Everyone needs a bad day of golf

Some of us more than others experience a bad day on the golf course.

First off, I recognize that a bad golfing day is relative. Phil Mickelson has a bad day when he doesn't come home with an oversized check. A scratch golfer has a bad day when her handicap goes up. My dad, who as a rule doesn't like golf, has a bad day whenever his annoying son drags him out to the course.

For me, a bad day is when I play even worse than normal -- and normal is usually 40-50 shots over par. I started the year playing at Village Greens, about which I write here often. I thought my scores were on track for improvement. Here's what I shot so far this year at the par-56 course:

• Feb. 21: 105

• Feb. 24: 97

• Feb. 27: 98

So today I went out again, to see if I could keep my score in the high 90s or -- dare I dream? -- break into the low 90s. I was on track through the first eight holes to keep it close. I double bogeyed on five holes, scored 7 twice and one 6. Then on the ninth hole, I lost any hope for a good (for me) game. My first tee shot on the 260-yard par 4 dribbled about 40 yards to the right. I tried a second tee shot that fared no better; it went into the woods on the next fairway.

I played my first shot, as I should have anyway. It came to rest about 3 inches behind a rock embedded in the ground. I swung with my 5-wood in faint hopes of getting some loft and hitting the ball over the hill so it would roll toward the green. Instead, it hit the rock 3 inches away, spun in the air and came down half a foot from where I hit it. In frustration I hit it again and it went into the woods.

This is where I decided to start over again. I teed up a new ball, which again went about 40 yards. This time I played my mulligan the whole way, taking six pathetic shots just to get it on the green, and another three putts to sink the ball. I ended with a generous 9 -- generous because I didn't penalize myself for the first balls that I lost.

After that I gave up. I played the back nine with just five clubs, abandoning any hope of playing well. The strategy worked, somewhat, because I bogeyed two holes and inexplicably made par on hole 12. Improvement was rare, however; I scored 24 on three holes, including the last two. So the back nine ended with 51.

The biggest problem, once again, is that I have trouble pitching. I also had trouble today hitting my 9-iron from the fairway. Every time I used it I topped the ball, causing it to limp a few yards along the ground. So instead of making the green in two shots, as I ought to be able to do, I would need three, four and sometimes five shots to make it.

I putted well enough to save myself on a few holes, but at that point, who cares? The difference between a 7 and a 6, even at my level, is insignificant.

So here's my scorecard from today's round. The consolation is that I can do better. Whether I do or not is anybody's guess.

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? 

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?

Don't hate the driver

One of the most oft-used pieces of advice that novice golfers receive is:

Don't Use The Driver.

It's the most difficult club to hit. It will ruin your game. It will run off with your spouse and steal your credit cards.

To be sure, it is tough to hit a driver WELL. But at the par-56 course today, I was struggling with every other aspect so that when I reached the par-4 ninth hole, I decided to try my driver, a Mitsushiba that I'd found in a thrift store many years ago.

The results were, in short, not horrible. I hit the ball far and slightly to the left, but it landed close enough to the green that I was able to reach it in three shots. I finished with a 7, a score I've gotten before on that same hole. It felt good to know it was my lousy putting that cost me, rather than horrible shots to the green.

It all went downhill after the first hole.

By hole nine, I had already resigned myself to a day of terrible putting. After one-putting on the first hole for a bogey, I played terribly on the green the rest of the day. Forget about three-putts: I had to four-putt some holes (including an otherwise satisfactory ninth) and on one ignominious occasion, a five-putt.

My putts alone were one-under on the front nine. Oy.

So I spent the back nine figuring out how to putt. It may have made a difference; I made 27 putts on the front nine and 26 on the back.

But back to the driver; At Village Greens in Sinking Spring, Pa., only two holes -- nine and 18 -- are long enough to warrant anything but an iron from the tee. After my relative success on hole nine, I tried Mitsushiba on the last hole. Once again it went left, but had good distance. A line of trees to the left of the fairway kept my ball from going into the street. Hey, I'll take any help I can get. From there I needed three more shots to get on the green. It sounds like a lot, but I was pretty pleased with the last shot, one I took with my lob wedge that got me slightly uphill of the hole.

I finished the hole with a 7, three-putting to finish. On this kind of day, three-putts don't bother me. As much.

Finished with a 106. My scores keep going up,
not down.

The goal of cutting down on three-putts eluded me to day. I probably don't need to point out that my goal of breaking 100 at Village Greens was just as unreachable.

I suspect the two are related.

Here are more stats from today's game:

If my lob wedge were a person, I would write it out of the will

Amazing what one little piece of swing advice can do to your game.

I have been reading "Harvey Penick's Little Red Book" and "Fundamentals of Hogan" for tips on how to swing properly, something I never really studied. For years I followed the model of, watch your friends swing and try to do what they do (only left-handed). I didn't notice any improvement until today, playing at Village Greens in Sinking Spring.

My advice to beginning golfers: Par-3 courses are better than driving ranges for practicing your game. Short holes, (usually) forgiving fairways and real-life pitching and putting experience that won't cost you much more than a bucket of balls.

Anyway, last night after getting home from work I watched an instructional video from on swinging where the pro stressed the importance of keeping your left (right) arm glued to your chest on the backswing. A minor lesson, sure, but I'm certain I never did that with any consistency. So today, that was my goal: Keep that right arm close to the chest.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: My golf game is so bad that it needs a million fixes. However, that one remedy improved my score more than I expected. I hit more tee shots that went straight and far, and was consistently within reach of a bogey or double bogey on almost every hole -- the exception being hole 18, which one day I will conquer.

Oh, yeah. That's a gimme.

No hole went better than No. 2, where I hit the ball well for three shots to get it on the green. My third shot got the ball less than two inches from the cup for an easy bogey. From there things got slowly, but steadily, worse: two 5s, two 6s and a 7 before I told myself to calm down and go back to enjoying myself. I three-putted hole No. 8 for a 6, but that meant I got on the green in par. Which was good enough. Hole No. 9 was another triple bogey, thanks to some bad strikes with my lob wedge. The good news was I was able to two-putt it for a 7, giving me 50 on the front nine — six strokes better than last week's round at the same course.

I was much more consistent on the back nine, but the lob wedge continued to give me headaches. The 10th hole was just a big white circle with the pin on the fairway – the green was being repaired. All I had to do was get the ball to land in the white circle and count that. But I kept skimming the ground with the lob wedge, overshooting the target over and over. What could have been a par* resulted in a 6.

On hole 13 I had a legitimate chance at a birdie but ended up three-putting for a bogey instead. The good news is I only three-putted two other times on the back nine. In addition to keeping my right arm close on my backswing, my other goal today was keeping the putts down.

Hole 18, at 305 yards, continued to be trouble. I hit the first shot straight down the fairway but my second shot landed under some trees. I shot it out with a 9-iron but lost it, resigned to take a penalty drop. As I hit my next stroke I found the original ball, halfway up a steep hill where the green sat on top. I played my original ball and managed to get it on the green, but an agonizing three-putt gave me the only 8 of the day.

I guess it's a sign of progress when an 8 on the scorecard is an aberration rather than an expectation.

What I like about golf is that the moment before the swing, you are all concentration and living in the moment. At those times when you can keep your mind still and follow it with a well-executed stroke, the game is sublime.

One final note: I finished the game with a 101 – still unable to break 100 on even a par-3 course, but that is 18 strokes better than last week. I call that progress.

Today's scorecard:

The official record from today's golf round

I almost forgot to post my scorecard from today's 18 holes at Village Greens.

The good: two pars, one bogey and a double bogey. One of the pars was on hole 7, where I hit an 8 last week. So, yay for that.

The bad: Way too many three- and four-putts, despite starting with a good putting game in the first few holes. Also, four holes with 8, two with 9 and one 10 (but it was a par-4, so I was only 6 over).

The ugly: See the smiley-faces on the pars and bogey? I put a vomiting-face on the worst holes of the day. Hopefully that'll teach me not to four-putt.

Go ahead, taunt away.

Neither rain nor wind nor lousy play will keep the hacker from his appointed round

I'm proud to say this was my first shot off the tee.
Sadly, I didn't birdie. 

When you're a beginning golfer, sometimes the well-hit shots hurt more than the bad ones.

Case in point: My first ball off the tee today at Village Greens, a par-3 course in Sinking Spring – the site of last week's adventure – struck a wooden fence to my left and bounced within a reasonable distance of the fairway. The fence was the only barrier between the course and some homes on the other side of an alley. Last week, in fact, my first ball went far enough to clear the fence so it could land, unimpeded, in someone's driveway.

Anyhoo: lousy shot, but it wasn't disastrous. Better yet, it was still playable.
A second example of a terrible shot: I sliced another ball off the tee sometime in the front nine. It went high into a pine tree, crashing near the base and two inches in front of a thick branch. Rather than take a penalty stroke, I played this bad ball, chopped down on it with my lob wedge and brought it back to a reasonable spot on the fairway.

Bad shots I can handle. Hell, bad shots I can count on. And that's part of the problem.
Because every once in a while, I'll hit the ball well, using proper form, weight distribution and everything else – then overshoot the green. Suddenly my pitching wedge will carry the ball farther than I've been able to hit all day. When I need to just push the ball a bit, my 7-iron suddenly becomes a driver and launches the ball a mile, where a hole earlier, that same club couldn't carry it more than 20 yards.

Nowhere was this more perfectly demonstrated than on hole 18, a par-4, 250-yard hole with a nice, wide fairway where the green sits atop a hill. It could have been my best hole of the day — and I had a pair of pars and a bogie already. I used my 5-wood off the tee, and the ball went a little less than halfway down the fairway. My second shot was a 4-iron, which had the distance and aim to get me within one shot of getting on the green.

I've been uneven with the wedges all day. Sometimes they gave me just what I needed, more often they landed short. I figured my 8-iron would give me the distance to get the ball up the hill and onto the green, with one stroke to spare for par.

As I'd done with my earlier two shots, I hit the 8-iron as well as I could – a beautiful, arcing shot that went high in the air, straight toward the pin and landed on the green. And kept going. When I got up the hill, the ball was 5 yards from the edge of the green, at the far end of the hole. Out came the lob wedge. Once again, I overshot, getting it too high and rolling the ball past the green onto the high-grassed fringe on the other side. One more shot to get it back onto the green, and three putts left me with an 8 for the hole.

Another tee shot, though I bogied this hole.
When you're a novice, a bogie's good enough.

Bad, but not as bad as some holes I played earlier today. Twice I scored a 9 and once a 10 (but if anyone asks, I'll tell them it's a 3 in binary).

Oh, I had a few bright spots. Twice I hit the green from the tee and was able to two-putt one for par and three-putt the other for a bogie. On the back nine, I parred another hole after actually hitting my lob wedge the way I wanted.

Striking that fine balance between hitting the ball the way you want and hitting it the way you expect is still beyond my reach. So is breaking 100, for now. Even at Village Green, I shot 119 – 63 over par.

Golf outing -- Village Greens Golf Club, Sinking Spring, Pa.

Today's important lesson: A 7 on a par-4 is a better score than a 7 on a par-3.

That's a rabbit in the lower left hand corner,
 and no, I didn't hit it.

I played not quite a full round at Village Greens Golf Course in Sinking Spring, a mostly par-3 course in a beautiful, tree-lined suburban setting. Luckily the day was a nice one for walking in the woods, as I spent most of my time among the trees in search of my ball. First two shots off the tee on the first hole went into a row of trees that separated the course from some nearby residential driveways. I gave myself a Mulligan and hit my second shot in about the same place, although it stayed on this side of the trees.

Thus did the rest of my game progress: Lots of 7s and the occasional dreaded 8. On a regular par-72 course, one could call this a success. I DID score 56 on the front nine, after all. But since Village Greens has a total par of 56, I can't say I improved any.

After hitting a dreaded 8 on the seventh hole, I returned to form somewhat and scored a 7 on hole eight. (According to my score card I four-putted the hole; an increasingly frequent occurrence, I found.) I got the same score on hole nine, which became an instant morale booster. That hole is a par-4, and I hit a nice, straight drive with my 5-wood off the tee. It took me six more shots to get the ball in the cup. But considering I hit an 8 on a par-3 hole — twice! — earlier, I consider a 7 a victory.

The back nine went unevenly. I was playing behind some old dudes who seemed slower than continental drift, so I skipped hole 10. After a horrible 8 on hole 11, I bypassed hole 12 and immediately improved, scoring three 6's and a bogey on the next four holes.

I returned to form on 17, scoring an 8 (with three putts). On the last hole, pressed for time, I hit the ball about 30 feet in the air and 15 feet in front of me. The hell with it, I decided. Sometimes you have to know when to quit.

Beginning golfers need to focus on the positive (I keep telling myself), so I try to forget the bad scores and focus on the string of good holes I had on the back nine. Why else would anyone take up this game?

This round taught me two lessons good for any novice:

1. It doesn't matter if your score sucks; just enjoy playing.
2. Every once in a while, your score won't suck. Not often, but once in a while.

Those are good enough reasons to keep swinging.

Still a long way from breaking 100.