So I guess it will have to wait until spring

So since I last posted the weather has done the exact opposite of what I hoped it would do. Instead of staying relatively warm (for the Boston area), it has gotten frigidly cold. Instead of not snowing, it has snowed like crazy. The reason for the weather update is that I will not be able to get in a round of golf down the cape next week now. This stinks so when all is said and done and if I am lucky and get on the course in March it will have been almost 8 months of no golf for me. I am going to be frank...THIS SUCKS!!! I need to find a way to get out on the course because if I dont I will be on the hunt for a golf version of a Betty Ford clinic. I would say they might call it a Tiger Woods clinic but as it now turns out his clinic would be less about golf and more about sex addiction. So I guess they might call it a Jack Nicklaus clinic for those addicted to the game of golf. Anyway I just wanted to vent my frustrations with not being able to play the game. But hey my team won the division 2 state championship and got to play at Gillette Stadium (home of my New England Patriots)!! Well I will try to be much better about updating this blog more often and I will use many stories of days of golf gone by to satiate my appetite for chasing the little white ball. Until next time hit em long and striaght!!

Winter depression worse this year

Well it has been months since my last entry and that is because I have been fully engulfed in coaching football for The High School in my district. That being said if I have not had time to blog I have definitely not had time to golf. I have not picked up a golf club since August 14th. It is now December 15th and there is snow on the ground, which means that there will not likely be any golf forth coming. This is a very depressing thought for me for a couple of reasons. The first is that this is truly the longest I will have gone between rounds since I was in middle school. I think I will have to frequent an indoor driving range for much of this winter. The other reason for the depression is that in early August I got a new set of Callaway irons. After the time it took to custom fit and make the clubs and then ship them to my house I only had the chance to play 1 round with them. My game was more consistent and the clubs made a difference! Now I can only assume that my game will have gone down the yellow river (not the famous one in China, but the toilet). I am trying not to think about my lack of golf but it is very challenging. The good news is that in about a week and a half I will be going with Kel down to the cape for the first time since mid August. This is another thing both she and I are missing in a huge way. The cape is like our sanctuary of peace and relaxation. There is truly nowhere else we can just go and relax enjoy life and not have any obligations. We cannot wait to get down there and enjoy life again. Now that I have vented about my lack of golf and the Cape I will close out this post with a ray of hope and sunshine. Maybe if the weather is ok I can get a quick 9 holes in down the cape over break. I hope everyone is having a great winter and remember if you cannot hit em long and straight at least enjoy watching them fly a quarter mile into the woods!

Pebble Beach: On course

So after one of the greatest adventures of my life getting to the resort, I experienced what is currently the greatest round of my life on the course. Our tee time was early and we decided to get up and eat something and have a coffee before going out to play. If I don't have coffee and food I play golf a lot like I paid attention in high school. For any of you who did not know me then it was not a pretty sight, lots of sleeping and very little note taking. I know it is all mental and I am sure I could play just fine without these items, but...well lets face it I don't even believe myself as I am writing it right now I NEED COFFEE AND FOOD TO GOLF!

We got our coffee and headed to the first tee just feet from the restaurant. As we walked over the Caddy that Mr. Winn hired introduced himself and said he would be able to caddy for 2 people that day. Seeing as how I was already given one of the greatest gifts a golfer could get to play at Pebble Beach I differed to Mr. Winn and Jake. I figured he could tell me where to hit the ball on the green until he lacked enough oxygen to maintain life and it would not make a difference, because I would never be able to hit it to an exact target on the green anyway. At the first tee i saw a slight dogleg left and hammered a drive just onto the rough on the right side of the fairway. I was so happy I didnt do anything horrible like hit one of the multi million dollar homes nearby. After reaching my ball I was promptly awoken by the sound of golf ball on pavement and a nice sting in my left calf muscle. The guy behind us teed off and bounced one off the cart path and directly into my leg. This is a bruise I will cherish always, in fact I sometimes think about punching myself in the same spot to keep the memory alive. After being struck I took out my gap wedge and promptly hit a ball about 15 yards short of the green. I hit it fatter than jabba the hut. I then hit a sandy on the green and 2 putted for bogey. Not a bad first hole I thought it could have been a lot worse. It was at the third hole that I really shocked myself. I was in a separate cart from Jake and Mr. Winn and did not see what the caddy had grabbed for clubs. I knew it was a par four and could remember in the game on PlayStation hitting the ball over a line of trees onto the green with a driver. I grabbed my driver and decided to give it my best fantasy try. When I walked into the tee box the caddy chuckled and said I should have brought a hybrid and tried to lay up to the bend. I was already sure I knew what I wanted to do and anybody who knows me knows I was never going to take the hybrid out. Needless to say my drive actually did exactly what I said it would. I told them I wanted to go over the trees and hit the middle of the fairway near the green. I took the club back close to my body trying to hit a little draw and pounded it over the trees. My ball was less than 50 yards out smack in the middle of the fairway. I pitched on and 2 putted for par I was 2 over after 3 and everything was coming up Eric. All day I was hitting shots with consistency until about the 13th hole. I went on a 3 hole skid but was still double bogeying for the most part at worst. Then back to par bogey golf with a bird mixed in. Finally we pulled up to the infamous 18th hole. This is a par five that bends around to the left with nothing but the Pacific Ocean along the left hand side. I told the group I was going to go for it and cut the corner because what the hell when was I ever going to play Pebble Beach again. Again the caddy told me it was not a great idea and said he had seen a lot of balls get wet when people tried to cut the corner. Well I took the club back and absolutely hit the drive of my life. The ball went right over the ocean hit the fairway and rolled another 20 yards towards the green. The caddy chuckled and said he couldn't believe it. I am pretty sure if I tried I could have floated directly over the water to my ball that day I was on cloud 99. Second shot was a 3 wood that I slammed past the green and through the group of Japanese gentlemen leaving the hole causing them to scatter like roaches from a beam of light. The ball landed behind and to the right of the green directly underneath the giant windows of the restaurant with people eating lunch and staring down ominously like a group of elementary school children watching the lion at the zoo. I took out my sand wedge and hit a beautiful flop shot that landed on the left side of the green. The problem like always is that I am a terrible putter. I make Happy Gilmore look like Sam Snead when it comes to putting. Needless to say I 2 putted for par but by all rights I should have been on in 2 and putting for eagle. This day capped off the greatest day of golf in my life to date. I am sure there will be more but I don't know that they will ever live up to that day!

I GET TO GOLF WHERE?!?!?!?

It was a cold winter snowy day when Kelly's dad floated the idea of taking another summer trip to all of us around the dinner table. He said he thought either Italy or California would be a fun time for everyone. Having had a blast on the trip to Ireland the previous summer, I knew we could have gone to the Holiday Inn in Lynn together and had fun for a week. In the end Mr. Winn decided he wanted to go out to California and specifically the San Fransisco area. It was one of those moments where you are truly in a dream like stupor when Mr. Winn then told us, and by us I mean me and Jake (Kel's brother) that we would be playing the famous PEBBLE BEACH! I can remember trying to pinch myself and thinking I was really dreaming. It could not be true. I had played Pebble about a million times on Tiger Woods PGA golf on PS2 and could tell you exactly what every hole looked like without missing a beat. From that winter day until the end of June I was like a kid waiting from Christmas day!

Finally the day of departure arrived. We left Logan on the way to California filled with excitement. We landed in San Fran and made our way to the rental car area. We all packed our stuff as well as ourselves into the Toyota minivan and headed off for a "2 hour" ride to Pebble Beach Resort. On the way we decided to stop for lunch in a little sea side town called Capitola, which really made the trip an adventure. As we were eating lunch overlooking the Pacific Ocean we saw what appeared to be a large plume of smoke rising up from the direction of Pebble Beach. We then heard that wild fires had started along the highway we needed to take and the road might be shut down for a while. We rushed out and tried to drive south only to get caught in major traffic and finally turned around back in the direction of Capitola. We decided to make the best of the situation and find a nice little bar on the water to sit and have a couple of beers and watch some authentic NorCal Beach volleyball. A couple of hours later we got word that they reopened the south side of the pacific coast highway and we could head towards the resort. As we drove smoke began to gt thicker and thicker and we began to see more emergency vehicles. Then as we rounded a bend in the road there were fires roaring on the opposite side of the highway no more than 100 feet from us. We took out cameras and got photos of the wildfires and of a helicopter that was dropping water on the fires below. After all the excitement we finally passed through those fires and were back on our way. There was one final obstacle in our way that would come on the doorstep of Pebble Beach complex. One more set of wildfires were blazing just outside of the famous 13 mile drive that forced us to seek an alternate route into the Pebble area. We drove around and finally found our way in.

As we pulled in we caught a glimpse of some of the holes of the famous course and I literally felt as though I had not butterflies, but large birds of prey in my stomach flapping wildly. We checked in to Pebble Beach resort and saw our rooms. They were unbelievable our room overlooked the bay and the fairway of the famous par 5 18th hole that runs in a dog leg left around the curved shoreline. All I could think about was the million times I had seen the virtual flyover in the PS2 game and how it was exactly as it looked in the game. After unpacking we got ready for a nice dinner at the restaurant overlooking the 18th green and mentally prepared ourselves for what would be an almost religious experience for any golfer. Tomorrow at about 7 we would be on the range and by 8 we would be ready to tee off on the first hole at one the meccas of golf in the states. All I could think as I fell asleep that night was please do not hit a terrible tee shot in front of the clubhouse and starter on this course. NO SLICE NO SLICE! In my next entry I will go over the stomach churning roller coaster ride that was my experience at this amazing golf paradise, and maybe a little bit about the next day at another jewel in the Pebble complex the Links at Spanish Bay! Until then Hit em long and straight and wahtever you do DO NOT SLICE!!!

Ireland the Sequel

It is not often that a sequel is better than the first...in fact I cant think of any sequels that top the first movie or book. My golf experience in Ireland however is a different story. As I said in the first post about Ireland we stumbled onto the little course had to rent old mismatched clubs. Yet still this was a great experience because it was my first golf experience in Ireland. My next time would be light night and day compared to that day. On the next trip i would have a chance to play Adare Manor, Home of the Irish Open. It all starts getting off of a plane at about 6 in the morning Ireland time...Well I should say it all starts with a most gracious and appreciative thank you to my future mother and father in law for taking me to Ireland with them on a family trip. Now back to that plane. As the group of us got off the plane early in the morning and for us more like midnight or 1 AM we were a group that looked as though we had just been a part of a combat mission. Waiting in line lying on benches and barely able to hear any of the others due to what I can only describe as my ears being so clogged that I thought someone had jammed potatoes in them. We went to the rental car booth and Kelly's dad came back and said the van was ready for use. We hopped on the shuttle to the parking lot in the misty rain towards the vehicle we would be spending loads of fun filled hours in over the next 9 days. As we pulled up it shone like a dark gray beacon in the night...THE TRANSIT it was the most beautiful box shaped van I had ever seen. Steering wheel on the right shifter on the left hand of the driver looking like Austin Powers' family van. We piled in and headed for Adare Manor, where we would spend our next 2 nights. We had a tee time for 10 that morning which for us was really 4 AM back home. We arrived at the facility to be greeted by an old...no a VERY old castle sitting beautifully on a vast expanse of green. There were so many shades of green It looked like they had gone through a packet of paint swatches and pulled out one of each sahde of green that existed and put it somehwere in the landscape. There were also beautiful flowers and shrubbery that looked as though there were people who's sole occupation was to care for each one individually. This place was like nothing I had ever seen. We unpacked the transit and headed in for breakfast before we played that day. I am a total fan of Irish breakfasts. The black and white pudding, the sausage, eggs, and hash browns its like the breakfast version of a meat lovers pizza. After breakfast we headed for the course. The rain had subsided and given way to temperatures of about 85 degrees. This never happens in Ireland it was crazy. We stepped up to the first tee. Kelly's dad said he would hit last. Jake (Kel's brother) hit first and hit his drive right down the middle. I stepped up and crushed my drive down the left hand side. Mr. Winn came up and with his lefty swing hit a little cutter from right to left down the left hand side. The starter who had been staring at us as if trying to read our mortal souls seemed to sigh in relief that we were not just American hackers here to ruin his course and slow the entire day down. Although we were all tired, we pulled it together and played pretty well..until about the 7th hole where we all decided that it might be a better option to just play 9 that day. Coming down the 9th fairway you got a photo quality shot of the castle in the background and the amazing scenery. It was then that it all hit me...I was playing golf at one of the best courses in Ireland AMAZING!!!

Golfing across the pond

Most of my early golf takes place at Hillview. I did not venture to many other places early on or try anything new because I was scared out of my mind of trying new courses. To me the idea seemed like a trip into an unmapped area of the Amazon basin. Why leave the comfy confines of what I know and I have come to love? I could shoot almost any shot on "my" course with my eyes closed. Well I guess I could do the same anywhere with similar results but with less comfort. Eventually curiosity got the best of me and I ventured out to many places around the area. Later on in life however I really had the chance to venture out...WAY out. I have golfed twice in the country of Ireland. The first time was on a little links course in the middle of nowhere. Kelly and I were driving around Ireland (in our standard car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and the shifter on my left hand) checking out all of the sights. We drove into a town called Lahinch and as we drove through I saw the most incredible looking golf course I had seen to date. There is a picture of the course on the left. This was a true links course with the rolling undulating fairways, long golden fescue for rough and greens that were large and appeared to be littered with craters and hills. It was amazing. We stopped and decided to stay for the night since we were close to the Cliffs of Moher anyway. I should say I begged Kelly much like my dog begs at every member of my family on pizza night. She, being gracious and amazing, decided to agree. We found out though that there was a tournament on the course and it would not be able to be played until days later. The next day we left and continued on our journey. After seeing one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen at the cliffs, we drove through the countryside to our next destination. On the way I saw a sign for a little public course and coerced Kel into playing that day. She agreed and we pulled in. The course was small but difficult and the wind was blowing around 30 or 40 miles an hour off the ocean. The clubs that we got from here were less than stellar. They actually reminded me of my first set, I could not believe someone had found and repaired that old wooden driver and somehow shipped it to Ireland. These clubs were terrible, but it was a fun day. Kel and I were partnered up with a young Irish boy who I swear was straight out of a movie. We introduced ourselves and he said "I'm Patrick...This is Proper golf weather isn't it?" in his finest Irish accent...or I guess in his case lacking our crazy American accents. Kel and I looked at each other and giggled like the first time we heard a health teacher refer to a man's or women's private bits in front of our whole class. The day went as good as could be asked with those sets of clubs. The scenery was amazing and the company was hilariously Irish. All in all we had a blast. Next time I will tell you about the second time playing in the Emerald Isle. Until then hit em long and straight...unless you are playing a dogleg!

Sharing the addiction

I have written a ton about the beginnings of my addiction and relationship to golf. Now its time to start touching on some of the other areas of golf and some stories that are more present. I recently got engaged and could not be any happier...Well I could be happier if I could convince Kelly to enjoy golf and want to golf with me a lot. As it is she will golf with me when we are down in Cape Cod but in Kelly's words "ONLY THE PAR 3 courses". She claims to be terrible at golf and this is one of the reasons she won't go. Let me tell you a little story about the last time we went to the Par 3 near the cape house. The course is a nicely maintained par 3 called Twin Brooks golf course only about a mile away. After debating for a while about going she decided to come along semi happily. The day was insanely windy...I mean St. Andrews windy! We get to the first hole and I go to the left...Kelly goes to the middle. First round of the season luck she tells me and before she finishes getting it out of her mouth I am sounding some sort of fart imitation noise as if to shun her comment. Needless to say she is 1 over after 4...SHE PARRED 3 of the first 4 holes. In all fairness she has been doing a ton of the 30 day shred workout plan...you know the one from the biggest loser, so she claims that's why she is hitting the ball better... I think she has almost always hit the ball well. I mean she is an amateur golfer like the rest of us so she will have good days and bad but she is a good golfer. If only I can convince her and maybe she will like to golf more and eventually I won't have to drag her caveman style to the golf course anymore. Hey a man can dream can't he? Don't answer that it was rhetorical!