i think i'm going to take the piece of business advice i read in this article and run with it....

fall golf....

fall is my favorite time of year- for golf or otherwise. i haven't been out a lot in september. a nice 112 at the home course, a lucky 116 at whittaker and an abyssmal 120++ at hawkshead- which i was playing for the first time and really liked, but i stunk it up.

i'm hoping to get the last of the 3 lessons for the year soon, and to get a few more rounds in. anyone want to go to arizona this winter?

lucky charms?

alright- so maybe they weren't that lucky- but jen and the boys rode around with me for the front 9 this afternoon and i shot a 55- which i'll take all day on good days. these pics are from
june.

it's a really hard game....

ryan took me to the buick open at warwick hills last sunday for the final round of the buick open, and it was cool to see how it's really done. it is good to know, for furture reference, that it is pretty ridiculous to try to follow tiger around on a sunday- but that you can still see a lot of great golf by camping out at a good spot and letting a tournament round come to you. everyone has to play all 18, so there is really a lot of room to watch. it's also good to know that pros shank it once and a while (jeff sluman hit a tree in front of us and netted about 20 yards on an approach shot) and don't always putt lights out (we saw at least one 3-putt). but we also witnessed bob tway ace 17- so there was no real danger of thinking these guys are just good- they're great. tiger was 20+ under to win the thing.

we played the captain's club on saturday, and i think i was in the 130s--120s for sure. then i shot a 123 at home on friday, and a 59 on the front yesterday. after friday, i got frustrated. i started thinking- really for the first time- that maybe i should not golf. i am lucky- i get to golf a lot more than most people, and most people are better than me. sometimes i think i owe it to the people who are better than me but don't have the time or the at-home support that i have to play more, to play better golf.

it's a really hard game. but it remains fun. and i still have hope for improvement. i worked by irons a bit better yesterday, and struggled around the greens more than i usually do. i suppose it is a matter of putting your best foot forward off the tee, on the approach and around the greens in order to score to your potential. the day i get 200+ off each tee, don't duff my irons and get up and down will be the day i break 100. and that will be a happy day. for now, my goal remains staying within a 6 shot per hole allotment. i'll be happy when i get that 108. and to keep it all in perspective- i'm happy now, really.

back at the legends yesterday, and she was apparently not happy that i played a different course over the weekend. 63-61. really struggling with iron shots until i got it dialed in toward the end. no shortage of 3-putts, which always hurts. and plenty of those other costly mistakes that are so easy to make, but so hard to counter.

due back there this afternoon, but it looks like we may get rained out.

the tragedy at sugar springs....

i'm not sure which hole is pictured here- the sugar springs country club near gladwin, michigan doesn't have a huge web presence. i went there on saturday with my fairly frequent partner/opponent ryan. we play when our families get together, which is quite a bit now that we're all living back in michigan.

so we're cruising along in the 7:10 am tee time slot on saturday- a beautiful morning. pace of play was great. the course is in really good shape, with some interesting natural challenges in the guise of woods and water. lots of hilly spots, which makes it hard for me- i'm really struggling with uneven lies these days. suffice it to say it has a lot of common michigan golf features that i'm not used to as a member of the still-stark macatawa legends.

after a meltdown on 15- a short-ish par 4 where i had a chance to get on in 3 but instead flew everything and put the rock in a ravine, never to be seen again- we had to fly two ponds on the par 3 16th. i hit into the second pond- almost made it over, but not close enough. i think i salvaged a double, maybe it was a triple- and i started thinking about finishing strong. we were all even through 16, so there was not a lot of blood left to extract from the match.

17 is a par 4- some houses on the right, some water on the left- but plenty of room to land in the fairway to set up an approach to the green, which is up a relatively gentle slope. ryan threw one into the middle of the fairway. then i took the craziest golf shot i've ever hit in my short career.

i got a hold of the ball, and it was flying along nicely for me- which means it was going to land somewhere close to 200 yards from the tee. i could tell it was going right- but not slicing- and realized i was lining up with cart path, which ran the length of this hole. i thought i might get a friendly cart path bounce- which i did, in the end. but not before the ball hit a bird on the head. i think it was a robin, and it never saw the ball coming. death was likely instantaneous. we rode toward the scene of the crime, and it wasn't clear until we got closer what had happened. but there she/he lay, in a small pool of blood- the head trauma was pretty apparant.

we sort of sat there for a while. i felt bad- i still feel bad. the akward silence was broken up by a guy who lives on the course riding through to the clubhouse in his personal cart. he recommended that we chuck the deceased into the woods next to the course, which we ended up doing. i was rattled- so i ended up with an 8. i got it together on 18 and finished ok- ryan and i were all square, even though i shot a dismal 121 and he shot much less.

life goes on, except for that bird. we'll probably revisit sugar springs some day, and i'll say a silent prayer for the robin, and all of nature that is so rudely trampled upon by people and their silly games.

best. score. ever

with a par on 8- which i never par- and a double on 9, i finished happy with a 55 on the front.
i could have done better than the 55 i ended up with on the back, but 55-55 is the best score i've carded.
break 100 before 2007? maybe.

next week's road show....

Taking the freak show on the road to New Buffalo, MI next week to play HERE. I played the course once in May, and the same group is headed back--it's just about exactly half way between the loop and Holland, so perfect for keeping the Chicago connections live....

....because i don't like people

welcome to joey5iron, the all-purpose blog focused on bad golf and passive-aggressive mid-western communication. who really wants to talk to people? not me.

so if you've got something to say, say it here.