Bear asked where Rob was playing this weekend. I told him.
Oh no. That course is horrible! Probably the worst they play on!
Oh no you don’t! Don’t say its horrible and put preconceived notions in his head!
It’s a funky course. Not horrible. Just interesting. I corrected. Or I could have used Gary Player’s quote he used to describe playing on courses that were not necessarily up to scratch : It is the best course, of its kind, in the world !
I asked Max on the bag at the turn how Rob was playing. Rob had already given me the thumbs down from the 9th green so I wasn’t expecting much. Plus his hat was off, which is always a ‘tell’ too.
Haven’t seen him play this badly in a long time ! Difficult time getting off the tee effectively.
It’s been a week of little golf practice, lots of basketball and tons of homework.
Still, good attitude though, so thats a plus.
On one hole Rob drove the ball into tall grass left of the fairway – the green, out of sight and far away on a distant hill. The sensible shot is a punch out on to the fairway. Rob took a hybrid and whacked at it. It didn’t move. Whacked at it again. And again. There was no way it was soaring out of that rough. Exasperated Max walked up and suggested the sand wedge punch out.
Rob: I had a sand wedge in my hand and then my brain burst into flames and I just took out the hybrid and hit it!
There is a real gift in being able to find the humor in a situation. It is only golf after all.
Rob’s back 9 went better and included a chip in eagle. First eagle for the boy !!!
I was behind the scorer’s desk today and it turned into a day of rule officiating :
- Attending the pin while putting. Yes you can.
- Hard, compact, gravelly ground next to fairway, is it ground-under-repair? No, only if marked as such and yes, definitely the best course of its kind in the world!
- Player hits a ball into the hazard and says he is going to hit a provisional. Tees it again and plays it into the hazard and again says he will hit a provisional that goes in the hazard again…….. You cannot play a provisional for a ball that went into a hazard. If it goes in a hazard and you say you are playing a provisional ball and drop it and play again – that is the ball that counts. Junior golfers tend to find hazards a lot – know the rules around them. A hole like this (inadvertently playing penalty plus distance time after time) sinks a round unnecessarily.
- If a player causes the ball to move slightly and it moves but comes straight back to the original exact spot (i.e. oscillates) there is no penalty. If it moves off the spot and does not come back to the same spot you have got to put it back where it was with a one shot penalty. If you play it from the spot it moved to without putting it back it is a two shot penalty.
Pretty regular stuff until 7 year old golf got ugly. Two daddy-caddies in the 7 year old group came in literally shouting at each other across the scorers table in front of the 7 year old field of players and parents. One was accusing the other of a rules violation of changing out his child’s ball during the hole. Calm down, dude, the first ball was hit in the water! But he started the ball with a Callaway and changed the brand with the next ball to a MOJO !
Oh my ……
And then the other dad fired back – is there a rule against telling his son to stand in my son’s line?
At this point the director managed to get them inside and read them the riot act in private.
It is just a game. Play it. As best you can. With a little humor if possible. And fire in your belly, or your brain ……..
