October 7, 2007

ALPINE LAKE, WV — An editorial commentary by GStan - Continued

Part 3 – The Front Nine

Hole 1 I have only a small swig of the Jungle Juice before teeing off.  Bro’s tee shot is not long but it is next to the cart path and still in birdie range off the tee, so I’m able to launch one and it ends up within 10 feet of the dance floor, the 3rd one I’ve hit within that range in four days, including one on the green.  We hit only average chips and two-putted for a par that felt like a bogey.  Slick and Bartlett play from across the road, then from the greenside bunker, making an unimpressive 5 at the first.  They should have paid Boland some money for that performance on number 1.

Hole 2 We boringly make par as most groups would expect to do on a hole with almost no danger.  The jungle juice is tasting surprisingly good.  Slick bombs his drive past the bell, but little does he know that his second shot would be the last shot of the front nine that he would play from the fairway.  He hits a tree with his second shot, but they avoid danger and are able to save par.

Hole 3 Bro dutifully smacks one toward the green, perhaps 50 yards short.  I hit one flush, right at the stick, but it’s the wrong club, and we are 10 yards short of the green with the pin in the front.  Bartlett hits his 6th consecutive shot that travels less than 50 yards.  Slick flexes his muscles and is, of course, over the green with his tee shot.  But at least there are no clubs in any of the trees.  Bro is not drinking jungle juice, but he’s still in the zone, probably because he’s on beer number 7 already.  He chips to about 6 inches from the cup, a kick-in par.  After chipping his own ball, Slick asks, “Is that good?”  I reply, “Uhh, Slick, you’re still six feet away and it’s going to break at least two feet, ya better putt it just to be sure.”  Bogey for Slick and Bartlett.  Through hole 3, GStan and Bro: E; Slick and Bartlett: +2

Hole 4 I’m 2/3 of the way through my first bottle of Jungle Juice.  I’m just beginning to feel the tension slowly vacate my body.  If it would only get out of my head, we might just be able to keep playing well.  Hole 4 and Hole 13 have my number at Golfapalooza.  No matter how well I’m hitting the lumber, I have some sort of mental block against getting the ball in the air on those two holes.  On 4, I have hit it into the rough 50 yards in front of the tee box for 3 consecutive days.  I get no comfort from the fact that at least I hit them all straight.  Bro removes all pressure from me again by hitting it 150 yards up the hill on the right side of the fairway, (just like Slick’s tip book says to do,) par is virtually a lock.  Like any real man in this situation, I say “f&ck it!” throw down the 4 iron and stupidly grab the driver yet again.  â€œSo that’s what a good tee shot on this hole feels like,” I say to myself after my swing.  Its drawing left into the rough, but I could care less, it’s farther from the tee box than my 3 previous drives on this hole combined.  Slick and Bartlett are on the hillside to the right of the fairway.  Bro and I are 250 away in the rough, but have a clear path to the green.  Bro blasts one that stops in the middle of the fairway, 75 yards in front of the green.  This is where the Jungle Juice really starts to kick in.  I have nothing in the bag to hit it 200 from the rough, let alone 250, but I’m going to wail on this 4-iron because I’ve got nothing to lose.  Usually, (at least for me), that attitude results in a 20 yard top, or worse, a whiff.  Somehow I caught it on the sweet spot and the golf gods carried the ball to nearly pin high, just behind the mounds to the left of the green.  (Shot #1 of the best golf shots I’ve ever hit.)  Just 15 feet worth of good chip stands between us and an eagle.  We do not hit good chips and instead, leave ourselves above the hole.  We are only 10 feet from birdie, but the ball will have to travel a 26 foot arc along the break to get to the hole.  We’ll take our par.  Slick and Bartlett save par.  

Hole 5 This is one of two shots out of 74 where Bro and I both hit bad shots.  Bro’s tee shot was playable, but 225 from the green.  I nutted one down the left side, that somehow stayed left and we couldn’t find it.  Slick and Bartlett play their second shots from up on the hill near the road.  After good lay-ups and decent approaches, we are unable to drop a 12 footer to save par, the first blemish on the scorecard.  Somehow, Slick and Bartlett manage a par.  I’m sure they cheated.

Hole 6 Still stinging from the lost ball on 5, and also from Slick’s comment that I am drinking like a sorority chick, I polish off bottle #1 of the Juice, and crack open #2.  Bro polishes off his 13th beer, and Bartlett decides he needs some Jungle Juice.  Slick puts his tee shot in the woods, Bartlett hits his 13th consecutive shot that fails to travel 50 yards, and Bro scales the hill to within a 15 yard birdie chip.  I stand on the box, 2-iron in hand, and patiently wait, as I feel 9 years worth of pain and frustration over never hitting this green flow out of me.  It was so relaxing.  I had to stop and look down at my shorts to make sure the feeling wasn’t just me urinating on myself.  It wasn’t a picture perfect shot, but it was a picture perfect result.  (Shot #2 of the best golf shots I’ve ever hit.) It started at the left bunker, fading to the right and rolling up onto the middle of the green.  As we pulled up, we could see that it was pin high and just 15 feet from birdie.  I close my eyes and picture an ugly woman in an effort to restrain a well-earned but possibly highly embarrassing erection.  We have plenty of time to line up the left-to-right putt while Slick and Bartlett survey the forest to the right of the green looking for Slick’s ball.  Somehow, they find it with a clear line to chip; go figure.  We can’t drop the birdie, but Slick and Bartlett can’t save their par.  Through hole 6, Slick and Bartlett: +3, GStan and Bro: +1.

Hole 7 After reaching the green on 6 for the first time ever, (which is probably 35 previous attempts,) I decide that there might be something to the Jungle Juice and start drinking it a little faster.  Slick blasts one off the tee, not in the fairway though of course.  Bro hits about 175 out on the right side of the fairway.  I give a lot of credit for this round to Jungle Juice, but I can’t even describe how easy it is to hit a golf ball in a scramble when you always still have a realistic shot at birdie, even if you play your ‘alleged’ B-player’s shot.  (Thanks again Bro! Good luck with that Ace!)  So, having consumed some more tequila, and allowed it to consume me, its time for the fun to begin.  I hammer a drive down the left side and it fades on my command, but it is not quite enough fade, as a hard left bounce sends it toward the trees.  We find it with a clear shot to the green, with the only one problem.  I think hitting a shot directly from the cart path, (even taking a divot!), would have the potential to do less damage to your club than hitting from the dirt to the left of number 7.  How in the hell does that stuff stay so firm?  We base our decision to hit mine on the handy phrase from whence so many legends have been born: “f&ck it!”  Bro, yet again, puts us in great birdie position, directly in the middle of the fairway with 110 yards to the middle of the green.  I’m high on Juice, so I decide to wail on the 4-iron again, this time risking loss of club and/or limb, by hitting off the stainless steel clay.  And what else would you expect from a Jungle Juice induced swing but a completely pure shot, right on target, farther than I should be able to hit the ball, that stops just to the right of the green?  (Shot #3 of the best golf shots I’ve ever hit.)  Just forty feet of good chip stands between us and an eagle.  Slick puts his second shot pin high, six feet away from an eagle.  I hate him.  As we walk onto the green, I jokingly tell Bartlett that I am going to mark their ball because we are going to make our chip and his ball is right on our line.  Bro, of course, chips pin high, six feet below the hole, an excellent shot at birdie, so I can go straight for the hole.  My chip landed about 8 feet on the green and was in the hole the entire way, following the path I had just envisioned 10 seconds earlier as I took my practice swings.  (Shot #4 of the best shots I’ve ever hit.)  I don’t really know how loud I yelled or how high I jumped as the ball gently kissed the flagstick and fell in, but I firmly believe that if I had heard such a roar coming from another group, it would have been totally demoralizing.  I could see initially from the look on Slick and Bartlett’s faces that my reaction was a bit more than they were expecting.  They cheered right along with Bro and I though.  As I said in the prelude to this article, during my Golfapalooza career, I always seem to be listening to the hooting and hollering that goes on around the golf course, and never among the group participating in it.  This felt quite good.  Bro and I chest-bumped like a couple of wide receivers celebrating a touchdown.  He would later admit, “I’ve done some chest bumps in my life, but never one where both guys were 3 feet off the ground.”  Three inches or three feet, who cares, it felt like thirty feet.  I did not even try to think of that ugly woman from back on 6; instead, I proudly sported the proverbial ‘is that a banana in your pocket’ look.  So now we look back at Slick and Bartlett.  Just a few seconds prior, they were looking at a six foot putt for an eagle, a skin, maybe a long putt and picking up one, possibly two shots, on us.  Now they HAVE to make a six foot eagle just to PUSH the skin and not LOSE any ground to us.  Slick seriously asks, “Is that good?  Since you just made that great chip?”  â€œUhhh, Slick, you’re still six feet away, you’ve got some break, ya better putt it just to be sure.”  They miss.  I think they both need more Jungle Juice.  Through hole 7, Slick and Bartlett: +2, GStan and Bro: -1.

Hole 8 Slick and Bartlett both miss the green to the right.  I don’t know why they keep teeing off first when we are totally kicking their asses.  Bro hits pin high into the right rough, we can still par from there.  So I step onto the box, expecting to hit the same 2 iron fade that got me onto 6 for the first time ever.  I have to wait a few minutes until my woody from the last hole subsides, so it doesn’t interfere with my swing path.  I catch it flush, but without the fade and we end up pin high in the left rough.  We both make uneventful bogeys, a good score at 8, and proceed to the ninth tee.

Hole 9 Despite the bogey, I’m still feeling invincible from the eagle two holes ago.  Slick and Bartlett take the box again, even though they’ve only won one hole on the entire front nine.  Bartlett takes his 17th consecutive full swing that fails to produce a shot of 50 yards.  I’m amazed at how completely satisfied and unaffected he is after each dud.  Maybe he’s matured to the point where he realizes that he can only expect to get as much out of his golf game as he puts into it.  Maybe he’s been adding Knob to his Tequila Sunrises.  Whatever.  He’s happy and I’m happy for him.  Slick hits a great looking shot, again, that ends up in the woods, again.  Bro puts it in the middle of the fairway about 150 from the green.  Since par is virtually guaranteed, its time for me to show everyone how large my genitals are and try to go over the trees for the green.  (I don’t know why everyone talks about trying to hit over the hotel.  Over the trees is where the green is.  There is no possible way a ball that travels over the hotel can get on the green unless it hits a tree, a rock, or someone’s head.)  Anyway, I caught it pretty solid, but it was nowhere near high enough and it buried itself in the trees.  Just for fun, while Slick and Bartlett continued their ritual of exploring the woods on every hole, I rode up to see if by some miracle, my ball had shot through the trees.  It had not, but we did find it, in the trees, about 40 yards from the green with a clear path to the front of the green.  In retrospect, choosing to play it was the one error in strategery we made all day.  In our zone, one of us would certainly have put Bro’s ball in the middle of the green for an easy two-putt.  Instead we chipped from the woods to the right fringe.  Neither of us could stop the ball chipping back down the hill, and we both missed the twelve-footer coming back up for par.  Slick and Bartlett managed to find their ball and matched our bogey.  That was a front nine 37 for Bro and I, and a little better chipping at 1, 4, 8 and 9 could have easily put us in red figures.  Slick and Bartlett shot the ugliest 40 you’ll ever see in your life.  Were it not for good approaches and chips, it could have been a 50.

To be concluded...