I played three rounds of golf over Memorial Day weekend and it wasn’t until the back nine of the third on Monday that it dawned on me how unusual this spring has been for me. Most years by the time the end of May rolls around I’ve golfed enough to be ready for a slight breather, and I spend that weekend dropping in on a couple or three cookouts, reading a novel, watching tv and maybe playing one round.
This year was different. I felt like I’d barely played golf, and in particular had only completed 18 holes once. Twice I got rained out of the back nine, and have promptly lost both of those rain checks. I had gotten in several 9 hole rounds, but only at a handful of courses and so there are clubs in my bag I still really haven’t hit since last fall except on the range. In particular I’m not great at hitting woods off the deck so each year I’ve got to work to re-teach myself that part of the game.
So how did this all happen? I’ve identified several culprits: work, rain, the Boston Celtics, and a fourth one that ‘s kind of a project I’ve started without realizing it, I think we can all agree that the pandemic sucked a lot, aside from those handful of people who still are trying to pretend the whole thing was a hoax. Because of a pre-existing condition—actually two if you want to count the fact that I’m relatively fat—my doctor wanted me to be extremely conservative about locking down above and beyond what any level of government required or suggested. So aside from a few months in the late spring through mid-fall of 2021 I’ve mostly been at home when I haven’t been golfing. Here’s the problem, there are people that don’t golf, and a lot of them are actually fun to hang out with. I think it adds a lot to my life and probably everybody’s to see them in person from time to time not just on a computer screen. ( I’ve also been dillegent about getting my vaccinations on time, and this is from a guy who only got the flu shot once in maybe 20 years before covid, and both of those because somebody stopped by whatever office I was working on prepared to give them to everyone.) So while meeting someone for dinner or drinks doesn’t take golfable hours off the table, brunch lunch coffee and afternoon drinks does.
The Celtics have screwed up the beginning of my golf season by going on this incredible run and making me want to watch every minute of every game, re-watch some of the games, and listen to a lot more sports media yap yap about it than I usually do. Also via my Davidson College ties I’ve been a Steph Curry and Warriors semi-fan for quite some time now and watching that team get back to full strength after their injuries has been fascinating, and so I’ve also been watching most of their games. In part to try to figure out how the Celtics might try to beat them—some stuff has played out the way I expected some hasn’t. So the problem of course is this that all this has had me up past 1am a lot.
Combine that with maybe the one clear good thing that came out of the pandemic for me—really committing to getting 8 hours of sleep a night for the first time since I was wrestling in high school and our coach demanded it of us—and morning golf has been taken off the table. I don’t like morning golf that much anyway, but it would have been a good way to deal with the next culprit this year.
But before I move on to that, getting enough sleep really is a good thing. And being on a long streak of enough sleep has even really does make me feel better in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of science behind that out there that I haven’t really dug into but might for a couple of weeks later this year. Because I don’t think that the NBA or the networks are going to come to their senses and realize that the most important basketball of the year doesn’t actually need to be played near the North End of Boston at 11:45 local time, I’m going to have to figure out a way around this in the future.
Really short complaint about the weather cause this isn’t going to be interesting to anyone. It’s sucked here. And in particular its rained almost every afternoon it seems . Insert your favorite quote from Mark Twain or PJ Harvey or maybe even Euripides for all I know; complaining about the weather has been done before.
Work of course is the real problem. It eats up a ton of time. And if I’m invited back for another @sharplid post after this semi-legible attempt I’ll pick up there.
-Ballgames
