I watched Tiger start his round with a bogey this morning on the Golf Channel. Then, over lunch, I checked the leaderboard on PgaTour.com. Tiger had no more bogeys, four birdies, and finished with an eagle on the high-risk/high-reward 18th, to creep up to a tie for 2nd at 67. Graeme McDowell went out earlier in the day and shot a steady 66 for the lead.
Sergio Garcia is at 68, and I like his chances and his game. I’ve always admired the Spaniard golf stars: Seve, Olazabal, and Sergio all have that swashbuckling romantic wild-off-the-tee soft-hands-around-the-green style that I love. Those guys don’t obsess about swing mechanics, they obsess about getting the ball in the hole.
Speaking of bizarre swing mechanics, I want to root for Jim Furyk too, but he looks a tad shaky. Mike Weir, on the other hand, the lowest-scoring lefty so far, started ultra-agressive and then smoothed it out. Phil who? (Note to Phil: dump Dave Pelz. Science is for scientists, and scientists suck at golf.) And speaking of big names tanking, what’s going on with Davis Love?
Should be a great tournament. Keep an eye on Fred Couples. He’s looking good, and he grew up learning the game at Jefferson Park, our neighborhood course these days. If he makes the leaderboard on Sunday, the Columbia City Ale House will be rockin’ for lunch.
Here’s an interesting presentation of some blogs covering what’s happening in Lebanon and Israel. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a map like that for bloggers all over the world, so that you could just zoom in on an area of interest and see what the locals are saying? Anybody seen anything like that?
I stumbled across that page while looking through the links from an article in the Nation that Megan recommended to me.
If you spent as much time playing coin-op video games in the early 80s as I did, this video is pretty cool. They say it took 4 hours of shuffling people around to film all 3 minutes of it.
By the way, I heard of this because Manuel Clement posted it to an internal distribution list. He’s the guy who owns (and still plays) a Micro Moog, like the first synthesizer I bought in 1975.
Megan and I are both enjoying working on our golf games. One thing that’s a great fit between us is that we both don’t want to think about or hear about anything analytical regarding the physical details of our swings. Megan because she just doesn’t care, and me because I tried that for many years, and didn’t start playing better until I stopped doing it. So we just encourage each other to swing away on the course, no fear, no rules, no restrictions, and I like that a lot.
Anyway, we had a great practice round at the Crossroads Par 3 last night. We left work and hit a bucket of balls over at Bellevue GC, then played nine at Crossroads. Here’s how we did, score-wise:
For those who aren’t familiar with my GolfTrak program, the little white squares are pars, the black squares are strokes over par, and the red squares (if any) are strokes under par. So you get a little graph that shows how your round progressed, and after you’ve seen this a few times (or a few hundred), it’s a handy visual way to see how you scored. I did it this way (as opposed to a graph or something) because it’s easy to render in character mode, which is what GolfTrak started with in 1987. I’ve re-written GolfTrak a few times, and will probably again, but not this year — the late-90s version works just fine for now.
I also have provisions for tracking putts, penalty strokes, greens in regulation, and fairways in regulation. In the example above, I did that full-detail tracking on my score, but not on Megan’s.
Anway, here’s where we’re at and what we’re working on, for my fellow golf geeks. You know, the things I’d babble about if we had a beer at the 19th hole … er, 10th hole in this case …
Megan had her best round ever. She was hitting her 9-iron (the only club she hits) so well that she’s going to augment it with a mid-iron next time. She had a few 3-putts, though — like everyone who plays golf, she’s discovering that once you start getting on the green in fewer strokes, the putts start to matter a lot more. So she’s going to work on putting, and I’m going to start tracking her putts (and the other details) when we play.
I had a decent nine holes, which is a nice change from the way I’ve played the last few days. I finally managed to start swinging more freely, with no conscious effort to manipulate the club, roll over my wrists, or any of that sort of manipulative analytical BS. I didn’t try to control the clubhead my first couple of times out this year, but I’ve started trying harder now that I’ve built up some scoring expectations. Last night I managed to back off and just let the swing happen, which resulted in hitting 4 greens (and 3 others I barely missed). And the putts are dropping pretty well, too, including one from off the green on #4.
Oh, that 5th hole. My worst swing of the round — shanked one into a tree trunk nearby, and it ricocheted back to a point about 10 yards behind the tee. I then had to hook a little 6-iron around the tree up to near the green, which worked great, but then I chili-dipped a chip, hit the next one long, and finally sunk a 10-footer for double-bogey.
I’ll post another status report in a couple weeks. Isn’t golf fun?
Megan and I took a hike this afternoon up near Snoqualmie Pass. We went up to Snow Lake, in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. It’s the most popular hike in the Washington Cascades, for several reasons: close to I-90, not far from Seattle, and you can get into what feels like wilderness within an hour of the car. Well, if you can ignore the hundreds of other people doing the same. But it’s great exercise, and more fun than hanging out in the gym.
The photo above was not taken today. I took that one in February of last year, two days after I met Megan. I was hiking alone in the deep snow, and when I stopped for a snack these birds swooped down to see what they could get. I reached up and snapped a picture of them before they backed off. Later that night, when I sent Megan an email asking her out for our first date (dinner at the Space Needle), I attached this photo because it was, well, two birds. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today I finally took Megan to this spot. We brought a bottle of cheap screw-cap wine and enjoyed it in the shade above Snow Lake before hiking back down to the car. Here are the photos from today’s hike:
Megan and I have lots of fun playing golf, and we want to get out with some other couples. Couples golf can be great, as long as there aren’t any guys giving the wife condescending golf lessons. Which, unfortunately, is the norm.
In addition to our couples-golf aspirations, though, I’m also trying to get together a regular guys foursome. You know, so we can be macho jerks together and bond like pro athletes, soldiers, and prison inmates do. Those guys have all the fun.
Simon and I are in, as well as our friend Scott (after Scott and Jessie get back from their ultra-long honeymoon). So we need one more. Anybody care to join us? Here’s the profile of the type of guy we’re looking for to complete our foursome:
1) Fun to be around, especially right after hitting a terrible shot. Or ten in a row. If your score determines your mood, just write down a 72 and we’ll see you at the 19th hole.
2) Never talks about any of these things on the golf course: swing mechanics, golf tips, or what club anybody has hit or will hit. Can you spell B-O-R-I-N-G?
3) Doesn’t give golf advice on the course. If you’re that good, go get a job with the PGA. Or play with your poor long-suffering wife.
4) Knows the rules and follows them. We’re not your conscience, or your Mommy.
5) Is tolerant of all vices, especially drinking and smoking on golf courses.
If you meet those criteria and love to play golf, we don’t care whether you shoot 70 or 170 and we’d love to have you. Any takers? Tom and George, it’s really too bad you guys live in the Midwest.
We played Interbay Saturday evening, after I had played it in the morning with some guys from work. It was windy and very crowded/slow, but we had a great time.
For those who don’t know the Seattle-area golf courses, the view down the first fairway of Interbay (that first shot below) is looking straight at West Seattle. The current header photo on my blog was taken from West Seattle Golf Course, looking back toward downtown from around the left edge of the photo below.
Simon’s a southpaw like me! I’ve spent so much time around right-handed golfers that it looks weird every time he steps up to that side of the ball. Do I look that weird? Nah, couldn’t be.
I downloaded all the photos from Lynn’s camera, to burn her a CD. So of course Megan and I went through them. And we found this one of Elton holding a leopard shark they caught.
Hey Elton, is this illegal or anything? Because if it is, I should make this right. By posting a picture of me doing something illegal, too.
