Yesterday morning I continued my ‘golfing comeback’ with a day out with Dad at Maplewood Golf Course in Renton. The weather was supposed to be a bit better than our Riverbend excursion last month, so we were hopeful that we would miss out on the rain all together, but we were prepared either way. Fortunately, when we arrived at the course, we found a pretty solid group of people there and just overcast, cold weather.
With my newly gripped Ping S59’s in tow, we hit the first tee ready to roll. I won’t give the play by play, or hole by hole recap here, but let me just say that I was very happy overall with my play. I spent way too much time struggling with my driver and my irons tended to drift a bit right of target, but I’ll attribute that to me adjusting to the new grips. I seem to remember this same issue the last time I went to oversized grips on my Wilson Staff irons, which I quickly worked around in a range session or two, but that’s another conversation to be had later.
The one strange thing that I did on this particular round was putt far more off the green that I ever have before. For the most part, I was pretty successful with my short game as I was draining 10 foot puts like it was the normal thing to do on the front side. By the back side, my putter had cooled a bit, but it was still very sharp.
Dad continued to play his newfound consistent game. Shooting on an unfamiliar course is always hard, but with the exception of a few wild drives, he played a nice steady game. It’s pretty easy to tell he’s been working hard on his game. I never have expected to score well in winter rounds, as I always just used them as a way to shake the rust off before the ‘real season’ began, but if he is able to hit the ball this well now, I would be we will see some upper 70’s from him this year.
All in all, I am really enjoying getting back on the course. It was really the last thing I ‘gave up’ from my pre-married life and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until the last two trips out. I tried to fill the void with a few other things over the past few years, cycling, disc golf, tech stuff, but nothing seemed right until the last month. About my only bummer deal thing is that I don’t have a good range within driving distance (or even better, walking distance) to go practice at. Maybe I’ll check the web for Blue Boy and see what’s up there. The other part that stinks is not having a carpeted area large enough to practice putting. I’m not buying another one of those astroturf greens ever again, but it would be nice to work on that putting stroke at home. Oh well, baby steps right?
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