Mention baseball in our lunch time group, and the conversation immediately turns to the Major Leagues—the standings, the pennant races, and the summer’s outstanding players. Bring up football or basketball and it’s all about colleges and the pros. 

But when we talk about golf, the conversation turns to our own games. It’s about the hole well played, and the potential eagle turned triple bogey. We talk about the weather, courses we’ve tried and the new equipment we’ve bought.

Only as an afterthought does anyone mention the pros. Unless a Major is in the offering, !’m the only one who knows—or cares—where they’re playing on the weekend. And I’m the only one who knows where they are on the money list, or even what equipment they play.

I think it’s probably safe to say that anyone with more than a casual acquaintence with the game of golf has found himself in slumberland standing on a tee box, in a fairway or on a green. Dreaming of the game, I’ve found, is a common experience among the golfers that I know. Some relive great rounds or shots; others are forced to endure nightmares. But anyone who plays with any enthusiasm dreams of fariways and greens.

But I also have a further confession to make. I not only dream of golf; I put myself to sleep thinking about it.

For years, I’ve been something of an insomniac. Although I must get up at five to get to work on time, I can rarely fall asleep before eleven. I’m tired, but just not sleepy. Part of the problem is that my mind runs on endlessly with problems looking for solutions’, kids schedules and what I’m going to teach in class tomorrow.

The age old solution for sleeplessness is counting sheep. It’s something that makes sense, I suppose, if you are a shepherd or otherwise engaged in some agrarian occupation. Counting a flock as they pass through a turnstyle is no doubt boring enough to put even the most alert farmer to sleep.

But I’m a thoroughly suburban creature, and have no interest in sheep whatsoever. So I recently hit upon a solution: Rather than counting sheep, I replay in my head one of my recent rounds of golf.

I close my eyes and imagine standing on the first tee. I pull a club from the bag and tee up the ball. Then the swing. I relive the arc or the ball, usually high and straight, but not long. It bounces a couple of times and then settles down.

I mostly skip the walk between shots, for I have no interest in playing the entire round in real time. It’s more like a highlight (or lowlight) reel. I replay the second shot and then fast forward to the green. A couple of putts, and then its on to the next hole. I’ve been known to improve my lie and even take a dreamland mulligan.

I don’t think I’ve ever finished one of my insomnia curing rounds, or even a nine. I can remember playing six once, but that’s about it.

I told Mrs. GolfBlogger about my new strategy for falling asleep and she just nodded.

“Now you know how I feel about watching golf on television”

I’ve decided that the traditional method of scoring a golf round is unnecessarily depressing, especially for a mid handicapper like myself. I rarely make a birdie and often find myself scrambling for bogey. I can reel off a string of pars that keep my scores in the mid-eighties, but par for a course is an unrealistic expectation.

For the most part, I’ve given up keeping score, and play instead for the joy of hitting the ball. If I play a hole without hitting a truly bad shot, I consider it a success. But when I do want to keep track of how I’m going, I use a different system:

First, I assume that every hole’s par is one higher than the one listed; a reasonable score for a on a par 4 therefore is a five. Then, all I have to remember is how many strokes I am over or under bogey. If I shot a five on the opening par 4, I’m even. If I get a birdie on the par five second, I’m suddenly two under.

It’s a much more positive experience. What my method tells me is that I’m slightly better than a bogey golfer, which is good enough for me. After all, the USGA says that the average score is somewhere around 100, and that only 25 percent of all golfers ever break 90.

It’s good to be among the top players in the world.

My occasional playing partner Brian has a variation on the theme. He calls his method “scoring fives.” We call it “Brian Math.” Under the scoring fives theory, Brian assumes that every hole on the course is a par 5. So he only keeps track of any score over or under five.

After a round, when you ask him what he shot, he’ll likely respond “twenty.” What that means in USGA scoring is that he shot a 110. But twenty sounds a lot better. It’s also a much healthier golfing experience – he doesn’t get stressed out trying to meet an unrealistic expectation.

Of course, the best method may be to ignore par altogether. This summer, my friend Paul took up match play. He and his regular group – all very good players – made it their regular format. And they were, by his account, very happy with the result. At the end of the day, all that mattered was how they had done relative to each other, not to par.

In conceding holes, and ending rounds at 2 and 1 or worse, they’ll never know their stroke play scores. But I’ll bet they had a lot more fun.

There are few things in golf that I enjoy as much as trying out a new course.

A restless soul, I rarely play the same track twice in a row. This summer alone, I’ve played eighteen new clubs, completing my goal of playing every public course in Washtenaw County, Michigan. I’ve also played courses in West and “Up North” Michigan, in Maryland and at Torrey Pines in San Diego. In all, I’ve played twenty five different courses (some I had played in previous years).

Unfamiliar courses are an adventure. Like an explorer with an incomplete map, a player can get an approximate lay of the land from a scorecard, but never really know. To find the source of the Nile, Speke and Burton actually had to make the journey. A new course begs to be explored in the same way.

Standing on the first tee, I always wonder what’s in store. Will the course be a beauty, or a dog? Hard to conquer or easy? Memorable? Forgettable? Fun? Frustrating? A day at a new course always is filled with possibilities.

And it’s the possibilities that draw me onward. Each hole offers a new experience; a new view; a new test of golf. Balls land in unexpected places. Traps are closer – or farther – than they seem. Water unexpectedly comes into play – or doesn’t. Seemingly flat greens reveal themselves to be multi tiered.

There are regrets on the journey. Putts take unexpected turns. Playing cautiously, I often underclub. Or, arriving at my ball, discover that there was a better way to play the last shot.

But there also are triumphs. To play a hole perfectly on the first try is exhilarating. Discovering that the ball has landed in the center of the fairway on a blind shot makes me grin.

Finding a course’s soul is part of the adventure. Corporate, resort, real estate development, family run or traditional – each has its own distinct flavor. On a couple, I could almost see men in white sport coats and women in beehive hairdos standing on the clubhouse porch. I have a real fondness for the older, family-owned tracks that were laid out by the founder, and still are maintained by his grandchildren.  Ernie Els’ first design – Whiskey Creek—seemed to reflect his personality. A few lacked any soul at all, having apparently been built solely for the purpose of boosting the value of nearby housing lots.

But in my explorations, I’ve found that nearly every course has at least one hole that makes the trip worthwhile. Sometimes it’s the scenery; on others it’s the strategy. A few I like simply because I can just grip it and rip it.

On the very best courses, the good holes come in bunches, and the atmosphere and character are palpable. Those are the tracks that I take note of, and plan to visit again.

But not tomorrow. Tomorrow a new course beckons.

While cleaning a bunch of scorecards from my bag this week, I realized that I haven’t kept score during a round for quite some time. I had sixteen cards, and on only one had I recorded numbers for more than three holes. That’s when it occurred to me that I haven’t recorded a single score for my handicap in nearly two seasons.

I don’t know why I’ve fallen out of the habit. It’s not that I’ve been playing poorly and am trying to avoid the issue. On the contrary, I know that – a few driver distance issues aside – I’ve been striking the ball very well. I also know that I’ve been chipping and putting with accuracy.

The sixteen cards are for twelve different courses, and if I thought about it, I am sure that I could go back and reconstruct a good many of those rounds. I have a terrific memory for holes and shots and rounds.

But I don’t really have any interest in knowing what, exactly, I shot. I’ve really been enjoying golf this summer while playing as many different courses as I can. I’m taking the time to enjoy the scenery, and the flight of the ball. I often pause to take photos of the course. In my bag is my Palm pilot; I take notes about things that occur to me as I’m playing.

I may have fallen out of the habit earlier this summer when I spent a couple of rounds hitting balls just for the fun of it. I’d get to the 150 mark and drop a few balls to fire away at the pin. Or, coming to a good driving hole, would hit three or four just to see how far I could bomb it. Putting is my favorite part of the game, so I’d take a few extra ones just for the heck of it.

And now that I think about it, I’ve been doing that all summer. I usually play alone, on weekdays, and in the early mornings, so there is no one around to complain. If I play three, four, or five balls, no one is the wiser.

Golf is a lot of fun when you don’t keep track of your shots. I may not keep score again.