A Golfer's Optimism For Life

It's not just golf we work on when we work on golf

Hickory Woods, No. 18 (Me)

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This is The Year. I know it like I know my own power-fade off the first tee. The one that misses the fairway that slopes right at a 45-degree angle, through the skinned rough and down into the deep forest. The place isn’t called Hickory Woods for nothin’. The right rough at No. 1 is a damned magnet.

It doesn’t matter, though. Not this Year. I have Found Something. It’s a wonderful something, better than somewhere over the rainbow, better than putting like Phil Mickelson.

Every new golf season, I find something, a new Rubik’s Cube in my swing that I’m convinced will loose me from Double Bogeyland. A deeper turn, a fuller follow-through. I spent a year saying “low and slow’’ to myself before each shot, convinced a low-slow swing would aid my tempo and keep me from topping the ball.

. . . and all year my tempo was a jagged line and I topped the ball.

That doesn’t matter now. I have found the new secret.