Days until Goodboys Invitational weekend: 68
Location: Stonecreek Golf Club
Score: 50 + 51 = 101
Handicap: 25.4 / Trend: 25.2 (-0.2)

Day Two of my weekend golf odyssey began with a nice little range session where I felt ready to get out to Stonecreek Golf Club and finally do some damage. It had beaten me up more than a few times in the past, but after yesterday’s round at Superstition Springs I felt confident that this would be THE day.

An hour later: five holes, five lost balls. An ill-advised lay-up into the water on #1. My tee shot finding the same pond on #2. A sculled 5-iron into crap on the par-3 third (how’d that happen?). A pulverized drive through the fairway (and a neighbor’s fence) on #4. And an 8-iron approach shot on five that I thought I’d hit purrrrfectly but found the pond right of the green. And yet I’m still alive, courtesy of a diabolical short game and a red-hot putter, including three straight one-putts all from around twelve feet.

Jordan Spieth (actually, his name’s Connor, but he looks like the PGA Tour’s boy wonder with a swing to match), one of the two sticks I’m playing with, finishes off his Pabst Blue Ribbon, and says with a grin, “Dude, you can play this game if you can get within fifty yards of the hole!” He and his friend have country music playing in their cart, so I respond with, “Like that country song goes, ‘If Today Was a Fish, I’d Throw It Back In'”. They like that, and his partner Clay yells, “Let’s start playin’ some freakin’ golf!”

And so we do. I go bogey-par-par-bogey to rescue a 50 on the front, but after the turn I’m out of sync again. It’s not like I’m shanking balls all over the place, it just that I feel a hair off. I can’t seem to put together two good shots in a row, and the two times I do, I three-putt the green. It was just that kind of a day. A par and two bogeys on the back to close and I limp in with a 51 for a 101, just like the surf route.

While it would have been nice to break 100 (and looking at the card I see how easy it would have been to do), I’m not that disappointed. It wasn’t that long ago that on a day where I’d hit only four fairways and lost nine balls I’d be looking at somewhere around a 120, but I hung in there throughout and never once thought the mojo wouldn’t come back on my next swing. The sticks were a good bunch of guys to play with, and I’m guessing we won’t see another bright, lovely 75-degree day until the heat gods flip the switch in October. And that 101 still dropped my handicap index a smidge.

But there’s clearly still work to do. I know I fell into some old bad habits out there, playing the ball a little too forward in my stance and swaying during my backswing and not getting more vertical as Hunter Mahan advises, but that’s just being more disciplined, slowing things down a little, and making better decisions when I’m out of position. But all that comes with practice. Two weeks from now I’ll try the same two courses again and just see how it goes. By then Goodboys Invitational weekend will be less than two months away. Lord, how this year is going by fast!