Hardcore Masochism

"I will never be satisfied
I will never be satisfied
I will never be satisfied
Until it ends in tears."
-Living Colour (The band not the TV show)

If you had told me 5 minutes before my last round of golf that I would shoot a 96, I would have been happy.  If you had told me that I would shoot 5 pars and 6 bogeys, I would have been thrilled.  So why, after shooting a round of 96 (one of my best rounds in months) do I still feel so miserable?  Well, quite frankly, I'm an asshole.

But also because, deep in my heart, I know I could have done better.

Allow me to paint you a picture:  It was a beautiful autumn day in the Bronx.  Early in the morning with very few people.  Calm and serene.  A perfect day for golf.  I pay my greens fee and casually make my way to the first tee.  I hadn't played in a while so I really wanted to take the time to loosen up before going out.  But then the starter says to me, "You're a single?  Hurry up and play in front of these guys because they're a group of 11."

Um, ok.  So much for loosening up.

Then as I'm rushing to get myself together so that I could take my first swing, another single walks up and is forced to join me under the same high stress scenario.  Now, maybe these circumstances actually helped me because I ended up hitting a pretty great first tee shot.  However, my second shot was not so good and I ended up in the sand trap.

Here's something you should know about me: I fucking hate sand traps.  Hate.  Hate.  Hate.  Hate.  Hate.  And yet, here's the thing: I hit a great shot out of the sand trap.  This boded well for the day.  It boded well indeed.

I proceeded to play some of the best golf I had played in months.  I was hitting great tee shots, great chip shots, and even catching a couple of lucky bounces here and there.  Oh my friends, it was a glorious day.  It wasn't perfect.  I definitely made mistakes.  But none of them were disasterous and some of them were actually good mistakes.  You know, the kind where after you see the result you say, "Oh yeah.  That's exactly what I meant to do."

That is, until I got to the 15th hole.  That fucking 15th hole.  (Clearly it was the hole's fault and not mine.)

I hit a poor tee shot which trickled in to the fairway.  Bad shot: yes.  Disaster: no.  I can only describe my second shot as this: It was as if the Hindenburg had crashed into the Titanic and then they both ran into a bus full of puppies.  This is not hyperbole.  It was that bad.  All of the good things that I had done up until that point were wiped out in one inglorious stroke.  One of the worst mistakes to make at one of the worst times to make it.

And to make matters worse, I made matters worse.  After I hit that bad shot out of bounds (followed by a monumental freak out), I continued to tell myself that I shouldn't let that one mistake ruin my entire day.  That I shouldn't let that one mistake compound into more mistakes.  That I should calm down, reset myself and move past it.

Unfortunately, I just wanted to be an angry, petulant child rather than the mature, level-headed golfer than you've all come to know and love.

I proceeded to nearly hit my penalty shot out of bounds.  (Which made me furious-er.)  Then, in my fury, I furiously miss-hit my now 5th shot, and left it short of the green by about 2 yards.  Then, in my even greater fury, I proceeded to furiously skull the short chip shot and send the ball flying about 35 feet past the hole.  And in a final burst of epic furious-ity, I three-putted the hole for a grand total of...wait for it...9 (Or a bogey 5 for those of you playing at home.)

Now, I've always had the goal and the expectation of breaking 100 (even though that rarely happens), but until the 15th hole I actually had a legitimate shot at breaking 90!  90 I say!

And now for the lesson.  After having a little time to digest everything that happened, I realize that I didn't miss my chance to reach my goal because of that one mistake.  I missed it because of how I responded to that one mistake.  I forgot the first rule of golf club: You do not talk about golf club.  Wait, I'm sorry, I'm mixing up my metaphors.  The point is, mistakes are going to happen and we can choose to dwell on them or we can choose to let go.  I chose the former and it didn't help much.

Although, in my defense, I usually make my disasterous mistakes much earlier in the round so that I have the entire day to recover from them emotionally.