Its never lonely in last place

Each year I ensure my handicap has been stretched enough to allow me to enter the Manchester Spring Classic. The threshold number is 9. On Paper my 7.7 puts me firmly in the neighborhood. However, the handicap you post and the handicap you are, can be diametrically opposed. To be fair, during the summer months, my 7.7 may be somewhat accurate, but not in May, and certainly not during the early days of May when winter is still hanging on like a stubborn fart left in a room temperature car.

I digress.  Not in a way to minimize my mediocrity, but more so in a way that avoids the obvious.  Vermont Golf Association; I am a Manchester Spring Classic 20.  Please don’t disqualify me.

Now that honesty has rung through, lets add to this the fact that the field comprises of the best Vermont golfers we have to offer. Division I scholarship athletes, former professionals and many who haven’t whiffed the 90s since they were 7 years old. 

It’s no secret that the odds of me winning this tournament stand at zero. Be that as it may, each year I happily march to the first tee with optimism in my eyes thinking that maybe, just maybe, I have what it takes to pleasantly shock the Vermont golfing world…..or at least my mother.

This optimism usually lasts all the way up to my second shot of the tournament. This year that shot was an eight iron that traveled all of 10 feet. A barrage of double bogeys later and reality once again kicked in, where my dream of hoisting the tournament trophy to a shocked group of scratch golfers disappears and the true goal, the one that I try to ignore, but always know is lurking, comes into play; don’t finish last, like you have the prior two years.

I have begun to play all sorts of mini games within my head when my one goal is to be at least one better than at least one other person.  I play the avoid double bogey game, the don’t hit three from the tee, or my all time favorite, no more than one from the bunker.  Breaking up the arduous slogging through cold and wind is always made a little more fun when you set easily achievable goals along the way, that is until you fail.

A ball into the hazard, a fluffed bunker shot or a 7 on a par 5 isolated is ok, but when you go back to back to back like Reggie Jackson in the world series, the dread and utter lack of confidence can overwhelm your already heavily bruised ego.  For me, holes 11, 12 and 13 set the tone.  Double, double, triple.  Three putt, fluffed bunker, two balls in the water.  

The blow had been cast, and I was on the ropes.  I could feel my body detach from my brain like some out of body experience. The only thing that comes close to this feeling is the severely hungover 18 on the first morning T time of dudes golf week.  I am ashamed to say though that despite the late night cocktails and the raging heartburn from too many Hooter’s wings, that I played better that day than this.

And when the little goals go away, one basic one remains; finish.  

Finishing achieves two things; one, you can look yourself in the mirror saying that “technically” I didn’t give up.  Two, it provides the hope that some other competitor did not and, no matter a 75 or a 115, posting beats no posting.

I choose to post. And, despite another arithmetic certainty of posting the highest number on the VTGA website for my mother to see, my spring tournament experience can never daunt the measurement of attempting for better.