Shooting 88 Can Be Great!

Trusting your golf game – and accepting all results – can lead to lower scores and more golf enjoyment!

Diane and I just came home from our annual visit to see my family in Pittsburgh, PA.  We had a great time as usual.  We were able to attend a Pirate baseball game at PNC park – a first for me – and enjoyed this and all parts of our trip.

As I did last year – and a number of times before – I was able to play my favorite golf course – Oakmont Country Club – as a guest of my friend and ORC member Larry Young.  I have played Oakmont I think about a half a dozen times before, and each time came away from the round very frustrated that I was not able to score better.

As I noted in my post last fall, Oakmont is a wonderfully fair but demanding golf course.  If you hit good shots you can score well, if not it is very easy to make double bogies and higher.  In the past, I would let a poor hole get to me – and this would lead to more poor shots, more frustration, and on and on.

This year I have been playing some of my best golf ever.  Even though – because of some physical issues – I have played about half the total number of rounds as in the past, about 30% of my rounds have been in the 70s. 

I promised myself that no matter what I scored I would enjoy each and ever shot and hole of my round at Oakmont.  We played from the men's tees – 6,400 yards (longer than the normal 6,000 senior tees I play at home) – and I was rewarded with my best round ever at Oakmont – an 88 (45 front, 43 back).  Now at home I might be frustrated with this score – but not at Oakmont.  I think I probably hit 4 or 5 poor shots, most often leading to a double bogey – but not one time did I get upset with myself and the results.  I kept remembering that this is what SHOULD happen on a great golf course.  And I hit a lot of memorable quality golf shots, ones I will remember for a long time.

Hopefully this is a big lesson for me in the future – and perhaps for you.  Accepting what you have done, moving on, and doing your best to hit the best golf shots you can hit is worth the effort.  No matter what the score, getting to play the great game of golf with your friends, to challenge yourself to score the best you can on a given day – how can it get better than that?  And MAYBE keeping this attitude is one of the keys to playing the best golf you are capbable of playing.

The Fit Is IT!!

Tony