Lessons from the Links

I squeezed in a 2nd solitary 18 holes Thursday before the annual mid-afternoon Thanksgiving feast, and I again played a very satisfactory game of golf.  It wasn't spectacular.  Nothing amazing happened.  I shot 93, missed a few putts I should have made but didn't, needed to conjure up the Magic of Flora, my aged 11-wood (whose pink flamingo head cover gave the club her name), to get me out of a couple of waste areas and back into the short grass, but made no ball offerings to the water hazards and put a few pars on my card.

Real Life Trumps Family Golf

I'd planned to write a post tonight that reported the outcome of the first in our planned 3-match Thanksgiving series.  Travel plans were made.  Golf clubs were packed.  Smack talk had started.  Then things fell apart on the West Coast, and there was much reconfiguring and changing and adjusting.

We all agreed.  The needs of children in crisis trump the Thanksgiving Match Play series.

A Girls' Golf Weekend Supremo!

The Lorena Ochoa Invitational is a different kind of LPGA event.  The field is small -- just 36 players -- and the tournament is very intimate.  The players tend to hang out at the Guadalajara Country Club after every round snacking on Mexican tidbits and drinking margaritas.

It feels more like a girls' golf weekend at the beach than a pro golf tournament.  Well, there are a couple of significant differences -- a million dollar purse and a great big hand-crafted ceramic and tooled-silver trophy, to be specific.

Lexi Thompson got initiated into the Lorena Ochoa Invitational winners' circle today that includes Christie Kerr (2912), Catriona Matthew (2011), IK Kim (2010), Michelle Wie (2009), and Angela Stanford (2008).  I can't imagine anything that would be more fun that a serenade by a mariachi band to celebrate the end of a weekend of golf with the girls!

Diabetes & Me

I walked out of my doctor's office about a year ago with a diabetes diagnosis.  It actually wasn't much of a surprise.  My family medical history has been working against me on this one for most of my adulthood.  But I've lived an active life, watched what I put in my mouth -- most of the time -- and held off the inevitable for as long as I could.  So I received the diagnosis gracefully, asked to be sent to diabetes education, and was convinced that this wasn't going to change my life.  I was very mistaken.

Good Company Trumps Slow Play

I don't know about your golf rounds but sometimes, for me, getting through the round is more about survival than about winning.

I once played a round in Palm Springs in July when it was so incredibly hot that the drink cart carried iced towels in a huge cooler and dispensed them without charge several time during the round.  We all survived that round although I'll not again play golf in a Palm Springs August.  Another time I finished a round in rain so heavy that my ball was making 6" rooster tails on every putt.  I survived that one too, and the one I played the day the dreaded 8th hole pond at Star Fort was frozen and my ball resembled a hockey puck as it bounced on the ice and careened up the fairway toward the green.

And then there are the rounds that involve emotional survival.  That's he way it was for Jason and me at Wild Dunes Sunday afternoon.