All-Around Missed Putt!

Barb found this photo in her files and sent it to me as evidence that she's never been a putter.  But I can tell you that I've never seen Barb use this putting style.  In fact, I've never seen anybody, man or women, junior golfer or geriatric hacker, try to putt like this.

I've studied this photo for a while and the more I look, the more amazing it becomes.

All of us who've ever plumbed a tricky green, hung over a ball, lined up for a crucial putt, forced the tension from our hands and bodies, followed Ben Hogan's advice and drawn that magical line from the ball to the cup and back to the ball, then taken our putters back and allowed them to swing forward like pendulums suspended from our shoulders, and held the putt while our balls rolled effortlessly forward on pure and true paths and dropped with a satisfying clunk into the sanctuary of the cups must surely be filled with gratitude.

THIS IS NOT THE WAY WE PUTT!

Pumpkin Cup Final Score: Star Fort LGA - 11, Woodfin Ridge LGA - 5

Star Fort LGA 2012 Pumpkin Cup Team

At the conclusion of the Sunday Best Ball matches the Pumpkin Cup was firmly back in our possession, but the final score doesn't tell the entire story of this annual contest among friends.

Pumpkin Cup: Day 1, Star Fort Team - 5, Woodfin Ridge Team - 3

Star Fort Team Members Marie Pate (left)
& Ruth Glasl (right)  trying to grab the Pumpkin

Let me give you a little background on The Pumpkin Cup.  It's a 2-day, match play event.  The 2013 Pumpkin Cup is the 4th playing of the event.  Day 1 we play Captain's Choice in 2-women teams and Day 2 we play Best Ball, again in 2-women teams.  I've started lobbying for an expansion of the format to include a 9-hole singles match, but that's something for the future.

Pumpkin Cup Countdown

26 hours to tee time and counting.  Everything seems in order.  The pairings have been sent to Fred to get the cards printed.  Barb and I have tweaked the rules sheet one last time.  Everybody has their food assignment for Saturday's on-course snacks and Sunday morning breakfast.  What else remains?

Whoops!

Barb

Barb and Shirley and I piled into Barb's van yesterday morning and took a little road trip to the Golden Hills Golf & Country Club Club for the last Sandlapper tournament of the season.  There's no more organized interclub play now until March.  Everyone's hunkering down for the Thanksgiving-to-New Years holiday season, and then golf slows down as we navigate a couple of cold winter months.  Well, I know winter's a relative concept.  We're in South Carolina.  It's nothing like Michigan.  But we do need to wear sweaters and sometimes we need winter gloves during January and February.  The Magnolia Blossoms among us tend not to play much golf.

Pumpkin Cup Worries: My New Putter

Star Fort Pumpkin Cup 2012 Team

I've been deeply worried, in that secret, unspoken fashion that can disrupt my sleep and distract my attention from Hillary's comments on Washington dysfunction, about the wisdom of acquiring a new putter and trying to make friends with it 6 weeks before the Pumpkin Cup, which is an annual golf highlight in my life, right up there with my biennial matches with Wes.

Pumpkin Cup: Pre-Tournament Tensions

As the Pumpkin Cup approaches, tensions are building.  There's mild bickering and political maneuvering around the format: 2 18-hole matches vs 4 9-hole matches.  Will there or won't there be an alternate shots format?  And the ultimate point of contention: If we do singles matches, who will play Sandra, who's the closest to a scratch golfer?

Lucky Shots, Big Girls, & Little Girls

Here it is, Shanshan Feng's lucky 2nd shot on the par-5 18th hole at the Pine Valley Golf Club in Beijing, China that gave her an eagle and an upset victory over Stacy Lewis, and then set off that storm of sour grapes tweets this morning.

Shanshan wasn't the only lucky golfer yesterday.  Lefty did it too, sending his ball crashing into a tree and skipping across a pond, all from a grossly uneven lie.

This is Golf. Hope Springs Eternal.

I confess.  I 'm a sucker for new equipment.  Even though my rational self knows better, that part of me that always thinks today I will play a bogey-free round sometimes takes over.

Ace!

I'd predict that everybody who's ever had one knows immediately what this photo is depicting!  Am I right?

I remember everything about this shot!  I remember that I was playing with Pat and Teenie that day, and that I'd played the first 3 holes on the front 9 rather miserably.  I remember how helpless I felt when we drove away from the 3rd green and I had yet another double bogey on my score card.  And then, I experienced a golf miracle!