My Kingdom for Two Good Nines!

I played golf with my friend and client Digger this weekend at his club, Moon Valley Country Club. As you may recall, Digger used to take some of the biggest tiger pelts you have ever seen as divots. I think that the club president and the course superintendent must have had a "come to Jesus" meeting with Digger because he is now picking the ball pretty clean and not taking much of a divot at all. I cannot, however, say it is improving his game.

I tried to get Digger to walk, but he was having none of that. He said something about going to the gym for an hour that morning and that was all of the exercise he needed. We played with another club member and his guest. The member was about 70 years old and walked with a pull cart, which made me feel ridiculous riding (although he seemed to be in the motorized cart pulling the pull cart along side most of the time) We teed off at about 2:30 and the weather was perfect. Digger was shirking his child care duties and told me that he was only able to sneak away for nine holes. I played really poorly on the front 9. For some reason I was hitting a lot of shots very thin and even topped a couple of 1-hybrids and skulled two L-wedges. On the 7th hole, Digger's wife called and told him to get home. As the man of the family, Digger played out the last two holes before running home with his tail between his legs.

I decided to walk the back nine with my two golfing partners carrying my bag on my shoulder like a real golfer. Walking in solitude helps you focus and "be the ball". I started flushing the ball on the back nine. I parred the 10th, 11th and 12th holes before my first bogey. We were playing really slow and I was worried that we would not finish before dark. I parred 2 of the last 5 holes and bogeyed the other 3 holes with one ball in the water. In the dusk, I hit my drive on the 18th hole into the water and my second shot into the greenside bunker and then I almost holed out from the bunker but left the ball one or two turns from the bottom of the cup. I shot a 40 on the back 9 to go with my ugly 47 on the front nine for an 87 total. One of these days I am going to put together a good front 9 with a good back 9!

The last few times that I played golf I used my GolfLogix application on my Blackberry Storm. I now have an extended battery and the application works really well. From the tee box or fairway on the par-5 holes, it gives me the distance to each hazard and to clear the hazard and the distance to the 150 and 100 yard lay-ups. From the tee on the par-3 holes and from the fairway it gives you the distance to the front, middle and back of the green (the scopes give you the actual distance to the flagstick). You can keep your score, tee shots in the fairway and left and right, greens in regulation, putts and other sundry information, and if you are really sophisticated (which I am not) you can measure the distance of each shot and the club used. After the round you can analyze all aspects of your game to see what areas require the most work. For $40 per year (plus the cost of the extended battery) I recommend this application over the $350 scopes or GPS devices.