Well, not quite passed. More like conditionally passed. The condition being that before I graduate the PGA's Professional Golf Management program, I have to return to the PAT battlefield and pass again, for real next time.
But in the mean time, it's true. I went down to WV and played on the good ol' track at the Pines CC. I forgot how short that course really is. Coming down the stretch I knew I could triple bogey the 18th in order to pass, and what do I do? I make it a closer call than necessary and make double bogey to shoot 82.
Man oh man. I could have kicked myself, too. I got off to such a bad start on the second round that I shot myself right out of the event and forfeited any chance at shooting 75 and passing for real. I never felt such focus on the golf course. I never realized just how micro you have to think out there. And now, looking back, I realize just how right Russell (Reid) was when he said "It's cumulative." He meant that the game, or any round in particular, is cumulative. You don't shoot a 79 on the first tee. Nor do you do it with a chip shot on the 8th hole. Nor do you do it with your last holed putt on 18. You shoot 79 (or any number for that matter) by narrowing your focus to each individual shot-each target and the method by which you will advance your ball in the direction of that target-and adding up those shots-ONCE THE ROUND IS OVER!
You don't even so much as determine the score on a par 3 with your tee shot (well, aside from the rare instance of a hole in one).  And even when the ball is holed for a 1,2, or 3, or more, what good is it?  It's 3 (if it's a par), that's it!  You might as well not even think of it as par, or birdie, or good or bad.  It's just a group of 3 shots that can't be taken away.  They've been recorded just the same as the middle 3 shots of a par 5 are recorded.  And you know what? Once you sink the putt for par, you just have to go tee it up and hit another shot, and another shot, and another shot...until you've holed it 18 glorious times.

An interesting conversation came up last night about performance enhancing drugs in the world of golf. I continued to think about it some and decided to publish.

PEDs in golf probably once seemed out of the question, but nowadays, not so much. With fitness and athleticism becoming an increasing fad in golf - see Villegas, Woods, and others - it's speculated that the use of PEDs in order to gain a competitive edge in the future will be a likely temptation for some players.

Gary Player, one of golf's greats, is convinced that at least 10% of the pro golf population is using. He has first hand knowlege of at least one case, though he is sworn to secrecy as to who. On the other hand, players like Tiger and Phil are not aware of the use of PEDs on tour.

In the middle of last summer (mid-PGA season) there was rumors and news of random drug testing on the PGA tour. Tiger encouraged it, Player too. Additionally, I heard amature rumors that one top golfer conveniently went down with a knee injury around the same time as random testing. Now, if Tiger's 9 month vacation was intended as a detox, I hope his recent return to form at Bay Hill might aid in dispelling that theory. Specualtions were also made that Vijay Singh could perhaps be using. Now, I don't pay very close attention to Vijay, other than knowing that he's a workhorse on the range and practice green, but given his natural size and frame, the effects of PEDs in the dosage size that would benefit golfers (they're not fighting 300 lb. linemen down the field - a golf club weighs 400 g, tops!) could easily hide in his structure.

Now I'm not here to point fingers, or to speculate who's guilty and who's clean. I'm a naturally trusting person to begin with...I give people the benefit of the doubt until they show me otherwise, and that goes here, too.
I do agree, though, that given the direction the sport is heading, with guys like Camillo taking up cycling andTiger being Tiger, it won't take much for someone to come along just slightly weaker-willed than they are and start injecting something in the locker room before a round to see if they can keep up til Sunday afternoon.

In the end, while I don't doubt that there is a temptation out there, I guess I just feel like golfers are made of better stuff. Who expects to find a golfer, who on one hand assesses his own penalties, tarnishing the valor and character of the game and gamesmen in his very midst with HGH, Testosterone, or Xanax (calms your nerves over that crucial putt, doesn't it?)

-T.J.

Hey there, it's time to talk golf. (I have a feeling it's what I'll be writing about the most around here...some may find it sad)

Random notes:
1. I'll probably start a lot of entries with random notes, cause they'll be fresh in my mind, and I'll want to get them down in writing for whatever reason. I thought of putting them at the end of entries, but that means I'd probably forget them by the time I write what I have come to write. Which is the irony in blogging for me...I rarely come here to write anything other than the random. So maybe an appropriate title for this page would be "Random Thoughts," but hey, it's my page, I'll be picking (or maybe frequently changing) the title. So anyway...I changed my mind, and I'll put the randomness up front. Maybe because it'll get more visibility there, or maybe because, like I said, it might actually be what brings me to this page more often than not...who knows, maybe it will snowball into more on some days. (Case and point, this entry?)

Now for the real random notes I wanted to offer:
2. I forgot this one. (Damn!)
3. I heard Sunglasses at Night the other night...it's actually a decent song IMHO. (And I'm re-listening right now just to make sure I wasn't drunk [which I wasn't!].)

Just in case you were wondering, that was not the golf talk...here comes the golf talk.

Golf is a mental game for those that didn't know. And for those that didn't know, I play golf (almost for a living). I spent my first full year working on my game last year, coming across many obstacles and needing to find ways around them. Those included (a) finding practice time while living in NYC in a young marriage; (2) figuring out how to hit the ball (duh!) and what schools of thought I'd use to train myself physically; and the awe inspiring (d) {Thanks Buzz from Home Alone} that golf is a mental game of mental discipline as much as it is a physical game-
(Side: Sunglasses at Night just finished = still good)
-and it's even more mental once you can hit the ball in at least a predictable direction each timeyou step up to it.
Let me explain. It's a mental game like open the bathroom door is mental, or at least we all wish it to be. Have you ever been in a friend's bathroom, or even your own bathroom, and finished up, only to fumble over the doorknob, making it sound to all on the exterior, that you've dismantled and reassembled the simple device twice before sliding the latch free of the doorjamb to open the door and re-enter the Oscars party in your post-business glory? I mean really, how many times have you opened a bathroom door? and didn't you just turn the little lock a quarter turn? but in which direction was it?
It's a simple move, you reach, turn, pull. You anticipate the way the knob will feel, how it will or will not resist your will as you turn it (ours tends to resist and then snap open, feeling like you've broken the darn thing)

Remembered random though #2 (yay!) Many wold be amazed at just how much trouble Bill Watterson HAD finding work out of college, given his later creative genius set on display through Calvin and Hobbes.

Back to it:
Let's be honest, the mental game of bathroom door opening has beaten us all up from time to time. Our form is there, most days, as it should be, since we've done it a thousand times before. The mechanics are predictable; you can manage your "big muscles" while still administering the surgical precision required by your fingers in order to open the portal back into the party/game/restaurant from whence you once left. But again, it's mental. It's about confidence. It's about believing and or knowing that you can open the door flawlessly and then just watch as it swings open and curves gently right to left into the corner of a tight dogleg par-5 as you hold your finish and wait for the ball to come to rest in the short grass...
...wait, am I on the tee?
OK, so maybe it's a terrible metaphor, but what I'm saying is in early December, after playing 5 holes in even par (that's a good thing all you non-golfer-types) and forgoing my game-plan on the 6th tee at the Myrtle Beach PAT, I did mis-hit the shot into the right water, and instead of staying focused and putting the odds in my favor on the next shot, I got agressive, and forgot how to hit the ball (mentally and physically, but only physically because it was first lost mentally) and I took a 10. Yes a 10. I then rebounded with a bogey - 7 over through 7. From that point I put it back together and began to believe in myself a little again to pull something out of the bag that resembled a game, only to cap things off with a 5 putt, or was it 6?

So yes, you need to get your game to a point where you can stand on a driving range day after day and pound balls beautifully down the field before you, and do it again on the practice tee before a round. But you also (and more importantly, perhaps) need to be at a point mentally where you can play 18 holes of mentally tough golf, regardless of what the last hole was, regardless of what the last shot even was. Become mentally tougher over every shot, with quiet confidence, no matter what level at which you play, and you'll play better golf.

Make sense? ... sorry about the whole bathroom thing. Better luck next time, Tyler.

Until next time,
-T.J.

I like Jon and Kate Plus 8,