Synopsis:
Chrissi has informed me that I officially cannot say that child rearing has hindered my ability to get out and play a round of golf. I agree, I am getting in a balanced share. I played this course a lot when going down to the Cape. It is really a good value and a great place to work out your flaws. I have a lot of flaws after the debacle which I call my ROMP play. Never, ever do a major change to your swing just before a big tournament, even if you think that your confidence in your old swing is ZERO, at least you know your flaws. I feel for players like Tiger Woods (even though he really doesn't need my sympathy), when he picks up little bad habits with his swing. Most tour players must correct their problems during the course of a tournament because they never know when those little things are going to happen, and they usually book themselves for tournaments early in the year. So, at least we have the luxury of taking some time off and going to the range to fix problems. Being a little bit pig-headed, I tried to fix them during the week of ROMP and I suffered a bit for it.

Although this is an old course, they just added 9 new holes and split the front nine between holes 4 and 5 and inserted these new ones. So hole #5 is now #14, confused yet?

I played this course with my Dad about two years ago, after he went through his massive rehabilitation. I was so pleased to be out there with him and we had an awesome time. He hadn't played much since, but really was itching to get out, and he set the day up for the foursome, which was my brother Joe, my buddy Nelly and me.

We played what used to be the back 9, but now is a separate 9. High winds were a plenty. The rust showed a bit for my Dad as he worked out his groove. It only took a few holes before he started golfing like I always remembered. A nice controlled game.

My Dad has what I have to call an "obsolete" shot in his bag, at least when it comes to the marketing machine that tells you that there is a club for every shot out there. I have only seen one other golfer do this, and that was out in Arizona this year. Dad was about 30 yards short of the green but in the middle of a tightly mown fairway. He pulled his putter out of the bag and putted it from that distance (a-rumblin' bumblin' stumblin'), right up to about 6 feet of the cup. Usually the ball rolls between 5 and 10 feet. Its the most amazing thing to see. Nobody, I mean nobody does this on a regular basis, but it works for him so well, and it inspires me to give it shot some day.

After 9 holes, my Dad went home and we went out to finish. We got the guy at the counter to agree to let us out on the 18 hole course, promising that we would come back in after 9 (the 9th hole finishes about as far from the clubhouse as possible). Well... we didn't... we went another 18. He's how it looked.

Front side
#1
Well, after working on my swing for 9 holes and getting back to a comfort level, it looks like I shouldn't have monkeyed with my swing the prior week at all. I am surprised that with all the nicknaming of ROMP week, the I wasn't nicknamed "The Tinkerer", since I seem to always be making adjustments aloud, "Hey, its my office, I'll speak on the speakerphone if I want!" Nelly became "Fireball", Dave became "The Sniper", I got a temporary one called "The Comet" that didn't stick, and Pat was "The Tourniquet! Because he applies the pressure!", just kidding, that is what Nelly wants to be called. Anyway, my tinkering lost me about 30 yards of distance (I might have been able to live with 15 or 20) and I didn't gain the control that I hoped for. I didn't realize how pleasing it is to bomb one down the fairway until I started doing it again. Well, anyway, I am back in a big way! My first drive couldn't have been better. I took par very easily.

#3
This is a short, yet tough hole because the green is sloped and elevated, so any miss usually suffers the wrath of Ross (Donald, that is). I missed my approach shot and reached for my new favorite chipping club, the 8. I had a lie on the up-slope. Nelly asked me if that was going to be too strong a club, but I told him that I thought that the slope cancelled out the loft of the club (I actually sounded like a golfer for a minute). I was right. I popped the ball up gently and it ran to about 1 foot. It was a great par.

#5
Just as I was complaining to Nelly about how I had so much trouble getting my putter aligned, I must have started to pay more attention to it and suddenly, everything was rolling in. On #5 after some serious troubled tee shots, I had aboot (South Park Joke) a 50 footer. I rolled the ball up to about a foot. Wow.

#7
I hit the most bizarre but satisfying shot. Noone saw me. Nelly was down an access road looking for his ball. My brother just hit his shot and was driving up. I was in a bunker in 2 and had about 105 to the pin. A tree was partially blocking my way. I hit PW out of the bunker and it clipped a leave or two and then made it over the greenside bunkers, on the green and then rolled up to about 3 feet. I was going absolutely crazy. It was the best sand shot that I hit in years and from the sand! I sank the par. And believe me, I was not expecting par on that hole after my lousy tee shot and subsequent worm burned second.

#8
Nelly and I hit absolute bombs on this par 5. He had a draw, mine was perfectly straight. We drove up to them and they were 1 foot apart. One of them was 2 inches further than the other. I didn't hear the end of it, but that is the kind of stuff that I will never mind hearing (I drove it 305 and you drove it 304.8).

Back side
#13
After parring 3 holes in a row, I drove my tee shot nice and straight. My approach shot landed pin high, and off the green but just off to the right. The chip was a two stage shot because of the rough and two tiered green. I just wanted it to die at the hill and cozy up to the hole, but it hung on the upper tier about 15 feet away. Nelly said, "Whoa, gotta lot of work left for that par." I hit the 20 foot putt and it just went perfectly straight. It was really pretty. And I knew about 3 feet out that it was going in. My par streak stopped at 4 on the next hole as I blew apart and took a 7.

#15
I had a tough hole again and was on the green in 5 (Tee in the woods, chipout into thick rough, tough shot advancing the ball 20 yards, 4 iron short of the green, chip on to 15 feet, whoa!). I had 15 foot bender for bogey. I hit the putt and exclaimed right away, "Its in... its in... its in! ITS IN!" and it was dead center of the cup. "You know it, kind of like the way you know you about a good melon, you just know."

#18
The 18th was a manly 420 yard par 4. I hit a skyball the tee shot (1st time that day), and had 220 left to the green. With Nelly as my caddy, we determined that a 3 iron would be ideal. I hit the most perfect 3 iron of the year, perfectly straight and it ended up about 2 feet from the green. It was perfect and I got up and down for par. Good finish.

Parting thoughts
Well, first of all. Nelly took a bunch of great pictures of my Dad and brother in action. I will get them up on this page very soon, so come back and take a look. It was amazing to get out with my Dad again, and get some of the family to play golf together. Nelly expressed his pleasure with being able to golf with my Dad again. It was just a lot of fun, and obviously he has a lot of bits of golf wisdom to bestow upon us. I can't wait to pull the putter out from 40 yards away (hopefully I will have practiced this before I get myself into amateur trouble).

My brother is working on some issues with his drives mainly. He had a couple of smackeroos that just pleased every member of the gallery. He sometimes gets under the ball and ends up losing distance, but it is something that I see him slowly working out and getting great results. His pitching and chipping show the touch that he shouldn't have with the few times that he has played and the ling breaks (two years, I think) between starting up again. Nelly and I are trying to get his putting stroke in order. He takes a big backswing and then puts on the brakes with his putter and although he made some really good putts, it looked like it cost him some here and there.

Now that I have worked out my little swing-sabbatical, I can get back to my course management skills which have been put on hold while I try to get things together. My strategy to aim for the center of the green has really started to pay off, but it does leave me with very long birdie putts. I am happy with tap-in pars. On that note, I am getting excited about the fact that I seem to be stringing 3, 4 and 5 pars in a row. That is something that is unusual, and I think that I will handle it pretty well the more they come, instead of having a major meltdown to crash the bandwagon

My old game is back. The thing about it is, I love going for par 5's in 2. That is my joy and strength as a long hitter, but I haven't done that much this year, because I have been playing the "smart play" route and I made very few pars as a result of a missed shot here or there. Though I had a double bogey on #14, the drive was perfect, and although I missed the 3 wood, the miss ended up rolling up to where the lay-up would have been anyway, so I feel that it is a high percentage play for me. I guess all the griping that I have done about my putter was the thing to do. It was almost as if my putter wanted to prove to me that it wasn't inferior. I'm sure the real difference was that I paid more attention to my alignment after making a statement about it, but its nice to think that my putter actually cares about making as many putts as I do...

-Until next time,

Murph