Doctor's Orders: Play More Golf!

We all know golf is good for our health.  It just makes sense that swinging a golf club 80 or 90 or 110 times in a 4 hour period and climbing in and out of bunkers have cardiovascular benefits we can't get sitting on the sofa clicking buttons on our remotes.

But wait! There's more.  Every diabetic golfer knows that blood glucose goes down as exercise increases, and that means the more we golf the more we can eat stuff we wouldn't normally eat if we were sitting on the sofa managing the remote.  I've determined through some quasi-scientific research that if I get out of the cart while my partner is preparing to hit her ball, take a couple of clubs and walk to my own ball, take my shot and then start walking back toward the cart, over the course of an 18-hole round I will log between 2 and 2.5 miles of walking.  So, even if you don't want to schlep your clubs, if you're a cart-riding golfer like me and you detest the gym and treadmills, you can still get in a decent amount of "exercise" by playing three rounds of golf a week.

Sunday at the Masters!

Masters Sunday 2014.

It was everything Sunday at the Masters should be!  There was an amateur who survived the cut and played the weekend.  A pair of fifty-somethings stayed at the top of the board and showed us that golf is a game for a lifetime.  There was a twenty-year old youngster, playing brilliant golf, challenging a no-holds-barred Big Dog who hits the ball a country mile.  There was a breathtaking chip-in from a bunker.  There was a devastatingly short tee shot that could have gotten hung up in the rough but instead rolled back down the hill and into the water.  There was a death-defying second shot out of pine straw, through a little stand of pine trees and onto the green.   And when it was over, on the 18th green, there was gentility and humility in both defeat and victory, which is as it should be in the game of golf.  All played under the watchful eyes of a man with a vision of what golf could be in the United States, on a golf course like no other.

Unique to the Game of Golf: A Competition Among Friends

Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus & Gary Player, with Augusta
National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne, preparing, yet
again, to open the 2014 Masters Tournament with their
ceremonial tee shots.

We’ve always wanted to beat each other; we’ve never hidden that. When we did win, we congratulated the other. When we lost, we congratulated the other. 

Gary Player, on his lifelong relationship with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer

I've been fretting about the Star Fort Ladies Golf Association spring tournament.  Well, actually, I've been fretting about the pairings.  It's a team event and I'm still not entirely recovered from my shoulder surgery.  My swing's a bit stiff.  I tire easily.  I'm not going to make much of a partner.

Taking Relief: Rule 26 Water Hazards (Including Lateral Water Hazards)

Lateral Hazard Drop Options

The Star Fort Ladies Golf Association annual spring tournament's at hand and I'm readying myself for the contest with a little back yard chipping practice and a review of the ever-mysterious Rules of Golf.  I know it's hard to believe that a yearly competition among friends who golf together week after week requires a rules review, but there's always some Eagle-Eye monitoring and I don't want to be disqualified for an unintentional infraction.  Take the Rules Quiz:  Do you know your drop options in the situation illustrated here?

After the Tourney is Over . . .

Lexi Thompson joins the Poppy's Pond Jump Club

I have a kind of morning after feeling as I confront a cold, dreary Monday with a long to-do list that just doesn't inspire me.  What's this about?

Sunday was an all-around golf day.  I have a long history of slipping out to the golf course on Sunday morning for 9 holes of solitary practice, throwing down another ball, or two or even three to correct a bad shot, try a shot with two or three different clubs, and so I slipped out to the course and played 9 just to give my new shoulder another road test, enjoyed a pleasant Sunday brunch, and then settled down in front of the television and readied myself for what I'd anticipated would be a riveting four-way battle for the Kraft Nabisco Championship.  Sunday began with the promise of being the sort of day I generally enjoy, but this Sunday didn't sparkle and fizz.

Oh Good Heavens! I Thought We'd Gotten Beyond This!

I'n as offended by Golf Digest's choice for its newest issue as every other woman golfer.  Soft porn? Pandering to . . . who?  Men sexploiting women?  Surely not?

This isn't about sex.  This about money, and market share, and news stand eye appeal, and . . .? What it's not about is golf.

Why am I surprised?

Why don't I subscribe to or even casually read Golf Digest?

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.

Is it Spring Yet?

Augusta National Golf Club, dreaming of spring

This winter has gone on, and on, and on, and on some more.  I know you folks who live up there north of Atlanta have had it rougher than those of us who live down here in Magnolia Blossom Land, but even here, where the tulip trees are blooming, the dogwoods are in full bud, and the azaleas are scheduled to pop in about two weeks, it's still winter, or what passes for winter in the South.