Days until Goodboys Invitational weekend: 35
Location: Lone Tree Golf Club
Score: 44 + 43 = 87
Handicap: 25.6 / Trend: 24.2 (-1.4)

I wish I could tell you there was a point in time during today’s round at Lone Tree Golf Club where I felt everything came together and that I felt “in the zone”, but that never happened: playing alone on a warm, humid day in the Valley of the Sun, I simply stayed in the moment, playing the shot in front of me, not worrying about the last shot, not thinking about the next shot, not concerned about the numbers I dutifully scribbled on the scorecard. My only swing thought throughout the day was to not over-swing and to focus on my weight shift practice swing, as my swing coach Alex Black had shown me at our last lesson, then let it fly.

I won’t lie to you: my performance last week at Superstition Springs hurt, really stung, and so I spent a lot of time this week – four trips to the range – working on ridding myself of the bad habits that had crept into my game over the past six weeks like, to quote Stevie Nick’s wonderful lyric in Fleetwood Mac’s “Angel”, a ghost through a fog. I’d always been prone to over-swinging – my “death move” being finishing off on my back foot with my front foot on what I call twinkletoes, but in the past few weeks it had gotten so bad that I had lost control of my driver and was shanking my pitching wedge. So the trips to the range this past week, even with all the heat and in the sun, focused on only two things: weight shift, and not trying to kill the ball.

I’d played Lone Tree well in the past, shooting 90 once, but I remember that particular round more for taking advantage of the subdivision the course winds its way through by way of a number of fortuitous bounces off the walls that line so many of the holes than anything else. Oh, and the meltdown on the par 5 #18 when I realized I only had to triple-bogey the hole to break 90 but made nine instead.

I know it sounds the height of arrogance – especially after shooting an incredible forty-one (count ’em, 41) fewer strokes than my round at Superstition Springs just a week ago, but the fact is this was pretty much a rocking-chair 87. Being consistent off the tee all day I was never in any real trouble except for the island green #12 where, having to take a drop after going just short with a 5-iron from 155 yards out, I really put pressure on myself to put a pitching wedge on the deck from the 70-yard drop zone. Which I did, knees shaking, but then three-putted (my only one of the day) from thirty-five feet.

Usually, I can look at a round and say that I left x number of strokes out there through bad shot-making or bad decisions, but the 87 was pretty much right on target. If I got lucky with a sand wedge chip-in for birdie on the par 3 #8, I had to take a drop with penalty on the par 4 #17 because a foursome all of a sudden appeared out of nowhere behind me, and I had no time to look for my tee shot which at last look was headed dead straight down the center of the fairway. But those are the breaks.

…Come to think of it, there was a sequence of shots that, if anything else, defined today’s round. On #7, a 433-yard par 4 with a pond lining the right side, I push my drive left through a fence and into a neighbor’s swimming pool. Rather than take a drop, I hit my third off the tee and pulverize it dead center of the fairway, leaving me 187 to the pin. I grab my 4-hybrid – a club I’ve struggled with all year – and hit it flush. A click, a couple of bounces, and I’m left with a putt of sixteen feet, which I then proceed to leisurely two-putt for a very nice double-bogey six. That one felt pretty good, I’ll tell ya.

The numbers don’t lie: eight one-putts or less, eight fairways hit (six on the back), two birdies (my first of the year), five pars (two of the three par 5s, including that pesky #18), and six bogeys. And while Lone Tree is no Superstition Springs, it’s no slouch either: nearly 6,500 yards from the blues with a rating of 70.3 and a slope of 120. I don’t care what course you’re playing, you shoot 87 and you, mi amigo, are playing golf.

What I’m most proud of, of course, is the fact that I spent most of the day smack-dab in the middle of the fairway following my tee shot. Which is why there are really no heroics to boast of from today’s round. Golf is so much easier a game to play if you’ve got a nice lie and a good yardage to the green: you just pick the right iron and try and shook it down the whammy. And while there were a couple of sculls out there, there were more than a few pulverized 4-hybrids and enough close-enough-to-precision irons that allowed my short game (the best I’ve had all year) to take over from there: hence the one-putts.

Still, just as I said after shrugging off last week’s debacle at Superstition Springs, today’s round, while as gratifying as last week’s wasn’t, is just one round and tomorrow is another day. The ice-cold Sam Adams Boston Lager went down pretty smooth at the grille afterwards, and I felt really good about seeing all that hard work at the range this week pay off, but I’m content to simply enjoy this round of a lifetime for what it was and to just keep trying to improve on what I’m trying to do.