Now That's More Like It?

"It's not so much the mistakes, it's when you make them."

-Me

On my last round of golf, I set out with the goal of breaking 90.

In my heart, I had the realistic and achievable goal of breaking 95.

I shot a 100.

Now I should be happy about this, right? Wrong. I'm never happy. (I am a golfer after all.) But this particular round was almost more painful than shooting a 109 a few weeks ago. At least when I shot a horrible score, I knew there was no chance whatsoever of reaching my goal. But being so close, and yet so far away, just hurts my soul.

For one thing, I literally had 7 putts that just missed by inches. INCHES. That alone would have gotten me to my goal.

But the overall theme of the day was summed up in the aforementioned quote. As I finished my round, I ran into the course's golf pro. A very nice man who I've actually played with once. He asked me how it went and I said, "It's not so much the mistakes, it's when you make them." Meaning that hitting the ball short isn't the problem, it's hitting the ball short when there's a water hazard in front of you. Hitting to the right isn't bad unless there's a cluster of trees where you hit it. And THOSE mistakes, sadly, were the ones that kept me from my precious goal.

The golf pro acknowledged the brilliance and wisdom of my insight.

But the good news is that I seem to be at the point where I finished last season scoring wise. Maybe there's a chance that I could actually be improving.

Maybe.