Drive for show, putt for dough, and improvise on everything in between

Who would have thought that a golf game I played on the antepenultimate day of February would be my fifth -- FIFTH! -- game of the year? In the Northeast, weather has been practically nonexistent. Bad for the planet, bad for crops, but good for my golf game.

Regrettably, a beautiful day for golf.

So yes, I am personally benefitting in the short term from the destruction of the planet, but I do feel bad about it.

In the meantime, I played Village Greens on Monday, for the third time this month. The good news: The weather was perfect. (Sorry, earth!) The bad news: I showed no improvement over my last game. I scored a 98, one worse than the last time.

I should feel frustrated that my game didn't improve, but I was just happy that I stayed the same in two areas that have improved in the last few weeks: shots off the tee and putts. In short, the beginning and end of each hole are fine; it's the middle that causes me trouble. This is partly why I prefer to play at a par-56 course instead of a regulation course. A six on a par-3 hole is better than a 12 on a par-5.

Still, I accomplished just two bogeys for the round, and one of them -- on the 95-yard 13th hole -- I managed only because of a one-putt. I actually putted fairly well on the front nine, needing three putts on just three holes. The back nine was the reverse: I managed two putts or fewer on just three holes.

The site of my last bogey. For lousy golfers like me,
bogey is good.

The par-4 18th hole, a 305-yard uphill challenge was my undoing. Though my tee shot was fine and my third shot -- with a 5-wood about 100 yards from the pin -- landed on the green. But I muffed my second putt and it took me two more to hole out.

Here's my scorecard from Monday's round. I managed a symmetrical score: 49 on the front nine, 49 on the back. I still have a long way to go, but I'm reasonably confident I can keep my score in the double digits -- at a par-3 course, at least.

At a real golf course? I'd have to hope to keep it under 120. Make that 130. I'm still not nearly good enough to break 50-over par.

Golf round - Village Greens, Feb. 24

Even on a rainy day, you have to keep on the sunny side. No matter how bad your game might be, focus on the positive.

You can't see it, but I totally hit the ball in the middle of the fairway.

Friday, for instance, I took pride in some unusually good putting. I played Village Greens -- which, as I often mention, is a par-56 executive course with just two par-4s. The best I ever did was a 90 in October. My most recent game was not that good; I shot 97, with not a single par for my efforts. But then, I make par about as often as Liam Neeson makes a joke. (Not often, in case you were curious.) I took solace in the fact that once I reached the putting green, I seemed to know what I was doing. A little.

I credit the "Complete Encyclopedia of Golfing Techniques" for my improvement. Over the winter, such as it was this year in the Northeast, I spent some time reading the book, laughing at the golf fashions (white belts? really?) and studying the tips for how to grip the club, how to stand and how to swing. The book provides basic advice on the swing, the short game, the putt and other areas, and basic advice is what I need.

Now I finally know where to put my feet, where to put my hands and how hard to hit the ball when I'm putting. Seriously. I never knew this before. So once I got the ball to the green, unless it landed six inches from the cup, it could take me one stroke or sixty to finish the hole.

On Friday I still had a few three- and four-putts, but on more than half the holes, I could finish with two putts (and in two cases, one putt).

The late great Harvey Penick deserves credit for this, as well. He wrote in his "Little Red Book" something about the first putt should be on a line to get close to the hole; the second should aim for the hole itself. I take that to mean, don't worry about sinking the ball on the first putt. Instead, use it to set up the shot that will get the ball in the hole.

So that's how I approach each green, and, with one exception -- I let frustration get the better of me and four-putted on the 10th hole -- I managed two putts or fewer on 12 of 18 holes.

In the overall scheme of things it didn't put a huge dent in my score. It's not like I shot a career best, and in many cases a two-putt made the difference between a triple or quadruple bogey. I only single-bogeyed on five holes, with no pars (let alone birdies) to my scorecard.

But it's a start. Now I can worry about every other aspect of my game.

A new season, same old scores

I used to think baseball was the ultimate sport for the stats geek. In the days before SportsCenter, you didn't need video replays to recap the action from the night before. The box score gave you all the information you needed to dissect what happened in the game. Only baseball fans could look at the six-inch-thick "Baseball Encyclopedia" and consider it a treasure instead of a doorstop.

(Fun fact: It works wonderfully as a doorstop.)

I used to go to baseball games with a bag of peanuts in one hand and a score book in the other. Why? Because it was fun.

My friends never thought so. I could never delegate the task of scorekeeping if I wanted to leave my seat for a bathroom break or another beer.

Thankfully I found golf. I can continue my nerdy fascination with breaking games into numbers and statistics. The main difference is that, unlike baseball, I'm not interested in how the pros do.

My scorekeeping interest has turned inward; I keep track of all my scores, my putts, my penalty strokes, my sand shots. Maybe in the jumble of numbers I will figure out how to improve.

Here in the Northeast we've endured a season that barely qualifies as winter. Barely 2/3 of the way through February, I've played golf three times this year.

The first time I was every bit as rusty and horrible as I was when I started the game anew last year. I played nine holes at a lovely course in southern Berks County called Chapel Hill. On the par-36 front nine, I shot 85. On the plus side, I got my money's worth from the course. (I also saw what I think was a fox, but it didn't see me.) I kept my score in the single digits on just four of the nine holes and sank two balls in water hazards.

The fox had no interest in retrieving golf balls from the water hazard.

On track for a 170 score!

A week later, I played Exeter Golf Course with my friend Chris. Maybe it was the social factor, but I improved by almost 20 strokes, shooting a 66 in nine holes. That includes five penalty strokes over the course of the game. Most of the time I hit into giant water hazards, and in one case I hit my tee shot into some poor soul's backyard.

No, I didn't play it from there.

Nine holes of golf might not qualify as an actual test of improvement over last season. And even if it did, those two rounds didn't show much improvement at all. So earlier this week I went to my usual course – the par-56 Village Greens in Sinking Spring – for my first 18-hole round of 2012.

It's an executive course, where all but two holes – 9 and 18 – are par-3s. But the par-3 holes range in distance from 95 to 190, so for beginning golfers like me, the course still provides a nice challenge. The last three times I played there in 2011 I managed to hit in the 90s, not including a 90 I achieved last October.

I like my fairways wide and forgiving.

But this week I still showed the rust of a winter layoff, ending with 105. The first hole didn’t bode well; I shot 7, taking five of those just to get to the green. After bogeying the second hole I struggled the rest of the front nine, getting mostly 7s and 6s, with a 9 on the par-4 ninth hole.

I didn't do much better when I started the back nine, scoring a six on holes 10 and 11, needing three putts to finish each one. But I bogeyed holes 13 and 14; on the former I two-putted and on the latter I hit the green from the tee. I ended with a 47 on the back nine, 11 strokes better than the front nine.

It's still not a great score – 47 is 19 strokes over par for the back nine – but now I know how bad my playing is at the start of 2012.

Nowhere to go but up, right?