Out of the zone

If a golfer can have days where he's "in the zone" then it stands to reason that he can have days where he experiences golf at the other extreme. "Out of the zone" days.

Yesterday was such a day for me.

I had such high expectations for my morning round. I took the day off to play with a good friend who has had some recent health issues and is just now able to get back into golf. We scheduled an early time to beat the oppressive heat wave this area was experiencing. On the first tee we were paired up with a very nice elderly couple from Florida. I ripped my tee shot long and down the middle of the first fairway. All seemed to be going as planned. It was going to be a great round!

But it wasn't to be.

I pulled my approach shot badly into a trap left of the green. But I managed to get up and down for par - all was still good.

On the second hole, a par five, I flared my drive wide right, pulled my second badly, and thinned my third into a trap in front of the green. Again though, I was able to get up and down to save par.

Okay, I think, maybe this is going to be a special kind of round.

Oh yea, things got very "special" from that point.

There's no need to say much about the rest of the round except to say that the wide range of bad shots that I hit may have set a new personal record for one round. Chunks, thins, slices and hooks - you name 'em, I hit 'em. In spades and with creative variations.

But there were a couple of positives. First, I never lost my cool. Second, though I played exceptionally poorly, (e.g. I hit more sand traps than GIRs!), I scrambled to shoot an unembarassing 82.

I think these two positives are related. But I don't know how I managed to play so badly.

So... I'm gonna just try to put this round behind me and look forward to a better ball striking round next time.

Fortunately, I don't have to wait long - only until tomorrow!