I'm just sayin'

There's one overriding reason I keep on golfing as I get older and weaker. That's very simple: every time I go to the range, or hit balls in my garage, or play a round of golf, I know for a fact that I've ended the day just a little bit closer to understanding golf.

That's progress, and incentive, rolled into one.

The challenge is to drop the arrogance that I believe tempts every good golfer and offer oneself up as ready to learn.

I've been fortunate to have had the opportunity to play on great courses against good competition and found a pro who gave me good guidance.

The strategy I've adopted for the coming year is to keep my effort at its most efficient level. I have to swing hard enough to make a true, ballistic stroke, where there's only one moment when I put energy into making the club go forward, but easy enough so that I have no sensation that I'm in danger of losing balance and falling, or, worse yet, pulling a muscle and putting myself in pain.

That means hitting my pitching wedge about 100 yards, +/-5. I can then count on about 12 yards difference between adjacent clubs: 88 for the gap, 76 and in to the green for the SW, 112 for the 9, 124 for the 8, 136 for the 7, 148 for the six, 160 for the five, 172 for the 4, 184 for the 3 and 196 for the 2. I can count on about 215 from the 3-metalwood and 235 from the Driver.

For me, that's what I get with a swing that feels like a 70% effort. It may be less, or more, but it's a start.

When I get on a course, if I have a 160-yard shot to a flag that's sitting on the back of a green, I sure don't want to go long: I want my next shot to be a putt, so my best chance of getting what I want is to hit my 6-iron, confident that even if I swing a little harder than I want, or catch it just right and have a little draw to deal with, I'm not going over. In short, I try to play every shot with the least opportunity for the worst outcome.

If I have the same distance to a hole cut on the left-front of a green, right behind a trap, then my shot is to grab the 4-iron and hit a high cut, aimed right at the flag. That way, I've taken the trap out of play, and if I overdo the cut, I have a putt or at worst a chip.

So, although I can count on 160 yards with a normal stroke with the 5-iron, I wouldn't use that club for either of these two circumstances. That's not the way a Tour pro thinks, and not the way I thought when I was young and stronger; it's the way I choose to strategize now.

It turns out, as I sit here and analyze it, that it's not the simplest way to play, but golf, for me at least, is the most complex game I've ever played. By comparison, chess and bridge, "intellectual" games, are both much simpler. Golf is like playing the New York Times Crossword puzzle. The structure is pretty much the same, day-to-day. After playing it hundreds of times, you get to know the standard crosswordese clues -- some of us refer to them as "Gimmees", like an 18" putt -- and you know there'll be days when you can't fill the grid without an error, and it takes you longer. But you just learn to keep working at them, and gradually you get better, and faster. Even the easiest Monday puzzle (Monday is the easiest, Saturday is the hardest, Sunday is the funkiest) is worth doing, like playing a short course with relatively flat greens. 

And that will be enough blogging for a Thursday afternoon.