The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

The blog is coming from San Diego tonight, as I am visiting the grand kids and golf will be taking a back seat for the next week. Did get in two rounds this week and they were quite contrasting rounds in play and venue. The first round was at Scenic Valley, and was highlighted by some good solid ball striking with many short putts missed, but some lengthy putts made for birdies, which resulted in a nice solid score of 74. Then I traveled to Bedford Springs for some R and Rm, and played a course called Down River. This course was in very good shape and very flat and pretty wide open. The course was fairly long from the blue tees playing about 6700 yards to a par of 72. The greens ran a 6 on the stimp and were very smooth. I played this course the next day after Scenic Valley, and it was a completely different round. Terrible ball striking with only 5 greens hit in regulation, but the short game which has been a problem all year, jumped into high gear and I managed to shoot a 77 which featured 3 up and downs from sand traps and numerous good chips and pitches from some very difficult positions. Bedford Springs is about a 2 hour drive, so Down River does not count as one of the 100 courses, but it was a very nice course to play at a very reasonable rate of 25 with a cart. This is another example of just how goofy this game can be. Even though the scores were only 3 strokes apart there was no comparison on how I struck the ball. I will be getting back home on Friday so again I will only be playing one or two rounds this week. The search will continue with the emphasis now on the mental game. I think there are three areas where the answer to this game lies. One, a permanent solution to the yips. Two a permanent solution to the shanks. Three the solution to the proverbial choke. I don’t mean even  the tournament choke, but the choke we all do when we are close to shooting one of our best rounds and we fold up in the last 3 holes. The solution to these problems have not been found and may not even be close. Please don’t mention that Haney book on yips. A  complete waste of book binding. So the search will go on with some hope, but with knowledge that it may never be found.