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
Showing posts with label 2008 Masters Tournament. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 Masters Tournament. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Reflections on The 2008 Masters
That grand Spring ritual that heralds the beginning of the golf season for us northeast floggers - The Masters - has come and gone for 2008. All the tradition and ceremony remained intact, like the schmaltzy theme song, like Nantz' schmaltzy commentary, like the tributes to the past and the connecting threads woven to the future (does it get any better than Player passing the torch to Immelman? You couldn't write a script like that...)
The Masters looks a little different than in the past - it was my first Masters in high definition, and it looked fantastic. CBS, by the way, clearly has the best quality hi def of any network. The pictures on my 42" LCD looked almost three dimensional. How about that computer-generated ball-flight tracker, which shows the curvature of the shot from the player's perspective? Pretty edgy stuff for a tournament that won't allow a blimp (a rule I am strongly in favor of.)
There were new players and plot twists added to the continuing story of The Masters, but here's the rub: Most of the key moments were disappointments of one kind or another. Couples misses the cut. Tiger's hopes (and ours) for a modern, single-season grand slam are dashed. Heroics are few and far between - Tiger's pitch from the 10th fairway to the 18th green on Friday was about as good as it got. This Masters Sunday back nine was all about failure, and failure is an ingredient used only sparingly in the recipe for memorable competition. If failure were salt, this tourney left us parched (to stretch the metaphor...)
We seem to have entered a chapter in The Masters' story in which this grand old tournament comes to resemble the U.S. Open - and that's a bad thing. The thrilling Sunday back nine has looked more like an episode of Survivor; "Who will make it through the wind and water challenge?" Instead of the roars for which this tournament is known, we heard hushed moans when Sneds dunked it on 13, when Flesch splashed down on 12 before imploding, when Immelman fell short and wet on 16. There were no smiling faces coming up the 18th fairway, even from the leader! Following his tee shot on 18, Immelman let out a sigh of relief. After making his final, winning par, instead of jumping for joy, he had the look of a man who just got a repreive from the Governor! Hats off to Trevor, he played great, withstood the pressure, and earned his first major, but he and a few others might need a little counseling to avoid any PMTSD: Post Masters Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Perhaps this will change with the weather, and even Augusta National's management can't dictate that, but we already have a golf-war-of-attrition every June, ending on Father's Day. The folks at Augusta need to pay a little more attention to how The Open is set up (British, that is) where they seem to continually strike a balance between challenge and reward. Come Spring and the daffodils, the azaleas, that music, and the green jacket, we want to be thrilled! We want to be reminded of what makes The Masters the premiere golf event of the year! We want to be reminded of why we are anxious to make our first tee time of the season! We want to be reminded of how good it can get!
Bring back the roars!
GF
The Masters looks a little different than in the past - it was my first Masters in high definition, and it looked fantastic. CBS, by the way, clearly has the best quality hi def of any network. The pictures on my 42" LCD looked almost three dimensional. How about that computer-generated ball-flight tracker, which shows the curvature of the shot from the player's perspective? Pretty edgy stuff for a tournament that won't allow a blimp (a rule I am strongly in favor of.)
There were new players and plot twists added to the continuing story of The Masters, but here's the rub: Most of the key moments were disappointments of one kind or another. Couples misses the cut. Tiger's hopes (and ours) for a modern, single-season grand slam are dashed. Heroics are few and far between - Tiger's pitch from the 10th fairway to the 18th green on Friday was about as good as it got. This Masters Sunday back nine was all about failure, and failure is an ingredient used only sparingly in the recipe for memorable competition. If failure were salt, this tourney left us parched (to stretch the metaphor...)
We seem to have entered a chapter in The Masters' story in which this grand old tournament comes to resemble the U.S. Open - and that's a bad thing. The thrilling Sunday back nine has looked more like an episode of Survivor; "Who will make it through the wind and water challenge?" Instead of the roars for which this tournament is known, we heard hushed moans when Sneds dunked it on 13, when Flesch splashed down on 12 before imploding, when Immelman fell short and wet on 16. There were no smiling faces coming up the 18th fairway, even from the leader! Following his tee shot on 18, Immelman let out a sigh of relief. After making his final, winning par, instead of jumping for joy, he had the look of a man who just got a repreive from the Governor! Hats off to Trevor, he played great, withstood the pressure, and earned his first major, but he and a few others might need a little counseling to avoid any PMTSD: Post Masters Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Perhaps this will change with the weather, and even Augusta National's management can't dictate that, but we already have a golf-war-of-attrition every June, ending on Father's Day. The folks at Augusta need to pay a little more attention to how The Open is set up (British, that is) where they seem to continually strike a balance between challenge and reward. Come Spring and the daffodils, the azaleas, that music, and the green jacket, we want to be thrilled! We want to be reminded of what makes The Masters the premiere golf event of the year! We want to be reminded of why we are anxious to make our first tee time of the season! We want to be reminded of how good it can get!
Bring back the roars!
GF
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