Donald Trump's Handicap Index

He may not be willing to release his tax forms, but thanks to the providence and foresight of those other founding fathers—of golf in the USA that is—Trump’s USGA handicap is indeed a matter of public record.

A Farewell to Summer

For the first couple decades of life, summer is the best season hands down. A time of liberation--liberation from the tyranny of academia, as well as the shackles of long-sleeves and pants. Summer is the time to gorge on sleep, and Vitamin D, watermelon and iced tea. The time to make big plans to do everything you'd wanted to do during the year but were too bogged down with stupid schoolwork. Then adulthood sets in and summer takes on a different feel. Mostly it's business as usual. But still, we cling to that euphoria, if only by habit.

As a golfer however, I've come to realize that summer is actually the darkest time of the year, emotionally. Summer is all about sweat; damp, sticky gloves; sun stroke headaches, overcrowing, long waits in the hot sun and the absolute dregs of golf course-society. For our cursed kind, it's actually a time to be endured more than enjoyed.

Game under repair

This blog has not exactly been a hotbed of golf spirit and enthusiasm lately.

Winter Desperation 2015: The Melt

It is actually happening. It is finally raining. For the first time in months, pure wet rain--not the frozen stuff. Not the freezing rain, not the sleet. Not the goddamned dreaded wintry mix.

On top of that the days are getting longer and the sun's peaking higher in the sky. The more steeply the sun's rays are angled, I have read, the more heat is transferred to the surface of the planet. Come March, those angles get steep enough to result in a daily net heat gain, thus rapidly accelerating the rate of snow melt. I was not aware of that.

Winter Desperation 2015, volume 2

Winter has set in. Deep within, even though it's now March. In my mind's eye I can no longer conjure up visions of golf, as it is played on a golf course. I can't do it. The memory is just too distant. At bedtime, in those fleeting moments between waking and sleeping I might receive a faint glimpse of a golf memory from the past, but it's hazy and short-lived.

Winter Desperation 2015, volume 1

Now that the positive vibes from my good play at the end of the season have completely evaporated, I'm forced to face the truth. This is, and will continue to be for some time, a bleak winter season for golfers.

I feel eons removed from my last round; the next round lies beyond the foreseeable future. Where does that leave me?

I feel like a tiny dot in the middle of a blank white page.

When you are midstream, there's nothing to do but try to keep moving forward and hope to reach the other side. Let's not pussy around this thing: desperation has set in. I know not how many days have passed since I played golf; don't even want to check.

Roadrange: South Orange County Edition

I am ripshit annoyed at the moment. If you have a profanity filter on your browser, might as well switch it on. First a little setup. Early this morning a light, steady rain began to fall here in south Orange County; it continued until just past noon.

DARKNESS

Here in the civilized world, the darkness of winter doesn't just creep up on you. No, in this age of "Daylight Slaving" and other so-called modern advances, winter creeps up for maybe the first couple weeks of October and then BAM! It leaps up suddenly, unsheathes razor claws and mauls you from behind.

"2 Teams, 1 Cup" 2014 Edition

I have no interest whatsoever in any of the pre-Ryder Cup hype or the weeks-long buildup, but when the event actually begins I can't help but to watch with some interest.

It's hard for me to attach any kind of patriotic zeal to sporting events--I tend to watch with the disinterest of an extraterrestrial, coldly observing human behavior. Let's face it, the guys on the US team have more in common with the guys on the Europe team than they do with you, or me. But still, US vs. Europe is an interesting golf rivalry in that a clear pattern has emerged lately, in which the tormentor has become the tormented. Comeuppance, in a sporting context, is all in good fun.

Stuck in the mud

The happy roadtrip times are over. I am back in the city to ride out the dog days of summer. The weather has been unsettlingly cool this year, yet the deep summer blahs are still in full effect. At this point I feel like I'm only playing to fill a need, to avoid the withdrawals. To get back to zero.

Ghettogolf: Cup Fever

Okay, so normally I try to avoid weekend golf in the city. But this afternoon somehow boded well. I just had a feeling. A conjunction of some iffy weather and the big soccer final maybe. I called up the Dyker pro shop to make sure I could walk on as a single. He said I could. I asked if it was busy and he said it wasn't. I strained to hear any deception in his voice and decided it was worth a try.

'14 Brooklyn Open preview, part 2: What's in the bag

Here's what'll be in my bag for tomorrow's tournament:

Dark Thoughts, spring edition

It's time to talk about what the hell is going on here. If you read this site on the regular you might be wondering where all the usual misadventures in city golf have gone, the tales of encounters with detestable strangers, of awkward confrontations and offended sensibilities, the lurid photography revealing some of the saddest places and conditions found anywhere in the golf universe, only to be replaced by meandering swing contemplations and dim snapshots of range balls and decrepit astroturf.

WTF: Your Summer 2014 Forecast

So I just read some disturbing "news". According to the morbid shit-rag known as the NY Post, this year's Farmer's Almanac is calling for a lot of bad summer weather in our region.

According to the Almanac, which claims an 80% accuracy rate and correctly predicted last winter's protracted misery, the Tri-State will be hotter, humid-er and thunderstormier than usual this summer. Already, online assholes everywhere have started to chortle about a "Solar Vortex"--sure to become the latest in face-punchingly annoying hashtag catchphrases.

Lost In Staten Island

After stinking up Brooklyn with my lousy play, I decided to hide out for a bit in Staten Island. Looking over my last twenty scores, I see that I've played more rounds at Silver Lake than anywhere else. So I guess that makes this unofficially my home course now. It's a big change after being a Brooklyn golf regular for all these years.

Dark Thoughts 2014: The End

A random sampling of turf near in New York City. Since the local courses aren't answering the phone when I call, this is the only indicator I have of what it must be like out on the fairway.

Now that Daylight Savings days are here, it's probably high time to put away those dark thoughts of Winter 2014.

It doesn't matter that there's still snow on the ground--DST means that spring is nearly here. Right? Which means that at some point the earth will actually thaw out completely and miracles of miracles, we can resume playing golf like it's no thing. It doesn't matter how stubborn this lingering winter is--sooner or later the warmer weather will happen, it has to. There simply is no historical precedent for it not to. In the meantime the extra daylight will be nice--I guess. It makes it a little harder to wallow in gloom and that's probably good.

Fun With Sports Betting: WGC Matchplay

It's been a while since a shit was given about PGA TOUR golf, so here goes.

When I was growing up back in the dark ages, a.k.a. the eighties and nineties, sports betting was regarded as a vice and an illegal activity. Then one day, well into adulthood, I wake up and suddenly realize that sports betting is now a normal acceptable feature of ordinary life. Now, people talk freely about their wagering exploits online. Now, otherwise law-abiding folks openly and regularly engage in office-wide betting pools, during work hours for Christ's sake. And employers don't even look twice at any of it. Everyone's in on it, schoolkids, grandparents, hell even most chicks nowadays put some cash into their workplace March Madness contest.

Every goddamn person in the western world seems to be cashing in on this wholesome-yet-lucrative hobby. Everyone except me--naive, clueless, slow-adopter. What the hell happened, where was I when all this was approved. When it comes to sports betting I might as well have been in a coma for the last couple decades.

Dark Thoughts: Snow Day

What I've come to realize in the last few days is that this current winter is the worst winter I've ever experienced. Funny that I'm just now figuring it out. Then again this one didn't really come out and announce itself as the winter to end all winters. It just kept piling on slow and steady, and now it's all this.

A tribute to Not Bill Earle's Ball

The ball, it's been said, is possibly the single most important piece of equipment in golf. The only one, in fact, that's involved in every single goddamn play that's made on the course. Metaphysically speaking the ball is, in a sense, our surrogate, our representative, our emissary to the sky. Wherever the ball goes, so does a little piece of our soul along with it. At its full flight best, a golfball is up there with Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers, Goddard's rockets, the Saturn V, etc and so on. Man's eternal quest to kiss the sky, soar like a bird, say "up yours" to gravity, and "eat my wake" to the earth, if only for a brief moment.