Lyons Mirror-Sun
August 30, 2007
David Friedli
Hole-luiah!
Here are the three best things to happen to my golf game.
One: the purchase of the Tommy Armour 845 irons that took five strokes off my game from day one.
Two: the “three easy payments of $49.95”, saw-it-on-late-night-television-and-bought-it driver the Rev. Bill Martin gave me seven years ago in the middle of a round when he threw it further than the drive he hit, then stood amazed as I hit it straight down the fairways the rest of the round.
Three: the driving lesson Jerry Spethman gave me on Tee 11 at Oakland Golf Club earlier this year that added thirty yards to the miserable efforts I had shown through the first ten holes.
Now, add a fourth wonderful thing to bless my golf course efforts.
These words leapt from the page of the September issue of the Oakland Golf Club newsletter: “ Number two green will be closing soon and a temporary green will be set up. We will be taking out the old green and a new green will be replacing it.”
Hole-luiah!
It would be too simplistic to say Hole Two of OGC is my golfing nemesis. In addition to the 18 holes of every round, my game has plenty of “holes” of it’s own.
Drives from
the tee are erratic. Long iron shots twist and turn like a B-movie plot.
My short iron game eats shots like a starving grub worm devours fairway turf
roots.
Despite the urging of those I compete with, I will not part with my 40-year old Wilson blade putter even though I am not accurate with it.
However, the news of an impending change in the landscape of the second green is encouragement that next season will bring a positive change in my score each round.
Hole two at Oakland is a par three hole that plays straight south into the prevailing summer wind. A six-foot deep ditch half-filled with water wraps around the front and right side of the tee.
A row of 20-foot tall spruce trees lines the right hand rough. Two 60-foot oaks narrow the fairway 175 yards out. Another shallow ditch guards the front of the green, effectively eliminating any ball from rolling onto the green. Long shots land near, on or over the No. 9 tee. I’ve seen all three, hundreds of times.
Playing between 190 and 200 yards, depending where the tees are set, the green is at the extreme end of my three-iron and a bit short of the typical landing area of my five-wood. In other words, I am between clubs, and there isn’t much I can do about it.
In 26 years of play, I have hit the green from the tee once. If my memory serves correctly (and why shouldn’t it?) I believe I made bogey on the hole anyway. Lay-up, chip, putt. That is my only strategy.
Usually it is more like lay-up, chip, chip over the green, chip, three-putt, go to next hole in a golf depression.
The Club is replacing the green because it has been affected by a serious grass fungus, and truthfully it’s not much of a green anyway. It is small and has a domed shape. For the non-golfer, landing a ball on No. 2 is like putting a cereal bowl upside-down on the kitchen table, standing 20 feet away, throwing a frozen pea and landing it on top of that bowl. Just keep trying and keep adding strokes. Soon your scorecard can look just like mine.
I am praying to the golf gods that the planners of the new green think in these easy terms: shorter hole, larger green, flatter surface. Please.
Hole-luiah! Perhaps I will finally find the promised land.