My wife will cringe when she reads this as our agreement was for me to make a little money to support my golf addiction and have a new hobby.  I like those ideas too, but I can’t see them very clearly through all of these dad gummed dollar signs!  After all, I have what it takes, right?  I’m focused on success, working hard to find sellable inventory, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about my product, a pro on eBay (100% positive feedback!!!)….yada, yada, yada.  So why have I been doing this for a week with nothing to show for it?  Here’s why – IT’S HARD!  So far, I’ve been outbid on all of the merchandise while following the “buy on eBay” tip, I’ve nearly purchased a set of counterfeit Ping G10s from China, and found “to good to be true”  deals……with a slight catch……. SHIPPING CHARGES OF $100 OR MORE!! I’ve also flirted with buying a pallet of “lost and found” golf clubs off a dock in Jersey that somehow reminded me of an episode of the Sopranos.  After determining that I wasn’t going to get rich by relying on eBay as my supplier and I didn’t want to be in federal prison or “vacationing with the fishes” my thoughts turned to finding a good reliable (cheap) wholesaler.  So I did what any respectable Wal-Mart executive would do and set my sights on China.  Lots and lots of exporters out there from China.  Unbelievable deals are advertised on every website.  There seems to be an underlying reason for that.  After getting over my initial shock and awe at these bargain basement prices on name brand cutting edge stuff, I started looking deeper and deeper and I’m now convinced that EVERYTHING shipped out of China is counterfeit.  Hell, even their own products might be counterfeit just to stay consistent.  Now that little detail may not have derailed a lot of folks but my conscience told me to stay away.  That little characteristic of my psyche may ultimately prove to be my downfall.  Drat! Foiled again.  Not ready to give up the good fight just yet though.

So this last Saturday morning, I was reading the local e-edition of the newspaper and drinking coffee when I discovered that there was a garage sale in my neighborhood.  Hmm….I thought.  Most of the people around here are old and white.  What do old white men do?…..THEY PLAY GOLF!  So I threw my family in the car and off we went.  Now the sale was only about 3 blocks away, but I figured we best have the car if I found a few random sets of new Callaways and Taylor Mades for peanuts.  Not quite.  I did find an old TM Burner Bubble in good shape, a Callaway BB Fusion demo 6 iron and a couple of Tight Lies clones.  Paid a dollar a piece for them.  I can’t imagine that I won’t make several times that on eBay but we’ll see.  Obviously, I’m not going to make a living picking up old clubs here and there from yard sales but at least at this point, I should start this venture off in the black.  I’ll keep you updated.  Cheers!

You can also order food from the clubhouse via most GPS devices.  No more wasting time at the turn.  Order on #7, pick up after #9 and off you go.  I’ve always been happy to see the GPS screen in my golf cart before the round, but I recently had an experience that was a little eerie that makes me think twice about them.

I was playing a new course in Erie (how ironic), Colorado about a month ago and had a minor run in with my golf cart.  The cart won as you will soon see.  The course is called Vista Ridge.  It’s a beautiful course with a great layout.  I highly recommend it if you’re ever in the area.  It’s a little pricey ($78 is what I paid) but you can probably get a better rate for a twilight round.  Since I had never played the course before and it was quite hilly, I wasn’t surprised to drive up over a mound and see that I was closer than I should have been to the green.  I got out to hit my ball and noticed that the cart was beeping at me.  At first I thought I hadn’t set the parking break and it might be rolling a bit.  Nope.  Cart stationary.  Break engaged.  The cart was still beeping.  I blocked out the noise and hit my shot.  It was a good one as I recall.  I then wiped the turf from my wedge, stuck it back in my bag and boarded the still beeping cart.  I pressed the accelerator to remove myself from this “no cart zone” and nothing happened.  I double checked the fwd – rev button and found no problem.  I checked the key to make sure I hadn’t bumped it off.  Nope, that’s not it.  At this point, I’m thinking that the battery must be dead so I look to the video monitor to see if there is a way to contact the clubhouse.  Now I notice that there is a warning on the screen telling me that I am not allowed to drive the cart in this area.  I am instructed to press the glowing green button to reactivate my cart and proceed to any position on the course outside the restricted area.  I pressed said button and pushed on the foot feed.  The cart at full throttle proceeded at the blazing rate of about 2 mph.  As I drove back up the fairway past the no carts sign, my cart accelerated to normal speed and I resumed play.  This same scenario occurred once more during my round and from there I had this very strange feeling I was being watched……and somewhat controlled. Very discomforting.  As I approached the clubhouse at the turn, my cart automatically slowed to 10 mph and the screen flashed “Clubhouse Speed Limit 10”.  Once again, I was a little uncomfortable at how someone or something else was calling the shots.  I had no incidences of this kind on the back 9.  In fewer than nine holes, I had been conditioned to be extremely vigilant regarding where I was allowed to go and how fast I could go there.  I followed the arbitrary rules imposed by the Vista Ridge Golf Club because they had deployed technology that gave me no choice.  There’s something inherently wrong with that sort of thing…and not just at the golf course.

Of course there are always games within games going on every day.  Everyone puts a little cash in the kitty to start with and over the course of the long weekend, approximations of handicaps are calculated and a winner is declared after Saturday afternoon’s round.  We don’t generally have to worry about anyone setting a higher than deserved handicap.  We’re all pretty familiar with each others abilities and none of us are really good enough to execute a controlled sandbag.  There is an “awards banquet” (if beer and little smokies counts as a banquet) in whoever’s room is the biggest/cleanest on Saturday evening.  Small, appropriate trinkets are handed out for various titles such as Most Lost Balls, Giantest Score and The Shit Shingo award. This last and most coveted award is named after an obscure reference to a shot that Shingo Katayama once hit in a PGA event.  It’s given to the golfer who hits the most heinous of shots that actually ends up back in the fairway or on the green.  The Sunday round is just for winding down and rehashing and selectively remembering the mostly juvenile behavior of the previous evening.  

Although the 4 days of golf is always great, the best things that come out of Golffest are the lasting memories.  Every time I play a weekend round with any of the “Festers”, someone invariably makes a reference to something that happened at a previous Golffest. 

One of these memories really stands out.  I’ll try to do it justice here:

My foursome was playing a par 4 parallel to a par 5 running the opposite direction.  The fairways were separated by a ravine about 50 yards wide. The guys ahead of us are four of our Festers.  The beverage cart had caught up with them as they were arriving at the par 5 tee box so they freshened their drinks and grabbed some snacks.  Business as usual.  While we were putting out on the par 4, we notice them all driving back towards the tee box laughing uncontrollably. Seriously, this is the kind of laughter you usually only associate with a 5 year old enduring relentless tickling at the hands of an ornery uncle.  They could hardly breathe.  We couldn’t imagine what could have been so funny but we just continued to play behind them for a couple more holes. Finally, we arrived at the tee box of a drivable par 4 where their group was waiting to tee off.  Still red faced and giggling, they struggled to fill us in on the details.  As I said, the beverage cart had met them at the par 5 tee box.  We remembered that the young lady driving the cart was remarkably pretty.  She was really quite flawless as I recall.  We had learned during our provisioning with her that her day job was as a cast member on a local Austin, TX soap opera.  She looked the part.  Apparently, the fellows ahead of us had been so smitten by her, they had forgotten to tee off and were 200 yards down range before they noticed that there were no balls to find.  They never seemed to recover that day from a scoring perspective but they were drunk on laughter for a day or so afterward.  I’ll take that trade off.

Golffest 2008 is coming up in late October.  I’ll make sure to post a recap once I return.

Besides the thumbs up on project 40 x 41, she gave me something else I had never had…..a brand new box of a dozen Titleist Pro V1s. I would sometimes buy a box of refurbed Pro Vs or I’d play one I found in the woods or fished out of a pond, but this was a brand spankin’ new box. I kinda felt like a person does when they’ve gotten a brand new car. You can’t wait to drive it all around town or go on a road trip but for the first few months you can’t even park it away from home for fear of getting scratches or door dings. If you’re not used to playing premium golf balls, I suggest you go and get a box. The balls themselves may or may not make you play better, but if you’re like me, they’ll encourage you to make better decisions on the course when it comes to risk. It pains me to no end when I lose a $4 ball. I’m cheap that way. In order to experience this feeling less often, I found myself doing things on the course that had never crossed my mind before. I concentrated harder. I chose higher percentage shots. I watched errant shots more carefully in order to give me a better chance of finding them The net of this new attitude was fewer penalty strokes. Depending on the course, it didn’t always translate into lower scores, but I sure felt better about my rounds and I had a lot more fun. I did finally lose all of these balls but that dozen lasted me longer than any dozen balls I’ve ever had. Try it sometime. It might work for you too.

With all the holiday travel, shopping, events etc, I didn’t get to start my quest until after Christmas. I had been wanting to play a resort course in the hills above a lake near my mothers house. My sister and her family were visiting for the holidays so I persuaded my Brother-in-law to tee it up with me and get this thing started. We woke up to a cold and gloomy morning but not to worry, I had checked the forecast the day before. The high was supposed to be 36 degrees Fahrenheit with a chance of snow flurries. AWESOME! No lightning so we were good to go! What we didn’t know was that the high for that day was reached before we got up at around 6am. Did I mention that the course was in the hills above a lake? Did I mention that it’s windy in this part of the country? Frickin’, frackin’ cold is what it was! By the time we completed our round, it was snowing lightly, our extremities were useless and snot had frozen our mouths shut. At least this way I my Brother-in-law couldn’t cuss me for insisting that he come along. That was the second coldest round I’ve every played, but that’s another story for another post.

So off I went, determined to complete this year long journey. I’ve played 25 new courses so far and I’ve got my yearly golf buddy trip (Golffest 2008 – will post on this later) coming up so I’m still on track to finish my 40. Most of these courses are within a few hours of my home. A few of them are a little farther away. I’m keeping all the scorecards and entering my rounds into an online USGA handicap system. I was hoping to see a downward trend in my scores but so far, They’ve been pretty consistent. I guess that’s to be expected when only playing courses I’ve never seen before.

From time to time, I’ll post a review of a new course I’ve played. Hopefully, this blog will be around long enough to get all 40 in the books.

1.  Women don’t suffer from ego overload.

2.  Women don’t fart or belch out loud. If they do, it’s accidental and it won’t happen again.

3.  Women don’t drive the cart like they have a death wish.

4.  Women rarely feel that they have to play the tips to prove their womanliness.

5.  Women smell better than men.

6.  Women don’t cheat at golf.

7.  Women don’t get so hammered that they get cut off by the drink cart attendant.

8.  Women don’t screw around, they just play.

9.  Women don’t piss in the trees.

10. I like women

As soon as we got back, I called up the JMGC and scheduled my day of golf. It would include 1 hour of biomechanics assessment, 1 hour of club fitting and 3 hours of lessons with a JMGC Master Instructor. A break for lunch was mixed in there somewhere. On a bright shiny Thursday morning in July, I was met in the parking lot by the biomechanics technician and manager of this particular JMGC. He took my bag and led me to a well lit room draped in black cloth. Several machines were present along with a 50 inch plasma TV mounted on the right side wall. Little did I know at that point that I could hate a TV so much. After letting me warm up hitting some 5 irons into the dark curtains, Justin (JMGC man) hooked me up to several electrodes. One on my head, one in my glove, one on my hip. I’m sure there were others but I don’t remember where they were. There was also a belt around my waist that had a wiring harness coming out of it. Sounds uncomfortable but it wasn’t bad actually. I hit several more balls wearing this apparatus and then Justin had seen enough. He was a pretty low key guy but he almost seemed alarmed. He showed me some numbers that had come up on his computer and explained to me what they meant. I kinda got it but I’m a visual person so it wasn’t until he played back a video of my swing that I understood the gravity of what had happened. I’ve watched enough golf on TV, Instructional shows on the Golf Channel and have read enough Golf Digest to know what a decent swing is supposed to look like. I think you know where I’m going here. Mine was not that swing. Almost nothing about it was that swing. To add insult to injury, before fully process the horror that was my swing, he split the screen and put a video of Adam Scott right beside me! ADAM FREAKIN SCOTT! At that moment, I think I felt like the guy on the nude beach with the smallest genitalia and no towel to use for cover. Lots of words came to mind. Hopeless, demoralized, embarrassed ….etc….etc….you get the picture. In a situation like this, the only way it could be worse is if more people see it. Well, guess what. None other than Jim McLean walks in to talk to Justin. JIM FREAKIN MCLEAN! What the hell is he doing here? Doesn’t he live in Florida? Of course he can’t help but see my side by side going on in HD on the wall. After discussing with Justin for about a minute, he turns to leave the room and says something to the effect of “Try to hang in there”. Thanks Jim. Now back to work. After being told that my hip flexors were made of cement and my right ass cheek was trying to play a different tee box, some excellent adjustments were suggested to put out the immediate fires. Very unnatural feeling adjustments but necessary…oh so necessary. We spent the rest of our time in the Vader room trying to establish a swing thought or technique to help keep me in a better position during my backswing. I’m sure there was more that needed to be addressed but after all, this was only the 1 day school. With some well wishes, Justin passed me off to the club fitter. He was setting up the launch monitor on the range so I just hit some balls to warm up and talked with him about nothing in particular until he was ready. I’ve been on a launch monitor before but nothing like this one. It was manufactured by a Danish company that uses radar technology derived from a missile tracking system. Once again, very high tech. He asked me to hit some six irons for the machine. Armed with my new posture fresh out of biomechanics, I confidently set up and smashed a high draw right at the target. “This is working out great” I thought to myself. He asked how far I normally flew my six iron. “I’d like to say 160″ I replied, “but realistically I’ve lost some distance since I turned 30 so it’s probably more like 150″. One hundred and thirty two yards. 1 STINKIN hundred and 32 yards. My totally smashed 6 iron traveled 132 yards in the air. How could this be? Humbled once again, I was told that the Master Instructor would have some suggestions on how to increase my distance so, not to worry. We determined that my current irons which had been fit for me at another establishment were adequate and my driver was fine. I hit some more balls off a lie board and then we went up to the shop to flatten the lies on my irons and talk hybrids.

Lunch break.

Met the Wife and Daughter for a bite to eat. Put on a good face. Didn’t let them see the panic. Threw up after lunch.

Back at the range, Joey greeted me in the members area. Joey didn’t look like a Master Instructor….but he was. He had me hit some six irons…..hey…what is it about 6 irons? All the demos and club fitting irons are six irons. Never my favorite club. Oh well. He didn’t really offer any advice, just watched and filmed from back and side. After about 15 balls, we took the camera back up the hill to another darkly decorated room with a hitting bay…..and a TV. He plugged the video camera into a computer on a desk at the back of the room. He showed me my swing in super slo-mo…OH FUN……and then sat me down beside him while he drew lines on the images to show me where things should have been. The good thing about my situation was that there was no doubt or debate about where my shortcomings were. No sir……pretty obvious. Even with the most excellent adjustments made by Justin, I still needed a lot of fundamental work. We spent over an hour in the bay just taking ½ swings on the correct swing plane. Once I got into a little bit of a groove, we went back out to the range and I hit some more balls while Joey wrote up some notes and drills for me to take home. We ended the day working on some putting. Much to my surprise, there wasn’t much wrong with my stroke. I just needed to work on my green reading and alignment. Joey had few tips and then we were done. They all waived and said good luck as I made my way to my car. Hot, and exhausted, I drove home and slept well.

Two days later I went to the range to practice my new swing. I had done my drills each night before bed and was ready for the improvement to begin. I sucked. That’s the only way to put it. I’ve never hit the ball that badly in my life. Worse yet, I bought the large bucket which only prolonged the agony. I just can’t leave a range ball I paid for in the bucket. Over the next few days, I fought off the almost overwhelming urge to quit golf for good. I finally settled down, did my drills and went back to the range. Different range this time. Bad karma at the other. Whether it was the Great Golf Pumpkin watching out for me or just dumb luck, it got better. Not very consistent but there were glimmers of hope starting to appear. I mishit a lot of shots, but the ones I hit solidly were some of the prettiest I’ve ever hit. Distance was improving as well.

Here we are a month after my very eventful and …um….informative day a the JMGC. I’m better than I was. Getting better all the time. It was really a difficult day physically and mentally but my final take is that it was all worth it. If you really want to get better and look good doing it, save your change, get a part time job, sell some old clubs. Whatever it takes, get to the nearest golf school and strap it on! I’ll bet you won’t be sorry.

This last Sunday though, Phil failed painfully as he has done too many times on the big stage.  I’ve been an apologist.  I’ve made excuses for him to my friends.  I’ve blamed his final round faltering on bad luck or unfair course setup……but the fact is, Phil’s brain seems to head to the scorers tent while his body is lining up an approach shot 10 yards left of the 15^th fairway.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad if it was just his nerves causing him to underperform.  Seems to me, his nerves are fine.  He actually just makes really poor decisions at very crucial times down the stretch.  I know that his recovery shots are often otherworldly and he gets away with a lot of mistakes because of it.  But sooner or later, with the pressure of trying to bring home the hardware against the likes of Singh, Els, Garcia….etc and lest we forget, Tiger, all that grinding is bound to tap out his luck. 

All Phil had to do last Sunday, up by 1 on the downhill side of the back nine, is hit fairways and greens and he’s in the clubhouse hugging that really ugly trophy.  How many of us would be thrilled to hit a nice little 3 wood draw off the tee that comes to rest somewhere in the 280 yard range?  Did that cross your mind Phil?  Could that be a safe, effective way to put this one away Phil?  Alas, no.  Instead of plunging a dagger into the hearts of his worthy opponents by splitting the remaining few fairways, swashbuckling Phil whips out his  big, giant whuppin’ stick and proceeds to smash, bash and pummel his scorecard all the way into a tie for 4th.  I know that he and Bones (Jim MacKay – long time Mickelson friend and caddie) have a great relationship and til death do they part but come on……..don’t you imagine that Bones sometimes just has to close his eyes and feel grateful that the purses are so large nowadays that he won’t have to worry about getting paid once the bodies have been counted?  It’s one thing for Phil to go for the crowd pleaser in Milwaukee or the 84 Lumber Classic (no offense to these great tourneys) but to consistently cut his own throat in a WGC or a major (see Winged Foot 2006) is just beyond the bounds of sanity.  You gotta give yourself a chance, man! 

Annika Sorenstam once said that as a junior golfer, she’d throw tournaments in the closing holes of the final round because she was shy and didn’t like the attention commonly showered upon the winner.  One thing Phil definitely does not fear is the glow of the limelight.  So what is his problem?  He’s a smart guy.  In my opinion, he’d be a smart guy with a few more wins if he’d just keep it in his pants late on Sunday.  Love ya Phil!