“Dude, you’ve only got 205 to the center of the green, go for it. Ir grande o quedarse en casa, si?”

My playing partner Greg is speaking in Spanish again. Translation: Go big or stay home.

The seventeenth hole at Superstition Springs is a monster – the #2 handicap hole on the course – with a quasi-island green protected on three sides by water. Go short, left, or right and it’s agua caliente for your ball. As has happened nearly a dozen times today, I find myself in a very strange place, playing from a place I’ve never been before. From the middle tees, it’s 484 from tee to green, and normally I’m already playing a penalty shot having found the water at 180 yards, but today my drive has gone at least 260 with the tees moved up a bit, and I’m smack dab in the middle of the fairway with 205 to the center of the green.

“I’m going to lay up with a six-iron”, I tell Greg. “That’s the safe shot.”

“Mierda” (translation: bullshit), says Greg. “You mean safe like on 12 where you hit your six twenty yards over the green into that strip mall across the street? Donde estan los huevos, vaya para el!”

It’s a good thing I still remember a lot of Spanish from Mrs. Bicile’s eighth grade class. He’s questioning my manhood and telling me to go for it, and he’s got a point there. After all, I’ve got huge numbers interspersed with small ones all over my card, and my commitment to “pull the trigger” and “squash the bug” on every shot has left me in places at Superstition Springs I’d never seen or played from before. That 12th hole Greg mentioned was 143 yards and I’ve always played a six. In past rounds I’ve left it on the hill short of the green, but today my six carried the green by at least a dozen yards, landing on the down slope and crossing Superstition Springs Boulevard before coming to rest at the door of a formal shop across the street. In the past two hours I’ve seen drives go through fairways into water I never thought I could reach, a pitching wedge of 90 yards go 110 and land in a flower arrangement behind the ninth hole where brides and grooms normally say their vows, and a 155 yard five-iron placed to miss a family of geese carry them by fifteen yards and end up in a pot bunker I never knew existed. I’ve had one birdie and two other putts for birdie with a combined total of four feet that were two-putted for par and three-putted for bogey.

In short, I’ve been in places on this course I’ve played a dozen times in the past that I never even knew existed.

So when Greg tells me to vaya para el at 17, I pull out my five-wood, which, I have to admit, has performed admirably all day. I set up slightly open, open the face slightly to fly against the wind coming from left to right, square up my shoulders, and let it rip.

Greg knows it’s there as soon as the ball leaves the club. “Get in the hole!” he yells, and the ball hits the mound just beyond the water, takes a peek at the hole as it slides by, and comes to rest on the fringe sixteen feet away. Three putts later, I’m in for par on a hole I’ve never made less than double bogey on every time I’ve played.

They say a scorecard doesn’t lie, so the 55 + 53 = 108 is what it is. But it’s hard to be disappointed when that 108 includes a front nine with an eight and a ten on two par 4s (the first and ninth, respectively), and a back nine with a crowd-pleasing 11 on that damned 14h hole where I lost three balls in the water the last time I played and did the same thing today. On a course where the four par 5s are really well protected, if not overly long, I had an eagle chip and two birdie putts. I had eight holes – eight holes! – where I made bogey or less, even while hitting only five fairways all day. Sure, my putting left something to be desired (35 putts) but at Superstition Springs you have to commit to every putt, and my missing a half dozen from two feet or less shows where my commitment there was today.

To say I struck the ball well today would be an understatement. Thanks to Alex Black’s instruction my irons are better than they have ever been before, my driver is really starting to come around, and my chipping was pretty damned fine throughout the day – especially given the hard, fast greens. Thanks to Dr. Bob Winters I’m able to throw off an 11 on a par 4 and rip a drive dead center down the next fairway. After the step backward my last time out, I’m back to being on track to where I need to be come Goodboys Invitational weekend in July.

2:30 PM on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s just me at the Kokopelli Golf Club driving range – well, not really, it’s just that the only other person there is several stalls down and hasn’t hit a ball in the last half-hour as he’s busy negotiating some big business deal from the sounds of it. Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets To Paradise” is blaring over the loudspeaker, the skies are a blistering azure, and there’s a hot wind blowing out of the south. I was about 90% through my bucket of balls before I took a break to work on my short game and a hour’s worth of chipping and putting on the practice green. With no one else out there I’m practicing every kind of pitch and chip one can think of, and my short game has never been this good.

I head back to my bucket, grab my 9-iron, and practice “squashing the bug” just like Alex Black showed me the other day. Before I took my break I could tell I was over-swinging and getting just a bit too aggressive, but the chipping and putting has created a sense of inner calm and peace, so this time the 9-iron is hit perfectly and with a perfect trajectory, landing softly about five yards past the 100-yard marker. After two more identically-perfect swings, I grab my eight-iron and do the same thing. I finish up by practicing low driver “stingers” that center-cut the imaginary fairway I’ve envisioned in front of me.

That’s three buckets of balls in five days, the best practice sessions I’ve had so far this year.

As self-satisfying as a practice session like this is, it’s also the loneliest of pursuits – something not unusual in the world of golf. I recall a passage in Tom Coyne’s Paper Tiger, where, upon meeting his girlfriend after months of banging balls in his pursuit to qualify for Q-School he finds there’s really not much to tell:

There is plenty about [Coyne's pursuit] that only I will ever know about, that I cannot re-create for her or even in these pages for you – it’s the aspect of the game I care for least. Some consider it golf’s greatest mystical asset, but I think it’s the part of the game that can leave you the emptiest. Every so often, you hit that pure shot – I make the perfect move Doc [Jim Suttie, his swing coach] has been imploring me to make, I pinch a ball off the center of a six-iron, it flies at a controlled, cannon trajectory, effortless and exact, and in that moment I know I have changed. I have reached a place where I never honestly believed I would touch – a part of me can strike a golf ball as well as I will ever need to, as well as anyone, anywhere playing the game.

I see a lot of myself in Coyne’s words, because there are times I feel the same way. In golf measurements, while it’s been less than three and a half months since my first round at Superstition Springs this year, I ‘ve traveled light years in terms of my swing and overall abilities, to the point where I don’t even feel like the same person anymore. It’s not just that, with the help of Alex Black and no small amount of work on my part, my golf swing has changed, I’ve changed as well. As someone who – rightly or wrongly – always expected too much of myself, put too much pressure on myself, and never felt adequate when it came to trying this game called golf, I’m at a point where I’m both comfortable and confident in my golf skin. When things go wrong, as they did my last time out with the sticks, I’m able to make the necessary corrections and stop further bleeding. It’s a direct result of that round at Trilogy that I discovered the set-up that was the final missing piece of the puzzle I’ve been working on, and I’ve found the confidence I’ve always lacked whenever a golf ball was put in front of me.

It occurred to me while watching Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer the other night that the same sensation I’ve encountered on the driving range these past few sessions is not unlike the kind of experience surfers have when they encounter that perfect wave or perfect wave experience. Consider this quote by big wave surfer Greg Noll, from Susan Casey’s fine book, The Wave, where he talks about being “in the moment”:

That rush! I can’t explain it. When you blow down the side of a wave and the thing’s growling at you and snorting and all that power and fury and you don’t know if you’re gonna be alive ten seconds from now or not, it’s as heavy an experience as sex! If you surf, you know. And for all the rest of you sons of bitches, I feel sorry for you.

No less an authority than Roy McAvoy has been quoted as saying, “there’s no greater feeling in the world than a well-struck golf ball”, and he’s right.

A recent incident remains fresh in my mind: I’m hitting balls at Superstition Springs last Saturday when a guy from a couple of stalls comes over and says to me, “I’m about to be the worst kind of driving range visitor. There’s something I saw in your swing…”

I cut him off at the knees. Politely but firmly, I say, “thanks for your concern, but I know exactly what I’m doing out here and what I’m trying to do.”

And then, while he’s still watching me, I hit a seven-iron on the screws, really put a twist on it. It takes a lovely trajectory, fading ever so slightly over the 120-yard marker, coming to rest near the very same patch of dark sand I had picked out just seconds earlier.

“Any questions?”, I ask.

This is something I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined myself ever being able to do. It’s not just brushing off a “helpful Henry” – you see these guys at the range all the time – and it’s not the first time I’ve politely declined the help of a stranger. It’s the ability to make a confident swing with good – OK, great – results with a stranger staring down at you. Being able to do this is not just un-Great White Shank like, it’s positively otherworldly, as if some golf alien has taken up residence in my body. This is not to say I’m not going to make bad swings or even have bad rounds; what’s completely different is the resilience, discipline, confidence, and ability I’ve brought to my game with the help of Alex and my de facto mental guru Dr. Bob Winters.

Friday and my next round, at a very challenging Superstition Springs, awaits.

“You’re not squashing the bug, Doug. That’s a really fine swing there, I’m really proud of the progress you’ve made, but you’re not squashing the bug.”

It’s back to school for The Great White Shank, and the chipping area just right of the mounds on the 9th hole at Superstition Springs Golf Club is the classroom. The intent was to work on tweaking my short game, but after a few attempts at pitching to thirty yards and sixty yards, my swing coach Alex Black has noticed a problem.

“What did you say you shot last week with those three sticks?”, he asks.

“A rocking chair 110″, I respond.

I can tell Alex’s eyes behind his shades are full of concern. “That’s too good a swing to be throwing up chump numbers”, he says plainly. I want to see your set-up. We’re going to resolve this issue for you once and for all.”

I set up with a 7-iron and hit a few balls. The first thing Alex notices is that my shoulders are open at address. He asks me to pull my back elbow in just a little bit and turn my front shoulder to the ball. The results are nothing short of miraculous. The fade I had is gone, my ball flight trajectory suddenly looking like it has gained a little Bubba Watson oomph.

“That’s better, he says. Now I want you to start taking a divot”. He puts a ball way in front of my front foot. “When do you take a divot?”, he asks.

“The only divots I usually take are six inches to a foot behind the ball”, I answer sheepishly.

“Not any more”, he says confidently. “I want you think, whether your ball is teed up or not, I want you to think of ripping that tee right out of the ground from under the ball. That’s how you go get it. That’s how you squash the bug.”

As someone who has always prided himself on sweeping the ball off the turf this is a real challenge for me. But if there is one thing The Great White Shank has always been good at is following instructions – you never have to ask me the same thing twice. (I just wish my India team at work was the same way, but that’s another subject entirely!) I respond to Alex’s instruction with gusto. As he expected, I hit a couple of balls thin, but my third ball is positively crushed, right on the screws, a small patch of dirt where the ball once was.

“How far do you normally hit your 7-iron?”, he asks.

“125″, says I.

“You just hit that ten yards further and straighter than your previous balls. You’ve got too good a swing to be giving away yards like that. You square your shoulders and squash the bug like you’re doing there, expect 10-20 more yards on every iron.”

I then confess to Alex the move I discovered virtually by mistake last weekend, the day after my implosion at Trilogy Power Ranch with the sticks. I had spent most of that day hitting crappy duck hooks and shanks with my 3-wood and 5-wood, so on Saturday I headed back out to Superstition Springs with just woods in tow, bought a large bucket, and tried all sorts of set-ups and finishes until by accident I found a set-up that returned me back to pounding the ball long and straight. Not trusting myself, I did the same thing again on Sunday at a different range I happened to be passing by, and the same set-up that worked so well for me on Saturday repeated itself on Sunday.

“I’m setting up square just a little right of target and opening my club face up just a tad, and I find myself able to come through the ball easier and finish at a better location”, I tell him. Alex throws a few balls down at my feet. “Let me see”, he says.

The first couple of balls are really tattooed – solid hits with beautiful trajectories. The third is an ugly duck hook.

“Whoa. Where did that go?”, asks Alex. “You’re doing the same thing with your woods. Your set-up is OK, but your shoulders need to square up; otherwise, it’s too easy for you to be finishing up at three o’clock when you should be finishing up at one.” He uses his driveway marker stick to show how open my shoulders are at address. “Square those shoulders up and pull the trigger, and don’t be surprised if you not only hit it straighter, but get another 15-20 yards off your hits.”

Once again, the results are miraculous: big, solid hits with a trajectory no one familiar with The Great White Shank’s golf game would ever believe their eyes to behold.

We then head over to the putting green where Alex makes a couple of small recommendations about my chipping and putting, but overall he’s quite complimentary. “You’ve got a well-rounded game there, Doug. I’m very impressed with the progress you’ve made since our first session. The changes I’ve asked you to make today are nothing more than simple tweaks, really – you already know how to do them, now you just have to incorporate them into a repeatable set-up you can make over and over again, whether you’re at the driving range or playing a round with a bunch of sticks.”

I hand over my $60 to Alex and he starts collecting balls around the green in advance of his youth clinic starting in a few minutes. I take about twenty balls and go back to the range. As good as I thought I was hitting my woods and my irons prior to our lesson, the tips Alex has given me is like applying 5-Hour Energy to every club I hit. I’ve added yards and find myself making even more solid hits. I note the takeaways from today’s lesson:, broken down by woods and irons:

With my woods it’s all about set-up:

1. Pick a target and aim slightly right of center, open clubface ever so slightly.
2. Square up the shoulders.
3. Pull the trigger, emphasizing Alex’s power move driving my back leg forward and turning through the shot.
4. Finish at one o’clock position.

…and with my irons it’s all about contact:

1. Pick a target and square up. Ball forward in stance.
2. Square up the shoulders.
3. “Squash the bug” by hitting down on the ball. Take a divot and knock the tee out of the ground.

Out in the parking lot, I’m putting my gear away and a guy drives in next to me. He’s getting his gear out of the trunk, and I tell him the range and putting green are virtually empty.

“You’ve got plenty of room to hit balls to your heart’s content”, I say.

“That’s too bad”, he says, “I hate the driving range.”

“I can’t imagine why”, I say, and drive away with a big grin on my face.

My tee time next Friday at Superstition Springs has already been made. It will be interesting to see how my game compares to the last time I played there, back in February first time I teed it up

“Wow”, was all I could mutter to myself. “Wow”. The grille at Trilogy Golf Club at Power Ranch was cool and dark, the Sam Summer appropriately icy and refreshing. Me? I felt like I had just gone 18 rounds with Smokin’ Joe Frazier, then ridden hard and put away wet. The Great White Shank was back – or rather, his old game was back. An unwelcome four-hour visit with someone (actually something) you thought, or at least hoped, had been packed away and tossed up in the golf game attic for good. But as I’ve said before: no matter how good or how bad you play, the scorecard doesn’t lie.

In today’s case, a 52 front and a monster 58 on the back will always equal 110. And an ugly 110 at that.

It needn’t have been that way, for it was a beautiful day for golf – 90, with a dusty breeze out of the west. Trilogy Golf Club at Power Ranch was a legitimate tough track with narrow fairways and greens that were even faster then the ones I thought were the fastest I’d played out here while at Lone Tree Golf Club two weeks ago. I knew something was amiss right off the bat while warming up at the practice range when I couldn’t hit a fairway wood to save my life – the duck hook, the shank, and the sculled ball all took turns at paying their respects. I can’t say I panicked, but I was certainly concerned enough that when the starter called my group to the first tee fifteen minutes earlier than originally scheduled it was all I could do to yell, “but I’m not ready!”.

The three guys I was playing with were true sticks – minus-two, plus-one, and plus-two handicaps (the latter a former golf pro at my Superstition Springs home base). They were there to work on their games in preparation for a Pepsi-sponsored tournament taking place at Power Ranch over the weekend; I was there just hoping to play my game, not get hurt, and stay out of their way. Having never played golf with guys this good (they finished at 74, 77, 78), I’ll admit I was intimidated – I mean, how can you not be? I know they’ll all do just fine putting at the Pepsi – after all, they sure spent enough time practicing putts while waiting for me to join them on the green on just about every hole.

If there was ever a day not to have my tee game and chipping game fall apart this certainly was it. But the results were ghastly: ten lost balls, eight penalty shots, fourteen strokes taken to get out of eight sand traps. Bladed chips rocketing off the green in all directions. As hard to believe as it seems, I was making enough good recovery shots that after six holes at bogey-triple-bogey-bogey-double-bogey I was still in pretty good shape. But banging two balls off houses on my drive and second shot on the par 5 seventh and a crowd-pleasing snowman shook my rafters and I doubled my way into the clubhouse men’s room where I gave myself a severe tongue-lashing for playing like a scared pussycat out there.

It didn’t help. The 58 on the back was just poor golf: while my tee game started to show signs of life, around the greens it was as if I had never chipped a ball before. The sticks would be standing there waiting for me to join them and I’ll admit, I folded like cheap bridge table and started rushing everything. What happened at the par 4 sixteenth – the #1 handicap hole – was a microcosm of my struggles: I just missed the fairway with a decent drive, but I sculled a four hybrid up over a ridge into an area under repair. Taking a legal drop, I had only 65 yards to the green but I fluffed my wedge leaving it several yards off the green. I then bladed a chip over the green and then took two more tries before I could even take my putter out. All this while the sticks were on the green in two waiting patiently over their birdie putts. They say in a defining moment either you define the moment or the moment defines you. Well, it was a defining moment alright, and the definition was sh*t.

As hard to believe as it seems there were some positives I can take away from today’s round: I actually hit my irons well all day (it’s truly frightening to think what I might of shot had I not!), including a blistered 5-iron off the tee at the par 3 15th that I faded in beautifully to a back-left pin placement to twelve feet – closer than any of the gorillas (I two-putted for par). And my drives on 17 and 18 were my best of the day, both long and in the center of the fairway. Unfortunately, both were wasted when, on 17, I shanked a 5-wood off a neighbor’s house into their pool, and on 18, sculled a 3-hybrid into the lake. I also did OK putting (35 putts), with three one-putts. Most importantly, I kept my composure, humor, and attitude throughout and kept firing away through good and bad.

There’s not much you can do when you have a day like this except head back to the range and work it out. It bugs me that I everything I had been working so hard on the past month as far as my physical and mental approach to the game were concerned was nowhere to be found today – I mean, Alex Black and Dr. Bob would be very disappointed in me. If I can’t play and focus properly when I’m playing a meaningless round with three sticks, how on God’s green earth will I be able to handle the pressure of a Goodboys weekend, where the bets are flying and the trash talking separates the men from the boys and the contenders from the pretenders?

The optimist in me says this was nothing more than a temporary setback and an experience I can take and learn from.

The realist in me says I need to get my a** back out to Superstition Springs and exorcise whatever demons crept into my game today. And quick.

It’s Saturday morning and I’ve got a bunch of errands in front of me – Lowe’s to get the paperwork signed for the replacement of all our crappy windows with energy-efficient replacements, the pool place to get my first water test after the refill, then finish Krylon-ing all our outside metal art and pottery to protect them from blanching to white in the upcoming heat months. Today is a real ten-beller, mid-to-high ’80s, and the breeze feels great through the open windows. I’ve got a surf CD playing, and the Torquays and the Aqua Velvets are blasting out one pulsating, reverb-drenched tune after another. It’s a good day.

I’m thinking about my range work at Superstition Springs from Friday and feel pleased that I’m near where I need to be with Goodboys weekend less than three months away and the real heat just a few weeks away – that will surely limit my ability to spend 2-3 hours banging balls and chipping and putting at SS on Friday afternoons. Once the temps are over 100 on a regular basis it will be all about efficiency and what you can get accomplished in an hour’s time before you begin to sizzle like a steak on the grill and are forced to retreat to the closest cold, dark place. I look at the passenger side floor and see the bucket of twenty balls I scrounged off the empty putting green before leaving, figuring these will be a good start for next Friday’s session. I look again just as the Aqua Velvet’s “Slow Dance With a Fast Girl” starts playing, and at that moment in time I know exactly where I’m heading: back to SS for a quick mini-bucket.

I’m glad I had tossed my 7, 8, and 9-irons in the trunk yesterday, figuring those were the clubs I was planning on focusing my attention on next Friday – while I’ve been concentrating so much on my woods and my tee game (rightly so), I’m well aware that in order to score better I need to ratchet up my short iron game to get me on the green in regulation when opportunity presents itself, and close to the green for more precise chipping when it doesn’t.

When I get to Superstition Springs, a surprise awaits me: there a big event taking place, the Mesa Sister Cities Student Exchange Classic, where golfers from Mesa’s sister cities around the world are gathering for a day of golf and festivities. The driveway into the course and first tee area are festooned with flags from countries all over the world: Brazil, China, Italy, Mexico are just a few, and it’s packed. Back in the old days, I would have shrugged my shoulders and turned the car around, but today I’m intrigued and find a parking space in the adjacent strip mall. I also grab my tree irons and my bucket of balls and head over.

I’m glad I did because the atmosphere is truly festive – it’s a real treat for the golf senses: lots of folks on the range and putting green, the sound of balls being hit, laughter, the starter trying to create some sense of order out of the happy chaos surrounding him. I feel like I’m a participant at a U.S. Open, and I’m totaly jazzed to see one spot in the middle of the range open up. With all the flags around it’s not hard to imagine you’re hitting balls next to a Sergio or Adam or Ernie or Graeme – at least the amateur versions of same. And the guys on both sides of me can really hit the ball – especially the two what appear to be high school kids who are there with their girlfriends. They’re young, handsome, and athletic, with swings that would normally make me want to cower and shrink away for fear of embarrassing myself.

But this is the new The Great White Shank, so I drop a ball on the only two blades of grass left in my hitting area and, after a couple of easy practice swings, proceed to top an 8-iron that runs about twenty yards without leaving the ground. Back in earlier days, I’d totally freak and proceed to embarrass myself further by repeating the same over and over in a wash of anxiety and full-court stress. But, like I say, this is the new TGWS, and I just laugh it off. I drop another ball, and stripe a beautiful 8 that floats over the 100-yard marker and settles softly somewhere around 110. And I do the same with the rest of the bucket, work in a few 7- and 9-irons along the way. I top a few along the way (those are my new “good misses”) but I also hit some beauties that Alex Black would be proud of. My last hit is a 7-iron that is positively lashed – a beautiful swing, a beautiful trajectory, dropped exactly where I was aiming. Like Roy McAvoy says, always nice to quit on a good shot.

I don’t have my pitching wedge with me, but I figure there’s never a good time not to work in a few minutes of chipping so I find a little spot on the putting green where the pin is but a yard from the rough with no real fringe. I find a few stray range balls and practice some really tough chips – no green to work with, no wedge in my hand – but still am able to put a bunch close while a guy near me is attempting to do the same thing with little degree of success.

“Nice touch”, he says to me when his group is called, “you should be out here with us”.

“Thanks”, I respond, “but I’m just a range rat”.

As I head back to my car and past all the colorful flags I’m thinking just how far down the golf road I’ve traveled in the past year. Last year at this time, I was just starting to limber up for Goodboys, and if you had told me then what I’d be doing and how in a year’s time I would have said, OK, who are you and what have you done with The Great White Shank? You see, back then I was a Dusty Springfield kind of golfer, wishin’ and hopin’ that on any given day at the range or on a golf course I’d find a swing that would get me through the session or round. This year, I’m a man with a swing and a purpose, doing the necessary work I hope will pay off with some really nice and enjoyable rounds at Goodboys. Golf has become an enjoyable pursuit for me because my goals are not too ambitious to create stress and make it not fun, and, more importantly, I’m seeing improvement in my play and my confidence every time I put one of those Callaway RAZR-X HLs in my hand on the course or at the range.

That’s what being a range rat will do for you.

Friday afternoon at the Superstition Springs driving range. The weather is perfect – 85 degrees, tho’ the sun on the skin makes it feel hotter than that. But that’s OK, I’ve lubed up, am wearing white sneakers, white ankle socks, white shorts, a white Hynson Surfboards t-shirt, and a white floppy hat to protect my ears.

I’m dressed for work.

Not the kind of work you get paid for – I left that twenty-five minutes ago after a long, hard week – this is work I believe (not hope, believe) will take me to the next step of my golf reclamation project: that of a bogey golfer, although bogey and a half will do just fine.

The driving range is virtually empty – there’s only three or four guys hitting, lots of empty stalls. The putting green is empty. I mean, empty. Heck, if it weren’t for the fact the Pinnacles I’ll be hitting are all marked up I might have thought I was hitting balls at my own private club range.

I make my way over to my typical spot at the far left end of the range and take a couple of practice swings. One thing I’ve always found interesting about the driving rane (at least for me) is that you pretty much know how you’re going to hit ‘em by your first couple of practice swings. And today I just knew I had the mojo going, for my first four pitching wedges are pure perfection, pro-like shots two-hopping the 100-yard stick in front of me.

But I’m not here for pitching wedges (although I admit it’s great to see that I haven’t come to the range by myself – tempo has come along with me), I’m actually here with a purpose in mind. It’s not just to make good swings or perfect the swing changes Alex Black identified for me six weeks ago. No, I’m here to work on visualization, hitting targets I’m picking out for myself. And doing it with my driver, 3-wood, and 5-wood. As strange as it might sound to my Goodboys friends and cohorts (they’ll never believe it’s me who’s saying this!), The Great White Shank has moved far beyond what he once was. No longer some pathetic creature looking for something, anything that he can take to the course to help him survive at the game of golf, I’m an aspiring golfer no longer satisfied with just making good contact and moving the ball forward, I’m now all about hitting good golf shots and my targets.

At least that’s my goal.

Which is not to say I’ve discovered some magic pill that will make all the demons go away – after all, as Dr. Jim Suttie says, golf is hard – incredibly hard, in fact, when you’re screwing around looking for a swing or hoping some golf god will come down and bless you with a natural swing that makes courses beg for mercy and scorecards cry with astonishment at the numbers being recorded on them. That’s not me. I’m just a hacker who finally found an instructor that unlocked a couple of key swing thoughts and changes that someone with my ability (or lack thereof) could implement fairly quickly and easily. I now know that what I want to achieve in terms of my golf game (bogey and a half golf) is only achievable with work and focus, and lots of it.

I like the far left side of the Superstition Springs range because it has a natural narrow fairway created by mounds and trees separating the range from the #2 hole on the left, and yard markers lined up on the right. The grass out there is pretty brown, and there’s a six yard-by-six yard dark area 190 yards out, smack dab in the center. That’s my target for today. I will either bounce balls over it, paint it, or carry it – nothing else will be considered satisfactory. And I find myself doing all three, and regularly.

I play games with myself. I pretend one of my Goodboys friends says to me, “OK, let’s see this swing you’ve been writing so much about” as I tee up my 3-wood. Or, I visualize myself on the tee at hole #3 at Trull Brook – a tough, uphill par 4. Or, my favorite head game, three shots in a row dead center or I start over again. I do that with my 5-wood, my 3-wood, and my driver. It takes a while to make that third shot as good as the first two, but I’m able to move on with each club.

A slight breeze stirs and I take a Zen break, a few minutes to absorb what for me has become a ritual feast for the senses. I drink in the blue sky, the green grass, the red graphite shafts of my Callaways, the white practice balls, the orange balls I’m about to head over to the putting green to chip and putt with. A mix of suntan lotion and meat cooking at the snack shack grill creates a lovely summer fragrance. I hear the thwack of golf balls being hit by that Asian guy down the line who’s here every Friday – he’s got a big, athletic swing I wouldn’t dare try to copy. The ice water I sip is refreshingly cool to the tongue and body. I feel so much at peace and at home at this lovely place. A brown bunny rabbit scampers out from a set of bushes and I watch him munch grass until it’s time to get back to the business at hand. I imagine a scene similar to the last scene in Jaws, where Chief Brody and Hooper are swimming in after Brody has blown up the shark, except this time it’s me and fellow Goodboy Steve “Killer” Kowalski, and we’re talking hitting golf balls, not the ocean:

The Great White Shank: “What day is this?”
Killer: “It’s Friday, I think.”
The Great White Shank: “I’ve got another bucket of balls in front of me.”
Killer: “Keep hitting.”
The Great White Shank: “I used to hate the driving range.”
Killer: “I can’t imagine why.”

I bang balls for a good 45 minutes and spend the next hour by the putting green doing some putting and chipping. While my short game is showing improvement every time out, I know I need to tighten it up a little if I’m going to improve my scoring out on the course. I’ve got the whole putting green to myself except for another guy on the far end, so I practice all kinds of chips from impossible angles with various ball positions to see how the trajectory changes using the same swing. Four chips followed by four putts every time, the goal being no more than one putt from where I chip the ball to. If I two putt it’s back to the same position and do it all over again. That doesn’t happen often. I’m especially satisfied when, attempting chips from thirty yards away, I one putt all four balls, the furthest from sixteen feet away.

(Of course, this is Arizona and not New England, where the grass and the greens are totally different in terms of texture and speed. But I’ll worry about that later.)

I finish up back at the range with a few pitching wedges and 3-woods of varying degrees of accuracy and walk away 2+ hours later feeling physically tired but emotionally satisfied. I think back to last year and how I would never be able to pull this kind of thing off. Oh sure, I could hit balls pretty good one week, but then I’d go back the next and be totally lost again. No more. The difference in my swing and my approach to the game from even two months ago is like the difference between day and night. While my scoring in rounds I’ve played since my lesson isn’t where I’d like it to be yet, I’m confident it will come, and very soon. Still, I’m not going to push it – I don’t want to ruin what these Friday afternoon practice sessions have become for me: an escape from work, daily life, and all the crap going on in the world. Amazing to think there was a time, and not so long ago, where I couldn’t even begin to imagine the driving range as escapism – after all, why would I want to risk making myself more miserable with a crappy range session? Golf is now a completely different game to me now. Oh, it’s still hard work, but for me it’s now fun work and satisfying work, something my fellow Goodboys could never, ever imagine me saying.

Goodboys Invitational weekend is less than three months away, and I’m right where I want to be.

With thanks to Billy Joel for an awesome song by which to subject the post.

Scorecards don’t lie. There’s no question my golf game is improving with every outing, but the numbers are just not reflecting it yet. A 52 on the front and a 54 on the back has, and always will, equal 106 in the book of ages, but, as hard to believe as that number indicates, there was a lot of good to take away from today’s round at Lone Tree Golf Club in Chandler, AZ. After all, when you’re playing from the 6,500-yard blue tees with a slope rating of 120 you know you’re not teeing it up at some local muni or executive track. Lone Tree was a stern test, featuring the toughest layout and fastest greens I’ve played all year, with a par 3 island green I had completely forgotten about (I scored a nine with two lost balls). It played fast and hard all day, rewarding fairways hits but penalizing strongly any tee ball that strayed even slightly off the mark.

It was a beautiful day to play golf – probably the last I’ll play while the temps are still in the ’80s. On the driving range before teeing off I had my best session of year – I was striking the ball so great that I was convinced I was in store for the round of my life. Heck, I could almost see that sugarplum fairy of a scorecard 44 + 46 = 90 dancing before my eyes. So what happened? Well, before I get back to Billy Joel’s lament, let’s take a look at today’s pros and cons, which I dutifully listed out over a frosty Sam Summer at the clubhouse grille:

Pros:

* My Dynacraft putter continues to heat up. Even on very tough and very fast greens, “Mr. 3-Wiggle” was smooth and sweet all day, making only 30 putts, including seven one-putt greens. Frightening to think what my score might have been if I hadn’t putted so well. But that was all because of….

* …my chipping game, which also continues to improve with every outing. Still need to learn to relax a little more and improve my aim point, but those are just tweaks that can be worked out at the Superstition Springs chipping green.

* That $#@&! island green aside (why, BTW, do courses feel a need to create island greens? Those weren’t an invention of the Scots, that’s for sure), I’m playing with a lot of confidence with my irons. On several occasions – with five, six, and seven irons in my hand – the strikes were so pure it was almost breathtaking to behold.

* The 5-wood I’ve had so much trouble hitting on par 5 second shots finally showed up at the party today. And in Joe Boxers, no less. Didn’t hit it bad once.

* My mental discipline on the course continues to improve. No matter what happened on the previous hole I was very resilient today and kept coming out firing. I’m especially proud of the fact that after posting that nine on the island green hole I stepped up to the 12th tee (a long, tight par 4) and split the fairway dead-balls center with a three wood before walking away with a working-man’s bogey. My de facto sports psychologist Dr. Bob Winters would have been proud I stayed “in the moment” virtually all day long.

* From first tee to last shot I kept the same swing and form crafted at Superstition Springs the past two driving range sessions. The results may not have always been what I wanted, but I never deviated from the plan no matter what I was presented with. Alex Black would have been proud of that, I think.

Cons:

* Only had seven holes at bogey or better today. Need to do a lot better than that.

* Since my Alex Black lesson I’ve hit balls OB or close to OB left on every first and tenth tee. It’s the weirdest thing, not sure why that is. Be nice to get that out of my system the next time I play.

* Hitting eight out of fourteen fairways isn’t going to cut it come Goodboys weekend. While it’s true I was barely off target on at least three or four holes, the way Lone Tree is designed I really paid the price. If I want to play bogey-.5 golf I’m simply going to have to hit more fairways. Not to mention greens in regulation – something I ought to be doing more frequently whenever the opportunity presents itself.

* I know I need a better, more consistent pre-shot routine. Cultivating one I’m comfortable with is next on the to-do list. Which brings me to the #1 song with a bullet on my own Billboard charts…

* …my aiming point was off all day, and it really cost me. And that’s where Billy Joel comes in.

Simply put, if I’m going to continue to improve, I have to learn to trust my swing. On every shot. After so many years of poor play, abysmal course management, and crappy technique I’ve cultivated a bad habit of always aiming right of target since most of my shots would drift (or not so drift) left – remember, I wasn’t called The Great White Shank for nothing! Since my lesson with Alex Black, however, I’m hitting the ball much straighter, yet still continue to aim right. And when I aim right and hit the ball straight, guess what? It goes right, sometimes mucho right.

Take the 9th hole, a long par five, dogleg left around a pond. While my drive wasn’t great (got a member bounce off a pile of rocks after aiming too far right), I did find the fairway and then eased a 5-wood to within 138 yards of the pin. So I’m in the go-zone. Aware of the pond and a sucker pin placement on the left side of the green, I want to play smart and plan to leave an 8-iron just short of the green right to chip up and two-putt for my par. But what do I do? I don’t trust my swing and, without even checking the fact I’m aimed so right as to nearly bring the pro shop and cart shed into play, I just wail away and over-cook the eight, which slams into the fringe and one hops the cart path before settling into the gravel lot right of the cart shed. I take my drop and make an amazing recovery chip to within six feet which I then two-putt for a double-bogey seven. Just like that, I’ve thrown a minimum of two shots away. You do that often enough – which I did all day – those strokes start adding up. Hence, a 106 which could (and should) have been a 98 or better.

Now let’s compare that to 18, another par 5 with water on the right to a green protected by water on the left. I’m fortunate my drive (again, aimed too far right but hit dead straight) stops within two feet of the pond. I then crush a 4 hybrid to 165 yards from the green. Egged on by my playing partner Chester (a dead-ringer for Barack Obama, BTW, and one of the nicest guys I’ve ever played golf with) who tells me I’m hitting the ball too good to be playing golf so defensively, I plan another 4 hybrid, but this time I’m aiming slightly right with an open stance to play a baby cut I hope will ride the right-to-left breeze and cozy it’s way up to the green. I pull the shot off magnificently, leaving myself twenty feet for birdie. Applause from all around. I smash my birdie putt twelve feet past the hole, but then calmly drain a downhill slider for par. That, my friends, is what The Great White Shank is now capable of doing.

Since I started playing with my new Callaways two and a half months ago, I’ve completely overhauled my golf swing and my overall game to a point where that initial round at Superstition Springs in early February seems like a decade ago, played by a completely different human being. The new swing and the improved mentality are all in place: I’m improving every time I go out and can now honestly say there are multiple holes where I’m playing (at least for me as far as my goals are concerned) not just decent, good enough golf that gets the job done, but well played golf. Golf that’s something to be proud of. Now it’s just a matter of doing it more often.

And that’s all just a matter of trust.

Welcome to this edition of On The Range, I’m Gary Williams, your host. We’re here with Doug “The Great White Shank” on the driving range at Superstition Springs Golf Club here in Mesa, Arizona. It’s a beautiful day here – high ’80s, a light cloud cover to help lessen the usual hot mid-April sun – and the range is filled with golfers of all ages and the happy sounds of golf balls being hit. First of all, Great White Shank, thank you for making yourself available to On The Range. There’s been a big change in your bag since the last time we spoke, correct?

That’s right, Gary, I’ve diteched the Cobra woods, irons, and wacky fairway woods and playing Callaway RAZR X HLs from pitching wedge up to driver. The irons are new, the 3 and 5 metals and driver are second-hand. The sand wedge is the runt of the litter, a RAZR I found separately, but I love it nonetheless. The putter is a Dynacraft Design II that was given me by old Grant Carrow, who furnished me my first set of clubs at the behest of the late Mike “Doc” Frechette, a good friend of mine and one of the founders of Goodboys Nation.

So I’m watching you hit various graphite woods, everything from 3-hybrids to driver. What are you working on here?

Well, basically, Gary, I’m trying to integrate some instruction provided me by Alex Black, the PGA pro here, and my de facto swing coach, fellow Goodboy Ben “The Funny Guy” Andrusaitis. What I’m working on most is emphasizing my large leg muscles coming through the ball and de-emphasizing the rolling of my wrists through impact. I find that, too often, what is happening is that a combination of coming through over the top early and rolling my wrists over has been creating too many misses to the right. And, whenever I’ve tried to avoid that from happening, I’m doing nothing with my wrists, lagging too much on the downswing, and pushing badly left.

So that’s two misses, one to the left, one to the right. What’s the fix?

The fix, Gary, and for all you high-handicappers out there, similar to what The Funny Guy is trying to do with his own swing in following Steve Stricker, is to try and take the wrists out of the swing as much as possible. For me, that means, rather than rolling my wrists over and finishing off low, I’m now attempting to create a wider circle with my swing in take-back and follow-through so I’m finishing up with my chin actually fast against my left shoulder at finish.

That’s quite interesting. OK, for the benefit of our viewers what club have you got in your hand?

This is my 5-wood which, at least to date, has not been very cooperative as far as the plan is concerned.

Very good. Well, take a swing and let’s see what happens.

(The Great White Shank pulverizes a 5-wood straight down the middle of the faux fairway in front of him.)

Why, that’s marvelous!

Thanks, Gary. The key, of course, is to do this consistently – something I’m still working hard on.

The Goodboys Invitational is a little more than three months away. How and when does your preparation begin?

Actually, Gary, the preparation never stops. I’m very disappointed with the way I played the last two years at Goodboys. For whatever reason, I never enjoyed the experience or the Cobras I was playing – I just never played them according to my capabilities. It wasn’t until last fall after last Goodboys that I discovered these Callaways. They’ve changed my golf game. They’ve changed my life.

Your preparations from here?

Well, I’m going to play a couple of courses around here in preparation for a Las Vegas trip in late May when I hope to once again play Las Vegas National again. After that, it’ll be pretty much range work until heading back to Massachusetts the week before Goodboys to try and play Portsmouth Country Club, my all-time favorite course, and Trull Brook, a course I’ve always found will tell you where your game stands in terms of Goodboys. In fact, every 3-wood I’m hitting here, I’m imagining standing on the third tee at Trull Brook, a very tight, uphill par 4 that will always test how well you’re hitting the ball. If you can find the fairway at Trull Brook #3 you’re playing stick.

Great White Shank, your love of Portsmouth Country Club is legendary – what is it about Portsmouth you love so much?

Well Gary, from the moment you make the turn onto the road that leads to the clubhouse it’s almost like Magnolia Lane at Augusta National. The big oaks lining both sides of the road, the practice areas beyond the trees on both sides – it’s a just a feeling unlike any other place I’ve ever played. I’ve never played the course that well – it’s long and you have to keep it in the fairways – but the moment I step on Portsmouth’s grounds I feel as if I’ve come home. On nights I can’t sleep I’ll think about Portsmouth and it always puts me at ease. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Challenging. Memorable.

Thank you, Great White Shank, for your time. We truly appreciate it.

(winking) Be sure to say hello to Kelly for me.

Will do.

A Great Blue Heron swooped in front of me.

A rabbit insistent upon marking his territory stopped in front of me to pee not once, not twice, but three times.

A family of prairie dogs skittering around my feet.

It wasn’t nature alone that was wild on 544-yard, par 5 sixth hole at Bear Creek Golf Course, a sun-drenched track on the southern outskirts of Chandler, AZ. If we roll the tape you’ll see a sequence of shots my golf instructor Alex Black certainly didn’t have in mind during our lesson last Saturday:

1. Duck-hooked 3-wood into water right off the tee (penalty)
3. 3-wood shanked left into adjacent fairway
4. Duffed 5-wood traveling no more than twenty yards
5. Duck-hooked 5-wood into trouble right, ball perched inside a wild acacia bush
6. Pitching wedge out of the bush twenty feet straight, prairie dogs scatter in every direction
7. Pitching wedge pushed into trouble right
8. Miraculous pitching wedge onto green to three feet
9. One putt for a crowd-pleasing nine

They say the first round after a golf lesson is the worst, but I honestly thought I would be the exception. I wasn’t afraid of playing the blue tees at Bear Creek (in terms of yards and layout the course actually sets up very similarly to Passaconaway Country Club in Litchfield, NH, a course I’ve played many times). On the driving range before teeing off I felt really confident – a small bucket of crisply-hit wedges and solidly-struck irons. OK, the 3-woods and drivers seemed a little flaky – I can’t remember ever shanking a 3-wood or driver (that privilege has historically been reserved for my irons), but I chalked that up to nerves, which for some reason I had a case of. Even after pushed my opening 3-wood far left into desert scrub I still wasn’t concerned – especially after chipping out to 163 yards and crushing a 5-iron to sixteen feet before two-putting for a bogey five.

The 346 yard, par 4 fourth at Bear Creek is the second-easiest hole on the course. My first ball shanks left and hits the grill of a minivan passing by to our left. Taking my mulligan, I do the very same thing, except this time there’s enough loft to bunny hop into the strip mall on the other side of the street. Dropping three I proceed to do the very same thing with a 5-wood. Lynn, trying to be as patient as she can, suggests I aim further right and I do, dunking my 5-wood into the pond right. Seven minutes later, I’ve one-putted for a quintuple-bogey nine (no Goodboys double-par rule for me anymore!) and suddenly realize I’ve forgotten how to swing a golf club. Mere mortals who have said, “sod it” an gone back to their old comfortable swing, but The Great White Shank has lab work to do. I soldier on, solidly bogeying the par 3 fifth.

And then came that sixth hole.

I know what you’re thinking: The Great White Shank fell apart like a cheap bridge table the rest of the way and put up a big number. But I didn’t. I hung tough for a 51 going out – a 51 with two nines on the card. Not bad for yours truly.

Starting out on the back nine I decided to give the 3-wood a rest and grabbed driver. Alas, whereas my tee game suddenly came into form I lost my putting game and racked up two straight three-putts followed by an embarrassing four-putt from twelve feet on ten, eleven, and twelve for a 7-6-7 before settling into five straight rocking-chair bogies. That snowman I make on 18 is a pure throwaway – my de facto golf shrink Dr. Bob Winters would be horrified to learn that once I realized I couldn’t break 100 I gave up the chase and just hit shots I wanted to play for the hell of it.

While the numbers (51 + 52 = 103) don’t lie, there are still a lot of positives to take away from today’s round at Bear Creek. Sure, those ten putts on three holes (36 total, seven more than Alex Black would approve of) were ugly, but I did have three one-putts and came within two whiskers of five. I also reached a season-high total of nine holes at bogey or less, showing some serious Great White Shank resilience after those nines on four and six. Like that old Timex watch commercial went, I can now take a licking and keep on ticking. With my new Alex Black move I hit my irons consistently better than I ever have in years, if ever. How do I know? On the five par-3s I was a total of five over. That’s how you keep your scores down. Last year and before, a round like this on a 6400-yard course would result anywhere froma 105 to a 115; today, I shot a 103 and left a dozen or more shots out there while playing a round of golf for the very first time in my life by mechanics, not by feel.

The numbers, of course, don’t lie, but there will come a time (and it’s not far away) where a good five or six of those shots won’t be left on the course anymore. You can do the math; I’m not far away at all, and rounding into where I need to be for this year’s Goodboys Invitational right on schedule.

I counted the steps – it was thirty-four from the driving range at Toka Sticks G.C., where I couldn’t have hit the ball worse if I tried, to the first tee, where I effortlessly striped a 3-wood dead center in the fairway. A pulled 5-iron, a fabulous flop shot with a sand wedge over a yawning bunker to two feet, and a single putt later, I’m marking my bogey five on the card and wondering how on earth this always seems to happen.

I dunno – there’s something about me and warming up before a round that puzzles me. I mean, I usually stink, but few times as bad as I was today. Ground balls with a pitching wedge, duffed 3-woods, skulled irons of every type. I could practically hear the guy behind me waiting to hit his practice balls saying to himself, “it’ll be my luck that I’m going to get stuck behind this clown.” But it didn’t bother me. After finishing up with a big banana sliced 3-wood, I grabbed my bag, smiled at him, and in my most confident voice said, “now, let’s take it to the course!”

Today was round #3 with my Callaway RAZR-X HLs, and it was a breakthrough day for me, for not only did I break 100 for the first time with them (46 + 52 = 98), I had my first birdie with them as well (on a par-5, no less!), and did it in a way I feel is very important as I begin preparations for this year’s Goodboys Invitational weekend. Not because I broke 100 – believe it or not, I’ve done that several times before (though certainly not as often as I would like). Not because I had a birdie (although for me they’re pretty rare; I can count the number of birdies I’ve had since starting golf on my two hands).

No, the reason today’s round was so important was that, for the first time, I took into it a mindset completely different than any I had ever tried since the first time I took up golf two decades ago. This mindset, simply put, came from a series of conversations recounted by Tom Coyne in his fine and enjoyable book Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros with Dr. Bob Winters, Sports Psychologist with the Leadbetter Golf Academy. Coyne had gone to see Winters about improving the mental aspect of his game, and these conversations really hit home with me, to the point where I made my own commitment to give them a try myself the next time I played.

Discussing the importance of learning how to play golf “in the moment”, Coyne writes:

Doc explains the phenomenon experienced by tour players who are going low, players in the zone who are reeling off eight, nine birdies in a round [Ed. note: like someone we saw last weekend]. If you ask them what they shot before they look at their card, nine times out of ten they would have no idea, or would drastically underestimate their score.

“That’s being in the moment,” he explains, “when you have absolutely no idea what you might be shooting. In that state of mind, you’re not thinking about birdie putts or bogey putts – there is no such thing as either. I want you to forget about birdies and bogeys altogether. That putt is worth one stroke, same as the one before, same as the one after. People say, ‘Wow, I gave one back there,’, or, ‘I made bogey, I have to get one back now.’ And you know what I say to them? I say they are fooling themseves. I don’t care if they eagle the next hole, they will never get a stroke back that has already been played. If you are focused on giving strokes up, getting strokes back, then you are certainly not playing golf in the moment. Don’t think about birdies. Think about giving full effort on each and every golf shot. If you can do that, when you get to the scorer’s table, the birdies will be waiting for you.”

Now Coyne was concerned about birdies and bogeys; at my level my concern has always been about pars and bogeys and avoiding that big number that ruins a round before it is even well underway. In this regard, Winters gave Coyne some additional advice I found especially sage:

Doc and I discuss a European golfer’s mentality vs. how we think about our golf here in America. Americans tend to more result-oriented – nice birdie, nice five, good par, always aware of the score, focused on the end result. You hear the broadcasters in the British Open talking about how a hole was well-played, or a putt was well-holed.

“We would do well to borrow a little of that attitude on the golf course, to get away from the fixation on outcome,” Dr. Winters explains. “If you are out there on the golf course thinking about a certain score, it is almost an absolute guarantee that you will not shoot it. If all you can think about over a golf shot is winning a tournament, then you might as well pack your bags, because it isn’t going to happen. But if you can get to the point where you do nothing but focus on executing one golf shot, then the winning often takes care of itself.”

I remember reading these words for the first time and saying to myself, “holy sh*t”, that’s me to a ‘T’. So in preparing myself for today’s round I made Dr. Winters’ words my pure focus. I didn’t worry about my score, and while I knew I was putting a good front nine together, I resisted the urge to look ahead and project what I might score if I could just bogey or par my way in. And you know what? It worked. Not only was the 46 as good a nine-hole score as I’ve had in the past, I found myself enjoying the challenge of attempting each shot free from the pressure I’ve always put on myself to make a particular number.

Of course, it didn’t work all the time – especially on the back nine there were lapses in focus and a couple of very poor shot selections (an ill-advised 4-hybrid over a pond to a sinful pin placement instead of taking trouble out of the way with a 6-iron layup was especially punitive), but the big thing was that I didn’t allow these to snowball into a string of mistakes. And, at least for me, that was a breakthrough of sorts.

Now let’s be realistic – at a Goodboys Invitational weekend, with your partner depending on you, the trash talk, the bets all over the pigeon sheet, and all the other usual distractions going on around you this kind of mindset, while advisable, is simply not possible 100% of the time. Yet, there’s still a great deal of wisdom in Winters’ words – it’s not only good advice, it leads to a greater level of enjoyment in playing the game, and it worked well for me today.

What I’m most proud of is that I played ten holes at bogey or better – something I doubt I’ve ever done before. for me. Unfortunately, after that blistering front nine, things got a little loosey-goosey on the back – especially off the tee – but I still was able to grind out a good recovery shot (or two) on each hole to keep the final score under 100. Better yet, there’s still plenty of room for improvement – after all, I only hit six fairways today, and while my total number of putts was still a little higher than I’d like (30), I one-putted four times and didn’t three-putt once. That’s definitely moving in the right direction.

The only thing that would have made the day more satisfying would have been a post-round whirlpool at the Wynn Las Vegas spa.

Now it’s onto Saturday and the first formal golf lesson I’ve ever looked forward to. Expect a full after-action report here at Goodboys Nation weblog.