I ended the season last year playing the best I've ever played. The first two rounds this year, though, I've struggled to an 84 and an 83. Not the golf I'm used to playing, and nearly a stroke a hole worse than the back end of last season. This level of play leaves me with mixed emotions. I dislike playing poorly. A lot.
Yet playing poorly affords me valuable perspective, and after I finish gritting my teeth, cursing under my breath and looking to the sky and asking "why????" I feel strangely gratified. Yucking it up around the course (two grounders on Saturday, one of which was a near w..wh...whiff) makes me realize just how difficult golf is. You can't figure it out. You can only appreciate the game when it's going your away, and respect it when it's not.
Golf's best moments are fleeting, and play out in moments, not minutes. So even as I struggled, missing short putts (back to back at least once), slicing drives and skulling chips, I approached a 35 yard pitch on the 11th, over a bunker to short pin, opened the face of my 62°, put a smooth swing on the back of the ball and knocked it right in the hole. No words were necessary, just a shrug, high fives from my playing partner and caddie, and onwards. I continued to struggle for the rest of the round.
I don't know what this golf season will bring, but will appreciate the ups and downs even as I struggle or perform.
DS
May 6 EDIT: Speaking of golf's best but fleeting moments, last Thursday, I hit the second best shot of my life. The 18th at Meadow Brook Club is a difficult par-4 dogleg to the right that goes steeply uphill to a diffcult and severely back to front sloping green. After a good drive that left me on the edge of the rough with 130 yards, I "chipped" an 8 iron in the hole for eagle! While the pitch I mentioned above might be a 1 in 200 shot, the shot last Thursday is probably more like a 1 in 5,000. Before last Thursday, I'd never holed out to finish the round. Sadly (on a relative basis) this time, I didn't see the ball go in; instead, I saw it seem to stop about 25 feet past the hole, and missed the ball trickling back off of the slope and into its home.
