Better than coffee
Since my son was born early last year, I haven’t been able to play much golf. I only played 4 rounds last year, and this year is on its way to only having slightly higher frequency. Most of my rounds now include taking time off work, and I often fall into the trap of feeling like I need to work whenever someone is watching my son. The days of squeezing in a round after work are gone until he’s a little older and can join me.
A couple of years ago I got in the habit of booking the earliest tee times I could at nearby courses and getting 9 holes in before work. With my wife’s blessing, I decided to try that again today. What follows is an excerpt from my round.
I have the first tee time at 6:10, and I am surprised to find 2 other people waiting at the first tee. We say our sleepy greetings and agree to start a few minutes early since no one is there to stop us.
The first hole is a 380ish yard par 4 with a hill that slopes towards long fescue to the left of the fairway, houses to the right of the fairway, and a few inconvenient fairway bunkers that you risk with longer tee shots. From experience, I know that a 6 iron will get me to the biggest part of the fairway, and it won’t reach the bunkers. Not feeling too bold on this oddly cool July morning, I go with the 6, and, as a surprise to all members of our morning commune, I stripe it right down the middle. My playing partners both go with driver, and we’re off.
Riding the high of a no-warmup, barely awake, solid first tee shot, I find my ball in the middle of the fairway with about 140 left to a two tiered green with the pin atop the slope on the back left. I ponder whether I should I have driven it over the bunkers since I clearly have no holes in my game this morning. In any case, I grab my PW and decide on a course of action, knowing the golf gods are favoring me. I turn my left shoulder under my chin, feel the usual pressure in my left wrist, return the club back to the ball, and S***! I don’t have to look up. I could walk to my ball with a blindfold on. Unfortunately, I’ve felt this feeling in too many rounds over the years.
Some people would call this a shank. It’s probably not a full shank, but it’s enough to get an inmate put in solitary. I end up with a weak little pop up pushed 20 yards right of my target and 50 yards short. Confused and embarrassed by the turn of events, I plod along while staying out of the line of fire of my playing partners. I find my ball with a decent lie but with a blind look at the hole due to a high lipped bunker between us. Other than the visual effects of the bunker, it’s a straightforward pitch with lots of green to work with. Mentally, I commit to turning my round and possibly my entire golf career around with this shot, but in reality my pitch comes up short, and I leave myself 25 feet or so left for par from the lower tier of the green.
I’m so in my head at this point that I’ve forgotten about the existence of my playing partners, so I was a bit surprised to find some other people on the green as I walked up to study my putt. Had they seen my mini-shank? Did they remember that beautiful 6 iron off the tee? Had they told their friends and family about it yet?
My turn to putt arrives, and I send my ball up the slope to the high pin. The line is decent, but it has too much steam and rolls by about 5 feet. As I wait for my partners to putt out, the weight of the situation sinks in.
This putt… not my sleeping wife and child, not my day of work to follow the round, not the 4th of July celebrations over the next few days or our upcoming Scotland trip… is the most important thing in my world at the moment. It might be the most important thing in THE world. Nothing else matters. An internal war kicks off as I try to bring back positive impressions of prior putts made, while my brain seems only focused on reminding me of my failures and making my hands shake a bit. This putt is short enough that it should be made, but it’s long enough that when I stand over it it feels more like a dice roll than something I’ve practiced my entire life. The putter head goes back, although I’m not sure what forces are causing it at this point… it all feels very much out of my control. It returns back to the ball and through impact. I keep my head down and wait to hear that beautiful sound as it drops in the cup. But the sound never comes. I contemplate at what point I should stop listening, accept my fate, and look towards the hole.
After 4 or 5 escalating heart beats, I make my move and tap in for an ugly double bogey. Memories of my tee shot and the confidence that followed are long gone. Suddenly, the sun rise surrounding us just seems like a nuisance instead of a beautiful cosmic gift. I look to my playing partners, still a little surprised they are here, and one of them says, “It’s better than coffee, ain’t it.” I have to agree. I have never been more awake. I’ve never been more alive. I have 8 more holes to salvage my reputation as a golfer.
Unfortunately, the rest of the round closely resembled the first hole. There were some really nice shots leading to the occasional feeling of belonging mixed in with silly errors and poor shots on and around the green which had me wishing I was already at work. I ended up making friends with my playing partners, as we struggled together. We lied to each other that the livening wind, the difficult course, and early morning tee time were the causes of our despair, knowing deep down that the faults were our own. But we made it through the round.
As I got in my car to go back to my normal life, even through all my transgressions of the laws of proper golf, the game that has held me my entire life tightened its grips once again. All I could think about was my next round, whenever that may be, and that this was, in fact, much better than coffee.