The Last Day of Winter(golf) 2017

Wow, what a wild ride this wintergolf season has been, right? The highs. The lows. But really mostly the highs. November through February, the entire period was positively gay with unseasonable warm weather and golfing joy, and not just here. All across the northern latitudes, people wintergolfed their faces off.

Welcome to Winter '16

Okay, so I'm spazzing out prematurely. But I've been waiting so hard for this. Meteorologically speaking it is not actual winter yet. And it's been weirdly warm for the last couple of months. But, today it feels like actual winter--around 45 degrees with some wind chill. And so at last I'm actually looking forward to getting out on the course and chasing one ball around, after months of mostly whacking striped balls out into a meaningless void with no regard for consequences.

Packing a vacuum flask filled with piping hot tea gives me an enormous sense of well-being.

When the mercury dips below a certain level, I feel like the world of ghetto golf is my oyster. I can rove the fairways with little danger of my mellow getting harshed. On a day like this even Dyker becomes a safe zone.

Tons of leaves everywhere make golf a perilous sport. Who cares? I'm flying through an open course.

This was maybe the craziest round of an uneventful year. It was just so eventful. So much crazy stuff happened good and bad. I managed to hook a 9-iron clear around a big tree and on to the green. God is Great. Then on the next hole I shanked the most basic of sand wedge chips sideways into a bunker. Despair. All is futile.

Then two holes later I had a blind shot off a sandy lie to a short-sided pin. How did I even end up here? By flaring a high, weak 5-iron into the wind. Christ. Par would require a miracle shot. But I holed it for birdie. It is officially on.

I did things today to a golf ball that I've never done before. Needing to launch one over a tall tree-line I picked a 4-iron, said "What the hell?" and sent it straight up into the sky. I thinned a wedge off a bare lie with a full swing, and watched in confusion as it stuck the landing and spun back towards the hole. I pounded a driver with a solidness and squareness never experienced before. The deepest mysteries of the golf swing tend to reveal themselves on the course more than they do on the range, especially on a day like this. I think I might've got a glimpse at a Universal Truth of Golf. Wish I could describe it for you.

Disturbingly big group of beginners gathered at the first tee. Whatever it is they are up to, I don't want to know.

For it being forty-something degrees it was still kind of a nice day, and so there were a few people scattered on the course. When I eventually butted up against a foursome on the 13th tee, I sped over to the 15th tee, played 15 and 16, then played 13 and 14 and then zipped over to the 16th tee, well ahead of the group. Pffft. Crisis averted. A clever, impromptu rerouting made possible by a gas engine, a deep familiarity with the course's layout, and some can-do attitude.

I'm still marveling at some of the stuff that went down over the last couple holes. It was so much fun that once I saw the front nine empty, I jumped right back in and finished it off speed-golf style, in under an hour. There was daylight to spare and in these sun-deprived times, you've got to get it while you can.


After months of trying to avoid Dyker, and all places like it, it's good to be back in the fold. Damnit, it's like I never left.

Dyker Dealin' Days

Things are very slowly creeping back towards normal. I'm no longer eyeballing the weather reports with a bug-eyed intensity. We seem to be in the clear as far as any major freezing weather events are concerned; still, I'm not ready to put away my winter jacket just yet.

Closing Time, part III: End

I tried to maintain a state of stoic denial as long as I could. I thought I would time-shift my last days of 2014-15 Wintergolf, spreading the posts out in a vain attempt to savor the final good vibes of the season. And so here it ends, most unceremoniously.

Closing Time, part I

It's been a stupendous season of winter golf, better than one could hope for. But with a few inches of snow heading our way, the writing is on the wall. Fun time will be over soon. The coldest month of them all is just around the corner. Once snow blankets the ground, there'll be no recovering. Not in the short term. It could be two months before we tee off again--an unthinkable length of time in golf terms.

Yellow

Back from California. It was nice coming back to a mild New York winter. After a couple nights of rest I was back on Eastern Standard Time and so ready to get back out into the wild uninhabited world of winter golf. I hit it, pretty hard, taking advantage of the convergence of some holiday downtime and not-entirely-terrible weather. It was all kind of a blur of push draws and three-putts. I've been enjoying it as much as ever, but it's just been happening at such a fast rate that I'm having a hard time keeping up with it all, emotionally. So here's a bunch of photos and impressions from the last three rounds, all played with the same ball, an optic yellow Titleist I found up in Yonkers.

The Weekend Runaround

A flurry of activity lately. Weather's been hitting the sweet spot lately--around 40º with windchills. That's about the line that separates the hobbyists and the truly afflicted. This is what I've waited all year for, right? Time to get out there and get it, by train, bus or boat.

More Fall Splendor, etc.

I had last set foot on Dyker Beach Golf Course in mid-September. After a turgid 34 holes in the span of three days, I decided "no mas" of this place until the cold season started: "Spending ten hours here over the course of two rounds reminded me of why I hadn't been here in a while, and why I won't be back until the temperature dips below 40º."

The Legitimategolf Reality Tour, volume 1

Mr. F was understandably hesitant to have his actual identity associated with this blog, but there's his hat sitting in the rough.

Over the weekend I had a visitor. One of our brave readers from south of the Mason-Dixon came up to the city for a bit of adventure, personal edification, some light tourism, and to experience first-hand a slice of ghetto golf life.

Due to circumstances we ended up playing Dyker Beach twice in three days. Not the best itinerary, but perhaps good for my Southern friend in that this would at least offer him a deeper, rawer, more immersive experience. This is after all the ground-zero of ghetto golf in the Americas, in my opinion.

Sucking in the 80s

I found a rare tee time deal at DBGC, and then actually looked forward to seeing the old haunt again. Maybe I could rediscover some old positive vibes, maybe even some of my vintage scoring.

Chafed

Rough going out there today. The summer temperatures have been moderate lately, but swamp-ass humidity persists. Gad, do I hate summer golf in the city. DBGC is looking as rough as I've ever seen it. The greens are pretty much hybrids of grass and sand at this point.

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.

Ghettogolf: farther down the handicap hole

I thought it was about time that I gave the range balls a rest and tried some actual golf again.

Ghettogolf: Just dropped in to see what condition my game's in

It was a rain-cover kind of day.

After a couple of nice (but bloated) rounds in the Carolinas, I was eager to get back into some ghetto golf, card a couple scores on familiar courses and see where I'm at gamewise. First up was an empty Dyker Beach course, on a damp and windy overcast day.

Opening Day 2014

After seven weeks of daydreaming about playing golf the time has finally come to get real.

If the last post was a bunch of bellyaching about not knowing how to get back into the swing of recreational golf, then this latest outing was a reminder that I'm stupid, that nothing's really changed, and that it's gonna take more than a couple months' layoff to forget how to do any of this.

Dark Thoughts VIII: Full Swing

We've been so lucky with the weather lately. Praise the golf gods. I used to joke around about the winter being my peak season. Well by now I don't think it qualifies as a joke anymore. No, it's reality. The numbers bear it out--I'm playing more lately than at any time last year, and as of the last few rounds actually seeing some positive trend in my scores. Train keeps on rolling; why the hell not.

Dark Thoughts vol. 7: Raising the dead

A couple days of warm and rain at the start of the week here turned out to be a gigantic boon--it cleaned up most of the snow cover, which had gone all dirty and granulated and hard. More cold temps followed, but a brief window of opportunity opened up late in the week. Now most people probably wouldn't consider 30° F an "opportunity" but hey it's your old pal Legitgolf. Master of layers.

See, golf's great because it's a winter sport and it doesn't even know it (apologies to the late Mitch Hedberg). Seriously, you tell people around the water-cooler that you just got back from skiing in sub-zero temperatures and that makes you some kind of a cool guy. But talk about playing golf anywhere near the freezing point of water and you'll be considered some kind of lunatic. Where's the logic in that? I don't see it.

2013 Season End Report: Assholes' Last Stand

Well, that looks to be it for 2013 golf. I got in one last hurrah at Dyker Beach, a beleaguered, bitterly cold round in which forces of evil and ignorance repeatedly tried to come at me and derail my fun. A round beset with lunatics, rude foreigners and slow players.

Dark Thoughts: vol. 4: 2013 Season End Watch

We got some snow this week, and now it's being followed up by freezing temperatures for the forecastable future. Which means we are now at the point where every round, just might be the final round of the 2013 season. Now I try not to assign too much significance to the passing of Gregorian calendar-based intervals; the more salient point here is that each round played in these precarious times, just might be the last round for a really f'n long time.

I don't really feel that in my gut that it's the end, nor are there any major storm events on the horizon, but you just never know. Back at the end of '10, hard winter came early; the golf season was slammed shut right after Thanksgiving and wasn't revived until March. Really dark times.

Dark Thoughts vol. 3: Scenes from a botched weekender

It was seasonably cold over the weekend. The plan was to arrive two and half hours before sunset, and hopefully blast my way through a super-fast, super-twilight 18. On a day like this, who could be teeing off at that time?

I badly miscalculated the situation though and ended up making a mess of the whole mission.