Results and Much More

Happy Easter everyone, hope your Easter egg hunts went well and Easter dinner was a tasty success.I've got quite a lot to post today, so hope you'll take time to read it all. Some of it will be pretty entertaining. Walley sent me this next text that I'm posting and I'm sure while you're reading it you'll think of guys you've played with, enjoy Time to Reconnect With Joys Missed and Tee Shots Lost By BILL PENNINGTON
Sam Manchester/The New York Times
There is no documented truth to the theory that months of pitiless snowstorms, weeks of
subzero wind chills and an early April dose of sleet that froze the dog’s feet to the sidewalk now
guarantee that the 2011 golf season will be the best and most satisfying ever.
But I am accepting it as undeniable reality.
Virtually wherever you lived in the United States this past winter, the weather was frequently
not amenable to golf. Here in the Northern climates, as I stood beside my car pondering what
grip to use on the ice scraper — overlapping, interlocking, baseball, stranglehold — I wondered
if the greens at my home course missed me under all that drifting snow as much as I missed
them. I even missed the bunkers and water hazards.
But missing them gave me something to look forward to in the spring. So for this the first week
of a new season of On Par, 10 things I missed most.1. The first tee shot of the spring, framed against the sky.
2. Not being able to find that drive after it plugs into the soggy
turf.3. Feeling proud of myself for being miserly enough to have used an old ball, knowing how soft the ground is in mid-April.4. The guys I regularly see at my golf course, even those with strange habits. Doesn’t every club have a guy who makes odd sounds on the tee — rattling his bag in search of gum, making a
peculiar clacking of his teeth or playing with the Velcro on his glove? You get so used to it, and you miss him when he’s not there.Then there’s the guy who drives past his tee shot in the rough on nearly every par 4. When the ball is found 50 yards behind him, he always says, “Oh, back there?”
There’s the guy who walks onto the tee of the first par 3 in every round, and though he has played the course for 18 consecutive years, he asks, “What’s the yardage here again?”But my favorite is the guy who always has a joke on the first tee. It is usually not even funny,but we all laugh anyway because we appreciate the effort to distract us from our first-tee jitters.5. The warmth of the golf experience. Not in temperature; I was thinking more of the day’smission and the companionship it spawns. Golf is so routinely insane and patently irresolvable that the overriding job becomes keeping everyone in the group moving forward. This must be
done even though it means negotiating your way over hill and dale, through hazards, penalties,
obstructions and out of bounds. It is not easy, and that’s why you have golf partners.The group forges a bond, however lasting or temporary. The mission is complete when everyone leaves the last hole with a smile.How often in our disjointed, preoccupied lives do four people commit to sticking together for
one task for several hours? That’s what I missed.6. Being alone on the golf course. I know I just said I missed the companionship, but golf is endlessly varied, and one of its treats is the ability, often early in the morning or late in the evening, to set your pace of play as if it were linked to the rhythm of your own heart.
Want to play three balls on each hole? Want to dash around and play 12 holes in 90 minutes? Want to wander in the woods looking for lost balls? Go ahead. Play alone, and you’re always at play.
Nongolfers who think golf is stressful have no idea how often we never keep score. Playing golf
alone is like a reset button for life.7. The unexpected. A recent Swedish study reported that golfers live on average five years longer than nongolfers. Why? Golfers are hard to surprise. Golfers know how to adjust. Golfers are less likely to be struck by cabs on city streets, because we take a step back whenever
anyone is driving.Golf is good preparation for life’s vagaries — even when no one yells “Fore!”
8. The sportsmanship and, sometimes, even the lack of it. When a partner calls a penalty on himself, or when you add a stroke to your score because of that extra whiff in the woods that no one else saw, there is a strange but identifiable honor. You may be laughing at yourself, you may be angry or embarrassed, but you know you did the right thing.And on those rare occasions when I see someone cheating at golf, it makes me realize the pressure some people feel they are under to perform. How awful must that feel? No game,
score, bet or trophy is worth it. That’s another reset button.9. The sounds. A yelp from a far-off green when a long putt falls. A scream from the same distance when a putt lips out. The soft plunk heard from the fairway when an approach shot settles near the hole. The hard crack heard from the tee when a wayward drive lands on a cart path (best enjoyed when it adds 50 yards of distance). That weird thump of a flubbed shot, all
sod and no ball. The clank and jiggling metal sound of the flag being dropped in the fringe, a prelude to the best sound of all, that turkey gobble of ball clattering in the hole.I even missed the sounds on the driving range: the rat-a-tat-tat of multiple hits down the line,the grunting, the pleading, the muttering and disgust mixed with the occasional perfect contact, followed by a sweet silence. It’s all good.
10. The unfairness. This may sound senseless, but sometimes in golf, it is the truly ridiculous outcome — ball hits sprinkler head in fairway and bounces into nearby forest — that grounds you in a way that other sports cannot. It’s easy to be frustrated and unnerved, but if you stay composed and make par anyway, you walk to the next tee a master of the golfing universe. You faced unfair and beat it. Besides, golf doles out small doses of unfair. It’s character-building.You want truly unfair? Unfair is having your car buried by the snowplow just after you cleaned all the snow off. That’s unfair. And there is absolutely nothing good that comes of it. Because even when you clean it off again, as you sleep, the snowplow might bury it anew.
Man, I’m glad it is golf season again
   Next I'd like to give everybody who played in last weeks' players championship a big pat on the back for enduring some of mother natures' toughest conditions along with the tough conditions of the course. I'd like to thank the maintenance staff for doing what they could, considering the weather conditions lately. I'll be sending the results to the Herald this week, so they'll be in the golf section Thursday. I'll also post them in this blog posting.
 John Crots ask me to remind all club members that the Member-Member Tournament is June11 & 12 and NOT June 25 & 26 as originally schedule. This years format is match play and it always fills up, so get a partner and sign up soon as possible.Remind your golf buddies if they don't read blog. I'm going to put the past results in my next posting of the day because this one has gotten alittle long.