Checking my records, I see that I played golf on October 25. The temperature was in the mid-50s, the sun was shining, no wind, and it's looking like it will be my last round of the year, which is okay, because in that case I have a pleasant memory of 2017's last hole. It's a par 5 at Sundance, a reputed dog track in the town of Dayton. By this point I may have been half snapped up on account of my partner's view that signs about "absolutely no carry-ons" are "only a suggestion." Nevertheless I hit a long drive, though way right, and had no route straight toward the green for my second shot. I played out to the fairway between some trees at around a 45 degree angle to the hole, and, as often happens when taking a short swing to hit a low shot with an unlofted iron, I made a clean connection and the ball jumped, landing at least half way through the fairway and rolling into the left rough, where it came to rest about three yards behind the trunk of a small tree. I was maybe 130 yards from the hole, and the flag was directly behind the tree trunk, but I was so close to the trunk that I could aim just to the side of it and toward the left side of the green. To stay below the branches, I took another short swing with a 3-iron, and did pretty much what I wanted to do, but it's evidently hard to control the distance on such a shot: the ball again flew farther than I intended and rolled across the green, leaving around a 35-foot putt through maybe 3 yards of fringe. I got it within 4 or 5 feet of the hole and then made the next putt for a par.
Sometimes even a mediocre player can have a string of holes like that and golf seems easy. Never make a good shot, get a par anyway, because you never make a really bad one, either. I mean to contemplate this lesson all winter long. The Zen of golf. I will have watched a lot of basketball games on tv before this delusion comes crashing down upon me.
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