It’s the hope that kills you, I thought as I squelched my way round Thornbury’s wonderful Par Three course today. I started off in gentle drizzle and made a decent start score wise, albeit playing less than brilliantly. Given how much the course is used, it’s phenomenally well maintained, although it’s struggling now with the sheer amount of rain we’ve had. And so was I.
There are a number of elements to my game which are misfiring at the moment. My driving, my chipping and my putting are all misfiring and if there had been anyone there to watch, they’d have seen some pretty grim golf.
I arrived in the mid afternoon confident this would be my day. Only a few years ago, I would almost always break 70 in a round and on a few occasions I I broke 60. Those days appear to have long gone and I’m more worried now that I won’t break 80.
A disastrous six on the relatively straightforward fifth hole was a card-wrecker and the rest of the round would be about damage limitation, but shortly things got even worse. The ninth hole is the only hole longer than 200 yards so I got my driver out. Because the ground is so wet and muddy, there is no run on. The ball stays where it lands. I swung as hard as I could and lost sight of the ball. My guess it had gone way left. So I played another ball and kept sight of that one as it sailed beyond the trees on the left. Now, I was playing five off the tee and this time it went long and straight, but still short of the green. A chip and two putts and I was home. An eight, enabling me to post a dreadful 43 for the front nine. Then, hope arrived.
10 was another dud experience but on the short 11th I landed 10 feet short of the flag and scored a par. Hole 12, the course’s signature hole, has a massive drop downhill and is always a challenge, so I took out my hybrid club and, to my astonishment, landed the ball nine feet from the flag. It landed all right. It hit the green and sank into it. But a good chance of a birdie two which I of course blew. On 13, I hit a terrible drive, chipped through the green and then chipped on again, this time sinking an insane 15 foot putt. On 14, another par after a blinding drive to 20 feet and my confidence was high, but the hope killed me. I didn’t hit another green after that and staggered home in driving rain for a dismal 79.
My short game is grim at the best of times, but when I am chipping out of mud, I have no chance. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Yet here’s the thing. The good shots I hit in that round of 79, numbering a mere handful, are what gives me hope, hope that next time they will be the norm and not the small minority. That my half decent start today, which would have seen me score somewhere in the late sixties, fell apart after a triple then quintuple bogey was disheartening until I hit that good shot. At that point, I had convinced myself that the bloke hitting the green on 11, 12 and 14 should have been doing that with every shot and that the other 15 holes were mere aberrations. In my heart, I know how crap I am, but there’s always that hope.
Although I felt and looked like a drowned rat when I finished the 18th, needing and getting a six-footer to avoid scoring 80, I didn’t much care because soon I would be dry and once my clothes and golf bag were dry enough there was always another day.
It’s almost like professional wrestling where you know what’s you’re watching isn’t real but you manage to suspend your disbelief to enjoy the show. I know the golf I’m playing isn’t terribly good, and that’s on a good day, but somehow next time I’ll play like Tiger Woods at his peak. I know that if I didn’t feel that way, I may as well give up.
