Earlier this week, my friend and I made what seemingly has become an annual trek up to Colgate University to play their fabulous Seven Oaks Golf Course. I am an alum having completed my MA there in 1978, John is both an undergraduate and grad alum, in fact we met during the MA program in the summer of ’77. We both played the course while we were up there, and it seems to “call” out each summer for a return.
It is one of the first, if not the first, Robert Trent Jones designs. The condition of the course is always spectacular, the folks running it friendly and accommodating. The greens are large, with some very nasty pin placements, there are wide fairways but there are also creeks running throughout the course, on some holes those creeks come into play multiple times. The rough is US Open length and difficulty. As I’ve aged, and lost distance, I was pretty convinced that as much as I love the course, there is no chance of me scoring given its length and difficult conditions so I pretty much arrived hopeful (I’ve been scoring this year better than in a very long time…mostly in the low-mid 90’s on a consistent basis), but resigned to being frustrated by the score.
We arrived on a beautiful morning, after about a 4.5 hour drive, we had a 10 AM tee time, but Dallas, the pro, said if we were ready in 5 minutes he could get us out ahead of a league (about 40 minutes early) so we loaded up our pushcarts (yup, we were walking the first 18) and out we went…I hit a very respectable tee shot on #1 and it went down hill from there. Bottom line 103, not horrible but incredibly frustrating as I can, even now, recall at least 10 shots that caused that score to rise.
Taking a breath, we had a great lunch and decided to do not the 9 holes post lunch we had planned but another 18 to get the bad taste out of my mouth. First we found the AirBnB we were going to stay in that night and then back to the course…where again, Dallas was able to get us out 45 minutes prior to our scheduled 4 pm time. This time the result was a 102, a shot better but still frustratingly “off”.
Off we went to the local craft brewery: Good Nature Brewing http://www.goodnaturebrewing.com/home/ (link attached in case you’re interested)
Beautiful temperature, nice breeze, outdoor seating, and great food to go with wonderful local suds, we, of course, spent a ton of time doing analysis of the two rounds (John played much better than I did, I’m around a 20-21 handicap, he’s playing to 13-15 so that should tell you everything).
Off to the AirBnB, sharing one more Bad Sons that John had brought along, and decided to get up early, go for breakfast and see if we could move up the 7:39 to earlier (yup, Dallas came through again).
I had spent the night thinking about what I was doing that was setting me “off” my game and I realized three things:
- I was not continually balanced when I was setting up
- I was not properly rotating
- this is a big one…I was not fully committing to some shots, causing them to come up short, or fat, or skull, or otherwise add extra angst in bad positions.
I promised myself on the first tee that I would be mindful of all of those things, pretty easy to correct on the fly, especially the committing to making the shot as planned.
Well what do you know…I was consistent off the tee for the entire round, and shot a 92. The lowest I’ve ever scored on Seven Oaks! (as an aside: I can still recall at least three shots that should have been better and I had two three putt greens, so with that in mind alone I could have been an 87 which would have put me into orbit, however, the 92 did almost the same!!!). The great news: 92, the “bad” news I can no longer ever say I can’t score at Seven Oaks due to my age or lack of distance.
We had a great lunch on the way back (along with a local IPA from Roscoe Beer Company) , moved very well on the roads, and made it home easily.
Balance, rotation, confidence…more than just things that help a golf game…Position, staying on the fairway, out of the rough, playing smart, recognizing mistakes and not trying to exacerbate them, but taking the medicine of the bad shot and moving on. All can be euphemistically applied to all kinds of issues…of course, when you go astray it”s appropriate to yell “FORE” so folks in the way know there’s something coming!
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