JJ makes a mistake

I went and signed up for the state match play tournament. That’s the mistake, in case you were in suspense.

I still haven’t played a single hole of golf in Alaska this summer. I hit three buckets of golf balls this week, though, the most I’ve hit yet this summer. I’m not too sure that the driving range is really all that helpful, however.

Alaskan golf is funny in the sense that you really can’t practice putting and chipping before July. If you were to try to go out to the short-game area at a local course in June, what little grass there is won’t be anything like the greens you will see in the tournament.

Grass, and everything from pumpkins to tree leaves, grows so fast in June it boggles the mind. We go from nearly no grass on June 1st to shaggy green carpets by the middle of the month. The greenskeepers are so happy to see the grass growing, they don’t cut it until they have to.

Seriously, I don’t think that is the greenskeeper’s reasoning, but they do let the grass grow in for a while before deciding to trim it up. By the very end of June, just as the match play tournament takes place, the greens might be sort of decent to putt on.

Until then, we are left with hitting range balls into dirt driving ranges. You can get some sense of the direction you are hitting the ball, but no sense of distance or turf reaction. The courses are still in such poor shape at this early season, you can’t get much touch and feel on the course either. All this leads to a massive amount of uncertainty when teeing it up in the first big tournament.

For several years, I’ve played in tournaments not to compete, but to participate and just to have a tee time. I like seeing all my golf friends and having an excuse to get out and golf. I’ve played relatively horrible for years, though, and I would like that to change.

I ran into Chris Morin just the other day and reminisced about the time we both played well in the state match play tournament. We figured out it was 12 or 13 years ago, when I beat him to reach the semifinals. I played in the final foursome with Greg Sanders, Adam Baxter and Marcus Dolejsi. Maybe I got nervous, maybe I got tired, but I bombed that day.

The two days prior, I played what I would call the best golf I’ve played in Alaska in the past 20 years. What did I do different? I practiced every day for six weeks leading up to the event. It paid off big time. The practice shaved six shots off my normal scoring. Instead of shooting 76 or 78 on a good day, I was breaking par.

As my schedule became more busy in following years, I’ve been driven to discover how to play par golf with no practice. I haven’t solved it yet, but I guess the match-play event will be my next chance to test it out. It may end up being my first round of the year.

As we get nearer to the event and the roster of players is finalized, I’ll do my best to write some sort of preview of the state match play tournament.