Looking Ahead

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Charles Prokop

I’ve never been much for New Year resolutions, but sitting around with a cold and/or allergies the past several days has made me pensive. It’s mountain cedar season in this part of the world. For those of you who don’t know, mountain cedar (aka ash juniper) infests the Texas Hill Country and it fills the air with its pollen for a few weeks in December or January. There are always a few days with a very high pollen count. Get a cold that coincides with those days and you’re dead. That’s what happened to me, and now to my wife. She thanks me very much.

The picture below shows how much pollen we have right now. The photo was taken about half an hour after sunrise, and overlooks the valley near my house. That isn’t fog — it’s pollen mixed with a bit of smoke from people burning the cedar trees they’ve cut down. You can see the slight red tint in the sky, but you are looking west, not east. If you look carefully at the left edge, about halfway up the side of the shot just over the top of the pointed green tree (cedar, by the way), you’ll see a flock of buzzards in a leafless tree. I appreciate their concern, but I don’t feel that bad.

Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to my next year in golf and wondering what my goals are, or if I should have any goals. Trying to play a little better goes without saying. I try to do that with hit or miss success, more miss than hit right now, and that’s so wired into me that it’s not really a resolution. I’m thinking more about how golf fits into my life, what it does for me (or to me).

First, I resolve to play with a clearer head (no cedar related pun intended). Not only do I play poorly when I’m not fully invested in the game, I don’t have a very good time. So if I have too much other stuff pushing me or if I feel like I really shouldn’t be playing that day, I won’t play. If I can’t clear my head for golf I’ll do what I feel like I’m avoiding and be ready to play when the next chance rolls around. Or maybe I’ll just take a nap, who knows.

Second, and closely related, I resolve to always have a good round. I’ll stink sometimes, my game may stay in the dumper, but I’m going to enjoy myself. If I can’t enjoy the quality of my play, I’ll enjoy the wolf game, the skins game, the one long putt I make, the guys insulting me, me insulting the guys, the weather, the turtles in the pond off the 11th tee, the apple I brought so I could feed the core to the turtles, whatever. I’m not going to leave the course in a bad mood. I’ll just fly home on my pet pig.

Third, I’m going to complete my tour of small town and municipal courses. I started this a while back with my trip to Utopia, but weather and holidays has slowed me down. I really enjoyed the trip to Utopia, and I’m going to treat myself with some more of those little outings.

Finally, I’m going to keep at this blog. My plan is to post at least twice a week, and more often if I’m inspired by something. I’m also writing a weekly golf column reporting the results of our weekly tournament for the local papers. I’ll post a link to the column after the first one appears so the curious among you can take a peek at our local golf scene. That column will take some of my golf writing time, but I enjoy the blog and will keep it up.

I hope everyone has a good year. I can feel the antihistamine kicking in, so I’m good to go.

Related articles
Posted in reflections on golf | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Losing Pecan Valley

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Charles Prokop

While suffering from my New Year’s cold, I opened yesterday’s paper to bad news. According to the San Antonio Express News, Pecan Valley Golf Club is set to close this Sunday, January 8. Pecan Valley was the site of the 50th PGA Championship in 1968, won by Julius Boros. It also hosted the Texas Open in 1967, ’69, and ’70.

Pecan Valley is a beautiful and challenging old-style course. It has tight, tree-lined fairways with forced carries and doglegs that make you plan every shot. It has gone through several management changes over the years, but is currently managed by Foresight Golf, a locally based company that has always provided great course conditions and customer service whenever I’ve visited their courses.

Although I get to play there relatively seldom due to it’s distance from my house, Pecan Valley is one of my favorite courses in the area. I’ll be very sorry not to have it as an option. A local group is working to find a way to save the course, and I hope they are successful. I’ll miss the place.

Posted in daily golf issues | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Blot On My Career

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Charles Prokop

“And what do you see here, Mr. Shanks? These blots weren’t made to look like anything in particular, there aren’t any right or wrong answers. Just give me your first impressions.”

“It looks kinda like a golf hole, Doc. And there’s a little golfer over here. Uh-oh. He’s about to hit it in that lake over there, that big blue spot in the corner, see it right there? That dragon guarding the green is going to knock his ball into the lake. How can the guy not see that dragon? It’s so big! How can he miss it?!! It’s going to kill him!!! Are all your pictures this awful, Doc?”

Hermann Rorschach

There’s a type of psychological diagnostic procedure called a projective test. The idea is that what someone makes of an ambiguous stimulus says more about the person than it says about the stimulus. In the Rorschach Inkblot Technique, probably the best-known projective test, the inkblots aren’t really pictures of anything, so what they look like to me is different from what they look like to you. Our differing perceptions presumably say a lot about the differences in you and me.

I’ve always thought golf was a pretty good projective test. Different folks see golf in different ways, from “How can you waste your time hitting that stupid little ball around a pasture?” to “Golf is the new yoga of the supermind.” I’ll say no more about the golf haters and disparagers in our midst. They deserve only our pity and are beyond our help. With my deepest respect and sympathy, I say to them, “Go with God, but go away.” But for us golfers, golf is many things.

For some of us, golf is an addictive spectator sport. We’ll watch a tape delayed broadcast of players we’ve never heard of battling it out for second place in the Upper Volta Invitational while we wonder how many balls John Daly can hit in the water and still collect his appearance money. And how about that bunker shot that What’s His Name holed to nail down second place? And do you have any idea what kind of trees those were lining the 18th fairway? They don’t have those at my local muni, that’s for sure. (I confess I’m guilty of this. When I want to veg out I’ll watch any golf, anytime, anywhere. Give me a crossword puzzle and a boring golf tournament and I’m happy as a clam.)

Golf is a great soap opera for some folks. Did you hear what Stevie said about Tiger, and what Adam said about Stevie saying what he said? And what’s Tiger going to say about what Adam didn’t say about what Stevie said? Inquiring minds want to know. Discussions like this can go on forever on some golf sites, and often degenerate into wonderfully creative suggestions about what other commenters might consider doing with their anatomies to improve their analytic and playing abilities. If I moderated one of those sites I’m afraid my list of banned commenters would be longer than my list of active commenters. The banned list would likely include myself.

Of course, we don’t just watch golf and talk about golf, we play golf. For some of us golf is a skills challenge, a never-ending quest to get better. We work at it whenever we can, bang those range balls, take those lessons, buy that belly putter. A round below our expectations sends us into fits of despair, rage, or existential ennui. We vow to work harder. Or quit. That works, too.

For others, golf is just a way to relax and have fun with friends. We say we don’t care how we play, it’s only a game, we’re not trying to make the tour anyway. I expect that’s a healthy way to be, but I can’t personally vouch for it. I know one (count ’em, one) person that I actually believe when he says this. If he thought playing well mattered he wouldn’t be the happy-go-lucky guy he is. I try to avoid him – his happiness might be contagious.

I’m sure there are more ways we look at golf, and each way will say something a little bit different about the personality of that golfer. In the interest of science, I’m selflessly offering myself as a consultant and diagnostician to dedicated golfers. I’ll be happy to study your golf game in it’s natural habitat and spend time in exhaustive interviews with you as we visit the 19th hole after our rounds. I’ll charge nothing for my professional time. You’ll pay only my travel, my greens fees for our evaluation rounds, and you’ll cover the food and drink during our interviews. I guarantee my satisfaction.

Your satisfaction, not so much. But the experience? Priceless, I say. Priceless.

(Image of Hermann Rorschach in the public domain.)

Posted in humor | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Driving With Santa

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Charles Prokop

Driving has always been the weakest part of my game. When I’m playing my best I put my drives in play at a decent length, but I rely on good iron play and chipping combined with acceptable putting. When I play poorly it’s a struggle from the first shot. Consistently bad drives make every hole a struggle to get out of the trouble my drive caused. I even gave up for several years and went through a phase where a three iron served as my driver.

My first new clubs were a set of Wilson Billy Casper Shotmaker irons, a Christmas present back in the mid 1960’s. They replaced my original hock shop, wooden shafted irons. I didn’t replace my hock shop woods for another year or so, and I used my old Calamity Jane putter until around 1995. I’ve always wondered if the choice of which clubs to replace first helped determine my golfing future, or if my choice said something about my skills. My iron play was the best part of my game early on, so I enjoyed it the most and that was what I wanted to make new and shiny.

Of course, that’s a totally bass-ackwards way to do things. It would have made a lot more sense to replace the woods I couldn’t hit and stick with the irons that I could hit well, but who wants to get a Christmas present that risks making you feel inferior and makes you work? I loved those Billy Casper irons and played them long past their prime.

I finally replaced those irons in 1999 when my wife and I were traveling in an RV and I got invited to play with a group of guys at the Florida RV park where we were staying. (The oldest person in the group was in their 50’s – this wasn’t the stereotypical Florida RV crowd.) My clubs were hundreds of miles away in storage, so I seized the excuse to get a new set. Once again, I got the irons I liked and chose the Hippo woods (metals, actually) that fit my impulse buy budget. As you would expect, I continued to drive poorly.

Since 1999 I’ve gone through the Hippo, a Big Bertha (used), a MacTec (new), an R7 (used), and I now have an R9 (new, but comped). I drive better than before, but it’s still my weak spot. I’ve never found a driver that feels as good my irons. Some days the driver feels OK, but it can begin to feel like I’m swinging a rake at a moments notice. (On the other hand, my irons are fitted to my swing and body while my driver just has a shaft flex presumably matched to my swing speed. Maybe there’s a clue there, Sherlock?)

I’m thinking I may ask Santa to leave me a prescription for a driver fitting. I played in a few inter-club tournaments during the past few years and was impressed with how well some of my opponents drove the ball. When I asked about their drivers I discovered that they all went to the same club fitter and club maker. Each of them had a different driver, obviously well designed for their particular swing.

I’ve thought about going to see that fitter for several years but I’ve been stalling, waiting until my game and swing feel stable.  I’m beginning to think that’s as bass-ackwards as replacing my irons instead of my woods that Christmas long ago. My swing will probably never settle as long as I’m swinging a lawn implement on the tee box.

I guess I’m ready, Santa. Put that ticket under the tree.

And may everyone have a very merry Christmas.

(Photo by Charles Prokop)

Posted in daily golf issues | Tagged , | 2 Comments

I Took A Little Off It

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Charles Prokop

My 20 year old cat nailed me to my recliner last night and I’d finished the Sunday crossword, so I was stuck searching for something on the tube that would keep me moderately entertained. I’d had enough football so I ended up watching the Aaron Rodgers and Tony Romo playing lesson shows on the Golf Channel. I typically avoid those things like the plague because I can’t help trying things out and it invariably screws up my game, but I’m so far in the toilet right now I figured it wouldn’t matter.

Distance control came up with Romo a few times, including the predictable things about getting better distance with a smooth, easy swing and regulating distance with backswing length instead of how hard you swing. I could empathize with Romo here, because trying to regulate distance with my irons is a skill I definitely come and go on. Sometimes I’m pretty good at it, and other times any change from my full swing results in truly horrendous shots.

The best guy at distance control that I’ve ever played with is not a particularly good golfer in any other way. He doesn’t have an official handicap, but he’s lucky to break 100. He proudly claims the Wal-Mart sporting goods stocker as his golf pro, and he has more movement in his putting stroke than anyone I’ve ever seen. He twists and dances away from the ball as he putts, I guess to get a good look at the ball as it rolls anywhere but into the cup. On the other hand, he’s entertaining to play with and plays quickly.

Despite all this, he can control the distance he hits his driver in amazing ways. He’s as long as I am with a full-out swing, but he will pull driver at times I might hit a hybrid or an iron for a lay-up and he’ll bunt the thing just the right distance. It’s harder to tell how much of his distance variation with his irons is intentional and how much is accidental. All of his swings look about the same to me, and all are followed by a grin and his signature remark – “I took a little off it.”

A few years ago we were playing a course I’d never played before and we came to a par 3 with a lot of elevation change. It was dramatically downhill to a pond just in front of the green, then slightly uphill to the green. There was a steep uphill slope behind the green, and the wind was blowing strongly from tee to green that day. The hole was measured at 150 or so from the tees we were playing.

After a lot of thought I pulled my pitching wedge, guessing that it played about 120 with the wind and the hill taken into account. My friend hit first, and hit an 8 iron onto the green. This caused me to second guess my choice, so I switched to a 9 iron and hit it a good 20 yards up the slope behind the green.

When I glared at him he smiled and told me what I knew was coming – “I took a little off it.”

I’d ask him how he manages to do that, but it’s hard to get him to focus. You think that pro at Wal-Mart can help?

(Fake book cover and photo by Charles Prokop)

Posted in humor | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How Far Is It To That Trap?

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Charles Prokop

In his recent column in Golf Digest, David Owen discusses driving with GPS as a guide. He ends by admitting that he no longer pays much attention to signs and roads as he drives, so his knowledge of how to get from here to there is shrinking. I don’t use a GPS while I drive, but I have noticed my ability to judge yardage on a golf course has shrunk with the advent of GPS and laser rangefinders.

When I started playing golf I was delighted if a course had ornamental trees planted 150 yards out from the green as yardage guides. Without the trees, my yardage guesses were totally unaided. Remarkably, I got pretty good at it after awhile, although my judgements were “That looks like an 8 iron,” not “That looks like about 145.” I still catch myself doing that off the course these days when I try to judge distances. I figure my landmark is a six iron or so away, and translate that to yards.

I still remember my delight the first time I played a course with markers for 100, 150, and 200 yards out. When I started playing courses with yardage on sprinkler heads I thought I was in heaven. And my first course with GPS in carts? Woooh, baby!!

These days I play with a laser rangefinder, a Bushnell Tour V2. I use it religiously, even though I typically know the yardage on familiar courses. I’ve become the default par 3 distance information source in our group since the Chipping Lizard’s rangefinder died from heat exposure. We’ll pull up to a tee and Cowboy Gene updates the wolf bookkeeping, Cowboy Roy launches into a story, and the Lizard impatiently hovers his hands over his bag, waiting for my call. Gallon is usually still walking from the previous green, but he just hits it anyway, no information required.

The insane part of this is we’ve all played these holes hundreds of times. We can judge the distance without the rangefinder. After we get the information we pull the same club we would have without it. The wind, the temperature, and the natural inconsistencies in our swings far outweigh any gains the exact yardage would have given us. But we gotta have it.

One of these days I’m going to test myself and play without a rangefinder. I bet I’ll do just as well as I usually do, as long as I’m on a course with which I’m reasonably familiar. I can’t swear to exactly how far I hit each club, so I don’t think a few yards of uncertainty will make much difference.

But I’ll feel naked without that laser, I guarantee.

Posted in daily golf issues | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Dreaming of Scotland

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Charles Prokop

The weather and my schedule have been in perfect opposition the past few weeks. If I’m busy, the weather is good; if I have free time, it’s cold, windy, and rainy. Instead of playing, I’ve been buying golf balls (I got some Srixon Soft Feels for the cold weather) and I finally found a new pair of golf shoes that fit, so I’m ready to go when the stars are properly aligned.

In my down time I’ve been looking through The Scottish Golf Book, by Malcolm Campbell. If you like a little golf history and great photographs of courses and historical figures, it’s hard to beat this book. It has a few pages on each of a variety Scottish courses, with beautiful photos of the courses and the surrounding land. As a bonus, it has maps of some of the most famous courses in The Open Championship rotation.

Several things stand out when I look at the photos. First, it’s interesting to see how different many of the courses are from those I typically play. I’d really have to rethink my game if I regularly played classic links courses. Second, it’s rare to see cart paths or electric carts in the pictures. Instead, you see a lot of golfers carrying bags or using pull carts. Electric carts are visible in a photo of The Duke’s Course in St. Andrews, and the story makes a point of explaining why. The course was built for hotel guests, and there are some long treks from green to tee box.

The Duke’s Course was designed by Peter Thompson, who is quoted as saying that the “challenge should be getting to the green, not just landing on it.” He also said “putting should be fun.” There’s a lot of opportunity to run the ball up onto the greens, and the greens looked sufficiently sloped and contoured to be very interesting, if not fun. I bet it’s a real bear to play on a windy day.

Anyway, imaginary Scottish golf has occupied me when real Texas golf couldn’t. I’m hoping for decent weather tomorrow, because the long range forecast looks like my schedule and the weather will continue to be in opposition next week.

If it’s cold and windy tomorrow, I may just decide to play in Scottish weather.

 

Posted in book thoughts | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

My Winter Love

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Charles Prokop

The weather is cooling down and my thoughts are turning to decorating the house, protecting the pipes, and finding the perfect softer golf ball. In the heat of a Texas summer a high compression ball feels fine, but when the temperature tops out in the sixties or below I like a little squish at the bottom of my swing.

I’m a hopeless ball tinkerer. I settle on one ball for a while, but my love always fades and I begin to get restless. Maybe I can squeeze a few more yards out of my random-shot-generating swing with a different ball. Who knows? Somewhere in the back of my mind, that song from Pinocchio about how “the grass is always greener in the other fellow’s yard” just won’t stop.

Last year the Bridgestone ball fitting guy happened to be at my local Edwin Watts store when I dropped by to get a new glove, so I went through the fitting process. I’d been playing the E6, and their data suggested I was overcompressing the E6 and would do better with the B330RX. I gave it a try, and I like the B330RX most of the time. However, the fitter made the off-hand comment that the E6 might be a good cold weather ball for me, and that had the unfortunate effect of reinforcing my tinkering gene.

So it’s getting cool again, and here I go. I could just go get a few E6’s, but that goes against my nature. I’m in the ball accumulating phase of life (I find a lot more balls than I lose) so I get regular free test drives of a wide variety of balls.

Parenthetically, I seem to find an inordinate percentage of Nike balls in the nether reaches of the course. I wonder if the “just do it” style of ad attracts the bold, hard swinging risk takers of golf, so Nike balls more often go deeply astray?

I found a Srixon Soft Feel recently, and loved it for a round or two. I found it at the start of my best recent round and put it into play immediately, but who knows how much of my good performance was ball related? The ball felt good, but everything felt good that day. The next round wasn’t as good, but wasn’t bad, and the ball made the acquaintance of a cart path and a tree, so it suffered a bit and had to be retired.

The weather’s swinging wildly from warm to cool and back right now, complicating my ball choice. I’m looking for that feel of a soft cover with a firm base, kind of like what I look for when I pick out limes at the grocery store. The sensation in my memory is from a Pro V1 on a rare June day where the temperature was warm and my swing was perfect. What ball gives me that feel seems to change from year to year, maybe from day to day and swing to swing, so I’ll be searching the rough for audition candidates for a few more weeks.

Either that, or I’ll just do what I usually do. Give up the search and buy what looks good to me on the day I lose patience and the weather finally turns cold enough. Then I can try to fall deeply enough in love for a passionate but short winter fling.

As Mickey Gilley famously said, “the girls always get prettier at closing time.”

Posted in daily golf issues | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Take It Back To Where?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Charles Prokop

In between pepper-spraying sidewalk campers on Black Friday and buying unbelievably cheap golf clubs from Chinese websites on cyber Monday, I took a break and watched a little golf. All that was on at the time was a rerun of the American Century Classic, but I wasn’t picky. I just needed to stay inside until the screaming campers quit looking for me.

Tony Romo

Tony Romo. Image by Keith Allison via Flickr. Creative Commons Share Alike License.

So I’m sitting there, doing the crossword puzzle and keeping one eye on the tube, when Tony Romo hits a nice shot. This is quickly followed by a comment from Roger Maltbie (I think that’s who it was, but it really doesn’t matter much) about Romo’s nice “efficient” swing. It turns out Maltby means Romo has a short backswing, so things don’t have as much chance to go wrong on the way back.

What the hey?! I spend all my life trying to complete my backswing, trying to get it back there like Tom Watson has done forever, and now they tell me it’s a good thing to have a short backswing? That’s just wonderful.

At least I can save money on those yoga lessons. They were getting to be a drag.

Posted in humor | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A Lot To Be Thankful For

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Charles Prokop

My golf game has finally received the notoriety it deserves!

What? I'm supposed to stalk something? (Photo by Loretta Prokop.)

I live in the country, and it’s dead quiet outside on this Thanksgiving morning. When I look out my window, all I see are a few deer, a bunch of feral cats, and birds being stalked by those same cats, who are being stalked by other cats. I’m just 25 minutes away from the 7th largest city in the U.S., but you can’t tell it from here.

I’m about 10 minutes away (in the other direction) from the county seat, a little town with 3 stoplights but 2 weekly papers. I’m not sure, but I’d bet it was the town Robert Earl Keen had in mind when he wrote Paint The Town Beige – Keen was living here around that time and still has a ranch nearby. The papers do a good job of covering the local hard news, but they make a big effort to keep up with local folks – thus my sudden notoriety.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I’d returned from my layoff and turned in a decent round of 77. That performance in the stableford tournament earned me the position of top point  getter for the week, and a featured spot in the weekly column written to cover those results. Keep in mind this is Thanksgiving week, the paper comes out on Wednesday, and the first page has big stories and pictures about the annual tea put on by the Episcopal Church and about the winner of the recent Cow Patty Bingo fundraiser. I love it here.

Anyway, I flip to the sports pages and there’s the report of my round, with a two line headline stretching across the entire page in bold 7/8″ high type. You can imagine how honored I am. The other stories on the page covered 8th grade basketball, 7th grade football, and the undefeated youth soccer team, so I was in pretty fast company.

All of you less famous folks have a nice Thanksgiving. I’m going to drive down main street and bask in the glow of my adoring public.

Posted in golfing memoir, humor | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment