Today I Finally Played Some Real Golf!, Almost

Today I graduated from the driving range to the golf course!

Mary, one of my favorite golf buddies, called a couple of days ago and asked if I was ready to play some golf. The weather has been beautiful - South Carolina winter weather, sunny, in the 60s, not much wind. I've been getting bored with the range, even though I knew my game really isn't up to speed, so we made a date. I told her I would probably only play nine holes. (I'm still rebuilding my stamina.)

Then I talked with my PT team. They assured me that my titanium knee is firmly in place and I've made good progress regaining strength in my quads and hamstrings, and encouraged me to give it a try. "Use one of your clubs like a cane if you get in uneven ground," they advised as I went out the door.

So I met Mary this morning at the golf course and we ran into two more members of our women's league, Bonnie and Alma, and decided to play a foursome.

I was tremendously excited when I stepped up to the first tee. I haven't hit a tee shot for almost twelve weeks and I've really missed golf. I wanted to mark my return with one of those Mighty Girl shots.

It wasn't my best tee shot - not anything close to my Mighty Girl fantasy - but it was far from my worst, and my knee didn't do anything awful (like break apart). We were off!

The first hole was rough. I'd forgotten how to pitch and I'd forgotten how to putt. The putting came back quickly. After a vile 4-putt on the first I found my rhythm and 1-putted the next four holes. But the pitching and chipping - the heart and soul of my short game -  continued to be troublesome. (I think I'm trying to do with my wrists what I should be doing with my body, but I need some time on the range to get the feel of proper leg work and work out the problem.)

When I found myself in a greenside bunker on the 3rd I had a lapse in confidence. My knee didn't feel ready for sand and I said so. Nobody teased me. Nobody needled me. I felt accepted.

I tended the flag while Mary, Alma, and Bonnie putted out and we all walked off the green together. As we passed the bunker Bonnie stepped in and retrieved my ball. I was moved by her incredible kindness, but not surprised. After all, ours is a game grounded in courtesy. Even in the heat of intense competition - and today could hardly be characterized as intensely competitive - true golfers know our round will be more pleasant it we practice simple good manners.

There were a couple of pars on my scorecard today, and a few bogeys. Not too shabby for my first post-surgery round. There were also a couple of snowmen - not unexpected for that first round. And by the time we'd finished the 7th hole I was simply out of gas.

I tended the flag for the last two holes the first nine, put my clubs back in my car, and went home to ice my knee and take a nap, content in the knowledge that playing golf is, as my friend Becky promised, just like riding a bicycle. Most of the elements came back quickly and I'm completely confident that my short game will be back in form too. I'll give it another try on Thursday - perhaps I can finish nine and execute some respectable chips!

Almost A Great Shot (Except For The Bad Bounce or The Errant Pine Cone)

Heartbreak.  Photo credit: www.lpga.com

Along with thousands other women's golf fans I was riveted to Golf Channel late Saturday afternoon when Cristie Kerr and Lexi Thompson gave it everything they had to save Team USA's place in the Sunday Showdown lineup at the International Crown.   They couldn't pull it off.

Friends who neither play nor follow golf and who do not share my passion were waiting for me to join them for dinner.  I texted -- order some appetizers and have a drink -- I'm going to be late -- must see this hole to the end.

Sunday at Pinehurst Belonged to Michelle Wie

Michelle Wie teeing off Sunday at the US Women's Open.  Photo credit: USGA

The 69th playing of the US Women's Open has taken its place in golfing history.  It's an Open that belongs now to twenty-four year old Michelle Wie, once a teen phenom who labored at her craft for a full decade in order to achieve the Sunday afternoon pinnacle victory.  It was a well-played and truly-earned win.

The Mighty Lucy: Lucy Li's Very Big Day

Lucy Li.

The sun was still low in the eastern sky above the North Carolina Sandhills when The Mighty Lucy, oblivious to the debate among players and pundits and aficionados that has swirled across the ether for days about the wisdom of allowing an eleven-year old to compete in the grande dame of American women's golf competition that is the US Women's Open, current darling of the press corps, teed off promptly at 7:07am Thursday morning for her first round.

US Women's Open: Remembering The Babe

Babe Didrikson Zaharias, 1911-1956

In 1954 the United States was in the grip of the Cold War and being held in thrall by Joe McCarthy's Red Scare, and it seemed like only Edward R Murrow and Fred Friendly were going to take exception to McCarthy's madness.  Love was in the air and so was radioactivity: Monroe married Dimaggio and the first hydrogen weapon exploded over the Bikini Atoll.  The nation was poised on the brink of a cultural revolution, pondering but not yet able to envision the post-Brown v Board of Education social landscape.  Texas Instruments launched the transistor radio and Burger King launched its proletarian hamburger challenge.  The first issue of Sports Illustrated appeared on newsstands.

This was the year Babe Zaharias won the US Women's Open for the third and final time, defeating Betty Hicks (for the second time) at the Salem Country Club in Peabody, Massachusetts.  It was her 48th and final victory on the links.

It's Spring! That Means Tourneys, Tourneys, and More Tourneys!

The Links at Stoney Point, Greenwood, SC

Signs of spring: Two weeks ago the Star Fort Ladies Golf Association held it's season-opening Spring Fling Tournament.  Lexi Thompson has taken the traditional winner's leap into Poppy's Pond and Michelle Wie has danced the victorious hula at Ko Olina.  Last week it was the first Interclub Tournament of the year at Greenwood Country Club.  This week is was the first Sandlapper's Tournament of the year at the Links at Stoney Point.  And in less than three weeks the Symetra Tour will be in town.  We girls are swinging our sticks with renewed vigor at every level of the game.  I'm positively awash in golf pleasure!

Confessions of a Golf Addict

So I need to back up before I can go forward with this confession . . . to that pesky shoulder injury -- the one that involved some calcification, perhaps a tear in my rotator cuff, and some issue with my bicep tendon that was causing chronic tendonitis -- that was interfering with my swing.

After spending months swinging my sticks and suffering, and then more months with the physical therapist and still suffering with and without swinging, I gave in and scheduled the surgery I'd been trying to avoid because everybody (translate: everybody with whom I golf regularly who knew at least one other golfer who'd had shoulder surgery) kept telling me I'd be out of golf for at least three and probably six months, and six months without golf felt like an impossibly long time to me.

Beyond the Spotlight: Missing the Cut

Aussie Karrie Webb, 2014 JTBC Founders Cup Champion.

As I began writing this post, the second round at the JTBC Founders Cup was still in process.  As I am finishing it the players have completed the final round.  For the final two rounds Judy Rankin's attention was focused on the top of the board, on the two battling rookies -- Mirim Lee and Lydia Ko -- and for a time on Morgan Pressel, who was briefly flirting with the lead but then lost her momentum -- always a good story to follow up with a post-round interview.  But here came Karrie Webb, playing her way up the leaderboard on a bright, sunny Phoenix Sunday afternoon to snatch the victory with a clutch putt on the 18th hole, over an hour before all the cards were signed and all the players were in the clubhouse.

Until near the end of that sprint to the finish Webbie played outside the television commentators' spotlight and we almost missed it.   In her comments on Webb's victory, Judy Rankin admitted that for much of her early career Karrie Webb played in Annika Sorenstam's shadow and while Webbie was and is a fierce competitor and a very skilled golfer, she was overlooked because the media tend to focus on the prevailing star.  Rankin's correct.  There's so much golf being played outside the spotlight, so much to be learned by looking beyond the top five on the board, or the top ten, or even the top twenty.

Before There Was A Feminine Mystique

LPGA Founders, c. 1950

When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963 the LPGA was thirteen years old, the wobbly teenaged progeny of thirteen women who were driven to create a space for women in the very masculine sphere of professional athletics.

Robert Trent Jones: A Walk on the Wild Side

Shirley and I spent our second day at Hilton Head playing the Robert Trent Jones Course which, in addition to offering a superb round of golf, also provided a naturalist's feast.  The course is an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary and with fairways wrapped around canals and and lagoons there's an abundance of natural habitat as well as a continuous golfing challenge.

We took one look at the course map and agreed that we were going to need to focus on direction.  There was water everywhere!

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.

Interclub at Persimmon Hill

Lunch at Persimmon Hill

Once a month from March through October I play a delightful round of golf with a group of women from neighboring golf clubs.  We play the Stableford system, we play fast, and there are stakes.  As club teams we play for an annual trophy that's rotated among the participating clubs and won (or lost) based on each club's ladies association cumulative score.  And I have a standing side bet with Peggy Smith because I feel that it's not golf if I'm not gambling!

Birthday Golf

All of us have weird, idiosyncratic golf rituals.  I was once chatting with my spiritual daughter, Jane Lybecker, about our plans to reconnect with family and friends in the aftermath of a great disaster.  I confessed that I didn't have a plan.  (Jane, who's remarkably prepared for disasters, carries a 4-day water supply in her car at all times.  I would succumb to dehydration.)

Jane and her Sister Kim, Ready for a Family Golf Round 

That led us to consider the barriers to reconnecting when, in our cases, we are separated by great geographic distances.  (You can't get much further apart than South Carolina and California.)  We decided that the best we'd be able to do if faced with cataclysmic forces of destruction was drive to the nearest golf course and play a round, all the while sending out loving thoughts to everyone in our networks, who would also be playing a round of golf while waiting for the world as we know it to end.