( however, i sank two 30 foot par saving putts and one 25 foot birdie putt, so i missed three i should've made and made three i should've missed, haha.

played a par 3 yesterday that had an actual yardage of 174, but it was uphill a fair bit and the wind was blowing directly in our face at almost 20 mph. the flag was tucked into a VERY tight left corner of the green and was guarded in front by bunkers. i hit an 80% 5 wood into the wind, landed on the front of the green and then rolled up 3 feet behind the flag (and proceeded to get my birdie). the other three guys that were with me, they're very solid scratch players, so when they told me what a great shot that was after my ball had stopped, it felt pretty good.

i played a 4-man scramble tournament today with some guys from work, we managed a none-too-shabby 58 (which tied us for 1st, but the tie was carded off and we lost that one... blah). afterwards, we tackled another 18, playing our own ball. i took an 80, which, eh... i'd never played the course before today and wasn't exactly striking every ball perfect, so 80 was okay by me.

a disappointing 82 today. started off pretty solid coming off the front nine at +2, but then just completely lost it on the back nine, most especially on the 15th where i took an 8 (tee shot into a pond, followed by a hooked approach into ANOTHER pond). ouch. finished par, par, birdie from there, but it was poor consolation after that 8.

i didn't see a thread already mentioning this anywhere... http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/blog/devil_ball_golf/post/A-Tiger-return-Woods-breaks-course-record-at-Fl;_ylt=AuaRcRdZYtOlZ1xQAStq2gsogsUF?urn=golf-wp6093 granted it wasn't in a tournament, just tiger out playing golf, but 62 still isn't too shabby and bested the previous course record by 2 strokes. i'd be pretty excited to see him hold onto that momentum and win next week, but of course, whole other world between a casual round and doing it in competition for four consecutive rounds. i also thought it was fairly amusing/ironic that greg norman said tiger is probably done winning majors, and a few days later tiger goes to a norman designed course and breaks the course record.

struggled along to an 86 today. started off pretty solid for the first 12 holes and was 6 over (which is my goal whenever i play... to always be halfway to bogey golf, ie through 12 holes, be no more than 6 over par). but then a double on 13, bogey 14, double 15, bogey 16, triple 17, then somehow got it back together and finished strong with a birdie on 18. not sure what happened to me, but it got really ugly there for those 5 holes.

a guy i went to for lessons a year or so ago said my swing bore some resemblance to stuart appleby.