Black and white and green all over

"Who are you?" Scott asks when I tell him that I played two rounds the other week.

Scott's confusion is understandable. When I lived in Seattle, I played golf maybe -- maybe - once a month, less if possible. He knew me from those days, when my play was laughable and I wore my frustration on my sleeve. No wonder he was puzzled at my newfound enthusiasm for the game.

These days, I have even more gusto for golf than anyone would have thought possible. (Though I still can't bring myself to watch it on TV -- let's not go crazy.) I have recently discovered the joy of reading about golf.

Actually, writing that sentence, reading about golf sounds a lot less exciting than watching it on television. No matter. I stand by my decisions.

At a used book sale this weekend, I hit a goldmine of golf books. These should keep me busy during the offseason, which will start any second now.

Notice any similarities?

The giant "Complete Encyclopedia of Golf Techniques" is something I doubt I would buy new. But the price was right. I have no idea if it will be helpful.

As for the others, I'm particularly looking forward to these two:

As I have written before, my putting game is pretty awful -- well, not pretty but it is awful. So I hope these two books will help me in the offseason. 

As for the rest? There's the obligatory Harvey Penick series:

The golfing memoir:

The literary anthology:

And, last but not least, the collection of 19th-century golf writing, without which no golf library is complete. Note the faux-leather binding:

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and I didn't. I picked this up because of the sweet fabric-and-pewter bookmark in the middle.

Future blog posts on these individual books are almost certain. Meanwhile, what are some of your favorite golf reads? Discuss in the comments.

Here's to the bad golfers

I can't watch golf on television. I never could. Before I started playing golf, the flattened, boob-tube version seemed so boring. The announcers spoke too quietly, the audiences responded too softly and the action – following the arc of a white ball into what was often a gray or cloudy sky – too lazy.

"Of course you don't like to watch it; you don't play golf," my friends who did watch the sport on TV would say. "If you played, you'd appreciate it more."

He's probably not watching golf.

Except that now I play. And I still don't appreciate golf on television. I've tried watching The Golf Channel but it holds no appeal. All my reasons for disliking the televised version of the game remain the same, with one addition:

I'm more interested in bad golf.

I can watch football, basketball and baseball on television with great interest because I can't -- and don't -- play any of those sports. It's the same reason guys watch action movies. 

Allmoviephotos.com

Doesn't everyone want to be Tom Cruise?

The game's appeal is in its participation, the fact that anyone can get out and attempt to play, no matter how awful. Oh, and most of us are awful. If we weren't then we'd be the ones featured on Sunday afternoon television during the football off-season, sinking putts and hawking Buicks.

I'm not alone in this sentiment, and not even close to one of the originators of this idea. I was surprised to read that A.A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh, was a terrible golfer. But did he let this get him down? Of course not. The man fought in World War I, for crying out loud. Instead, Milne celebrated the sport because it lets people like him (and me) participate. No other sport, he said, allows you to be quite so awful. He wrote this in his essay, "TheCharm of Golf," in 1919:

"Consider what it is to be bad at lawn tennis. True, you are allowed to hold on to your new racket all through the game, but how often are you allowed to employ it usefully? How often does your partner cry "Mine!" and bundle you out of the way? Is there pleasure in playing football badly? You may spend the full eighty minutes in your new boots, but your relations with the ball will be distant. They do not give you a ball to yourself at football.

"But how different a game is golf. At golf it is the bad player who gets the most strokes. However good his opponent, the bad player has the right to play out each hole to the end; he will get more than his share of the game. He need have no fears that his new driver will not be employed. He will have as many swings with it as the scratch man; more, if he misses the ball altogether upon one or two tees."

Well put. I can hardly believe this is the man who once prompted the great Dorothy Parker to declare in a book review of Milne's "The House at Pooh Corner": 

"Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

She should have seen him play.

What's the appeal of watching golf on television? Inquiring minds want to know.

Almost ready for the big-boy courses

The last time I played a course longer than Village Greens, a public course with 16 par-3s and two par-4 holes, since Sept. 16. That's when I hit a pathetic (even for me) 87 on the front nine at a course in Lancaster County and decided, then and there, I am not fit for the courses where actual golfers play.

What a day for fair-weather golfers.

So since then I've made it my mission to practice at a short course, without the intimidation of par-5 holes, dog-legs and water hazards. Even the par-56 Village Greens is a challenge for a novice like me. To even break into the single digits, I still would have to hit 43 over par.

Hardly the stuff of PGA legends.

Still, I've been able to stay in the 90s pretty regularly, in the last month. In my three rounds since Nov. 1, I've shot no higher than 99.

Which brings me to today's insight. I am trying to not worry about improvement, and just enjoy playing.

In my brief golfing career I have learned not to keep track of my score from hole to hole. Today provided a great lesson why. I began the day with a beautiful, arcing 5-iron shot from the first tee that landed a short pitch from the green. It could have been an easy bogey, assuming I could get on the green in my next shot and two-putt the hole. Instead, my pitch shot went two feet. The third shot past the green, too far to try putting it on from the fringe. So I pitched it again, this time getting it 20 feet from the hole.

That number – 20 feet – comes into play later in this round. Keep an eye out for it.

I couldn't even salvage a two-putt, needing instead to take four putts to sink the ball. I don't have the best putting game, but on the first hole I was unusually bad.

The second hole was almost the same story, but with a slightly better outcome. I hit the 5-iron again from the tees, 120 yards away, and this time overshot the green. This time a decent pitch got me on the green, but far from the hole, and I had to putt four times to sink it. For the first two holes, I was already at 14.

OK, I thought. Guess I'm not breaking 100 today. C'est la vie (French for, "I hate this stupid game").

So close, and yet so frustrating.

You need to play with a certain amount of detachment. The writer and sports psychologist Bob Rotella stresses playing in the moment, so that's what I did. Bad shots, missed putts — none of it mattered. Even on the ninth hole, a 250-yard par-4, I didn't let a dismal second shot undermine my game, and finished it with a double-bogey.

At this point, I was sorely tempted to check my score. I had hit at least two 8s, and three sixes on the front nine, and was still convinced that I wouldn't break 100. If I had looked at my score – 53 – that might have been the case. Instead, I accepted that the first nine holes were disappointing and resolved to play better on hole 10. After all, it's a new start.

My putting didn't improve much – I still three-putted where two would have worked. I keep overshooting the hole and haven't developed the skill to get the ball to decelerate. So on the 12^th hole, when I landed on the green from the tee, I couldn't do any better than a bogey.

The short hole 13 – a 95-yarder – was just as vexing. I hit it with my pitching wedge, assuming I would land short of the green. Somehow I overshot it, and bad putting combined to make it a 5 — the third in four holes so far on the back nine.

On hole 14, I made one of only two remarkable shots this day. It took me two shots to get on the green, where I landed 20 feet (and downhill) from the cup. All I wanted was the ball to get close to the hole for a bogey. But somehow it found the line I was aiming for and went straight in, giving me my only par of the day.

The second remarkable shot came on the 18^th hole. This hole gives me grief every time, because it's a long distance – 303 yards – and uphill. The green sits on a plateau that gets more difficult to reach the closer you get. It's like the land of Mordor from "Lord of the Rings" in that way. When I took my third shot, staring at the summit from about 90 yards away, I decided to skip my irons. I pulled out my 5-wood, hoping it would give me the loft I needed to land somewhere on the hill.

Isn't that why they call them fairway woods, anyway? For just such occasions?

My first shot of the day with the 5-wood was better than I expected. The ball flew straight and high, coming down short of the green and bouncing to a few feet of the cup. Even I could two-putt this. So I did, for my fourth bogey of the day and a final score of 96.

I didn't expect that. Hurrah for Dr. Bob Rotella. His living-in-the-moment philosophy seems to have some merit, even for those of us not on the tour.

We only have a few more weeks of good golf weather ahead of us in the Northeast, if we're lucky. I will try to play a par-70 or bigger course before retiring for the winter. I'll let you know how it goes.

When have you been pleasantly surprised on the golf course? Or anywhere for that matter?