The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Well, its been two months since the last time I have blogged about my game. I have been playing the same amount as usual, about 3 to 4 times a week. Since the first of April I have played 26 rounds, with some 9 hole rounds thrown in. The golf, overall, has been mediocre at best and sometimes pretty horrible. I have had about the same number of rounds in the 80’s and 70’s. At least no more rounds in the 90’s although one was close, 89. My four tournament rounds have all been in the 80’s with one birdie in 72 holes.  Naturally, I have been trying all sorts of things to bring me out of this funk, that I have been in, since the middle of March. I have had just enough good rounds, one 74 and two 76’s, with a couple of 77’s and 78’s thrown in, to keep my handicap in the mid 5’s. The new rule about not counting rounds when you play alone is also helping. So with heading into the summer months here is what I think may bring back.

If there is one thing I have learned through this down time is that the swing is not the problem. That can be said about any golfer with a single digit handicap, and any pro tour golfer. The proof of this is the current analysis of Jordan Spieth’s golf swing. Spieth has had some 4th round issues since his infamous Masters collapse. Naturally, this has led Spieth to be on the slow motion camera more than any golfer in history. Watch his right knee, watch his left knee, watch his follow through, and blah blah blah. This past week Spieth wins the Colonial. Now let me ask you something. Did he really hit the ball any better in this 4th round than the 4th rounds where he did not close the deal? HELL NO. What he did do of course, is putt better than humanly possible for the last 10 holes, plus a chip in. How much do you think that had to do with his right knee or left knee. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Here is the final conclusion. One of my mantras even 6 years ago has been that 85% of all bad shots are caused before you start the swing. I revised that just last year to 90%. Now I can say with certainty that it is 100%. I am talking here about golfers with single digit handicaps. There are some swing fundamentals, of course. If you are shooting in the 70’s then you have that down pat. There are so many things you can do wrong at address. I will discuss these in future blogs, especially if I am right about this. I can tell you that this is all I will be working on in the next few months. As I always say the numbers never lie, so we will see what happens. Maybe this game is not as goofy as I think.

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

THE MASTERS, THE MASTERS, THE MASTERS, the talk of the town after the great Spieth collapse. After reading a cajillion articles about the subject, I still feel there were some things that were missed, and/or not emphasized enough in the reporting of the event and the aftermath.

First the event. I think the key spot, which led to the 12th hole debacle is what happened on the 11th hole and immediately afterward. After bogeying the 10th, he hits his drive in the trees, hits a smart recovery shot and then an absolutely brilliant wedge about 8 feet to a very dangerous pin. This is the type of putt he had been making the whole tournament to save many a par. He missed this one. Now walking to the 12th tee, I think he had to feel he still had a 3 shot lead at the worst. The big scoreboard right behind the 12th tee showed his lead had suddenly and I do mean suddenly been cut to 2 shots, when not to long ago he had a 5 shot lead. All of a sudden it was a golf tournament again and I think this threw him off just enough to butcher the 12th hole.

Second the SHOCK. Everybody expressed shock and disbelief. If we were paying attention should we have been that stunned. When Jordan Spieth walked off the 9th green on Sunday did I think he would win the Masters, absolutely, but I added, I bet he will make it interesting. Well, he made it a lot more than interesting, he lost the tournament. Why did I think he would make it interesting. He did the same thing on Friday and Saturday. Twice he could have taken this tournament by the throat and each time stumbled down the stretch. If he would have parred the last three holes on Friday and Saturday, he would have had anywhere from a 6 to 8 shot lead going into Sunday, and it would not have made any difference, if he had hit it in the water on 12 His double bogey on 18 on Saturday was particularly UG-UG-UGLY.

Third will he be able to recover from this collapse. Most people feel that he will come back and win as much, just as if he had won the Masters. They write about he’s young, he’s mentally tough and he’s a great player period. I think it’s a flip of the coin and it may not even be that good if two things don’t change. The first one is just a mental thing. He has got to get out of this we mode.   It sounds gracious when you win but when you lose it sounds a little weird. What was more disturbing was when he said that we will prove that we can close the deal on a tournament. What are you talking about? You have already shown you can do that. Two major wins last year and numerous other victories. It would have been more appropriate to say I had a bad day and I will learn from it. Your the boss man. There is one thing that Jordan Spieth will have to change about his game. He doesn’t get much flak about this from the media and Faldo touched upon ever so briefly, but the bottom line is this, Jordan Spieth is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, OH SO SLOOOOOOOW. On Friday his group got put on the clock and despite the fact that Rory was hitting shots almost before Spieth’s ball stopped rolling on Saturday,  walking off the 17th tee they were the only group on the course. From taking forever to make some decisions and backing off short putts one two or even three times you wonder how long his nerves will last. Lets face it, every time he makes a 3 footer, it’s like he’s making it 2 or 3 times. Let’s hope he does come back, because Jordan Spieth is great for the game of golf, but some re-evaluation is in order.

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Well, it’s been 25 days since the last blog, and a lot has happened. I have been able to play 8 rounds of golf, which makes 11 for the year. This is the most I have been able to play, this early in the season. Now, here are the scores, and hold on to your hats. 76, 90, 92, 94, 90, 85, 78. Yes, that’s right 4 straight rounds in the 90’s. I haven’t had a stretch like that since I was probably 13 yrs. old. Now, some of this was due to experimentation, but I have done this before, and never saw scores like this. The first 90 score even had 2 birdies. These scores could not be blamed on the weather. The conditions weren’t perfect but they weren’t that bad. The scores can not be blamed on early season rust. You can see, I shot a 76 which featured a one under 35 on the back nine. As usual there was something to be learned and there were some interesting facts from these horrific rounds.

The first thing was my over all reaction to these rounds. I did not fret or worry about them at all. You might think that this is real easy to do because it is early in the season. Let’s  see how you react, if you did this in June or July. But this is four straight rounds in the NINETIES. Two of the rounds were partially due to some horrendous putting of 40 putts each. It made me aware of how easy this can happen and how a prolonged slump can be just around the corner.

I don’t know if I really needed to be made more aware of this, but it really brought home the fact that it’s not where your good shots wind up but it’s where your bad ones go. During this 4 round stretch I hit a lot of quality shots, but I hit a lot of horrible shots, that ended up in hazards and entirely off the golf course. The quality shots caused some swing experiments to last longer than they should have.

Because of this bad stretch, I found a major swing flaw that I had, and I mean major. I will discuss this in a future blog, but let’s just say for now it started my small comeback in the last 2 rounds. The 78 was highlighted by quite a bizarre finish. The last 6 holes went like this: Birdie, Double Bogey, Birdie, Double Bogey, Par, and a 30 yard pitch in for an Eagle.

Lastly I would like to write about two golf related items. Naturally the Masters is coming up and I am anxious to watch it as much as anybody else. Do I think I know who is going to win? Hell no. My bold prediction is this. The scores will be high. Any time the Masters scoring record is threatened they set the course up to be impossible the next year. Just look it up. I don’t think this will be an exception. So expect another U. S. Open kind of Masters and I think that is a damn shame. Do I think the best golfer in the world will win the Masters. NO. WHY. Because the best golfer in the world won’t even be playing in the Masters, Lydia Ko. Chew on that for awhile.

 

 

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today I am going to discuss the other two things that I thought had real potential to help one’s golf game, but turned out to be, just dust in the wind. The first one was the mind body connection. It was initiated by the old argument of how much is this game mental, and how much is it physical. My contention is that it is a 50-50 split, but there is a definite disconnect between the mind and the body in many instances, which will cause bad shots, or poor results. I discussed these instances about two years ago and I am not going to write about them today but the goal was to find a  way to keep the mind and the body connected. It was a fruitless effort, but one that I still think maybe worth pursuing. Then last year I tried to find what I called, your that day golf swing. In fact, I thought this was the answer. It went something like this. You should go into each round with an open mind, and not be influenced by what went well in the last round. I even had a cute little saying, “abandon that swing thought before it abandons you. Needless to say this was not the answer for various reasons that are not worth going into.

So that was the past and I am ready to move on from those acid trips,  as I head into the new golf year. What am I going to do now? Well, as usual I have some ideas. One of my many mantras has been 85% of all bad shots are caused by things you do before you swing. At the end of last year I amended that to 95%.  I am going to try to prove that theory. I am going to do some unique and different things at address that go against some traditional golf teaching but is much more aligned with the way the body is supposed to move. I am going to continue to take a hard look at how the wrists function during the golf swing.  I am beginning to feel that this is a big key on good solid ball striking. I have already played four 18 hole rounds, and three 9 hole rounds this year, and so far have made no progress on the above. I have been fine tuning some things, that may prove to productive.  As this year progresses the better I do, will mean that progress is being made and there will be more blogs. That is one thing about golf the numbers never lie.

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today I am going to discuss some of the things I have tried over the last five and a half years of writing this blog, which I hoped would make this game easier to play. There were three, that I named, the shoulder control swing, the mind body connection, and finding your that day golf swing, which I thought was the answer. Over the next 3 weeks as golf season get’s closer and closer I will  discuss each one, and where I went wrong.

First, the shoulder control golf swing, that I introduced in January of 2013. I even did two videos on the subject in March of 2014. The shoulder control swing is exactly what it says, in that the turning of the shoulders can control all aspects of the golf swing. By folding your arms across your chest, and making a golf swing, your legs will move perfectly, and of course with your arms folded across your chest, they are have nothing to do with your swing. I played with this swing for almost 2 years and had some really good success. I shot one of my best rounds, during the time of the blog, and struck the ball quite well. I had some problems trying to adapt this method to my short game and putting. I struck the ball well, but I did have problems trying to work the ball with this method, particularly trying to hit a draw. It was during the 2014 golf season that I began to abandon this method, although I would go back to it for brief times, even in the 2015 season. So what was the problem? It was those damn arms. Here is one of the simplest, and yet one of the  most frustrating keys to the golf swing. On the downswing, the belly button has to pass the golf ball before the arms. Do this and you will hit a quality golf. Here is where I made the mistake. Turning the shoulders does actually control the leg action. When you make a correct shoulder turn on the backswing and downswing the legs have to move in the correct way. They literally have no choice. When you release the arms from across your chest and place you hands on the golf club, the shoulders no longer can control those pesky arms. You have to make a conscious decision to do so. Bobby Jones said it best when discussing putting and keeping your body still. Trying to keep your body perfectly still, can create too much tension in the stroke, so he advocated relaxation, and if the body moved a little bit so be it. By TRYING to keep the arms out of the swing, and mostly being unsuccessful anyway, just became too much of a distraction.  The shoulder control swing is a great teaching aid and drill on how a golf swing should really feel, when the arms are not involved.

I played the first round of the year about 12 days ago at Scenic Valley, and if I was even having the slightest doubt that this was a goofy game, the first round of the year ended all of that. The first drive of year was a low right liner that went about 180 yard that left me no shot to the green so I laid up to the right about 20 yards short of the green. I hit a great pitch to about 3 feet and made the putt, par. The next hole I hit an ok drive, hit wedge in about 12 feet below the hole and made the putt, birdie. The third hole an uphill par 5 I hit a fair drive, a 2 iron over the water, and another wedge in about 15 feet and made that putt, birdie. Now I have played Scenic Valley a lot over the last 10 years and I have never been 2 under par after 3 holes and here I was 2 under on the very first round of the year in February with temps in the low 40’s. Needless to say I got back to reality in a hurry with a double bogey on the next hole, and did manage to scrape it around to break 80 with a 78. Had not hit a ball in 2 months and birdie 2 of the first three holes. Goofy, you got that right.

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

After last week’s blog about the wrists and what the PGA pros do to manipulate the club head, let’s just say we have only just begun. This week I am going to discuss the half way back position. That is the terminology I am going to use for when the club head is parallel to the ground, half way back. Nobody allowed the club to get to an open position at this point in the swing, even though there were 15 players out of 61 that got the club face open at the top of the swing. To review, there were 21 players that were square half way back, 17 were slightly shut, and 23 that were shut. So what conclusions can be drawn.

Obviously, whether it be consciously or unconsciously, no player wants to fan the club open early in the swing.  My thinking is that by opening the club face early in the swing, it  would have a tendency to make the swing really on the flat side. You would get a lot of forearm rotation early in the golf swing, which apparently is not a good thing.

I think some of the shut face positions are due to a natural tendency to want the club face to continue to look at the target line for as long as possible. I see a lot of beginning golfers get in this position half way back.

There were only 12 players or about 20%, who were both square half way back and at the top of there swings. This to me would be the ideal way to swing and I am sure would be the way most instructors would try to teach. Eighty per cent have some variation on the square and square method. You have to wonder how much of this is consciously done or is this something that players work on and just can not seem to correct. Surely they know that they do this with all the video they watch of their swings.

Within this 80% group, there has to be a lot going on to make some of the moves they make from the half way back position to the top of the swing. So lets look at the three that make the biggest moves, that is going from the shut position half way back to open at the top. There were 3 players  Ray Floyd, Colin Montgomery, and Jack Nicklaus who did this and I mentioned last week that Ben Hogan went from slightly shut to wide open. All four had pretty distinct swings with Floyd’s being the most unorthodox. Again it’s pretty hard to draw any conclusions from those 4 players about why their hands and wrists worked the way they did.

In conclusion, the lesson to be learned here is don’t start opening the club face until you get at least past the half way back part of the backswing. That is even if you want to open the club face at the top but that will be discussed in later blogs as we get to the top of the swing and bring it back to the ball. Heading to San Diego to see the grand kids for Christmas, so it will probably be about 2 weeks before I continue the wrist study.

 

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today’s blog is inspired by the blog, All About Golf by Brian Penn. It was a post about whether or not to start the swing with an early wrist break, or go with the more traditional one piece takeaway. The post also contained a video by Nick Faldo, showing an early wrist break drill or precocking the  wrists and then starting the golf swing. This set the wrists in a square position and maintained them in the square position throughout the swing. My comment at the time was that I thought the wrists were the most misunderstood part of the golf swing. I did a blog a few years back on wrist cock and came to the conclusion that they are going to do what they are going to do and not even think about them. Well, after studying 61 golf swings from all era’s I found many surprises when it comes to what the wrists do in the golf swing. I studied two places during the back swing when it came to the position of the clubhead. One was when the club shaft is parallel to the ground and the second at the top of the swing. I always believed, that  whatever  position  the club head was in, parallel to ground, that it would be in the same position at the top of the swing, but this was simply not true. But before we get to the raw data, we must discuss how the wrists function and move. Even this has some debate about it.

The wrist is capable of the three sets of distinct movements. Flexion and extension, supination and pronation, ulnar deviation and radial deviation. Supination is described as turning the palm upward and pronation is turning the palm toward the ground. However you can not do this without turning the forearm. The debate is whether the forearm turns the wrist or does the wrist turn the forearm. It really does not matter but it makes Hogan’s term about supinating the wrists at impact incorrect. What Hogan should have written is that the wrist should be flexed at impact. Even though the wrist is capable of 6 distinct movements only 4 of them are totally independent of any other part of the arm.

Studying 61 tour players swings, men and women, here is what they did at the two positions of the swing. First when the club was parallel to ground, 21 players had the club head square, 17 slightly shut or closed, and 23 had the club face shut. Nobody had the club open parallel to the ground. At the top of the swing I judged the club to be square, open or closed. I did not try to break it down any further because it was just too difficult. There is a video of what is called “the model golfer” who is making the perfect swing. He looks like a Star Wars character, without the helmet.   His position half way back and at the top of the swing   is square, and I used this in my comparison of how players had the position of their club face at the top of the swing. Of the 21 players that had a square club face  parallel to the ground , 12 were still square, 7 were open, and 2 were shut faced at the top. Of the 17 players who were slightly shut faced at the parallel position, 9 were square, 5 were open, and 3 were shut at the top. Of the 23 players who were shut faced  at the parallel position, 10 got back to square, 3 moved to  open and 10 remained shut at the top of the swing.  Here is what I consider to be the big surprises.

I fully expected Ben Hogan to be open at the parallel position because he is so open at the top. In fact he is by far the most open at the top of any golfer, with that toe of the club pointing right to ground. However at the parallel to ground position he is slightly closed or shut faced. He goes from that position and gets it wide open at the top. No wonder he had to practice so much.

Tiger Woods. Tiger has had 5 different golf swings. His 97 Masters swing, the 2002 Butch Harmon swing, the 2007 Hank Haney swing, the 2013 Sean Foley swing, and his current swing and I don’t know who the hell his coach is now. I have to have a little levity, this is a long freaking blog. Despite all these coach and so called swing changes Tigers club position at parallel to the ground and at the top has always been the same, slightly shut to square. One swing I watched from 2015 he may have been square at the half way back position. Essentially, no coach really changed the position of Tiger’s club face during the course of his swing despite other swing changes.

There is no rhyme or reason as to who does what. There are hookers who are at any of the 9 positions and there are faders  of the golf ball who represent any of the 9 positions.

Jack Nicklaus and Luke Donald had swings that were from instructional videos. On their instructional video they were both square and square. However on videos when they were in the heat of competition Nicklaus would be shut to open and Donald would be slightly shut to square at the top. Draw your own conclusions

I was surprised by how many shut faced golfers there were. Two of most shut faced at the top were Lexi Thompson and Dustin Johnson. These golfers have had great success on their respective tours and I am sure that their swing coaches know that they are this closed at the top. You have to wonder why they don’t try to go to a more square to square method. Would it mess them up that much and if the answer is yes, then a better question would be why.

I have a feeling that I have just scratched the surface on what  the wrists really do during the golf swing, and why do the great players lets theirs wrists go all over the place. We all can’t turn like Ricky Fowler or Rory, but it seems simple enough to be able to keep the club face square throughout the swing. However, is this really important or necessary for good ball striking. At this point I am not drawing any conclusions on what I have been seeing on wrist action and the golf swing. The only conclusion I have drawn so far is  that nobody truly understands what role the wrists should play in the golf swing. In future blogs I will look at some swings specifically and who falls into each grouping. One thing for sure, when you see a slow motion analysis of a swing, don’t pay attention to Peter Kostis, when he is talking about spine angle or how quiet a player’s legs are. Watch that club face at those two key postitons of the back swing. Too be  continued, I am tired.

The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

It’s been about six weeks since the last blog and the season is winding down. The year has been disappointing but I hope a very useful learning experience. My handicap rose from 3.6 in the spring to  5.2 with the handicapping season officially over on October 31st. My play was erratic all year and my tournament play with some brief exceptions, horrendous. The blog is back to the title of searching for the answer, instead of trying to execute the answer. Fortunately or unfortunately I did not execute the author either. So, what happened?

This time last year I thought I had found the answer, which was finding your that day golf swing. It was to approach each round with an open mind and try to feel your golf swing, and let your ball flight patterns dictate how you would swing for that day. Another way I put it was to abandoned that swing thought before it abandoned you. In the beginning this seemed to work out well and I thought I was really on to something for the 428th time. But as the year went on things began to go in the wrong direction. The way I was trying to compensate did not work as well on some golf courses and really did not work for tournament pressure. I wrote last spring that I thought the best way to get in the groove on the day that you played was to do opposite of the bad shot, rather than trying to allow for the bad shot. In other words if your first tee shot of the day was a high right shot, rather than aiming more left and trying to play that shot, I felt it would be better to aim right and draw the ball which would correct the problem of the first swing. There is not enough space in this blog to write about why this did not work, but it had to do many times with the way certain courses are designed and really trying to play a shot that was not the right shot for the situation. Needless to say this year went by too fast and did not go the way I envisioned it. I did manage to play 100+ rounds for the fourth consecutive year and I am still counting as there is still a little golf season left in the Burgh.

So the quest will go on, with a little different strategy. Now we all know that great ball striking does not always mean great scoring. Without great ball striking, however, you will not have great scoring. Yes, with a great short game and putting, you can always salvage a round where you are not hitting the ball very well, and maybe even pull out a round close to par. But that is still not great scoring.  The way to go about getting consistent ball striking every time you play  will be a major goal, in the coming year. It will boil down to finding a way to control your body and using particular muscles to control the way the golf swing is performed. I will discuss this hopefully with some positive answers in future blogs.

The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

The blog is back and it is coming from sunny and warm San Diego. I am taking a much needed break from golf and really enjoying those three grand kids. Needless to say this has been a very disappointing golf year, which has seen my golf game go all over the place, and trying to execute the answer has proved fruitless. The golf year has essentially zoomed by, and it is hard to believe it is October 1. I did have another even par round since the last blog and my performance in the South Park senior championship was not to bad.  I finished tied for third, only one shot from the lead in my age group, and finished about 10th in a field of 55, shooting a 4 over 76. Other than that, my play has been mediocre at best, and my tournament play has been horrendous. My handicap has bounced around like in no other year. I started at a 3.5 index and slowly but steadily climbed to a 5.4 and then got back to 3.6 but then in just 30 days jumped back up to my current 4.6. Did I learn anything during this depressing journey? Well I hope so and I did surprise myself in one area.

Let’s discuss the surprise first. I felt going into this season that I would be able to execute the answer and had very high hopes with some very good scores at the end of last season. I felt if I was not executing the answer by mid season, around June or July, that I would be ready to hang them up, or at least play only at a recreational level. Well a couple of things happened that changed my mind. One of them was the old age game. That my problems were age related, was one of the traps I was beginning to fall into. So in order to disprove that, I must go on. When things don’t go well, it is an easy thing to fall prey to. I don’t see any decline in my game that I can attribute to age. My distance is still the same and I putt the same, streaky. I am as dumb as I have always been on the golf course, so that hasn’t changed.   It was also something I learned or think I learned, that may be the main reason that I am going on, at least for another year.

One of my edicts in golf is that 85% of all bad shots are caused  before you take your swing. In other words the swing is not the thing. It is problems at the address position, which I have discussed in the past, that leads to bad swings and thus bad shots. Now I am revising that to 95% for anyone with a single digit handicap. For as much as we stress and stew over our swings, its what you do before you start your swing that leads to disaster. I have also read about how the body is suppose to move, which as led me to believe that many of the fundamentals of the address position in golf are wrong. As I embark on this new way to stand up to a golf ball, only time will tell if I am just seeing another flock of birds. I will be in San Diego until October 6th, and then it will be  back to trying to find and execute the answer to this goofy game. In the Burgh, if we are lucky, the golf season should last until right around Thanksgiving. I have played 93 rounds this year, so I should make the 100 round mark for the 4th consecutive year. I will only be blogging when the spirit moves me or if my address position theories look like they have some merit. Keep plugging away.

The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s been two weeks since the last blog, with the first week being a week of grand kid fun. There was the celebration of my daughter’s birthday who happens to be born on 7-7-77. I should remember that even in my old senile days. One of the days we all went bowling and that was an interesting experience. I haven’t bowled in about 25 years or more and bowling uses an entirely different set of muscles. I had a hard time finding a ball that would fit my thumb. Now, I don’t have that unusual  size of thumb but even with a 16 pound ball there were some thumb holes that were too small. I had to use one that was too big and in trying to hold on to the ball I got a cramp in my hand that lasted 3 days. It was a good thing golf was on the back burner for awhile, because I don’t think I could have played anyway. Then, the two older grand kids six and eight stayed overnight and I got introduced to mindcraft a game that they love, and I still really don’t know what the hell is going on. I will be going to San Diego at the end of September and you better believe I will figure it out. It was a great 8 day visit.

This week it was back to golf, where my slow but sure comeback is continuing. The rounds this week were 77, 75, 76, 80, and 76. The 80 was yesterday at Fort Cherry where par is 70 and it was by far the worse round of the week.   This round was caused more by poor thinking and some off putting, but the ball striking was not much worse than in the better rounds. My 76 today was again marred by some bad thinking as I had 4 birdies, but 2 double bogies kind of crushed the possibility of this being a really good round. I am back to the shoulder control swing with some modification, and this re-learning of this swing has delayed progress on finding your that day golf game or swing. I have had my best putting stretch in a long time and that does help the score to say the least. As the physical side of my game gets more comfortable I expect to apply this to helping me find my “that day golf swing. I felt I had to get back to something, as bad as I was playing and scoring. The last two weeks have felt that I am back on track. The weather here in Pittsburgh has not helped much either, as this has been one of the wettest summers on record and the golf courses are paying the price. It has been a challenge to keep the courses playable. I have one more week of regular golf and then I will be hitting the tournament trail in full force. Beginning in August and to the end of September I will be playing in about 10 tournaments. So the answer will be executed or it will be my golf game that will go to a watery grave.