A Tournament For The Worst

One sunny Saturday in September of 2002, I flat-out skanked an 80-yard lob wedge over the green on the 18th hole at Alling Memorial Golf Course in New Haven, Connecticut. Thus ended my most recent foray into tournament golf.

When I say "tournament golf," I'm not talking about your weekend Nassau with your buddies, or even your club championship. I'm talking about down and dirty, USGA rules, marshalls on the course, an entry fee, the whole nine yards. History will record that your reporter - despite my brain fart on the 36th and final hole of the event - still managed rounds of 75 and 76 to finish 11th in a field of over 90 players in the 2002 Connecticut State Public Links Championship. That was the last time I attempted to play golf at anything resembling a competitive level. Until this week.

The Florida State Public Links Championship, like its Connecticut sibling, is open to any amateur golfer with a handicap lower than six and without a membership at a private club. The 2006 FSGA "Publinx" was to be staged at Grande Pines Golf Club in Orlando, a long, narrow, highly penal track nestled among the timeshares and t-shirt shops of International Drive. Armed with the inflated confidence of a summer full of scores in the 70's, and with my handicap hovering under four - an all-time best for me - I signed up. One week prior to the tournament, I played a practice round at Grande Pines with a few of my buddies and shot 77. Bought a yardage book, filled it with notes on strategy and club selection, spent the next few days sweating buckets on the driving range, and arrived in the parking lot on Friday ready for action. Or so I thought.

FRIDAY, JULY 21 - ROUND 1

I'm already running late. I hate that.

Arrived at the course at 8:30am for my 9:21am tee time, without breakfast. Farted around in the parking lot, found my cart - the FSGA asks that players ride, which I also hate, but I understand it, given the probability of heat stroke in Florida in July - and walked to the range to warm up.

First rule of golf with me: the skill and command I display on the practice tee prior to a round of golf is inversely proportional to my level of success during the round itself. This is an incommutable law, and cannot be argued. Bad news: I'm striping it on the range. Every club responds like I gave birth to it. I've got a bad feeling about this.

Armed with my trusty margin-filled yardage book, I step to the first tee - the tenth at Grande Pines - to chat with my playing partners for the day. Jacob is a 19-year-old behemoth from Melbourne who plays for Brevard Community College. Bruce is an independent businessman from Ocala. Neither of them have any clue who I am, which relieves me. The elderly volunteer from the FSGA announces each of our names as we place peg in ground. Not quite the same charge as the guy from the R&A who belts out players' names at the British Open every year, but cool nonetheless.

Jacob is first, and he nukes a three-wood into downtown Kissimmee. I'm second to play, hitting driver. The hardest shot in tournament golf, for an amateur like me, is the first one. Jangled nerves, tense shoulders, a hop in my step. My immediate goal is to get the damn thing airborne and get out of here.

Which, inexplicably, I do. A little draw, three feet into the rough on the left side. Then, just to make it interesting, I knock a five-iron to ten feet and sink the birdie putt.

So I'm one under par after one hole. The leader on the course. Thoughts of turning pro have crossed my mind. I bogey the next two, but birdie the par-5 13th, my fourth hole of the day. Even par after four. What's so tough about this game?

In every round, there comes a tipping point, and for me, it was the 7th hole of the day, the 16th on the card, a 400-yard dogleg right. My drive hooks over the trouble and into Position "A" in the middle of the fairway. From that point, with a six-iron in hand and a green light, I proceed to rope-hook one into a greenside bunker. No explanation, no excuse. The sound you hear is the wheels coming off.

I honestly cannot say that I was nervous to be playing tournament golf again. Sure, I was tight, but the fact is, I simply did not execute. For that matter, nobody in my threesome did much executing; we recorded two 82's and my scintillating 86, a number that sounds much worse than it felt. More sleep, less sleep, more work on the putting green - who knows what I needed. Once I reached plus-ten, my golf brain shut down in self-defense. It was a race to finish and get the hell out of there.

I should point out that I was far from the bottom of the first-round leaderboard. Two guys turned in scorecards that read triple-digits - and remember, the handicap limit for this tournament is around six. There were dozens of scores in the 80's. Had I actually played to my handicap, I would be in the top-ten right now. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. There's always tomorrow.

SATURDAY, JULY 22 - ROUND 2

I think I set my goals a little too high for this thing.

My target number for the first two days of this three-day event was 150 - as in, two rounds averaging 75. Had I actually accomplished that - and all it required after the first-round 86 was a second-round 64 (chuckle) - I would be sitting pretty in the Championship Flight on Sunday, maybe seven shots off the lead. However, my two-day total of 168 (82 in the second round, highlighted by an aggravating double bogey-bogey-double bogey finish) still had me in the upper two-thirds of the 100-man field. There are only two explanations for this outrageous error in math:

1. I seriously overestimated the relative talent of the field, including me; or
2. I seriously underestimated how tough Grande Pines would play from the way-back tees, firing to pins placed in utterly evil positions.

The good news is, I sucked on the range before I played, so my confidence was high. I also putted better than day one, and ran off a nice string of pars in the middle of the round. But for the third straight day on this particular golf course - two tournament rounds and one practice round a week earlier - I fell apart over the last three holes. I'm starting to understand why Vijay and Tiger spend all that time punishing themselves with personal trainers. It's not how you start; it's how you finish. I think I'm 12 over par on those three holes this week. Perhaps an energy bar would be in order for Sunday's final round.

The FSGA Public Links is flighted after two days, so my 168 total places me in the Second Flight (or, as I call it, the Losers' Bracket), competing against other players who shot similar numbers. I'm three shots off the lead in my particular grouping, a mere 20 shots back overall. I can't hit a 4-iron, 5-iron, fairway wood, or hybrid to save my life, and my short game is a coin toss from hole to hole. Other than that, I really like my chances on Sunday.

Bruce shot 88 on the second day. Jacob rallied for a 78, which included a triple-bogey. Jacob is in the First Flight, one step below the Championship group; Bruce will slog it out with me in the Second Flight. We have agreed that it's probably a good thing that we don't do this for a living.

SUNDAY, JULY 23 - FINAL ROUND

By the time I finish, Tiger Woods is hoisting the Claret Jug as the 2006 British Open champion. He need not look over his shoulder to see if the TV guy from Orlando is coming.

Let's focus on the positive: I sucked on the range again, so I felt good off the first tee. I played holes 2 through 8 in one under par, including a birdie on the 210-yard 7th hole. I parred the 18th. Other than that, well, it was the worst day of golf that I can remember. Really.

Where to start? How about the first hole, which I tripled. Pulled a drive into the rough, got stuck behind a mountainous tuft of sawgrass, took a penalty drop, punched out, knocked the next shot into a greenside bunker, blasted onto the green, two putts. Yep, that adds up to seven. The ensuing seven-hole stretch of sub-par brilliance was quickly ruined on the 9th hole, where I struck a lone pine tree so solidly with my tee shot that nobody in the group had any idea where it landed. It might still be rolling. Re-tee with a penalty shot, into the fairway in three, hit the green, two putts. Yep, six.

The back nine? Hell, I can't even talk about it. It started with another double-bogey - at some point on Sunday, my driver tendered its resignation and excused itself from my bag - and then got worse, if you can imagine. No greens hit in regulation on the back nine until the 18th hole. There was even a rare and mysterious quad on my scorecard. Right side, left side, chunks, blades, you name it. I made every short putt that I looked at, which was nice - the downside being, most of those putts were for some number higher than 5. It was so bad that I couldn't even get angry. "Mystified" is a better word.

Here's the difference between the golf we play and the golf the pros play: in tournament golf, everything is by the book. Hit one into the water? Fine. There's a very specific set of rules that govern where you may drop a ball, and your buddy hollering "just toss one down right there" does not factor into any of them. There are no gimmes, either, no matter how close you came to making that 30-footer, no matter how many strokes it required to get you to that point, and no matter how desperately you wish for your playing partner to mumble, "that's good."

It's not good. Not until you put the damn ball into the hole.

There's a life lesson in there somewhere, I suppose. We can send our kids to schools that do not issue grades, we can reward "almost," we can accept "close enough," but we're doing ourselves a disservice in the process. At some point, the ball has to go into the hole, and every stroke counts. There's no gray area. In that sense, three days of intense competition at a game I adore might serve me well, someday. Right now, I'm just glad it's over.

Jacob rallied for a 76 on Sunday, his best round of the week, to tie for second in the First Flight. John Veneziano of Mount Dora won the state title with rounds of 72, 71, and 71 - those final two scores being the only sub-par rounds among the entire field all three days. And as bad as I felt on Sunday afternoon, I still beat 14 other guys in the Second Flight.

On the bright side, my kids still like me, college football season is coming soon, and I'm not quite ready to take up tennis. If I'm lucky, I might even stink up another driving range later this week.