The Blade and I made it out for our own season opener on Masters Sunday. Here in the Northeast, April has been a changeable month, and it changed for the worse Saturday night, giving us a cold, gray, breezy day for our maiden voyage of 2008. It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't all good either. The good news: The lesson I took the week before did me some good. The bad news: I didn't always do what the pro told me to. Just as in any human endeavor, from assembling a kid's bike to baking a cake, when the directions are followed, results are good; when not, they're not. When I leaned back on "feel," I made goofs that reminded me why I saw the pro in the first place.
Fairways and greens (as well as front and back lawns) have been slow to green up and fill in this Spring - the nights have been too cool - so the course was a little scruffy, but the rough was not yet up, so you could say it was playing "friendly." Of course, this is muni golf we're talking, so I was reminded a few times about needing practice from bare and hardpan lies. The bunkers here are a mix of sand, soil, and gravel - you wouldn't dare take a shiny new wedge into one of these! My new Nickent hybrid was put to use, it does the intended job for the most part, but I need use it a few more times before I really trust it. I did notice that in direct sunlight it has bit of a red sheen to it, which was kinda neat.
The Blade, who is nick-named for his putting prowess, didn't show a lot of that famed skill on Sunday - at no time did his Ping sing to it's potential. He's just getting warmed up... We played with two other walk-ons, Donnie and John, both friendly fellows, both playing well enough to elicit a few cheers, and we all kept a similar pace. In my many, many rounds of muni golf, I can count on one hand the number of times I've run into genuine jerks on the course. Virtually everyone I've played with has been a good playing companion, some have been memorable.
Aside from the birdie on the par 4 10th, my shining moment was on 11, a short par 5, where I hit a bullet of a drive (following my pro's instructions) that cut the corner and bounced and rolled to 155 yards. My low moment: Hitting my second shot on 11 so fat that the chunk of half-dormant sod flew about 40 yards, or half the distance that the ball travelled before resting in a fairway bunker.
The tally: A handful of "others," a handful of bogeys, a handful of pars, and the season's first birdie. The actual score? Well, let's just say that a season's scores are like waffles, the first one's never quite right, and ought to be thrown away (or fed to the dog..)
The other good news: The Blade and I joined with our other golf buds at the home of The Commish that afternoon to watch The Masters final round while imbibing from one of those little Heineken kegs, and scarfing down sausage, peppers, and onions on Italian bread. The perfect start to the 2008 season.
GF
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