Shane Bertsch

I read a couple of weeks ago in a golf rag that Shane Bertsch had just missed the cut in the season's final tournament and in doing so had fallen to no. 126 on the money list, just narrowly missing out on fully-exempt status for the coming golf season. The gist of the story, though, was that we were to feel sorry for him because due to confusion surrounding his medically-exempt status for 2008 he didn't realize he hadn't already secured his card for 2009. I finished the article and couldn't help but feel a little annoyed at the fact that a guy who made well over half-a-million dollars this year playing golf (!) was actually trying to elicit sympathy from the work-a-day world of people who read golf magazines because he wasn't "smart enough" to understand what he had to do keep his job for the immediate future. I don't know of too many factory workers who can show up late for their shift and say they didn't know they were supposed to be there earlier who still keep their jobs for very long. And this guy had more then ample information from the Tour advising him of his situation that he claimed he "didn't read because he's on the road all the time and who has time to read all their mail anyways." Seriously, I don't feel sorry for this guy at all. I know he's no pampered superstar but still, he has a great gift for playing the game we all love and he couldn't figure out how to keep doing it against the best players in the world? No sympathy here.

Golfing And Ice Skating

My buddies and I played golf this afternoon and saw something none of us had ever seen before. As we were coming down the 18th fairway we looked over and saw kids ice skating on the pond bordering the 10th green. Golf and Ice Skating are two games/past-times whose paths don't usually cross. I've always thought the seasons were complementary, if you will, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe it was too cold to be playing golf but I don't think so. A nice sweater and stocking cap and some choppers to keep the hands warm in between shots was all I needed to stay loose and comfortable. Sure, the ponds bordering the fairways and guarding the greens were certainly frozen. But who wouldn't enjoy hitting balls off of them and watching them bounce back onto the playing surfaces. I drove the ball just short of the green on the par-4 1st hole, a hole which measures some 350-yards in length. And I'm no John Daly, mind you. But the frozen water next to the fairway and fronting the green provided a perfect trampoline for a low draw with the driver off the tee and Boing! Boing! there goes the ball right up by the putting surface. It was crazy, indeed. Crazy fun.

Golf In The Dark

I played golf in the dark last night. Sure I've played as it was getting dark before--many times in fact. But yesterday, as I was feeling the end of the season drawing ever nearer, I decided to keep playing well into and after it was dark. It took a little more concentration to "feel" where the ball was going, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that balls hit reasonably well on a course you are familiar with can be found with just a little extra attention paid in the dark. If the ground hadn't been speckled with fallen leaves who knows how much easier it would have been to find my balls? Still, I managed to par two of the four holes I played in the dark (I lost four balls on the other two--thanks, leaves) and couldn't have been happier to find both my drive and my second shot on the par-5 finishing hole right where I expected them to be. If you've never tried it I urge all you serious golfers out there to play in the dark sometime before you hang up the spikes for good, preferably by yourself. You'll be amazed at what you discover about your game.

The Rules of Golf

I realized the other day, after consulting the rules of golf, that I was in err on October 18th when my playing partners ball hit mine while it was at rest further down the fairway and I proceeded to play my ball as it lay. Turns out I should have replaced my ball where it lay before it was struck by his ball in motion but I did not. I should have assessed myself a two-stroke penalty for the hole and signed for a 7, not a 5. My apologies to the karmic gods of golf--I acted not out of selfishness but of ignorance and I promise it won't happen again. Seriously though, given that I and the rest of my playing companions were some 200-yards down the fairway when the collision of golf balls happened, I'm not sure how I was supposed to realistically assume with any accuracy where my ball had originally come to rest. It seemed more "accurate" and perhaps appropriate to just continue the hole playing my ball where it lay after it had been moved by my opponents ball. Oh well, live and learn.

Billiards On The Golf Course

Playing the par-5 7th hole at my home course yesterday a most curious thing happened to me. I'd hit a decent drive down the left side, just into the rough and short of the fairway bunker. It was sitting up nicely so I was able to get a 3-wood on it for my second and I made good enough contact with it to leave myself just under 100 yards for my third shot into the green. One of my playing partners (who had driven the ball some 30-yards further than me off the tee) was sitting in the middle of the fairway and prepared to challenge the green with another driver, this time off the deck. He hit it hard and low and somewhere around 100 yards from the green it landed, bounced once and then crashed into my ball, kicking it forward and to the right. My playing partners ball caromed directly sideways into the rough and behind a tree. Talk about rub of the green? It looked like we were playing billiards out there, for pete's sake. Not knowing how to proceed, I assumed that since it was impossible for me to accurately estimate where my ball actually lay before it was struck by my playing partners ball (I was roughly 200 yards away at the time of the collision) that I should just play it as lay after the contact. And for those of you who are interested, I proceeded to chip onto the green and make a routine two-putt par while my partner hit a miraculous low hook-chip to the back of the green and then dropped a bomb from about 30 feet that hit at least 5 different leaves on its way to the bottom of the cup for the most unlikely of birdies. Rub of the green, I guess.

The Shank

I hate to even type the word (let alone say it) but I have to after what happened to me today. I went to the golf course this morning to play in a two-man tourney at my club and God help me if I didn't shank my opening tee shot about 80 yards forwards and 40 yards to the right. Luckily my partner got it over the water on our par-3 starting hole and I was able to chip us close enough to make a par. The next hole, however, was a par-5 and was to be played alternate-shot. I hit a decent drive so my partner hit a 3-wood up within 125 yards of the green. And then, you guessed it, I shanked our third shot 80 yards forwards and 40 yards to the right. We went on to double-bogey that hole and the next hole, a long par-4 that I half-shanked a 7-iron just to the right of the green for our third shot. About to cry and about to walk off the golf course, we managed to steady the ship and play the next four alternate-shot holes in 1-over par and then somehow (and to this minute I still don't know how) I managed to play the next six holes of better ball in 1-under par. What a comeback, I must say. We managed little in the last five holes of scramble (even par, we were) and finished the tourney as a team at 1-over. Considering we were 5-over after the first four holes and I was fighting the shanks something fierce, I'd say we had a pretty good showing.

'Tis The End of The Season (Almost)

Up north here in Minnesota the golf season is winding down. We can no longer post scores for handicapping purposes as of next Wednesday and as the nights come sooner and the mornings get colder, the playable hours of the day dwindle with each passing sunset. We're usually still playing in early November but only on weekends and more than likely only at run-down municipal tracks. The one closest to my house was open into December a few years back and they didn't even move the holes for the last three weeks of the year. The greens were as hard as my driveway and those oft-used hole locations were worn out and the size of a kid's basketball by the time they finally closed their doors for the winter. Its time to start thinking about improvements to the game that can only be made over the winter, like what new clubs to get and what new swing thoughts to start implementing. I'm sure I'll start jogging on the treadmill again and maybe even start doing some push-ups and sit-ups this year. I'm not getting any younger and golf courses certainly aren't getting any shorter. Oh well, maybe tomorrow I'll finally make my first hole-in-one. I've still got a few more weeks of dreaming about how I'm going to play the game I love.