by Howard Jaymes on July 23, 2009
Call me crazy, but I truly believe it is possible for a hack like me to one day, shoot a par round of golf. Better yet, call me insane, because I also believe I can do this without taking lessons. Or, maybe I should just be committed to an insane asylum now; I say this because currently, my average score is nowhere near par. The only time scratch happens on the course for me, is when I am trying to relieve the itch from mosquito bites.
I do break 100…………….., every now and again. More often than not, I am hovering just over the 100 mark. I can honestly say though that my scores do not accurately reflect my game, at least in my opinion. Let me explain.
Most of my scores on each hole are bogeys or double bogeys. I manage to get a couple of pars per round, and once in a while I get real lucky and get a birdie or two. It’s those damn blow up holes that bite me in the ass every round! You know the ones; you’re truckin’ along just fine, hitting the ball not too bad and posting scores of one or two over par. All of a sudden for one hole, your game goes south on a fast train to Georgia.
Your drive has every worm on the fairway scurrying for cover and skitters about fifty yards down the fairway. You shank your 3 iron, chip the ball back onto the fairway from the trees, and top your approach shot. You are now lying four on a par four and you’re not even dancing yet. Your short bump and run, runs more than it bumps and you end up on the other side of the green in a bunker. You curse every Scotsman that was ever born as you barely hack the ball back onto the green, leaving yourself a 50 foot putt for triple bogey.
You line up your putt, take your stroke, and to your amazement the green breaks left instead of right leaving you feeling like an illiterate golfer because you can’t read greens. Two more putts and the bleeding finally stops. You pluck your ball from the cup and curse the Scots again because Lord knows, a few more must have been born since you last cursed them from the sand trap.
You mark a 9 on the scorecard and know in your heart that 100 will not be broken this day. You also know that, despite feeling like a man who just walked in on his girlfriend and best friend, all will be forgiven and you will be back. Like the Sirens of the sea, the lure and enchantment of the game is too magnetic to resist. Besides, next game, you will for sure break 100.
The first thing I need to do is eliminate those one or two holes per game with the blow up scores to bring my game into the mid to low nineties. From there, it is just a matter of hard work and perseverance. Maybe I am being naive but my theory is, if you can par one hole, there is no reason you can’t par the next hole, and so on, and so on, and so on. The other thing that has me believing it’s possible to shoot par, is my performance on the driving range. If I ever figure out how to take my range ball striking to the course, I swear to the good Lord above I would give Tiger a run for his money.
There you have it, the reason I started aquestforpar.com because, I am on a quest for par. I may have to admit defeat one day, but if I do figure this damn game out and am successful in my quest, it should give hope to hackers everywhere. And believe me, if a hack like me ever experiences the thrill of shooting par, anyone who ever picks up a club has the potential to do the same.
May the Golf Gods be kind to you,
Howard Jaymes
by Howard Jaymes on July 1, 2009
Editor’s note (that would be me):
In my last installment I wrote that the next chapter in my saga was to be called “The Four Musketeers”, I have, however, decided to switch horses in the middle of the stream. I will leave it at that for now, but in a later post I will explain why I broke a cardinal rule of the great American Cowboy.
In the future, I will refrain from putting a title to a post before I have written it. I know that in the grand scheme of things it is a relatively moot point and that, as the author I am free to use my poetic license as I see fit. I have long known that anal retentiveness is one of my lesser traits, and it is this trait that is responsible for my burning need to set the record straight.
I wrote my last two posts in this series with a humorous slant, and I hope I succeeded in entertaining you. This post adopts a more serious tone and comes from the heart.
Without further logorrhea, I present you with:
Heroes and Friends!
The value of material possessions which society seems to measure us by, have a defined worth. Financially, we are measured by our net worth, which is also definable. The value of true and loyal friendship, however, is immeasurable. True friends are as rare as left-handed golfers on the PGA tour, yet every weekend I get to play golf with three left-handed PGA tour players.
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by Howard Jaymes on June 16, 2009
Continued from,
“The Monkey on my back!”
Meanwhile back home on the range trouble was brewing in paradise, an emotional wedge had grown between my girlfriend and I and our relationship had become as cold as a snowman in the dead of winter. I tried to bunker down and wait out the storm but finally decided to pull the pin, one last bump and I had to run. They say the first cut is the deepest and in my case it was true. We had played our eighteen holes and we didn’t even bother to meet at the 19th hole to rehash our game, our relationship had run it’s course.
It was 2004; a new social media site that would come to be known world wide as facebook was born, Wiarton Willie predicted six more weeks of winter, John Kerry won the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, the last Oldsmobile rolled of the assembly line in Lansing, Michigan and Phil Michelson finally shook the monkey off his back by winning his first major. On the 18th hole, Phil drained a 15 foot birdie putt for a one stroke victory over Ernie Els to win a green jacket at The Masters and erase the title as the best player to never win a major. My claim to fame for 2004 was a failed relationship.
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by Howard Jaymes on June 11, 2009
Hello Blogosphere,
My name is Howard, and I am a golfaholic.
I have a mild addiction to golf, I love to play golf, watch golf, read about golf, talk about golf, tweet about golf and now, I will be blogging about golf. I even dream about golf, mostly I dream that one day, I will actually be good at it. It doesn’t sound like a mild addiction, does it?
I played my first game of golf in the summer of 1987 and while it wasn’t exactly love at first flight, the lure of the game slowly tugged at those places in the brain where our addictions lay dormant, waiting for that first taste of the succulent sweet nectar of whatever forbidden fruit caresses the spot that awakens the inner voice that softly and seductively whispers, “resistance is futile!”
I guess it could be worse, the addiction could be crack cocaine or meth, but then again, both combined would probably be cheaper than a golf addiction. It didn’t take long to realize that the green left over from my paychecks was slowly being chipped away until my take home pay was literally sliced in half. Life got rough for awhile as food, clothing and shelter took a back seat to my addiction and I fell deeper and deeper into the trap. Be fore I knew it, I had puttered away most of my life’s savings to feed my growing and out of control addiction.
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