We have a guest article today from Steve Czaban, the sports broadcaster and journalist from D.C. As you recall, Czabe is the genius behind the Potomac Cup, the battle between the best amateur golfers in Maryland and Virginia.
Czabe, a 5.3 handicap, entered the 36-hole Virginia State Amateur yesterday. He lasted nine holes. I love his scathing review of…himself! From the article:
“I did not make a single par. I hit a 6-iron OB on a 165 yard par-3 (it was 30 yards left). I hit my next drive on a short par-4 dead right, OB. I hit 2 other drives that were weak, weak, pop-ups, which ended up maybe 190 and on the edge of OB.
Yet I wasn’t slowing down our group. I wasn’t throwing tantrums. I wasn’t too embarrassed to turn in my scorecard (it was looking like it would start with a “1”).
I just didn’t belong out there. I was the Salahis of amateur golf. An impostor.”
That’s the difference between golf and competitive golf. Going out with your lunkhead golf buddies, shooting the breeze, swinging easy, and shooting a smooth 76 is one thing. When there’s money or trophies on the line, the pressure ratchets up exponentially. Most people can add five shots, ten if you make bad course management decisions.
I proved this conclusively with my cousin Stan, my favorite kind of chump to fleece on the golf course…in fact, the only kind of chump to fleece on the golf course. He bragged about how many times he broke 80, boasted about playing five times a week at the small course at Lake Placid, (the Mountain Course), and regaled me with how good he was getting…finally adding that he’d bet me $250 he could beat me straight up…strict rules of golf.
Meanwhile, I’m watching him use his putter head to scoop the ball out of the hole, aim 60 yards left to slice a 180-200 yard banana into the fairway, count like Bill Clinton, ground his clubs in hazards, you know the type.
So I took him up on his bet: 18 holes, medal play, strict rules of golf, $250. I even let him pick the course, his home course, the Links Course (misnomer) at Lake Placid.
You know what happened. I shot 87…Stan shot 106. He hit squirters out of bad lies in the fairway, he missed two-footers, he left balls in the bunker (trying to “pick” them out!), he duffed chips, and he steamed, seethed, and simmered all the way around as the day went further and further south. he actually even tried to call a phantom penalty on me on one hole, saying I couldn’t tee off behind the markers! I showed him the two-club length rule and then after the match, while everyone else was talking and enjoying an iced tea on the veranda, he was poring over the rulebook trying to find 19 shots in phantom penalties! Even his kids and wife were shaking their heads. I tried to explain that the pressure of competition makes all the difference to a guy who isn’t used to it, but he wasn’t interested in hearing that:)
“I never play this poorly!” he raged. “You just caught me on a bad day.”
I’ll give Czabe the same advice I gave Stan, Stan’s two sons, and anyone else who asks me how to get better at golf quickly: work on your short game. Add up all those duffed chips, poor pitches, and gut-wrenching putts, and you can easily find five shots a day. Then just minimize mental errors. That’s the second advice I’d give Czabe. There is wisdom that every golf needs – the wisdom to know when to go for that sucker pin and when to play for the meat of the green.
Then just have a short memory. Don’t make dumb mistakes which will make you run hot…then don’t sweat the small stuff. in competition, expect the unexpected, because golf follows Murphy’s Law too…the one day of the year you hit into a divot in the middle of a fairway, get buried in the lip of the bunker, get snookered by the one flippin’ tree on the course, or have one of a grillion other rules oddities turn up, it will be in the biggest match of the year, so be prepared and play it cool.
Anyway, Czabe’s piece is a great laugh, so enjoy it. And as for Stan, he paid me eventually…after his wife and kids and I chanted “WEL-CHER!, WEL-CHER! at him for three days. Then he wrote me a check…for $160. When I asked him what happened to the other $90 he told me, “well I bought dinner last night!”
I love ya, Stan, I always will. And I loved you even more when you made bets with me.
