Fore!

That was one of the many four-letter words that passed my lips on Saturday. It was my first round of golf in more than 10 months (yikes, 10 months!) but I've been so busy with other activities that I had to let something go. Besides, lately, I've been having a love/hate relationship with this sport.....I hate the environmental impact golf courses have on the area (which is mostly negative in my mind)....but, when I played last Saturday, of the few sweet shots I had, I remembered why I enjoy playing the game.

My little brother was in town so I headed out for a round with him and his long-time friends, Morgan and Casey. We played at a course south of Tacoma located in Lacey, WA, called Hawk Prairie. It's a 36-hole golf course and we played 'The Links' which is laid out in the traditional links-style (yeah, no duh). Casey used to work there....he also has a 5-handicap and was so nice to give me directional pointers which I tried to control. But I've lost the feel of my clubs over the months so not only was my target way off, but I had no control over my distance. I would consistently hit my approach shots way off the back, or my putts would go screaming past the hole (and, those were uphill putts...LOL).

The course was fun to play and I really liked the greens because they were consistent: consistently fast, and consistently undulating. They were in great shape....not heavily walked on and torn up like the munis in the Bay Area. All-in-all, the course was fun and I heard that the other course (Woodlands) is even more enjoyable. Easy course for walking which is what I prefer anyway (surprise, surprise). Typically, it's the equivalent of a 5-mile hike with about 20-35 lbs. of gear (I'm guessing) which makes the 19th hole even more gratifying. The one thing is that the web site led me to believe that there were primarily trees around the golf course....ha, not! A lot of houses have been built up in the area so beware of those errant slices or wicked hooks. We're still not sure what Morgan hit on what I think was the 15th or 16th hole off the tee...we couldn't even figure out if it was the sound of breaking glass or metal. We didn't see any broken windows as we walked up to where our drives landed, but then again, we didn't linger around too long to figure out what exactly his ball hit. The one negative thing was the marshall at the beginning of the round. Morgan and Casey showed up about 4 minutes before we were to tee off. So, the marshall ambles over and stressed *multiple* time how we need to keep up with the group in front of us because of the big-wig Weyerhauser tournament that was coming up behind us (yeah, WHATever). After about the 4th time, I finally said 'YES, we get it' and then quickly bit my tongue before I unleashed a few more words that I knew I would regret. Ha...we never saw the group behind us except for the last couple of holes in the round. Argh, such a maddening game with so many things about it that annoy me but it gives me more fuel to play better and to keep up with "the boys." And, now with hockey out of the way, I can use that time to work on my game. I'll probably get it back in time for the rains to start coming down again in the northwest but it'll be just in time to crank it at Poipu Bay on Kauai.