How to Turn an 89 into a 93

Wednesday was the first time I kept score all season. Bea and I had a 12:46pm tee time at Pine Ridge. I went early to warm up and hit balls on the range. When I first started playing golf, I used to get a large bucket and finish it in within two hours. I would barely break a sweat. Then came the “injury,” and since then, a medium bucket is the most I will ask my back to bear at the range. It’s different on the course, where I hit the equivalent of a medium bucket, but spread it over four or five hours with lots of walking in between.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling stronger, due to pilates-based physical therapy. So I thought, a small bucket before a round couldn’t hurt. In fact, it helped. I drive my first tee ball nicely into the fairway, instead of left into the woods like I usually do. I ended up with bogey on the hole, instead of my typical “just warming up” double bogey.

I shot 9 over par on the first half. I had a birdie chance on a par 3 but blew it by rushing the tap-in. I turned another makeable par 3 into a 4 by missing a 6-incher. Bea thinks not making short putts is a mental problem. I think she’s projecting. I don’t think I have a putting any more than the typical golfer. I think the problem is the unpredictable, and sometimes downright crappy, greens on local munis. God bless the public, but they don’t fix their ball marks, so half the time, I am bent over with my divot tool stuck in the dirt. A seemingly well-read putt can turn into a surprise ending caused by the scar of an old unrepaired ball mark.

Anyway, I was focused on holding steady on the back nine. Seven holes passed in the blink of an eye, and I was 8 over. Then I made par on the 17^th. (It was a par 3 and I landed the green for a 10-foot birdie putt but the ball didn’t break toward the water, like everyone always says it does.) All I had to do was par the last hole to shoot 89, and break my course record of 90.

But the last hole is a par 5, and I teed off into the right rough. I thought I was done for. Miraculously, I pured my 3-wood to within 125 yards of the pin. That’s where I had to make a choice. 

The approach was an uphill shot, and the pin beckoned like a lighthouse at the top, guarded by a steep bunker. I knew it was a sucker pin placement. I could have laid up with an easy 6-iron, then chipped it close and made par. But I thought, why not go for the green? If I took enough club, I thought for sure I could make it over. I took my 7-wood, which I had been puring stick straight all day. I took the shot and heard that wonderful sound of solid contact. For a glorious long time, it looked like the ball would make it. Then, at the last second, plunk! The ball hit the green grassy lip of the bunker and tumbled in. It had to be no more than 6 inches short of victory. 

So there I was, three shots into the bunker. I could still get up and down to save par. I wedged out, but only to the outside of the bunker. Then, with the pin so close, I hit a tepid chip which landed only to the fringe of the green. I ended up skulling that chip and sent the ball to the far side of the dance floor. From there it was not one, but three putts to sink the darn ball. Defeated, I cursed, and I didn’t care who was listening. 

In the end, I shot a godforsaken 93. I was quite annoyed with myself. But then I remembered, once upon a time and not too long ago, I would have been ecstatic with a 93. And my thoughts turned to when I could schedule my next tee time to try again.

Later, I thought about whether I should have played it safe and laid up. There are many areas of life where I play it safe – I drive defensively, invest conservatively, save money as if it will rain every day. But in love and golf, the great games of life, it’s better to take all the chances you can get, because the rewards of winning are always far better than the risks of losing. Or maybe I really am just a sucker.

Life as a Swingin’ Single

A few days ago, I played my first-ever solo round of golf. Playing golf alone has been on my bucket list for awhile, and I finally got up the courage to just do it. My husband has long discouraged me from trying such a thing, since he is always afraid I’ll get paired with some random guys who might hit on me, even though he knows it is mostly OMGs (old man golfers) out there. 

A few weeks ago, I had a preview of going it alone, when the two golfer gal pals I was playing with had to leave after nine holes. The course was jam-packed but I had the blissful experience of playing one hole all by myself. I hit an awesome drive and went on to make par, but there was a threesome of SOMGs (somewhat old man golfers) tailing me, and since the next hole was a par 3, I really had no choice but to let them join me. There was an Asian guy, a white guy, and a black guy, so as an Asian woman, I didn’t feel racially uncomfortable. They all turned out to be very pleasant and displayed a mastery of the art of brief but lighthearted golf chitchat. It is nice to golf with others, but since that one solo hole, I wondered if I could play better without having to worry about the social aspects of the game.

So I finally went out and tried it. I was actually scheduled to play with Bea, but she canceled due to some real estate thing she was working on. Fortunately, no one else had filled in the tee time. It was 2:30pm, the sweet spot after the morning rush dies down, and before the twilight crowd filters in. I arrived at 2:15pm and the starter told me to go right on through.

While waiting for the group ahead to clear the first fairway, I saw two OLGs (old lady golfers) drive up behind me in a golf cart. One of them said, “Are you alone? Do you want to play with us?” I didn’t want to assume that they’d be slow, but I also really wanted to play by myself, so I said, “How about if I get slow, I’ll join you.” They nodded in a “suit yourself” kind of way, and off I went.

I pulled my first tee shot left into the trees, and I thought, “Crap. Maybe I’ll play worse alone.” But the twosome ahead of me was already playing like crap, and I quickly caught up to them. After a hole or two, they let me play through, so I ended up stuck behind a skilled twosome ahead of me, who also offered to let me join them. I didn’t want to be rude, but I was determined to play alone. I decided to play two balls instead, so I could slow myself down and not end up riding them the whole way. 

That’s where things got hectic. I am the kind of person who walks into a room to get something and forgets what I walked into the room to get. I have a terrible short-term memory and sometimes drive around in circles because I can’t remember which way I was heading on a local suburban road. So imagine me trying to keep track of two balls, especially if they land in the deep rough. “Okay, one was by the red post and the other was by that short tree. Or was it by the white post? And which tree was it again?”

Things got really confusing on the putting green, where I am so accustomed to scanning all the ball locations to see who should putt first, that I actually found myself saying out loud, “Am I away?”

By the 9^th hole, I had lost 4 balls and realized I only had two balls left in my bag. Fortunately, I had parked my car in the end of the lot bordering the 9^th hole, so I was able to jog over to my car and raid my shag bag of beat-up balls that I wouldn’t mind losing. I grabbed 6 balls, which I was sure would last me through the back nine.

I didn’t keep score, but I knew I parred at least 3 holes. I made a few glory shots, with only the geese and dragonflies to witness. I also made some terrible shots that no one saw either. Out of sheer exhaustion, I only played one ball on the last hole. One thing about playing alone is that you get no rest in between shots, since you’re never waiting for someone else to play. When my round was over, there was no one to shake hands with, so I called my husband to say, “I did it.”

I had a giddy feeling driving home, like I had unlocked some secret of golf. Yes, golf is a social game. But there is a serenity to playing in private. Looking back, I loved being able to take my shots in peace, without worrying about rustling snack bar wrappers or clinking clubs or whispering playing partners who don’t think talking during other people’s shots is rude.

When I told my husband these things, he smiled. “You’re going to want to play by yourself all the time, now that you know how fun it is. It’s even better when you have the course to yourself and you can take your time.”

“I’ll have to wait for winter for that, probably,” I said. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for that sweet spot of sparsely filled afternoon tee times. And I will bring at least a dozen balls next time.

The Usual Haunts

I  recently found out from a neighbor that someone died in the basement of the house where my husband and I live. We bought the house two years ago, and we knew a family lived in it before us, but before them it was a long-term rental for an elderly woman who died in her sleep while napping in a chair in the basement. I told my neighbor I wish she hadn’t told me that. The neighbor said, “All you need to know is she was a very sweet, kind lady.” 

   “Did she have kids?” I asked.

    “Oh, yes, she had several,” said the neighbor.
    “Good,” I said, “because that means she’ll be haunting her kids, not hanging around here.”

I have always been, or claimed to be, sensitive to otherwordly “presences,” as I call them. My psychiatrist brother might say that this is a sign of insanity, as is overzealous religiosity. (And I would say that one need not look further than my golf addiction to see that I am crazy.) But I have only seen an actual ghost once. This was more than a decade ago, in New York, when I was visiting my aunt who lives in a historic pre-war condominium, the kind where Marilyn Monroe was rumored to have had a secret rendezvous with JFK. I was walking in the courtyard between the north and south wings of the condo complex. It was near midnight so I was surprised to see a young man dressed in a bellman’s uniform walking toward me. As we passed, he looked at me and smiled and said, “Good evening.” I nodded and replied with the same. I took a few more steps, then turned around to see if he was still there. But he was gone. 

Since I play a lot of golf, it was only a matter of time when I would experience this sort of thing on the course. This happened a few weeks ago. I was playing Pine Ridge with Bea and Seri and a single named Randy joined us. He was 62 but didn’t look it. While doing my routine neck stretches, I explained I’d had a herniated disc a few years ago and was back in physical therapy for a neck spasm. He revealed that he’d had a herniated disc in his lower back when he was a teenager, followed by back surgery in his twenties. Every few years, he’d move funny and end up with a muscle spasm. But he continued to play basketball into his 50s, and even now, in his 60s, continues to golf. His story made me feel hopeful.

I felt a friendly vibe from him, and we continued to chat here and there, and toward the end of the round, on a par 3, there was this moment when the wind seemed to die down and there was this quiet sense of calm surrounding everything. Maybe it was just because we were all marking our balls and focusing on our putting lines, but as I stood up to see who was away, I looked up at Randy and couldn’t remember his name. For some reason, the name “Stanley” popped into my head.

   Randy looked up from his putting line and said, “Am I away?”

   “Yes,” I said, “Randy. You know, I almost called you Stanley.”
   Randy’s eyes widened. “Funny you should say that,” he said. “My father’s name is Stanley. And today he would have been 91.”
   I felt goose bumps on my neck. “Did he play golf here?”
   Randy nodded. “Oh yeah, he played here a lot.”
   “Well, it seems that he’s here today,” I said. “He says to tell you that you’re a good son and you turned out okay.”
   Randy laughed. He knew that last part I said was just me joking around.
   As I took aim at my putt, I tried to listen for advice from Stanley or whatever other golf ghosts were hanging about. It was a long, straggly line, but somehow I made the putt for par. As we left the hole, I said, “Thanks, Stanley. Happy birthday.”

Disbelievers might say Randy and Stanley sound similar, so it’s not unreasonable to mistake one name for the other. But I believe it was more than coincidence that it was also one of the namesake’s birthdays. I know that I will be haunting some golf course some day, since my husband and I plan to retire near one, and I plan to play into my golden years. 

So, sometime far in the future, if you happen to be on a golf course, and you see an old lady shaking a 3-wood, hissing at you to pick up the pace, that will probably be the ghost of me, decades from now, after I’ve long since gone from earth, but will always and forever be, gone golfing.

Opening Day

It’s been a long cold winter. It’s April, and morning temps are still in the 30s. I haven’t played much golf at all this year, except for a quick trip to So Cal and the unseasonably warm day here and there. But yesterday, the weather was grand. Sprinkles in the morning, followed by bright sun and highs in the low 60s.

Things have changed among me and my regular golf gals. Bea got back into real estate and is too busy showing houses to play golf these days. Seri’s schedule is full, too, since she now goes to English classes four days a week. I have been crazy busy myself, with a sudden influx of freelance work, which has kept me busy in the off season, but also resulted in more hours at a desk. Last week, the tightness in my trapezius muscles caused a morning back spasm that had me running to the doctor. The acute pain went away after a few days, and at first I was afraid to golf right away, but I tried hitting some balls at the range, and my back actually felt better.

Yesterday, I was still a little nervous about golfing. But I already have an appointment with a physical therapist next week, so I figured if I hurt myself, it would be fixed soon enough. Seri has Fridays off, so she and I met at Pine Ridge for a 10:30am round. The course was oddly deserted, with only a foursome of OMGs (old man golfers) in front of us, and a twosome behind. I figured the threat of rain had scared everyone away.

It felt like Seri and I had the course to ourselves, and we had a blast. Seri was her usual bubbly self, an endless stream of self-commentary about her stance, her swing, her ball flight. I was my usual self, too, a cheerleading Pollyanna, exclaiming “Good ball!” and “Look at it roll!” whenever Seri hit a good shot. Our balls were rolling an unusually long way, due to the hardness of the ground, which hadn’t thawed yet. Underlying my display of glee, of course, was a mindfulness of my back. 

To reduce tension in my shoulders, I focused on getting reacquainted with the familiar little things about the game: the goose poop everywhere, the itch in my throat from the grass, and my superstition that, when marking my ball with my bumblebee ball marker, the butt of the bee must always face the direction of the hole. 

Also, Seri brought a new snack, a packet of the most light, crisp, and delicious cracker I’d had in a while. They were sesame-flavored with a sprinkling of crystallized sugar on top, and possibly a touch of coconut flavor. The package wrapper had a picture of a woman in a green skirt riding on a scooter. Seri told me the Korean writing translated to “great beautiful smile.” I kept the wrapper so I could take it on my next trip to the Korean grocery and buy the same crackers.

I did notice that Seri had suddenly gotten almost as long as me. Her usual ball flight on a drive was a high arc and a dead drop with barely any roll. Yesterday, her ball flight was low, with a roll about a third as long as the ball carried in the air. She kept complaining that she was moving her head during the swing. I told her whatever she was doing, she should keep at it.

On the back nine, the pace slowed. We had caught up to the group ahead. While waiting to tee off on a hole, we saw a goose just laying there among a bunch of other geese. At first we feared it was dead. Seri told me she had once struck and killed a chicken at a golf course in New Zealand. The kiwi golf course owners told her she could take the chicken home and have it for dinner, but she couldn’t bear it. She felt bad enough she’d brought its life to an end with a golf shot. Here at the home course, the goose got up and walked away, and we were relieved. I don’t know how to cook a goose anyway.

At the 18^th hole, I was doubly relieved that I could still hit a 200-yard tee shot. There is nothing like the sound and feel of a crack-a-lackin’ big bop. Neither Seri nor I kept score, but I knew I had parred two holes and bogeyed most. Later, I learned why the course had been so empty. It was the Orioles’ first game of the season, so everyone in town was either heading down to Camden Yards or staying home to watch it on TV. The Orioles won, with an 8^th-inning grand slam. So, it turned out to be an auspicious start to the season, for everyone.

A Very First Golf Swing

Last weekend, I gave my nephew his first set of golf clubs. Not Ping, but Peanuts brand, featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Toddler flex shafts made of featherweight non-toxic plastic. It was interesting to watch the natural propensities of a human when encountering the problem of how to swing a golf club for the first time. Communication was negligible, since my nephew is just 22 months old and hasn’t started speaking in full sentences yet. 

The set I gave him has exactly 3 clubs, 3 plastic balls, and 2 plastic tees. My nephew made no distinction between the driver and the iron, except he called the iron “Elmo” since it has a red plastic head. The putter was of no interest. (Takes after his aunt that way.) I showed him how to hold the club with two hands, how to tee up the ball, and how to hit the ball. My emphasis was not on form, since it was difficult to model proper form when I was stooped over to accommodate the short length of the kiddie clubs. Rather, I just wanted to demonstrate making contact with the ball, and attempt to imbue a sense of joy in sending the ball some distance away.

If I can extrapolate from watching my nephew, here are some general observations about attempting golf for the very first time:

• When confronted with a ball set up on a tee, the first inclination seems to be to flip the club head toe-side down and use it like a hammer to pound at the ball like it was a nail. This is because, in this country, children are too readily exposed to the ubiquity of the hammer. I blame Bob the Builder.
• If you can’t hit the ball very far using a club, it works better if you just pick up the ball and throw it. 
• It’s hard to hold the club with two hands when your arms are so short. 
• Knee flex is a really natural tendency. All the big boys do it. 
• Clubhead lag and weight transfer seem natural too. It’s years of doing other things, like sitting at a computer working, that seem to impede these skills from developing naturally. 
• Small balls can hold a person’s attention just as well as big balls. (And by that I literally mean that the golf ball is quite small relative to the balls of other sports, such as basketball and soccer.)
• If you’re not good at something right off the bat, and you know it, it’s okay to let someone else do it till you get better at it (I am referring to my nephew’s inability to balance the ball on the tee on his own; I was really impressed that he could grasp the ball and set it on the tee, and that he didn’t whine when it fell off.)

Anyway, I don’t know if my nephew will remember this first experience with golf, but I took pictures so that later, after he becomes a golf pro, a deep-pocketed sponsor will pay me big bucks to use them in an ad campaign. I do know that if I have anything to do with it, my nephew will have many more fun times with the sport I love.

I believe he enjoyed our little outing. Once inside the house, where my husband was watching the Golf Channel, my nephew pointed to the little white ball on the television screen and exclaimed, “Ball!” 

I think a golf star has been born.

Twilight at Torrey Pines

I needed a winter break, so hubby and I flew west to the San Diego area in search of weather warm enough for golf. I shipped my old set of Ping G2s out there for the unexpectedly low price of $22 via FedEx 4-day ground, which sure beat carrying them on a plane. Somehow the stars aligned and hubby and I decided it was a good time to cross another bucket list course off our list. So we decided to play Torrey Pines South Course.

The website makes it look like a hassle to get a tee time; if you're a non-resident, you either pay a big fee to book ahead or get up at the crack of dawn and sign up for the daily waitlist. We didn't have to do either. Instead, we went in at around 9am on a Wednesday and put our names on the walk-on list for twilight, which starts at 1pm in winter. The starter said to come back around 12:30pm and we'd be out shortly after 1pm. I had a feeling if we wanted to pay the $183 morning greens fees, he would have been able to get us out without much delay. But $110 for twilight was about what we wanted to shell out, so after putting our names on the list, we headed to Carl's Jr. for breakfast and came back at around 11:30am to hit balls and warm up.

There's not much of a driving range at Torrey Pines, although it was a good place to check my distances and try out my assemblage of "new" clubs that I'd procured from the used clubs bins at Golf Mart, including a 12-degree Ping G15 driver and a Ping G10 3-wood that cost me $99 and $49 respectively.

At around 12:20pm, we headed back to the clubhouse to mill about and soak in the atmosphere. You know you're at a famous golf course when there are lots of people just there to take pictures. At around 12:45pm, our names were called, and I nearly wet my pants.

This is it. The big show, I thought. Torrey Pines South Course.

As it turned out, the whole affair started with a bit of confusion. The starter said we'd be going out at around 1:05 or 1:10, so we paid for the greens fees, got a receipt, rented 2 walking carts and headed down to Hole 1. The first holes for Torrey Pines North and South Courses are right next to each other, and there was a kiosk there, but it was unstaffed, so we waited near the first tee ground, thinking they'd announce what time we were actually going out. At around 1:05, I got antsy and went back up the starter.

"What time are we supposed to go out?" I asked.
"1:05 or 1:10," the starter said. He looked at the clock, "You should be on the tee box now."
"Are we 1:05 or 1:10? It's already 1:05!" I said. I didn't understand why the guy didn't give me an exact tee time, like every other golf course in the world. I tried a different tactic. "What are the names of the 2 others in our group?" I asked.
And he told me 2 names which I remembered long enough to run back to the first tee and call out. The two guys on the tee turned around and identified themselves as the 2 people in question.
"Okay, then," I said. "We're playing with you two."

I was a bit annoyed that the start was so disorganized. It was also perturbing at the end of the round when we were returning our pull-carts and the unfriendly staffers kept their heads down without a "thank you for playing" or even a "how was your round?" But I had to remind myself that this isn't a TPC resort course, but a municipal course run by the City of San Diego, with workers about as motivated for the kind of pay they are probably getting.

From that point, the round progressed as usual, with handshakes and self-introductions. One of the guys was a Scottish teaching pro and the other was a shaggy local, the kind who enjoyed hearing himself speak. Later, he would start telling me what I was doing wrong on my putts, and I would feel tempted to punch him in the nose. But for now, I did my best to tune him out and focus on my game.

From the forward tees, the South Course is a manageable 5467 yards. The first fairway is wide and welcoming, with the kind of grass that makes you want to have a picnic. I double-bogeyed the first hole, a par 4, but I didn't feel too bad about it at all.

If you've ever seen Torrey Pines on television, you already know there is a lot of the ocean in view. And parasailers love the coastal winds blowing along the cliffs on the front nine.

Hole 3 is a lovely downhill par 3. The back tees have to carry that scrub on the left. The forward tees are on the right, only 105 yards from the green.

I made it on the green, just barely hanging on the edge.

I four-putted from there. What can I say? The greens are wicked fast and too much mustard could send your ball right over the edge into the ocean.

The course is filled with Torrey pines like this:

And this:

Here's another fairway to heaven:

Look closely and you can see how close my approach shot landed to the pin:

Here was an intimidating par 5 fairway. Rolling hills, multi-staged bunkers.

I made it to this point in two shots. Just one more to get on in regulation. But I blew it. My third shot ended up in one of those bunkers.

On the back nine, the sun started disappearing. We could see the remnants of the Farmers Insurance Open, which Tiger Woods had won just a few weeks before. The excitement still lingered.

The last few holes were a blur. We rushed. At one hole, after I'd three-putted again, the shaggy local shook his head and said, "Right and short, right and short. Don't you see a pattern?" Now I know I suck at putting, but this guy missed so many putts I was surprised he even claimed to be a golfer. I thought he had some nerve to criticize anyone, let alone a perfect stranger.

After teeing off at the 17th hole, hubby and I starting running to our next shots. The Scottish pro had gotten a lift from the cart-riding shaggy local by now, and as they whizzed past us, the shaggy local said, "You don't have to run." And I rolled my eyes, thinking, first you're telling me how to putt, now you're telling me whether to walk or run? Knowing that I would soon be leaving the company of this buffoon was the only upside to realizing that our twilight round at Torrey Pines was soon coming to an end. The Scottish pro, on the other hand, had behaved like a perfect gentleman, exclaiming "Good drive!" or "Good ball!" whenever merited, and remaining politely silent when not.

There's a water fountain guarding the last green, and it was so dark that I couldn't find any yardage markers to gauge the distance for my approach shot. I took a guess with an 8-iron and came up a few yards short. My ball bounced on the fringe and rolled back into the water. Unfazed, I dropped a ball a club length or two from where the ball went in, and chipped it up, just to have the satisfaction of finishing a full 18.

Hubby and I shook hands with the other two, and somehow I think the Scottish pro was sincere when he smiled as he shook my hand and said, "Well-played!"

A Warm Winter Day

It’s cold. It’s February and it’s supposed to be cold, but somehow it just seems colder than it should be. When it’s this cold, I usually do one of two things: 1) compare the current climate to my visit to the Arctic Circle, when I braved a night in sub-zero temperatures at a hotel made of ice, and I say, “This ain’t that cold.” Or 2) remember a warmer time.

I don’t have to think back too far to a warmer time. It was just about two weeks ago, on a Wednesday, when the forecast said sunny and low 50s. I called upon Bea and Dodi for a twilight round. Thank god for them, my fellow golf addicts, who will either work doubly hard to make time for golf, or skip out on work altogether. In Bea’s case, I had called her just as she was arriving at work, and she promptly told her boss she was taking the day off. Good thing her boss is also her husband.

Dodi and I walked, and Bea rode, despite her new year’s resolutions to start walking this year. She had recently purchased a Ping G20 driver, just like mine except hers was senior flex (or, as Ping euphemistically calls it, “soft regular” flex, which I think just sounds like an adjective for something else, after eating a lot of fiber). I told her she should have gone with the regular flex, but her fitter had convinced her otherwise. Still, I was flattered that she purchased the same driver as me. It meant she, too, had noticed that I was getting better distance off the tee.

None of us had played for weeks before that day, and none of us kept score. I was just glad to be outdoors and not at the gym for a workout. I played horribly except for a par 5 that I managed to par. But I felt such joy. It was warm. There was a moistness in the air. It felt like a shower in the sun.

On the back nine, things started to slow down. We were keeping pace, but there was a single behind us and Bea asked him to join us. I was a little annoyed that she asked the guy to join us without asking me first, but I know she prefers to play in front of strangers since it makes her perform better. As for me, the new guy broke up the rhythm we had going. It meant one more person to wait for, one more stranger to act polite for. Plus I could tell he thought he was really good. On one hole, Dodi and I hit our approach shots to just inside the edge of the green. We were both happy to land the green, but when the stranger hit his approach to the same area, he cursed himself, as if he’d made a terrible shot. It was kind of a mood killer, like a certain hole I played that day, when I hit my tee shot to the perfect spot, just to the right of a bunker. I had high hopes of making the green in two. But instead my second shot soared temptingly close to the green, then flared off right into a steep bunker. So the round, like that hole, was only half decent. But as a warm memory, it will do.