D's Notebook

Tag: golf (Page 2 of 5)

On Packed Weekends and Golf

June 21, 2021 /

Decent weekend in our house.

I watched a lot of golf, thanks to the US Open being played on the West Coast. Which is always the best. The girls were even moderately interested since we stayed right off the course during our visit to San Diego two years ago.

I watched some Euro championship soccer. I watched some F1. L and I watched almost all of the crazy ass game seven between Brooklyn and Milwaukee (she bailed to go to bed late in the fourth quarter). We watched the closing minutes of the Atlanta-Philly game seven and laughed at Ben Simmons. “HOW IS HE SO BAD?” she yelled at the screen. Poor Joel…

I bought a book that is right up my alley and knocked out a big chunk of it while sitting by the pool Sunday.

I’ve also still been fighting this damn cold I’ve now had for almost four weeks. In fact Friday I felt worse than I had felt for a week. It seems like time and the Z-pack and lots of vitamins finally kicked in and I may have the cold on the ropes. Thanks to the cold I’ve been squeezing a lot of naps in, too.

Oh, and I turned 50.

No big deal.

Maybe one of you mathematicians out there can tell me what the odds are of me being born on Father’s Day and also turning 50 on Father’s Day? Seems kind of wacky to me but it seems to check out.

Ever since the calendar flipped to 2021 I’ve been contemplating this birthday, what it meant, and that kind of stuff.

I was excited to turn 30, because it meant I was an adult and people would take me seriously. And then my 30s were about maturing and creating. I got married. We had three kids. It was a busy time.

I was not super pumped about turning 40 because it was the first milestone that felt old-ish to me. Turns out my 40s were a decent run, and I wish I had entered them with a better perspective. Yeah, I’m a little creakier than I was a decade ago. I’ve got a few, thankfully minor, health issues to worry about. Looking back my 40s were all about raising my girls, helping them navigate the first years of their lives and reach the points where they developed their own personalities and interests and are either beginning or poised to begin making big choices for themselves.

Fifty, though? Man, it seems old. I can’t help but think of a line from a song by Buffalo Tom that struck me when they released it three years ago:

Now my time behind is greater than my time ahead

As much as I try not to dwell on it, I can’t help but consider that math often. I hope I have many years left, but it is very sobering to know that I’ve most likely lived somewhere around two-thirds of my life.

All those songs aging Baby Boomers put out in the ‘90s are starting to make sense to me.

I kid, I kid. All those songs still suck.

Thanks to all who sent birthday wishes to me over the weekend.

The ladies took me out for dinner Saturday to Harry & Izzy’s, where we enjoyed shrimp cocktail and I had a fine filet. My Old Fashioned was a little too sweet, but perhaps that was three weeks of various meds throwing off my taste buds. Sunday morning we got a variety of fancy French Toasts from a local breakfast place before I saw in or by the pool most of the afternoon.

All in all, not a bad weekend.

Golf

The US Open went from a snooze-fest to an absolute delight Sunday afternoon. I’m one of those who isn’t a huge fan of Torrey Pines. It’s too long, doesn’t ask enough questions of golfers, and doesn’t take advantage of the glorious property it occupies. For about 62 holes it produced a tournament that had a ton of players in the mix, but prevented anyone from doing much to create separation. I was 100% sure Bryson DeChambeau was going to get hot on the back nine, birdie and/or eagle a couple holes that everyone else was parring, and win by two. He had the lead on 10 and that looked like a pretty wise prediction.

And then all hell gloriously broke loose. Bryson shot a 44 on the back nine, and played a couple holes the way I might play them. I’m not a Bryson fan so this was thoroughly enjoyable. I literally cackled like a fool when he cold shanked a wedge and nearly took out some fans on the opposite side of the fairway. Could not have happened to a better guy.

I would have been fine with just about anyone but Bryson winning, but was rooting hardest for, in no particular order, Louis Oosthuizen, Rory McIlroy, and Jon Rahm. Rory faded, as he has been doing for a long time. Louis cracked under the pressure, as he seemingly always does. And it was Rahm who dropped in two absolutely clutch-ass putts on 17 and 18 to claim his first major. It was a well earned and deserved championship.

Rahm might have played the best round of his life two weeks ago, taking a six-shot lead after three rounds of the Memorial, only to learn he had tested positive for Covid and would not be able to play Sunday. This sparked just the kind of meaningful, reasoned, and nuanced dialogue you would expect on Twitter, talk radio, etc. Rahm handled it all wonderfully. He admitted he should have been vaccinated sooner – I believe he said he had only gotten his first shot a few days earlier after he was exposed to someone who was positive – said he understood the rules and protocols that the PGA had instituted, said he totally understood they were in place to protect others, and went along with them. He didn’t bitch or whine or blame others. He accepted responsibility AND advocated for others to get vaccinated. Unlike a lot of dickhead athletes who have taken a different line over the past couple weeks.

After he won the Open, Rahm said he’s a big believer in karma. He knew that something good would come from his bout with Covid. I like to think it was forcing him and others in golf like Phil Mickleson to advocate for vaccinations so we can move society forward. But if winning the US Open was part of that karmic payoff, I’m down.

I do feel gutted for poor Louis. Dude has the purest swing you could ever hope for and, by all accounts, cares a lot more about his family and his farm than golf. The knock has been that he doesn’t care enough about winning and, thus, has only won a single major while fading on Sundays time and again. You could see the pain in his eyes when he holed out on 18, realizing he had a chance to tie or even beat Rahm in regulation before his normally fluid swing betrayed him. He may not burn to win above all else like a lot of golfers, but make no mistake, Louis wants to win. He’s played very well this year. I hope he nabs another major before his skills begin to diminish.

On Heroes, Villains, and Uncomfortable Decisions in Sports

May 25, 2021 /

We had great weather all weekend, and a ton of activities (L and I went to watch Indy 500 qualifying, C had her birthday dinner out with friends, and we hosted a nephew birthday party), so I did not sit and watch endless hours of coverage of the PGA Championship. I saw enough to get the vibe of the tournament, though, including roughly the last hour of Phil Mickelson’s win.

I had mixed feelings about the result.

I was never a Phil fan, for a variety of reasons. The biggest was that I was a Tiger fan and never understood how you could root for Phil over him. I get that Tiger’s game wasn’t always very sexy after 2001: he became the greatest course manager in the history of the game, jumping out to leads early in tournaments and then cruising home with cautious golf while his competitors faded. Phil countered that by always going for it. But what’s fun about watching the guy that goes for it but always seemed to make the worst possible mistake in the biggest possible moment?

Then again, I think I would have rooted for Arnold Palmer over Jack Nicklaus, so I’m not exactly consistent here.

There were plenty of other problematic things about Phil over the years. They aren’t worth rehashing. You can search for them if you need the background.

I have softened towards Phil in recent years, though. He’s been very adept at transitioning to the social media age. He often seems genuinely funny rather than the older guy who tries too hard. He makes fun of himself. He skewers people who are dumb on Twitter.

Yet there are always the missteps that kept from making me a true Phil fan. Most recently there has been his very public interest in the rumored Saudi-financed competitor to the PGA. In the abstract I think a competitor to the PGA is fine. Like many, though, taking tons of money from the leadership of Saudi Arabia to undercut the tour that made you a star seems like an especially tone-deaf choice. Especially for a guy who has always let you know he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.

There have long been rumors that Mickelson has financial issues, and that his interest in a Saudi-backed tour is purely to dig himself out of that hole. If that’s true, I would think a golfer of his status would have endless possibilities to earn as much money as he wanted without having to take blood money from Saudi royalty.

Despite all those negative or neutral feelings towards Phil, I couldn’t help but admire his play this weekend. He struggled to begin his round Thursday. Then something switched and he was, by far, the best golfer the rest of the weekend. He held off Brooks Koepka, normally a killer in the majors. He built up a large lead on a day when almost nobody was going low. When the inevitable mistakes popped up late, he never compounded them and instead made a series of terrific recoveries to keep those errors from turning into round ruiners.

This was not a fluke caused by crazy weather conditions or an insane round that can’t be explained. It was 63 holes of terrific golf against one of the best fields of the season. The fact Phil is about to turn 51 just makes it more admirable.

In the reaction podcasts and articles I’ve reviewed, almost everyone eventually asked the question: can he still take that Saudi money after this?

I think the answer is clearly yes. PGA golfers rarely display any great commitment to doing the right thing when the opposite choice involves a huge pile of cash. Time and again Phil has shown he is as driven by money as any other golfer.

I think every athlete has the right to chase as much money as they can. For every Phil who has managed to hang around for 30 years, there are dozens of golfers who get their card for one or two seasons and then slip back into the oblivion of the feeder tours. Get that money while you can, son.

It seems like Phil should be different, though. And not just because he loves to tell people he voted for Obama and has a few progressive political views. Even if gambling and bad investments and government fines have eaten away at his nest egg, he’s still made an insane amount of money in his life as a golfer. If he truly faces financial difficulties, winning the PGA at 50 should give him more than enough new revenue streams to refill the family coffers without stooping to taking the massive cash the Saudis are throwing around in their attempts to cover up the brutality of their regime.

Weekend Sports Notes

February 22, 2021 /

It was a very busy weekend for sports, so let’s get into it.

KU Hoops


Five wins in a row! My big concern about this winning streak was that three of the wins came against K-State and Iowa State, the two worst teams in the Big 12. Was KU’s better play just a function of their opponents? Or was the second half of the Oklahoma State game that began the streak a sign that it would play against better teams, too?

Saturday cleared that up. Texas Tech can struggle on offense. And they did Saturday. But to my eyes a lot of that was because of KU’s defense. KU also out-toughed one of the toughest teams in the league.

A month ago KU looked lost, with several players having moments where they didn’t look engaged. Over the past three weeks the team has built up some confidence and rediscovered how to play together. They are still missing way too many wide open shots. But they are playing some tough-ass defense, getting rebounds, and making it difficult for their opponents. If they can just find a way to shoot closer to the 40% from three I think they’re capable of, they can be a Sweet 16 threat once the tournament begins.

Kid Hoops

I didn’t share L’s result from a week ago. For the third-straight week they played a 25–12 game. I wonder what the odds were on that happening? Perhaps I could have gotten some action on that on your favorite betting app? Fortunately they won this one, to go 2–1 in that stretch. She did not have a great game – she only scored four – but played pretty solid D and had a few assists.

This week they played the team that beat them by 12 in their first game of the season.

On the opening possession the other team got the tip, went down and scored easily, then we had seven offensive rebounds plus a steal and another shot attempt and couldn’t score on our first possession. Seemed like it was going to be a repeat.

But we had our best player this time, and now know how to play together. We were up five at halftime and maintained that lead through the first 10 minutes of the second half.

Then our girls got sloppy and gave up a big run. We were down 22–18 with under 2:00 to play. We cut it to two points and got a steal, layup, and foul with under a minute left. We hit the free throw to go up one. Then L got a steal at mid-court, drove down, and finally hit a freaking layup! Plus she got fouled! She had a free throw to go up four. She left it short.

That was big.

They came down and got an immediate score to make it a two point game. On the next possession L got trapped, made a bad pass, and the other team seemed to have a clean look to tie. Until their girl travelled. A reprieve! Until one of L’s teammates panicked and threw the ball right to them with under 20 seconds left. We managed to get our hands on a pass and force an inbounds play at mid-court with about four seconds left. There was a timeout so our coaches had a chance to tell our girls what to do on defense. The fouls weren’t on the scoreboard but I think we had at least two fouls to give – the refs were not calling much.

The ball came in and our defender who was supposed to guard the ball ran away from her player. That girl took one dribble, then three steps…and banked in a three at the buzzer to win. It was the same girl who had traveled a couple possessions earlier and she did the exact same thing. Not sure why it wasn’t called this time.

On our way out of the gym L and her friend who was supposed to guard the shooter said the coaches told them over and over not to foul. Seems like a poor strategy. In 6th–7th grade ball with fouls to give and four seconds to burn, I’m fouling immediately. If they somehow get a shot up and the ref gives them three free throws, I like my odds of them having to hit three free throws to win. Even if they get two shots I’m feeling pretty good about still getting the win, and would be fine with OT if she hits both.

Oh well. It was a bummer of a loss. Our girls played really well aside from a stretch in the second half and those two late possessions. It hurt us that our best player didn’t play the last five minutes because she felt bad. Maybe we’ll get a third shot at them in the tournament.

Colts get QB

So I guess I have to start believing in Carson Wentz.

He was inevitable after the Colts never made a serious offer for Matthew Stafford. They are too close to being an AFC contender to go after someone young and/or unproven, and reuniting Wentz with Frank Reich seems like the best approach.

I think there’s a decent chance it works out. In fact, I think Wentz will be fine in terms of performance. It’s the injury factor I worry about more. Was suffering serious injuries three-straight years bad luck or a sign that he’s brittle and destined to get hurt again? There were plenty of rumors that he was not a great teammate this past year, but those always seem to pop up when there’s a major QB shuffle. Plus the Eagles were kind of a mess this year so I don’t know how much credence I give those rumors.

I think a third round pick and a conditional second round pick are a fair price for him. Ideally he stays healthy, finds his mojo again, and the Colts are a top-three team in the AFC this year. Fill a few holes with smart drafting and they can be a top two team. If Wentz is a disaster, I guess they cut him a year from now and try again.

Golf

Max Homa!


I’m betting very few of you know who Max Homa is, even after his win at the Genesis Invitational yesterday. He has been active in the part of the golf social media world I fell into when I started following the game again. He is tight with the No Laying Up crew, and has appeared on their podcasts and videos. A year ago he started his own podcast with the Golf channel’s Shane Bacon, and it has been on my must-listen list ever since. Max is very funny, very smart, very honest, and comes across as a very genuine guy who shares a lot more than the average golfer.

Over the past year he’s been open about his goals – not just to win but to be the best golfer in the world – and his struggles to get there. Last week, going into the tournament at Riviera Country Club, he said this was his favorite course in the world, it fit his game perfectly, and he felt great going into the event.

And then he freaking won it! I can’t wait to listen to his show later today when it drops.

His win came with a lot of excitement. He was stellar all day Sunday – he started two strokes back of the lead – and when nearly everyone else was faltering he just kept hitting great shot after great shot. If a few birdie putts that missed by inches had crawled in, he would have led comfortably when he stepped to the 18th tee. As it was, he knew a par got him to a playoff with Tony Finau, a birdie would win. He striped a drive down the middle. Then he hit an outrageously good approach that landed under four feet from the pin, the closest anyone came on the 18th hole all day. He walked up the fairway all smiles, knowing he had a near kick-in for a signature win.

So wouldn’t you know it that he, in his own words, choked, and spun it out.

No doubt a little rattled, his tee shot on the opening playoff hole landed next to a tree and he looked absolutely dead. Until he hit a ridiculous chip that allowed him to escape with a par and match Finau. When Finau could only bogey the second playoff hole, Homa had his win.

Homa was very emotional in his comments afterward. For someone unfamiliar with his story, his emotions may have seemed strange. But if you knew his first real golfing memories came riding on his dad’s shoulders at the old LA Open at Riviera, if you knew how much his parents sacrificed for him to play competitive golf, if you knew how hard he worked to turn himself into an elite pro, the emotions were completely understandable and wonderful.

America’s Cup


I accidentally found the America’s Cup challenger series races a week ago. This Saturday I found them again and all three girls walked through the room and said, “What is this?” Soon I was explaining what little I know about yacht racing, which was all learned back in 1987 when the America’s Cup got attention for about 15 minutes.

I highly recommend finding the races when the final series begins in two weeks. These new boats are insane! They race along at over 40 MPH. Thanks to wings that extend from each side of the boat, the hull is almost always completely out of the water. They look like they are literally flying.

The races, at least the challenger series, are also pretty quick. I remember the 1987 races lasting hours. These are done inside of 30 minutes. To my eye they lack some of the strategy that was present with those old, 12-meter boats. But it is still crazy to watch them rip down the course.

More Sports Notes

February 9, 2021 /

With the Super Bowl out of the way, here are some more sports notes from the past few days.

Kid Hoops

L’s team had a big game Saturday. Her team played the squad they were tied with for second place in their league. Looking at comparative scores, it seemed like the teams were pretty evenly matched. We were going to have our best player. Things looked good.

Then we got stomped.

L threw a ridiculous pass from the left wing, through the entire defense, to a teammate under the hoop who laid it up and in just before the halftime buzzer for our second basket of the game. We were down 12–4. It did not feel that close, either.

It didn’t get better in the second half. The opponents had two girls three inches taller than our inside girl and they just shut her down. Their team defense was great at all five spots and barely gave us any looks. Worst, our best player went 0–12 from the free throw line in a 13-point loss. Yep, Oh-for-Twelve. Poor kid, the misses got worse and worse as they piled up. She almost threw one over the backboard. Yikes.

L was 0-fer from the floor, but she was also the only girl who was able to get shots. She was forcing them but at least she was getting them off. She blew an easy layup late in the game, making her approximately 0 for her last 129 on layups. She did have a few other absolute dimes. One she again whipped through the entire defense, placed it on our inside girl’s right hand above her shoulders, and she laid it in without ever putting her left hand on the ball. It was kind of dope and got some vocal reaction from the dads. But otherwise L struggled like everyone else.

The crazy thing about the team we played was that they were coached by a high school girl. She knew her shit, was cool and calm on the sideline, and obviously has these girls drilled well on the fundamentals. I’m glad I wasn’t coaching and getting my ass kicked by her.

KU Hoops

Fortunately L’s game saved me from most of the KU game Saturday. Games at West Virginia are always the worst, so I wasn’t too bummed either about missing it or the loss.

I was bummed but not surprised that KU fell out of the rankings on Monday. The program’s reputation clearly kept them ranked a few weeks longer than they should have been included. L was borderline pissed when I told her it was the first time since she was four months old that had happened. Not sure why she was so worked up about it, she’s watched maybe 15 minutes of KU basketball with me this year.

Luckily Monday night KU got their shit together, at least in the second half, against Oklahoma State. I was in multiple texts threads with KU friends and my OSU buddy. I don’t want to dig back into them and give myself a headache, but I believe all of my friends would be comfortable with be summing up those conversations by saying the first half was a display of garbage basketball by both teams.

There’s not much to say about KU that I haven’t already said, although I think their struggles are currently being compounded by a total lack of confidence. David McCormack, in a huge upset, might be the most confident player on the team right now. But their lack of talent and skill and hoops IQ looks even worse when they play tentatively. I liked how most of the team played hard in the second half last night. Hopefully they’ve learned if you do that, good things will happen, and eventually the shots that have been clanging off the rim for the last month will start to fall again.

College Hoops Landscape

I guess if KU has to have a really down year, this is the year to do it. How crazy is it that none of the 13 winningest programs in D1 are ranked right now? Or that Duke, Kentucky, and Michigan State are likely to miss the tournament, and North Carolina would only squeeze in if the brackets came out today? Hell, if KU slips up over the next week when they play Iowa State twice and then K-State, they will slide into bubble territory. Those schools are the five most dominant Power Five programs of the past decade. And they all, to some measure, suck right now.[1]

I kind of scoffed early in the year when John Calipari blamed Covid for Kentucky’s struggles. But with all these blue bloods having issues, most of whom are relying on young players, that has become a reasonable explanation. Incoming players who normally got a full summer of workouts with/against returning and former players had to work out on their own last year, and they look like what freshmen used to look like.

Sadly those other programs will probably bounce back and be just fine next year. KU, depending on how long the NCAA shit drags on and what the eventual penalties are, could be facing a decent stretch of relative mediocrity.

Although, if Bill Self can keep his roster together over the summer and find a good transfer point guard, I think KU will be fine next year. It’s the years after that which could become problematic. And that’s if the NCAA allows Self to continue coaching.

Pacers

The Pacers are on a 1–5 stretch. If KU hadn’t won last night I might be ready to give up on all basketball for awhile.

Golf

L’s game Saturday also caused me to miss a lot of the PGA event. Once I got home, caught the final minutes of the KU game, and caught up on Twitter, I saw the outburst over Jordan Spieth’s round. I thought he was done at –7 for the day, so I was thrilled when I switched to NBC and saw he still had four holes to play. And he continued to drop absolute bombs for birdies.

It was a scintillating performance, full of all the high-wire stuff Spieth is famous for. As one podcast afterward stated, other than Tiger Woods, no golfer creates as much excitement as Spieth when he’s on. There’s something about his game that is so fragile and relatable. Plus he is so open about his success and failures that he doesn’t seem like your average, boring tour pro. Even at his best he always seems so close to losing it and looking like your average weekend duffer. Then he hits an amazing approach from the desert and holes a 60-foot putt and you are screaming and texting your friends.

There was a buzz on golf Twitter as people lost their shit. I missed Spieth’s peak, as it came when I was giving golf no attention. Even though he fell apart on Sunday – predictably – it was fun to be a part of the Jordan Spieth experience for an hour or so. I hope he can continue to round out his game so this is a weekly recurrence rather than a singular event.

  1. Gonzaga and Villanova are obviously in the mix of best programs of the past decade, and are doing just fine this year.  ↩

Some Sports Takes

November 18, 2020 /

The Masters

Like most golf fans I was realllllly looking forward to the fall Masters. Seeing Augusta National under different conditions than we’ve ever seen it before and without any fans was a dazzling concept. And in practice it turned out to be pretty damn cool.

I was surprised, though, that I didn’t get fully immersed in the tournament. Sure, I had it on a lot, but I wasn’t glued to the screen the way I would have been in April. I watched plenty of golf, but I can’t recount tons of details the way I can with, say, the 2019 tournament because my attention was always divided or I was taking breaks to go knock out errands (or buy a car or coach a game).

I wonder if some of that disconnect is because the Masters falling in early April is always a sign that spring is about to arrive. It’s a gift for surviving winter and starts to awaken thoughts of what activities warmer weather will allow.

Last weekend, while it was great to have the Masters, it was also a reminder that we’re about to go inside for several months. That the pandemic is getting worse every day. That our distractions from the generally awful state of the world are disappearing. This Masters was the last moment of a probably too-open fall before we slide into a locked-down winter.

I was glad Dustin Johnson finally put a great weekend together at a major again. DJ is probably the professional golfer that most hacks would aspire to be. He makes the game look so damn easy with his beautiful, powerful, easy swing. He no doubt has the coolest walk in all of sports. And the off-the-course stuff isn’t bad, with Paulina Gretzky as his partner and a huge house with a bunch of toys. His life isn’t perfect, witness his not a suspension suspension a few years back for allegedly failing multiple drug tests.

DJ has that classic “He makes it look easy so he must not really be trying” aura about him. When you add in a few huge meltdowns that have cost him majors, his career is viewed by many to be disappointing. Doesn’t matter that he’s playing in, arguably, the most competitive time ever in the PGA. Or that he’s won 26 total tournaments and over $70 million. A guy that good should have won more, right? Since he is so laid back and not the most eloquent guy in the world, he’s viewed as a bit of a failure.

Which is insane. Look at those numbers again. Twenty-six wins, SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS. I’m sure he’d like to have a couple of those Sunday rounds at majors back. But that’s still a great career even before adding his second major at Augusta.

The beauty of DJ is I don’t think he cares all that much. Yes, he wants to win, and those losses hurt. But from all accounts by those close to him, he has a very Zen outlook on life and doesn’t get hung up on either the highs or the lows.

I’m hoping this win frees him up a little and he can go on a nice run the next few years and nab 2–4 more majors before his game begins to fade. Now if we could just get Rory McIlroy contending in a major again…

Wichita State

So the Shockers and coach Gregg Marshall agreed to part ways yesterday after a series of reports detailed a long history of Marshall physically and verbally abusing players, his staff, and other Wichita State athletes.

Marshall always seemed like an absolute dick. I’ve heard stories from people who know people who would know that he’s an even bigger dick than his public persona suggests. These stories just confirm all of that.

I’m trying really hard to understand how he gets to walk away with $7.75 million. I know lawyers were involved, and someone on the WSU side decided letting him leave with that payout was better than getting into a legal battle. I’m wondering where those lawyers were when WSU was drawing up a contract that didn’t allow them to fire a guy for punching a player. Seems like someone missed a very important clause somewhere.

Just further proof of how messed up college sports are. I know athletics and academics are two different financial silos, but I’m sure those $7.75 million could have been spent much better ways around the WSU campus.

Someone pointed out how when UConn fired Kevin Ollie a few years back, he didn’t get a big, fat payout like Marshall did. That was because Ollie broke some NCAA recruiting rules and got the program placed on probation. So apparently physically assaulting people is just fine since it won’t launch an NCAA investigation.

The sad part is that Gregg Marshall is going to take his $7.75 million, disappear for awhile, and when his agreement allows, emerge having “done some soul searching” with a “fresh new perspective” and some desperate school is going to offer him another truckload of cash to turn their program around.

It’s really a shame he didn’t take the Texas job a few years ago and really mess them up instead of poor Wichita State.

Fall Links Life

October 29, 2020 /

I’m overwhelmed by numbers. The more I look at them, the more my sense of dread and disappointment and even fear grows.

That’s right, it’s time for a long overdue update on my golf game.

Quick summary: not good.

Now, for the people into that kind of thing, far too many details. Feel free to skip the rest, although you’ll miss the accounting of the greatest moment of my golfing life.

Because of a combination of factors, I’ve played my last five rounds on a new (to me) course.[1] It is not very long and, by course rating and slope, should not be super tough. But it is very narrow. Which means it may not be the best place for me to play. But I can always get a tee time and it is cheap, so it has been my spot for the past two months.

And it has been kicking my ass.

Five rounds on this new course. All five rounds over 100. Well, kind of. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

As I said, the course is very narrow. There is absolute death one way or the other, and sometimes both, on nine holes. I’m talking thick woods, a river, and a busy street. If you miss into these, your ball is gone, no space for a hero shot to get back into the hole.

In most of my rounds there I have played like there is a bonus rather than a penalty for losing your ball. Multiple times I’ve lost multiple balls on a single hole. Multiple times I’ve lost balls on two-straight swings. Most of my misses have been big, majestic slices off the tee. It has not been pretty.

My most recent round, two weeks ago, I was actually keeping the driver in play for the most part. However, I was suddenly missing left with every other club in the bag. So I guess whatever anti-slice methods I was using were working?

All in all, this course has chewed me up and beaten me down a little. But I’ve gotten a little stubborn about it. I realize I need to learn to keep the ball in play if I want to improve, regardless of what course I play. More than that broader goal, I really want to play a halfway decent round on this course, just to prove that I can. If I can just eliminate OB that will go a long way toward that goal.

I mentioned that one day was a little different. That morning I was doing my usual “fuck up start of the round” thing. I went 8–8–7–5–8. Or something like that, because I stopped keeping score after the third hole. I decided just to play out the front nine and if I wasn’t hitting it better by the turn, I would pack it in and go home. Fortunately, I did start hitting it better and finished with two pars, so I proceeded to the tenth tee.

Number 10 is just a brutal hole. It is dead straight but there is a thickly wooded hill all along the left side. On the right, beginning about 150 yards down, is water. From there to the green is a 250 yard fairway that is maybe 40 yards wide and slopes toward the water. The first three times I played it I either found the woods or the water.[2] This time I kept it straight. I did pull my second shot but got a lucky bounce off a tree and onto the green. I still three-putted for bogie but that was my best score ever on the hole. I followed that with a bogie on 11.

Then I went on one of the best stretches I’ve ever played. I went par-bogie-par-EAGLE-par-par. On 18 I left a bogie putt about three inches short that kept me from shooting 39 on the back.

From shooting well over 50 and being ready to give up to almost breaking 40. Golf is weird.

That eagle was the first of my life. It came on a 465 yard par five. The tee is super elevated, so the hole plays way shorter than what the card says. Plus it is actually a hole that you can miss either way and still be in play. My tee shot was fairly straight but trickled into the rough on the left. I had about 155 in (again, elevated tee helps) and had to aim to the right of the green to avoid a tree. I hit a seven iron that drew perfectly, hit short of the green, and rolled out thanks to the burnt out fairway. My ball settled two inches off the green, pin-high. I had a 15-foot putt that was slightly uphill with a little break in the middle.

No one was behind me so I stalked it like Tiger, checking every angle and trying to glean every nuance out of the green. I played a little left-to-right break, made solid contact, and the speed seemed right. The ball started to move right, as I expected. But then it moved back left and looked like it would miss just. Dammit! At the last moment, there was either a hint of break, a puff of wind, or the golfing gods helped me out and the ball tumbled in. Elation, joy, celebration, tears in his eyes, all that shit. I pumped my fist and waved to the non-existent crowd. People driving by probably thought I was a lunatic. Not really sure how I managed to par the next two holes after that moment.

That was a lot of fun. Not so much fun was not breaking 100 in my last five rounds. Not that I though I was great or anything, but after breaking 90 a few times and generally hanging out in the low 90s, I kind of thought 100 was out of play, at least on generic muni courses in good conditions.

I can definitely blame some of those scores on the penal qualities of the new course. Still, that inability to keep the ball in play is an absolute killer, whether I can find the ball after a wayward tee shot or not. It is something I have to fix if I want to improve my scores.

Score is not always everything. The 86 I carded in June came on a very easy course that gives you plenty of opportunities to recover when you miss the fairway. You don’t really need a handicap if you’re not playing in tournaments or in regular money games where you need a common starting point for determining strokes. I still signed up for one this summer, just to make my return to golf seem more official.

Handicaps are always erratic until you get a full 20 rounds in, and I only have 12 in the system right now. I’m currently sitting at a 19.1. I was hoping to be more in the 15 range. But ball don’t lie and my last five rounds say I’m barely inside the 20-handicap threshold that I believe separates mediocre and shitty. The only positive is being at 19.1 leaves me plenty of room to get better.

  1. Golf boom means courses are busier, school days mean I can’t get those pre–8:00 tee times, later sunrise means courses open a little later, and I have a limited window in which I can start if I want to play 18 holes on a weekday.  ↩

  2. Or both.  ↩

Weekend Notes

September 21, 2020 /

It was a weekend dominated by watching sports, mostly on the TV.

Friday night we went to an (outdoor) fundraiser that a high school friend of S’s was throwing. This is her pal who nearly died of Covid back in April. He brought together a few well-connected friends he has (one is an NBA player) to throw a neighborhood concert that would raise money for families that were struggling with expenses because of Covid-related hospital stays.

It was a perfect fall night, the first Friday night this season you had to throw a jacket on to be outside. It would have been great to be at a high school football game. But the concert was fun. There were a lot of St P’s families there. We hung with a few of S’s high school friends. We very briefly met the NBA player.

Throughout the night we were following the CHS game. They were playing the #8 large class team from Ohio. Last year the two teams went to overtime with St X winning. This year CHS won by three, getting a late interception as St X was driving for a potential tying/winning score. They are now 5–0.

Sunday I watched some chunks of the Colts game. They looked pretty good despite losing three more important players to injuries. Since key players getting injured seems to be a trend around the league, I’m starting to think the healthiest team in January will be the true Super Bowl favorite. I caught the end of the Dallas-Atlanta game, which was just stupid. Then again, if any team knows how to blow an un-blowable lead, it is the Falcons. We had dinner plans so missed the late games and the first half of the night game, although what I did get to see of the Pats-Seahawks game was highly entertaining.

I watched most of the fourth quarter of the Lakers-Nuggets game, and that was absolutely terrific drama!

I missed some NFL during the day because I watched C cheer at the St P’s cadet football game. She had told me the team wasn’t very good, which is saying something since she knows nothing about football. But they were playing another allegedly bad team so there was hope. After a scoreless first quarter parents were mumbling about a 0–0 tie. But St C found a huge weakness in the St P’s defense, forced four turnovers, and won 22–0. It’s painful watching bad middle school teams try to play football. Most of the kids are too small to tackle. The offenses suck. The defenses are terrible. The parents are constantly complaining. Granted, all middle school sports are kind of a train wreck. But football seems a little extra bad. I had this thought two years ago when M cheered: how on earth are all the Catholic high schools around here good-to-great at football when CYO football is soooo bad?

Most of my weekend sports time was devoted to watching hours and hours of the US Open. Which was terrific…until Sunday. I am not a Bryson DeChambeau fan. Which is a shame because he’s a remarkable player and just had a legendary performance in the final round of a major. But he’s both insufferable and generally full of shit, which makes it very hard to get onboard with him. I wish I could like him, because he is very much about doing things different than what conventional wisdom suggests, which is something that golf needs. But his personality is soooooo grating that I can’t get over it.[1]

He’s definitely the future of PGA golf, though, and us haters are going to have to get used to him. Even if he doesn’t dominate the way Tiger in his prime did, more and more golfers are going to begin following his path of bulking up to chase speed and distance. Even if he isn’t always winning, golfers who resemble him both physically and in their game will.

I’m not sure that’s great. Anyone who plays golf wants to it as far as they possibly can. But Bryson makes a mockery of courses, even ones that have been stretched out and allegedly toughened up to fight the big bombers like him. It’s clear that superintendents, the PGA Tour, and USGA have no idea how to set up courses to prevent distance from being such a huge factor without making them impossible to play for the guys who don’t hit it 300+ with the driver. And the PGA/USGA don’t want to piss off the equipment manufacturers but putting greater limits on either driver size or performance, or taking some juice out of the ball (or putting spin back into it). Golf writer Andy Johnson has been saying for some time that golf is headed where men’s tennis went a decade ago, when racquets got so hot that long rallies disappeared and matches became, essentially, serving contests. The ATP did take some juice out of the tennis ball a few years ago. I don’t watch enough tennis to know if that has made much of a difference.

I don’t know what the right answer for golf is. The sport has a long history of the pros and weekend duffers being able to play the exact same equipment on the exact same courses. When the pro game begins to turn into a completely different sport, where long and middle irons aren’t needed anymore, it may be time to re-examine that relationship and whether the pros should be forced to play scaled-back equipment.

As much as I dislike Bryson, I can’t help but be impressed with how rapidly he has changed both his body and his game. Just over a year ago he said he wanted to gain a bunch of weight to help him swing faster and harder. He gained a solid chunk during the brief winter off-season, and then another chunk during the lockdown. He’s something like 40 pounds heavier than he was a year ago. The gains in his game were immediately apparent. But a lot of people, me included, didn’t think he could manage to hit the ball insanely far and keep it relatively straight. He will occasionally go off the rails a little, but it is utterly remarkable how well he controls the ball off the tee. When he turned pro he was not a good putter. Since the restart he’s been putting incredibly well. His wedges were always his issue. Suddenly in the last month they’ve turned into a plus rather than a minus. Someone on Twitter today pointed out that Rory McIlRoy has been trying to figure out his wedges and putter for five years. Bryson apparently fixed them in less than a calendar year. Insane.

It was also a little disappointing that the tournament didn’t turn into the usual absolute carnage that the US Open is famous for. There were big numbers, to be sure, and only two players were at par or better. But it didn’t feel like the disaster so many Opens of the past have been. And when I say disaster I mean in a good way for the viewer. I love watching the pros look like me, battering the ball from one side of the rough to the other, or having no idea where it will end up thanks to course conditions. Bryson and the other young bombers out there may have ended that era.

  1. It doesn’t help, for me, that he’s a big supporter of our president. Which, to be fair, most pro golfers are and I don’t count it against a lot of them. But when you already dislike someone, that just makes it worse.  ↩

Sports!

August 10, 2020 /

It’s taken me awhile to get into them, but sports are back! Kind of, sort of, that is.

As I type this fall college sports are looking nervously at the drain, aware that a hand is lingering near the handle to flush them away to 2021.

But the pros have been keeping us entertained for a few weeks now. And it has been surprisingly good.

Golf

Golf was the first major American sport back, and had a glorious weekend with the first major championship of the year, the PGA Championship played at Harding Park in San Francisco. Twenty-three year old Collin Morikawa, just over a year after turning pro, won his first major with a sublime back nine Sunday.

Morikawa was in the middle of an extraordinarily packed leaderboard when he mis-hit a wedge on the 14th hole, coming up short of the green. Hoping to just get close so he could salvage a par, he chipped in to take the lead at –11. Two holes later he hit a legendary tee shot. Where others kept trying to fade the ball over the trees to the reachable par four, Morikawa took a little off his standard cut, bounced the ball just short of the green, and rolled it to six feet. He banged in his eagle putt and the tournament was his. He damn near holed a 30-foot birdie putt on 17 just to clown with people.

It was a dazzling end to a fantastic tournament. At least 120 guys had a chance to win on Sunday. Well, more like 12 or so, but it was a lot. Morikawa was the only one who could bust through, and he did it with absolute aplomb. He was the least heralded of last year’s three college megastars who turned pro together, largely because Matthew Wolff and Viktor Hovland played on one of the greatest college teams ever at Oklahoma State. All three have wins in their first year on the tour – Wolff also had a chance Sunday and is lamenting three putts that just missed – but Morikawa now has three wins including a major. The future of golf is good.

What was greatest about the weekend was ESPN’s coverage of the tournament. ESPN doesn’t get too many chances to show golf, but they balled out. Scott Van Pelt and David Duval were soooo good in their hosting duties. Duval never strikes me as a dynamic personality on his Golf Channel work. I don’t know whether Van Pelt drew it out of him or he was just more relaxed, but he was like a totally different guy. He provided great insight, was sneakily funny, and even gently roasted a few players. The network managed to show both the stars and the developing stories. Their on-air-talent was entertaining, informative, and humorous without being distracting.

In certain circles of the golf media universe, people love to kill CBS for how bad they are at broadcasting golf. ESPN gave people who complain exactly what they have been craving. I hope they can repeat the weekend’s performance when they take over non-network coverage of most PGA events in 2022.

Oh, and all PGA’s and US Opens should be played on the west coast. There’s nothing better than turning on golf at 10 AM and having it still on at 10 PM. I didn’t watch every minute of the coverage, but the TV was generally on just about every hour that ESPN and CBS were broadcasting.

NBA

The Bubble World NBA has been surprisingly entertaining. The first week I watched a lot; this past week I’ve mostly been watching only when the Pacers are playing. Where golf manages without a crowd – you lose the reactions to dramatic shots you but also lose the idiots who have to yell “GET IN THE HOLE” or “MASHED POTATOES” on every fucking tee shot – I was worried basketball without a crowd would seems sterile and boring. But it’s been alright. Granted, there is some fake crowd noise piped in, along with music and announcers. The Zoom fans are a cool touch, too.

I think what saves it is seeing the benches go nuts on certain plays. Those moments get lost a little when the crowd is going crazy. But when Joel Embiid took another piece of Myles Turner’s soul with a ridiculous dunk in the Sixers-Pacers game, seeing his teammates literally jump over the barrier in front of the bench was awesome.

As a Pacers fan, it has also been a lot of fun watching TJ Warren begin the restart on a ridiculous hot streak. He had some really good moments in the first part of the season, but also seemed to be working to find his place on the team. He’s not an alpha, content to quietly fit in, which made the transition a little more awkward. Something flipped and he’s just been going off. 53 in a win against the Sixers. 39, including a massive three with 11 seconds left to beat the Lakers. He’s been over 30 in every game but one and leads the league in scoring in Orlando.

The Pacers have also been a lot of fun to watch. They’ve been banged up, which has forced them to play small. But it is, mostly, working. I don’t know that they have enough to win a series or two in the playoffs, but at least they are entertaining.

Baseball

Baseball is also really strange without a crowd. Stadiums designed to hold 30,000–50,000 fans being completely empty gives the games a haunted vibe. Listening on the radio gives the games a spring training vibe, with the voices from the dugout and around the diamond coming through clearly.

With the short season and expanded playoffs, the math for this year is different than any other year. Teams that probably shouldn’t be taking chances to get to the postseason are doing just that in hopes they make the tournament and can then get hot.

The Royals are one of those teams. Brady Singer and Kris Bubic are clearly good enough to be in the big leagues. But I’m not sure it makes sense for the Royals to be burning a year of their big league control of each pitcher in a season in which the Royals are unlikely to contend. Then again, the Royals needed starting pitching and with there being no minor league ball this year, I guess this is the only way to allow their best prospects to keep developing. And I guess it’s a good problem if the Royals are good enough in a few years that they regret starting the service time clocks on these guys early.

For the first two weeks that decision looked especially dumb. The Royals looked pretty bad over the first 12–13 games. But now that they’ve ripped off four-straight wins, including sweeping first place Minnesota, and you start crunching numbers on how they can make the expanded playoffs. They’ve started hitting the ball. The pitching has been solid, especially the bullpen. And they are getting guys healthy.

It’s stupid to get too excited about winning four games (which translates to nearly 11 games in this year’s math). The Royals are still a pretty weak club. And baseball has made so many missteps along the way to reopening that I don’t think anyone has much confidence they won’t have to shut the game down at some point. At least there are games to watch for now.

Weekend Notes

July 20, 2020 /

Some notes from the past few days.

Nephews

We watched two of our nephews overnight Saturday. Number one just turned four, is very strong willed and stubborn, but generally a good kid. He loves to swim at our house, and spent a lot of time in the pool Saturday evening and Sunday morning. I tell you what, there’s nothing better for wiping a kid out than letting them swim for a couple hours. Bedtime is awfully easy when they can barely keep their eyes open!

When his strong will kicks in it always makes our girls laugh. He just does not like when things don’t go according to his preferences, and lets you know about it. He straight up tells you that you can’t do things if he doesn’t want you to. For example, he was getting fussy about leaving on Sunday and when S tried to help him get his belongings together, he started whining, “No Aunt S, I don’t want you to do that!” The beauty of it is that S and I have been through this and take no shit. So we either tell him how it’s going to be, or ignore him, both of which make him even less happy.

It’s kind of fun.

Our other favorite thing he does is how he’s recently learned that boys can pee outside. This may seem obvious to most of you, but to a kid who is being raised by a single mom, it didn’t come as naturally as it did for most boys. But now that he’s done it, he is kind of obsessed. Especially at our pool. On the Fourth of July he was getting out of the pool every 15 minutes and running to our trees to take another leak. Maybe he was drinking too much water, maybe he had a urinary infection, but I think he just liked to pee outside.

Along with this new skill has come the ability to pee standing up inside. That is more a function of him being tall enough to get over the rim and into the bowl. Sunday morning when we were getting ready to swim I asked him if he would go to the bathroom before we put on his swim trunks.

“Oh yeah, Uncle D, I’ll do that!” and he raced to the bathroom. As he ran he said, “I can stand up and hold my penis!”

Shit like that just makes me laugh.

Number 2 is almost seven month old, and just starting to smile and interact with people. He’s a little cutie and generally very pleasant, although a couple weeks ago when I was watching him he dropped a 45-minute meltdown on me. That was whatever the opposite of fun is.

For as cute as he is, he challenges his momma and anyone who watches him by not sleeping for more than 2-3 hours at a time. During the day naps usually last around an hour. At night he still wakes every couple of hours for a bottle. Thankfully S took the boys to the basement Saturday and while #1 slept straight through, #2 was up every few hours. He’s starting to eat some solid foods so maybe that will help him start to sleep longer.

My Golf

I had a very good round last week. I played a tougher course and shot a solid 89. Not my lowest score but, given the course difficulty, likely my strongest round so far. I hit the ball fairly well, although I still managed to put four balls into the trees. But I putted my ass off once I got warmed up.

I started the back nine by just missing a 50+ foot putt from off the green. It kissed the edge and left me with a foot coming back. On the next hole I had a 40-some foot putt from off the green. I barely lined it up, I just stepped up and whacked it, figuring because it was severely uphill I just needed to get it close for my second putt. I took one look, hit it, and watched it roll right in. And on the next hole I had a 60+ foot putt for birdie. Everything about the putt was perfect: the speed, the line, the break I played. The only thing that was not perfect was the Covid pool noodle in the cup. My putt dropped in, hit the noodle, and popped back out, stopping six inches beyond. I had to look up whether I could count it as a birdie or par. Sadly the rules say since it came out, it doesn’t count. But in my mind I know I hit a 60-foot birdie putt and really shot 88. Finally, after butchering my way up the 18th fairway, I dropped a curling, 30-footer to close my round.

A week earlier I had shot 99 on the same course. Ten shots is obviously a significant swing, and given how I putted last week my true score for that course is probably somewhere in the middle. But I sure felt good about my game after this round.

PGA Golf

OK, the Memorial tournament this weekend was fantastic. I always love how the US Open beats players up and makes them look like us weekend duffers. Since we have not (yet) had this year’s US Open, Jack Nicklaus clearly tried to give us the next best thing at his tournament. The course was baked out and very firm. Approach shots that would have stuck or only taken a couple hops and stopped on other tournament courses where bouncing through the greens into thick, gnarly rough.

The beauty of the rare PGA tournaments that take place on courses like this is how it gets in the pros’ heads. Suddenly they seem helpless because their games are so built around being able to bomb and gouge and putt. Few of them have much imagination and/or ability to adjust their game plans for different conditions. And as their confidence waivers, their mistakes get bigger.

Jon Rahm won the tournament thanks to some beautiful golf Saturday that put him well ahead of the pack. But I freaking loved seeing him put one in the deep rough on Sunday, then pitch out only to see that shot shoot through the green and land in the rough on the opposite side. That’s the shit us high handicappers can relate to!

An Update on the Golf

June 29, 2020 /

Life continues to be fairly boring. Well, at least in our house. There is obviously plenty going on in the world, and I’m feeling the urge to revive my Covid posts.

This weekend was especially boring, thanks to plenty of much-needed rain most of the day Saturday and then on Sunday morning. S has been busy trying to knock out Downton Abbey before it leaves Amazon Prime this week. I finished up a show I’ll write about next week. And we are getting the house ready to have some visitors later this week.

With that lack of material, I might as well write a bit about my latest round of golf.

You may recall my previous round was awful. I could barely hit the ball, it was going hard right with every club, and I was thoroughly discouraged.

In the time between rounds I corrected an issue with my grip and did some exercises to get my swing path more inside-out. All this was backyard stuff; I refused to go to a driving range because I wanted to take a break from hitting a big bucket of balls. Little 10-15 minute sessions with foam balls, the practice net, and then some chipping.

How did all that work out?

Well, I think I played the best round I’ve ever played, at least tee-to-green, last Thursday.

I shot an 86 on my home course, which I will remind you is a pretty easy track. I played with a couple random guys who I met up with at the first tee. It was a weird experience: it was the first time I’ve ever clearly been the best player in my group. One guy was just learning how to play and was pretty brutal. But he was out there and trying to have fun, so respect to him. The other guy only played nine holes with us, and he shot in the low 50s. He wasn’t terrible, just not consistent. He was where I was about a year ago. He was also good company and we exchanged numbers and he may pull me into a group of guys he plays with regularly.

So, all that work on my swing, what were the results? I hit driver off the tee on 13 holes. I had four slices, but those were all much less severe than the previous week. The remaining nine tee shots were long and straight. In a few cases very long. Relying on my phone’s GPS, which isn’t as accurate as a range finder, I was consistently hitting my drives 260–280 yards.

On the 12th hole I caught every last bit of the ball, placed it perfectly at the top of the hill in the fairway, caught the downslope, and the ball rolled and rolled and rolled. In fact it went right through the group in front of us, which I thought was well out of reach. By my phone’s measure, the drive went 345 yards. THREE FUCKING FORTY FIVE! Naturally I hit my approach shot a little fat so had to chip on and then curl in a bending 15-footer to get my par.

Other highlights:

I chipped in for birdie on 16.

I hit the two best iron shots of my life, a six iron from 170-ish that went over a line of trees and landed safely on the green about 15 feet from the pin and a four iron from 205 and was long, true, and landed three inches above the edge of a bunker and somehow did not roll down into it. My line was just off on this second shot but it was a gorgeous shot in the air.

I began the year with a goal of parring or birdie-ing every hole at my home course. That took a bit of a hit when I couldn’t play for three months. But I added three more notches to that list Thursday (two pars, one birdie) and have now checked off 12 holes through just four rounds. I’m intentionally avoiding noting what holes I still need to check off so I don’t get in my head about them the next time I play that course.

My putter was what let me down Thursday. It’s not that I putted poorly, it’s just that I was consistently missing under the hole. I had at least six putts miss by less than three inches, and because they were inside the break and the greens were dry and fast, I was leaving myself with 4–6 foot second puts instead of tap ins. I really hurt myself on the par 3 eighth, where I had about 60 feet for my first putt…and I putted past the hole and off the green. Second putt was short then I missed a very makable third putt before tapping in for a 5. Yeesh.

Those putting woes did not bring me down, though. I was thrilled with how I hit the ball, especially after I had been so lost a week earlier. The 86 is my new low score. The list of glaring errors was smaller than it usually is. I’m trying hard to realize that there are always going to be mishits, chunked chips, and misreads on the greens. That’s true for golfers with single-digit handicaps. The key is to both minimize them and be able to recover. Take a big piece of turf and watch your ball bounce about 30 yards down the fairway? That happens. Relax and make the next shot better, don’t let it turn into two or three duffed balls. I feel like I did that Thursday.

Again, I temper my enthusiasm based on the course. But I felt great after this round.

Speaking of handicaps, I finally joined Indiana Golf and have begun plugging in my scores for a handicap. Right now I have two full rounds and a 9-hole round in the system. I believe you need five 18-hole rounds before the computer cranks out your handicap. So I should have confirmation of a number in a few weeks.

I’m excited about the week ahead. S’s sister from Denver and her family are coming in for the holiday weekend. My brother-in-law and I are scheduled to play a couple rounds while they are here. He’s in the 4–5 range for his index. We’ve talked a lot about golf for the past year but this will be our first chance to play together. I’m looking forward to playing a couple new courses, although unfortunately the two courses I most wanted to play are either packed because of the holiday or shut down because of activity at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. His 10-year-old son is going to play with us one day. And we’ll likely take L to the pitch and putt course one day. Hoping at least some of my game from last week is present this week.

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