Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The driving range is apparently a completely different beast than the course proper, and it comes as no surprise this trivial newsflash landed just five days before tee time. It’s strange. Your dentist usually doesn’t jam the drill into a few healthy molars and your thigh before tending to the cavity, nor do electric chair operators send a couple sample shocks prior to performing the coup de grâce.

Only in golf, that vile sport perpetuated to crush the human spirit, would the practice area have the barest connection to the actual event. Standard operating procedure, it turns out, requires torture be prefaced with pre-torture. Before I discovered all this, though, I was content with progress from last weekend, when the Professor urged a return to the basics. I had cleared the chaff from my brain, regained some of the feel, and yet I’m cringing now when I think about Saturday. The stretch goal is to walk away with a 100, but multiples of this lofty number keep scrolling across my mind in ticker format.

Perhaps I’ll choose a more realistic target of 150, with the belief that a bar set low enough can only trip you, rather than slam you in the face. There’s a Greek myth about a poor bastard named Sisyphus who’s destined to roll the same damn boulder up a hill for all eternity, only to have it tumble back down again. Look closely enough at some of the paintings and etchings, and you’ll notice the rock may very well resemble a golf ball.