57 + 60 = 117

There’s a history of this kind of thing, you know. It’s like the Houston Astros going 22-10 during Spring Training and getting everyone’s hopes up, only to see their Opening Day starter get shelled, then losing the first 14 of fifteen games to start the season.

I’m not going to sugarcoat anything – there’s not a whole lot of comfort to be taken from a performance like today. It was a disaster from start to finish. On the range before the round I couldn’t seem to find any tempo whatsoever. On the course, it wasn’t bad enough that I was flogging the dog from start to finish, I had to be rescued by the Pro Shop because of my cart’s dead battery not just once, but twice! I mean, how often does that kind of thing happen? And, judging from my hideously swollen left-hand pinky finger, it would appear I fractured something on a swing out of a sand trap on #7 (one of three attempts to get out of the sand, BTW).

My goal of hitting fairways? A joke – I only hit only two all day. And the fact there are only two Callaway Supersofts remaining out of my original dozen tells you all you need to know there.

More than anything else, just like Tiger at Torrey Pines and the Phoenix Waste management Open, I found myself totally lost on a part of my game I used to take great pride in – my sand game. Sitting in a cold, dark Mexican restaurant and nursing a margarita afterwards I recounted the carnage resulting from my sand game; of those 117 strokes 22 of them – 22! – were directly related to sand traps. Whether it was taking two or three tries to get out, or hitting my out into water, it was, to be truthful, embarrassing.

There’s little comfort I can take out of today’s performance, and, to be truthful, I’m not sure where the road leads from here. I hit my irons OK, but my distance control was way off and I never felt comfortable over the ball. My course management was abysmal, but that’s gonna happen when things start spiraling out of control: you start trying to force things and nothing good ever happens from that. My short game was OK, but when you’re already looking at double-bogey or worse when you’re chipping onto a green who really cares? And what do you do when you find yourself out of position on virtually every hole?

The good thing is that the Pinot Grigio is cold. And it’s rewarding to see that my 26.1 handicap didn’t change as a result of today’s debacle. But that’s little comfort right now.

It may not have been pretty, but at least I looked good stinkin’ up the joint. And I never lost my composure – I just kept my head down and proceeded to double par the next hole. So there’s something to be said from that.