There is an old golf story/quote, attributed to Lee Trevino (paraphrased below):
“If you are on a golf course in a storm, and are afraid to be struck by lightning… just use your 1 iron. Not even God can hit a 1 iron.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t even own a 1 iron, so there is no threat to any deity here. However, this morning on the range I hit my 2 iron fantastically, over and over again. This may not seem like a big deal on the surface (to be sure I have received no calls from CNN or even the Golf Channel); however it’s the first time in 10 or 12 years I’ve been able to hit it with any consistency. This is pretty exciting for a guy who most often is lobbing 5 irons into the fairway and subsequently playing catch up for the remainder of the hole.
I also hit my 3 wood this morning, with mixed results. Many were fairly straight, however even those didn’t fly as well or as far as the 2 iron. My driver remained much like my erstwhile ability to dunk a basketball… superior fantasy material but rather unimpressive in reality (and if we are being honest, far more likely to result in injury than success). The primary difference being that I used to be able to dunk… I’ve never been able to hit a driver (except with a cart… I have done that a couple times over the years).
Playing the par three course after my time on the driving range was different. I never needed to use anything larger than a pitching wedge, which was nice because I could really focus on my short approach and putting games.. critical in putting up a good score (at least that’s what people who put up good scores tell me!).
I also ran some stats over my rounds thus week, and I’m actually pretty pleased with the general numbers:
Given my goal of going into this as roughly a bogey golfer and then shaving 10 strokes off of my handicap, I’m pretty much where I want to be. Tomorrow will be the last day of the mini-tour (AKA trial by – not exactly – fire). I’ll be playing a pretty open course and plan to use more of my longer clubs (including the now – if only temporarily – vaunted 2 iron). Then I will be moving to more of a maintenance approach (a round every week or so, along with some weekly work on the range) from a playing perspective until next spring… although there will be *lots* of planning work for the trip between now and then.