Mental Problems

I played golf with Seri and Auntie the other day. Auntie is the aunt of one of the Korean ladies that Seri plays golf with. Auntie is very quiet. I've played with her in the past, and I thought she was quiet because her English was not very good, but actually her English is fine. She is just quiet by nature. She wears large, dark sunglasses that remind me of John Belushi in the movie Blues Brothers, but her quietness reminds me of Teller of the magician duo Penn & Teller. 

Over the winter, Seri had broken a rib after slipping on ice. She has recovered enough to play golf again but still has pain, and her game is not up to her usual level. She told me she is leaving to go back to Korea in June because her son is off to college this fall so she does not need to live here with him anymore. The thought of her leaving makes me sad and I miss her already.

It was a quiet round. Seri was not as talkative perhaps because she was still in pain. I was quiet too, knowing that it was one of the last rounds I would play with Seri. I also had some pain from a myofascial issue I have been dealing with in my right leg that comes and goes all day long.

Perhaps because it was so quiet, and I was a bit preoccupied with my pain, I played extremely well, the way I sometimes find that having a migraine improves my game, if only because my mind is focused on something besides golf, so the golf is forced to happen naturally, by instinct. Before I knew it, I had shot only 7 over on the front 9. I'd avoided all the bunkers and made some miraculous putts to save pars. At the turn, I ate a banana and kept the streak going. Then I made the mistake of looking at my scorecard and calculating ahead. After hole 15, I was only 10 over. I started thinking if only I could par the last three holes, I could shoot an 82 for the whole round. Even if I shot bogeys on the last three holes, I could shoot an 85, which would still be a record for me. I could even shoot 2 double-bogeys and a bogey and still score a personal best. My mind started spinning with excitement. That's when things went awry.

On hole 16, I took out my 5-wood, which I hadn't hit all round. I thought I'd be safe hitting 5-wood since driver and 3-wood could end up out of bounds. Little did I know that 5-wood also had its perils. I ended up pulling my shot left down a hill into a hazard. Even with the penalty, I was on in 3, but it took me 3 putts to hole out. Still, a double-bogey at that point wasn't the end of the world. Nothing worse could happen, right?

Wrong. Hole 17 was a par 3. It's a tough hole with water on the left. I aimed to the right, giving me plenty of room to draw the ball back left. Who could have predicted that my tee ball would bounce on the cart path, sending it flying who knows where? As we approached the green, my ball was nowhere to be found, so it could have gone over the rainbow or into outer space as far as we knew. After the drop and penalties, I ended up with a triple-bogey.

At hole 18, a par 5, I started thinking, maybe I could birdie... but by then, I'd realized how much energy I'd wasted with such theoretical fantasies. I focused on the task at hand. Just hit the ball. Which I did. A nice, normal drive was followed by an errant second shot into the woods. But I punched out, made it to the green in 4, and then took 2 nice, normal putts to save bogey. In the end, I shot a 90. A nice, normal score. For me anyway. I also noticed that my leg was pain-free for the moment, perhaps because all the mental machinations had drawn my focus elsewhere. But feeling nice and normal for awhile was a very welcome side effect, even if it did ruin my game.

An Unexpected Prize

So I won another closest-to-the-pin contest. The woman's league I joined hasn't started playing yet, so a fellow member of that league, whom I'll call Miss J, invited me to play with her. Miss J is in her mid-thirties, so she's younger than most women in the league, and she has the larger-than-life personality of a diva but without the ego. Anyway, Miss J texted me and asked if I wanted to join her for golf with "a group she plays with weekly." Turns out, that "group" was another league, a men's league of mostly firefighters and policemen to be exact. Miss J belongs to four different leagues and she is the only woman in this men's league. But she said they are looking for more women to join.

When I showed up at the golf course and saw the 20 or so guys that we'd be playing with, I thought to myself, this could be interesting. There was excitement and confusion in the air, as the day's pairings hadn't been made and people were still hustling to put money down on the day's bets. Miss J said we should each put in $5 for the closest-to-the-pin contest. One of the CTP holes was for a set of headcovers autographed by a famous football player. The other CTP hole was for money.

Miss J and I were paired with two of the seniors so our tees wouldn't be so far apart. They sent us out first, even though Miss J and I were walking with pull-carts. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but my first shot off the tee was long and straight. I actually made par on the first hole, which I've only one two other times at that course. Unfortunately, the rest of the front 9 was riddled with doubles and triples, mainly due to my short game and the fact that Miss J and I talked incessantly. But when you're playing with a new gal you've never played with before, the getting-to-know-you chitchat is a necessary evil. None of our foursome landed the green on Hole 8, the first CTP hole, but that was for the headcovers so we didn't mind.

After the turn, I had some butter cookies and got my groove back and started making pars again. Hole 14 was the second CTP hole, the one for the money. It was a par 3 over water, and I'd played it many, many times. As I walked up to the tee, I joked, "Time for my hole in one!" I bent over to set my ball on the tee and got a head rush when I stood up. I took deep breaths till I wasn't seeing stars anymore. Then I aimed and took my swing. It was a perfect, pure shot. It landed in front of the hole, about 12 inches away.

In the end, I took the prize for closest-to-the-pin on that hole, which was $46 in cash. Add that to the fact that I shot 5 over on the back 9, which is the lowest back 9 I'd ever shot on that course. Oh, and I joined that men's league too. In total, the joys of the day were quite unexpected; the best kind.