I’ll admit that the whole debate over whether THE PLAYERS (note I even capitalized it correctly this time) was something I always thought to be absurd. Maybe it’s because I’ve always thought (and still do) that PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and his leadership to be a bunch of arrogant elitists and prima donnas. Finchem and his predecessor Dean Beaman have made no bones about the fact that they’re intent on making their tournament another major come hell or high water and have no shame in pressuring the suck-ups at Golf Channel to promote the debate as such.

OK, I’m calling off the dogs and am officially supportive of THE PLAYERS as worthy of major status. After, all when you hit your fortieth year, attract one of, if not the, best fields of any other golf event (including majors), and play it on a course as challenging as TPC Sawgrass if it looks like a major, acts like a major, and requires the patience and discipline of a major it must be a major. That’s not going to happen, of course – after all, with the explosion of golf across the world if there were to be a fifth major it’s likely to be in Australia or China before TPC Sawgrass or anywhere else. Whether Finchem likes it or not.

This year’s PLAYERS lacked nothing in intrigue and entertainment. Sure, the 17th island green is a tricked up hole, but you can’t deny the natural amphitheater Pete Dye created around the 16th green, 17th hole, and 18th tee makes for challenging golf and truly riveting television. Sergio Garcia certainly that found out – if you want to win THE PLAYERS you have to maneuver your way around all three closing holes, two out of three just won’t do.

Is there any doubt that, like him or not, Tiger Woods is more than “back” and has the best game on the planet right now? I’ll admit I’m not a Tiger fan by any stretch, but you sure have to respect the way he’s playing right now and marvel at how the swing changes he’s gone through have finally taken hold at every level of his game. Clearly, there seems little to stop him from winning at least two of this year’s remaining majors, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him sweep all three. The only golfer with the same kind of raw talent that can beat Tiger head-to-head is Rory McIlroy, but he’s clearly lacking the maturity and drive to excellence Tiger has. Rory’s got golf and Caroline Wozniacki competing for his affection, all Tiger knows is that he needs five more major wins to better Jack’s 18 majors and that’s all that counts. Big difference there.

THE PLAYERS certainly made for a great weekend of golf-watching. And whether or not it becomes a major someday really doesn’t matter as far as long as it has TPC Sawgrass for pure entertainment value.

One can only imagine the outcry if a Republican president were in the White House and it was revealed that the IRS was targeting liberal activist groups like Media Matters or Planned Parenthood, or La Raza – why, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and all the nuts at MSNBC would be calling for impeachment hearings to start tomorrow.

Alternatively, when a Democrat is in the White House and the groups being targeted by the IRS are Tea Party and conservatives groups? Ahh, nothing to see here, move along.

Unfortunately for the Obama White House, already up to its neck in scandal and controversy with the Benghazi hearings, this is not going to go away. And it shouldn’t be sufficient for the IRS to apologize – people need to lose their jobs over this. It’s so ironic that the other day at Ohio State University Barack Obama said this:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

Given this latest news I would say this government has revealed itself as a sham that can’t be trusted. There is no greater tyrrany than the government using the power of the IRS to stifle free speech, the right to assemble, and yes, the right to dissent. Given that Congress has promised to go after these people one can only hope we can find out who ordered the IRS to take these kinds of actions. Don’t be surprised if, like the Benghazi scandal, the road leads directly into the Oval Office. You can play gangster politics all you want in Chicago and get away with it, but not in Washington, D.C. – sooner or later the law starts catching up with the lawless and the chickens start coming home to roost.

“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

Two bits of dialogue from my all-time favorite movie “All The President’s Men” come to mind. The first is during that classic staff meeting where they’re discussing the content of the next day’s edition:

Harry Rosenfeld (Jack Warner): “What about the Dahlberg repurcussions?”

Howard Simons (Martin Balsam): “No one cares about the Dahlberg repurcussions.”

…and that scene inside Ben Bradlee’s office where he’s having a hard understanding the significance of Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting:

Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards): Have you seen the latest polls? Most Americans have never even heard about Watergate. No one gives a shit.”

Keep this in mind as the mainstream dino-media does all it can to avoid reporting on the 9/11 Benghazi attacks that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others dead. The Obama administration’s story (actually, lies) about how it was the fault of a little YouTube video and how there’s was no time to scramble military assistance to repel the attackers is unraveling before everyone’s eyes; just don’t expect to read or hear about it from the major media outlets – yet.

It’s important to remember that what did Richard Nixon in was not the actual break-in and the illegal wiretapping that the White House and his Justice Department authorized, but the cover-up and obstruction of justice that took place afterwards. If the Obama administration continues to think itself above the law and congressional oversight it may well find itself repeating the same kind of history. As Red State’s Moe Lane writes:

And let us establish once and for all what happened. The screw-up was in two parts. The first was tactical: the administration made a judgment call on whether or not to (metaphorically) send in the Marines. They decided not to. People died. Did that make it a bad call? Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes the dice hate you. Maybe if the Marines had been sent in the whole thing would have gone spectacularly pear-shaped and we’d have a hundred people dead, not four. But then again, maybe nobody would have died at all. Generally speaking, it’s a lot easier to justify We don’t throw lives away for no good reason than it is to justify We’d rather let four people die than risk a hundred. Still, it’s a hard call to make when it’s you on the scene.

But the second part of the screw-up is less forgivable. The general rule here is Command takes responsibility. JFK survived the Bay of Pigs incident because he embraced that rule. Nixon didn’t survive Watergate because he didn’t. If Obama had said, well, we thought that we had good security up at Benghazi, only we didn’t, so al-Qaeda caught us by surprise and killed our people and that was something that I have to take full responsibility for and I’m never going to let that happen again then, well, he might have lost the election, actually. We didn’t realize at the time, but Obama’s 2012 re-election strategy had pretty much no margin for error. So the administration picked a narrative (it was all due to a YouTube video!) that cynically traded on stereotypes about foreign Muslims and their collective level of impulse control*, and did nothing but push said narrative for as long as they could. Which was, oddly enough, long enough for the election to be over.

It’s debatable what role the President might have played in all of this up to this point, but it’s fairly obvious the reckless incompetence, and ultimate responsibility, for the deaths of the Benghazi four lies at the feet of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Powerline blog’s Paul Mirengoff has a powerful post that makes this case by laying out the facts the major print and broadcast media dare not present:

Under these circumstances, it would not do to attribute the Benghazi killings to the terrorism about which top State Department officials had been warned. Much better to lump what happened in Libya together with the protests that occurred in Egypt, and thereby characterize it as a demonstration that went too far, rather than premeditated terrorism.

Was Hillary Clinton directly involved in this cover-up? It’s difficult to see how she could not have been.

As I understand it, when State pushed back against the CIA’s talking points, a White House meeting was scheduled to thrash out the issue. One can imagine Clinton failing to keep apprised of something as mundane as a mounting threat to be safety of her personnel in Libya. But surely she was in the loop when it came to a bureaucratic struggle about how our U.N. ambassador was going to spin the Benghazi debacle. And surely, her representatives would not attend the meeting in which that bureaucratic struggle was to be resolved without being able to state the desires of the Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton, then, is culpable at the front end of the Benghazi disaster — when she and/or her agents ignored requests for enhanced security — and at the back end — when she and her agents engineered an attempted cover-up. Her culpability during the attacks is doubtful in my opinion, but I would still like to know what she was doing during those tragic hours.

In a serious society, Benghazi, standing alone, would spell the end of Hillary Clinton’s public career.

Of course, in a serious society, the very idea that someone like Hillary Clinton would be qualified to be Secretary of State is laughable. So let’s lay out the facts as we know them:

1. Hillary Clinton lied in her testimony to Congress. Note this was not done under oath and thus not subject to perjury charges, but I have a feeling she’ll be back and forced to sing like a canary under oath before too long.

2. President Obama went to sleep knowing that a U.S. ambassador and other Americans were being attacked by terrorists in Benghazi.

3. President Obama awoke refreshed the next day and headed to Las Vegas to fund-raise knowing his Libyan ambassador and three others were dead.

4. The entire Executive Branch lied repeatedly to the American people in order to save Obama’s chances for re-election.

Like I and many others have said previously, at least when it came to Watergate no one died. What is happening here is an absolute disgrace, but chickens all over the place are coming home to roost. Now that the dam of coverup, dismissal, and denial is breaking and all hell is about to bvreak loose.

And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people.

UPDATE: I hate to say I told you so, but no one listens to The Great White Shank. It’s amazing how much stuff I post finds its way into the blogsphere the next day. Check this Hot Air post by Ed Morrissey out: now that both ABC and Obama shill Ron Fournier have gotten wind of significant talking point revisions made to the original CIA memo to whitewash (do I hear “cover up”) any references to a terror attack, is there any doubt the dam is truly about to break into scandal territory.

Expect Speaker of the House John Boehner to appoint a select investigation committee with the power to issue subpoenas and then watch all the canaries start to sing. And don’t be surprised if one of the tunes whistled is “Hail To The Chief” – this story is about to go all the way to the Oval Office, where it will become apparent that it was President Obama who gave the orders not to help those poor folks under attack, then tried to cover up his cowardice and lack of command off by blaming the whole thing on a YouTube video, then lied about it repeatedly to the families of the dead and the American people.

The sound you’re hearing is toast being made.

Wondering when this stretch of windy weeks is going to end – I’ve never seen such a period of time where there’s so much dust in the air blowing around every day. The other day out of the blue this massive gust of wind came out of nowhere, toppling a bunch of our metal art and destroying one of the wind chimes. It ripped our American flag right off the pole, snapping the fixtures that held the flag in place. I didn’t realize that had happened until Mohammed’s wife from across the street came knocking on my door and gave it to me nice and all folded up. She said it landed in one of her trees.

Wind aside, the back yard and patio area is looking mighty colorful this year, dontcha think?

All of our petunias in pots both front and back were served notice yesterday that they have a week to live: the long-term forecast is a string of triple-digit days to kick off Arizona summer here in Gilbert starting next week. This is how it all starts:

Over the weekend, the mercury will rise to the upper 90s with dry weather and abundant sunshine expected.

Triple digits are likely to start next week.

They were lovely while they lasted!

Still lots of bird action around here – actually, I think the most I’ve seen in all the years we’ve been here. Yesterday morning I saw a foo-foo bird (I don’t know what they’re called, they look like grackles with very long tails but I call them foo-foo birds because of their comical nature and array of sounds) scrounging around for nesting material under the lime tree today. Unlike the mourning dove of a couple of weeks ago who would gather nesting material one stick at a time, this bird crams as much dead grass as it can fit into its mouth before heading off. I think from the direction it took off that Mohammed’s mesquite tree across the street for its future nursery.

Not much to write about today, so just a few items worth noting.

Congratulations to Tranquility Trail Animal Sanctuary and The Bunny Basics for taking 1st place in the National Animal Rescue Shelter Challenge! The bunnies win a $1,000 cash prize. If you’d like to help them out by sponsoring a rabbit or two you can visit this site as well. Kelly and her staff of volunteers there do wonderful work – at one time they had more than 120 bunnies, primarily the result of an emergency backyard rabbit rescue a few years ago. Since that time they’ve been able to find larger quarters and have loving homes for nearly fifty rabbits. They’re not just a rabbit rescue, they’ve extended themselves into all kinds of programs to raise house rabbit awareness in the Valley and provide all kinds of opportunities for children and adults to learn more about these wonderful, loving (well, except in the case of our Peanut!) creatures.

Ever hear of a lemon water detox? I’ve started doing one just for the heck of it in preparation for my next Eades diet starting the first week of June. The combination of lemon water and cayenne pepper is one you’ll never forget once you try it!

That story about those three missing women found alive in Cleveland after being kept captive for 10+ years positively boggles the mind. It just goes to show once again (as if we need reminding) that there’s real evil in the world around us. These guys weren’t off their medications and shooting up schools or religious fanatics blowing themselves and others up thinking they’re gonna get their 80 virgins in the afterlife, this was premeditated, conscious human bondage of the absolute worst kind. Sends shivers down your back, I’ll tell you. Can’t imagine what’s going through a lot of parents minds tonight.

I always find stories like this fascinating.

The one job I wouldn’t like to have right now? How to return the Boston Celtics into a NBA force. GM Danny Ainge is going to have to pull a few rabbits out of his hat if he wants to avoid bottom-dwelling the next few years.

Headline: Cops: Woman Arrested For DUI Was Celebrating End Of Previous DUI.

Headline: Cops: Woman’s Testicle Clawing Left Boyfriend “Bleeding From His Genital Area

Headline: Friends watched in horror as woman fell off bus, struck by vehicles This is especially heartbreaking, especially when you read this:

Police said Jamie Frecks, 26, fell out of the emergency door of a party bus and landed onto the highway where three vehicles ran over her.

Investigators said Frecks was on the bus with 15 other women celebrating at a friend’s bachelorette party.

Over the next several weeks, investigators will try to find out how Frecks fell out of the party bus.

Police would also like to talk to the other two drivers who struck Frecks, but chose to drive away.

Hat tips: Drudge.

…actually, it was a horrible weekend for girls night outs. This story is absolutely horrific:

Authorities searched for answers Monday, hoping to learn what sparked the blaze and why five of the victims could not escape the fast-spreading flames.

The women who were killed in the Saturday night blaze were found pressed up against the 3-foot by 1 ½-foot partition, apparently because smoke and fire kept them from the rear exits of the extended passenger compartment.

The position of the bodies suggested they were trying to get away from the fire, said San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault.

The women were celebrating the wedding of a newlywed friend, Neriza Fojas, who was among the dead.

I haven’t ridden in any stretch limos so I don’t know how they’re designed or what could have gone wrong, but it seems weird that there weren’t doors and windows that could have been opened. Of course, you’re in a moving vehicle, and the driver is so far up front that he doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s just an incredible tragedy and a horrible way to die.

Headline: Grammy-Winning Singer Headed to Prison for Failing to Pay $1 Million Owed in Taxes. You gotta hand it to hip-hop singer Lauryn Hill, she’s the one who didn’t pay her taxes but who is she blaming? Not her, of course, she’s just a victim of the music industry, just like her parents were the victims of slavery:

“I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them,” Hill said before U.S. Magistrate Madeline Cox Arleo. “I had an economic system imposed on me.”

At the time of her arrest last year, Hill wrote a criticism rejecting pop culture’s “climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism.”

Putting aside the absurd notion of Hill’s victimization, I’m wondering how her parents were slaves. Maybe she just has her centuries confused. Seriously, you really can’t make this kind of stuff up.

If April is nesting month here in our backyard May is hatchlings month, as we’ve got lots of baby sparrows and mourning doves coming to visit our pool fountain once we get to late afternoon. To see the babies with their flutterng wings and their funky feathers is a beautiful thing to watch.

We have this one mourning dove who presents himself (or herself) whenever he/she stops by with a raspy “whoo-whoo whoo” over and over – once I counted ten times! I’m not if its a he or a she, but whatever, that dove thinks this is his/her territory and loves to make himself/herself known continuously throughout the day. Really fun to watch – and hear.

While others were going ga-ga over the Red Sox start this year I didn’t allow myself to get caught up in the excitement, and watching them these last few days get swept by the Texas Rangers – one of the bona fide good teams in the American League – confirms the wisdom of waiting and seeing just how things play out. April can be a real teaser month, teams going good are not necessarily as good as they seem, teams starting off bad aren’t necessarily as bad as they seem. Texas will be there in the end; whether the Sox will be is anyone’s guess.

Looks like we’ve got another weather system coming in that will keep things relatively cool this coming week. Out here in the Valley of the Sun we’ll take any delay the weather gods have in mind to stave off the triple digits. The one thing everyone out here has been marveling at is how windy it has been for the past month. Not sure why, it seems like every day the wind has been blowing steadily and I’ve had to sweep the dust of the patio to keep it from being tracked into the house.

The Boston Celtics are in a world of hurt going forward the next few years. When teams like the Celts get old, it’s tough to get the mojo back without taking your lumps and finishing near the bottom for a year or two. Problem is, Boston fans would never stand for that approach, so GM Danny Ainge has got his work cut out for him.

“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.

I’ll say this for Barack Obama – dude knows how to turn an elected second term into a lame-duck presidency in record time. Consider in just a week’s time:

1. He holds a press conference with nothing to announce, other than it’s all the Republican’s fault that nothing is getting done in Washington. Thus leading to even his biggest supporters in the mainstream dino-media to wonder what he’s doing and where the leadership is.

2. Obamacare – you know, the Democrat-passed plan to overhaul healthcare in the U.S. with the slogan, “if you like your plan you can keep it” is springing so many leaks it looks like my master bath did yesterday. Not only has one of its original backers called its deployment a “train wreck”, but now you have the Senate Majority Leader whining they – you got it! – need more money to implement it properly and avoid said train wreck.

3. Explosive hearings on the Benghazi whistle-blowers are scheduled to start next week. They will undoubtedly show not just Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the administration’s callous incompetence and carelessness during the embassy attacks that resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others, but, it now appears there were al Qaeda operatives involved in a plan that was obvious well-coordinated and either missed or ignored by our intelligence community. And it’s not helping that the Obama administration is also showing the same level of incompetence, weakness, and disorganization when it comes to recent events in Syria.

4. The President’s immigration reform bill (yes, it’s his even though the so-called “Gang of Ocho” are the face of it in the Senate) is in the process of imploding, not just for its promise of amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, but the investigations involving the terrorists who set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon showing (who could have guessed it!) huge holes in our existing immigration laws and intelligence community – both of which could have prevented the deaths and injuries that resulted from even happening.

5. The President and Vice-President’s push for gun control failed miserably – not because there aren’t things that could be done to tighten up current laws, but because the majority of the country saw the push for what it was – to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens using the blood of innocent children as political pawns.

6. The President appears at Planned Parenthood’s national conference – the first president to do so at the very time grisly and horrific details about that abortion doctor on trial in Philadelphia leak out despite aggressive attempts by the media to ignore and suppress the events and the truth. As a result, more details about other abortion clinics, and how the industry operates in general, are showing just how far this country has gone down the road to infanticide. Mark my words, this story is not going away – there’s a sea change taking effect across the country, and the pro-baby killing (oops, I mean “pro choice”) lobby finds itself for the first time in decades on its heels.

If you haven’t heard or seen any of these above items being covered on your nightly NBC, ABC, or CBS newscasts, or on the latest “60 Minutes” you shouldn’t be surprised – the Obama presidency is going down in flames before our very eyes but you’ll never get the media to cover it. Can you imagine if a Republican president was in the White House with these kinds of things happening? Why, every morning talk show and evening newscast would have as its headline the fact that the President is now a lame duck and incapable of leading the country forward.

Truth is – and as the Obama administration finds even greater headwinds in its desperate attempt to implement its far-left agenda while it can (i.e., before the 2014 midterms when the Democrats take another 2010-style thumping) – the media is going to turn on the President for not living up to their dreams and expectations. And because the Left is like that, they’ll turn they lonely eyes to Hillary Clinton (!) to rescue their agenda in 2016. Why? Because this community organizer who never ran so much as a lemonade stand in his life, this pretender to the throne, has been revealed to be someone who really isn’t interested in getting his hands dirty in leading the country. Oh, he and his wife love the perks that go along with the job – the vacations, the golf, the fundraising – but it’s pretty clear after this time he’s not just that into being President. It’s, y’know, too much work. And because of his unwillingness and inability to engage the job and instead leave the details to trusted subordinates (who also, as academics and intellectuals, have no experience in either governing or business), his agenda is coming apart in a haze of pettiness, incompetence, sloppiness, and amateurness at all levels.

You won’t hear me complain – frankly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.