Target Handicap: 20.0
MyScorecard.com Handicap: 27.2 / Change: (+0.2)
Location: Trilogy Golf at Power Ranch
Score: 53 + 50 = 103

Another enjoyable round of golf played with complete strangers (including, BTW, my first interaction with a true PXG devotee, a Marine who came wearing black-and-silver clothes to match his black-and-silver golf clubs and black-and-silver golf bag – these guys are truly the Oakland Raiders / rebels /pirates of the golf world!), another disappointing round that will be looked back on as “one that got away”, and in a big way.

I’d like to think that I’m not that much of a would/coulda/shoulda guy when it comes to my play, but Lawdy Miss Clawdy, there were opportunities galore out there that I just frittered away. I actually went into the round feeling pretty confident about where my game was headed: I was really enjoying the new devil-may-care attitude with my driver (I knew it was still a work in progress and there would be some shaky holes out there – which there were), but I had been hitting my irons really well of late with my 3/4 take-away. I hadn’t been doing a whole lot of work on my short game, but I figure that’s always the last thing that comes around because you just can’t simulate game conditions around some dopey practice green. Besides, while I hadn’t exactly lit up Superstition Springs with my short game two weeks ago, it wasn’t that bad, especially considering how the Springs uses lots of faux mogels and around its greens.

Boy, what a stupid I turned out to be! On the front nine I can’t recall the last time (and I’m talking years here) that I’ve hit my irons so poorly. And it didn’t matter where it was – off the fairway, around the green, or off the tees. I can’t explain it, except to say that I was so out of sync I just couldn’t function. Johnny Miller would be saying that I was choking every time I would try and hit an iron, and I’d have a hard time arguing with him there – it was that bad. How bad was it? Try being +7 on the three par 3s on the front. +7! I don’t normally count strokes as lost because, by and large, things usually even out with good bounces and shots that one might normally make, but, reviewing the first nine holes I counted thirteen shots that were completely tossed away. I’m not counting, say, putts I think I should have made (although that 8-inch miss for bogey on the par 5 #7 hurt), and I’m not talking about chips that, say, ended up above the hole when they should have been left below the hole. I’m talking about true wasted shots: taking two or sometimes three chips just to put it on the green. I’m talking about sand wedges from, say 20-30 yards that I couldn’t get near the green in one try. Take away half of those and you’re looking at a fairly respectable mid-40s nine and I’m a most happy fella.

It was on the par 4 #12 that I finally hit a decent iron, nailing a 9-iron from 114 yards out to twelve feet left of the pin to raucous applause from my playing partners. And while I three-putted for the double bogey, I then went par (5-iron from 166 yards), bogey (6-iron from 151), bogey (8-iron from 132) that steadied the nerves a bit before I duffed yet another sand wedge (shit!) leading to a double-bogey on the par 5 #17 and chunking a pitching wedge into the pond on #18 that was followed by yet another duffed sand wedge (the fifth of the day) leading to a triple-bogey seven.

To say that I’m perplexed by this would be an understatement. I can’t remember such a poor performance (and I’ve got an elephant’s memory when it comes to these kinds of things). While there were a couple of years somewhere like 6-7 years ago that my short game rocked (when most every other aspect of my game sucked), I’ll admit my short game has always its ebbs and flows, but nothing even close to today.

…which is too bad, because I hit my driver with abandon all day and enjoyed doing so. I only “officially” hit four fairways, but there were plenty of times I wasn’t off by much. As the round went on I became less enchanted with an increasingly-high fade traj that began costing me precious yardage, but I couldn’t fix it. So there’s clearly work to do there, but it was sure fun not being afraid of where my drives would go.

Hopefully today was just an aberration. I’m not sure what else to do except get out there and try and play as much as I reasonably can. Keep working on my driver, keep working on those 3/4 takeaways with my irons, and let the damned chips fall where they may. But that doesn’t mean what happened on the front nine today isn’t going to haunt my psyche for at least a little while.