Golf in February

February. Winter's last stand. The final frontier. For anyone in the higher latitudes, golf in February is the exception and not the norm. If you look at the history of golf in New York (well my history at least) you'll see that golf in February is a roll of the dice situation, maybe a twenty percent chance in any given year.

Last Gas

Two days before the great mid-Atlantic blizzard of '16 would arrive, I made it out for one last round.

Marine Park in Winter

The End is near. In desperate uncertain times, the winter golfer cannot be too choosy about where he plays.

Since it's practically on the Atlantic Ocean, Marine Park typically sees the harshest weather conditions of all the city courses. But today it's ridiculous cold anywhere you go, plus I haven't seen the course in a long-ass time, and they've slashed tee times to liquidation prices. Marine Park's probably as good (or bad) a choice as any.

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.

Wintergolf essential: vacuum flask

If you come here on the regular, you might have noticed that over the last couple seasons I've been growing fond of that great winter sport known as golf. Winter golf--it's more or less just like regular golf, but there are a few key items essential to winter golf happiness. One of these is the stainless steel vacuum flask.

Frozengolf

A few days ago we got some rain, which I had thought would've been enough to melt away the couple of inches of snow cover. Trouble is it's been very cold and the ground is frozen, so even a full day's worth of steady drizzle was not enough to clean up the entire mess.

Roadgolf: Dunwoodie GC, Yonkers, NY

The weekender strikes again. This time with Ms. Legitimategolf, who hasn't been out in a while, and also has spanking new TM driver and fairway wood--gifts from a recent birthday--that need to be put into play for the first time.

Ghetto Golf, volume 11: Douglaston Park Golf Course, Queens

[This edition of Ghetto Golf was plucked out of the earth a couple weeks ago and stored on a shelf so that it could be enjoyed during these barren times.]

The latest stop on the Legitimategolf New York City Golf Tour takes us out near city limits once again, way out to the neighborhood of Douglaston, Queens. I was hereabouts not that long ago, whacking balls and checking out the instant noodle selection at the Alley Pond practice range. Douglaston Park GC is like Alley Pond in that the Korean flag has been pretty much planted here--this is K-town golf territory now.

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.

Dark Thoughts, vol X: Cold comfort

In normal circumstances the practice range is somewhere I go only when I feel it's truly necessary, like if I'm trying to make some sort of revolutionary swing change, have to re-learn to hit a ball and need the repetition. Not a fun, recreation activity. Some people might enjoy it; to me the driving range has about as much to do with actual golf as a drive-thru carwash does to actual driving.

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.

2014 Winter Season Status Report

[photo courtesy of NASA/NOAA]

Some of you have expressed concern for all of us up here in the Northeast in the aftermath of the latest snowstorm. Judging by the satellite photo, the situation looks very bad.

And judging by this sporting fellow I came across out by the East River, you might assume that we've now descended into desperate times. I remain unmoved however. I got a good fill of ghetto golf (and attendant douchebaggery) in the last days of 2013, and that's probably what's been keeping me going. Withdrawal will set in soon of course but no reason to worry just yet--there's a sliver of hope on the horizon.

This storm might've covered a big area, but things aren't as bad as they seem--the mess it left behind wasn't so bad as to squash all hope of playing golf in the near future. Temperatures, which had dive-bombed into the negative digits a few days ago, are about to swing wildly into the upper 40s. As I write this, I can look out the window and laugh cruelly as the drizzling rain eats away at the snow cover. Rain--our unlikely ally in these frozen, perilous times.

Hopefully the rain will macht schnell and clean this place up. Time is of the essence since on Tuesday we'll be hit with some more, potentially problematic arctic cold. But looking over the extendo forecast, there might appear a window of opportunity sometime around next weekend. Stay tuned!

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.

2013 Season End Watch part IV: counting down the seconds

I managed to get in another 18 this weekend, this time at Dyker Beach. The weather was borderline nice, which made me waffle over the matter about a hundred times before finally giving in.

Since there was (naturally) a lot of people at the course,  I was placed in a foursome which was a little weird for me. Because I'd played most of my golf alone for the last couple of months, it was sort of like a feral child being reintroduced into civilization. They were distant concepts to me, but I was more or less able to recall the etiquette, politeness and small-talk that I had learned in a previous life. Still I managed to step in someone's putting line a couple times.

Dark Thoughts VI: Master of Layers

Previously on Legitimategolf.com, I issued myself a challenge: in these waning moments of the calendar year, try and beat my best score of '13. And now the first attempt is in the books--a 92, 22-over par from the black tees at Silver Lake. I know. Scorewise it is an abject failure. I blew up the round early with an 11 on one hole. Besides that it was a complete success though I suppose.

2013 Season End Watch, part 3

It's probably time to call off this whole season end watch. I went snowboarding in the local NJ mountains this past week; I was riding the chairlift and when I turned around to look back down at the green earth I saw the Great Gorge Country Club sitting just beyond the base of the ski area, all verdant and ready to go. It occurred to me that this winter golf season is going to roll right on into 2014. Not ruling out any future calamities of course but for the foreseeable, cold temperatures are our only adversaries around here.

2013 Season End Watch, continued

This was the view outside my window yesterday. I use the big lawn down there to sort of extrapolate the condition of the local golf courses--only once that lawn has cleared can I even think about playing again.

These are the excruciating, uncertain and ultimately soul-gnawing days of our golf lives. Wintry weather has precluded all actual golf activity here for the last week or so. The golf club is getting swung plenty--indoors, at a manic, obsessive-compulsive rate perhaps, but alas the sensation of club-to-ball contact is little more than a memory at this point.

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.

A Guide to... Winter Golf, Part 1: Layering

If you are a golfer who happens to live in a semi-temperate climate, where courses stay open through winter, and your temperatures hover around the freezing point of water, you should consider yourself lucky once November rolls around.

Apologies to those of you in year-round temperate zones, you Californians and Floridians and the like, but in golf terms you are not as lucky as you think. With no offseason, you get no break from the epidemic of slow play or the mind-numbing douchebaggery of the super-casual set. In a lot of warm places the "offseason" is arguably among the worst times to play golf, with "Canadians" and other weirdos migrating in from the upper latitudes, clogging up courses and inflating greens fees.

Also let's face it, living in a winter-less climate dulls the senses. One of the great joys of life on Earth is experiencing that first flush of spring after a long dark winter, getting back on the course and feeling in one's bones the redemptive power of the sun awakening you and every other living organism around. Another of life's unlikely pleasures is that of coming back inside to a hot beverage, after a few hours of chasing pars in the cold. It is these such contrasts that remind you that you are alive, right?