I had been having a good round at The Gailes this past week, hitting every fairway and scoring a 41 on the front nine. But on the thirteenth, luck ran out and I drove the ball directly into an island of tall, thick grasses on the right side of the hole’s double fairway (it shares fairway with another going in the opposite direction).

Bad swing; worse result. My ball was sitting down in some of the most dense grass I had ever seen. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed my six iron, and took my stance, bending my knees far more than usual. My thought was that I needed to dig it out, and bending my knees would help me stay down through the swing.

I took a mighty swing, keeping head down, and my hands and arms moving through. Clubhead caught ball perfectly, and it sailed out into the fairway just a hundred yards or so from the green.

“Brilliant recovery,” said a voice behind me.

I had been concentrating so much that I hadn’t noticed the Ranger approaching in his cart.

“I need it to make up for the one before that,” I said. “It was terrible.”

The Ranger shook his head. “You’ll be a much better golfer if you forget those bad shots and focus on what you do right.”

Then he drove off.

It was a bit of a Bagger Vance moment. I thought about it a bit, and realized that he was right. Thinking about what I did correctly on a good shot is going to get me a lot further than endlessly dissecting every poor one. As a postmortem to a swing, You finished high; do that again likely will lead to more good repetitions than you screwed up because you didn’t finish your swing.

As Bing Crosby sang:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not at all sure what purpose “rangers” serve at a golf course.

It was very slow today at the Lake Forest Golf Club in Ann Arbor. Two groups ahead of us there was a father his young daughter playing as though they owned the joint. Dad was giving lessons to the girl. At each point, she would take a shot and hit it poorly. Then Dad would drop another ball, and another. It was interminable.

There were three groups backed up behind us.

After more than an hour of this nonsense, I was waiting for my partner to tee off when I noticed the ranger driving across two fairways straight at the father-daughter team.

“Good,” I thought. “He’s going to take care of this.”

But he passed them by. And then he passed the group immediately to our front and headed straight for my position. He arrived with an important message: “Your push cart is too close to the tee box.”

I must have gawked, because he quickly said “Its a rule. They have to be ten yards from the tee box.”

“You let three hundred pound guys STAND on the tee box,” I snapped. “That cart doesn’t weigh a fifth of that and it’s not even touching the box. And what about those two holding up every player on the course.”

“Nothing I can do about that,” he said. Then he drove off to search in the woods for balls.

After nine holes, my partner bailed on the course, and I made the turn. I joined a new group at ten. On the fourteenth, the same ranger drove up. This time, he had an important message for another in my group, who was driving a power cart.

“Your cart is too close to the green.”

The guy’s cart was actually at least fifty yards from the green And there were no signs or ropes specifying otherwise. But he apologized and moved his cart back.

And then the ranger headed off to look for balls on the treeline. The ranger never did move the slow players along, and a quick afternoon outing turned into a five hour crawl.

I don’t know what the course is paying him, but whatever it is, it’s too much.

A good friend of mine who is a single digit handicapper said something the other day that made me think about my own game.

“I’m really working hard on getting rid of the mental mistakes,” he said. “I can live with the physical mistakes. But the mental ones have got to go.”

That’s a great way to approach things, and one that I’m going to make a real effort to adopt. But I think I’m going to start small. I’m going to start with a resolution to work harder on choosing the correct club. That’s part of the mental game—preparing for the shot—and one that could stand improvement. I lose far too many shots over the course of a round by either leaving it short, or flying the green. In fact, I’m sure I could drop 3-5 strokes a round if I made better choices.

So I’m going to try to start a mental checklist before each and every time before pulling a club from the bag: distance to front and back of green (more important, I think, than to the middle), lie, wind, height. I’ve managed to make an aim and alignment check part of my pre-swing routine, so with a little discipline, I should also be able to incorporate an automatic club check.

By far the hardest part for me is going to be discounting the “feel” of the shot. Sometimes a shot just “feels” like an eight, when logic tells me it should be a seven. I’ve got to learn to go with logic.

Of course, as with my friend, I’m going to discount the physical errors. Chunking a shot, or hitting it thin doesn’t count as a “wrong club.” They’re dumb moves, but not “mental mistakes.” Focusing on the mental, while discounting the physical is a great idea, and one that should not only lower my scores, but also keep me from beating myself up over the odd poor shot.

Do the GolfBlogger and think for a minute about your own mental game. Is there another factor I should consider in choosing the right club? And what are the mental errors you’d like to eliminate. Leave a comment.

I am constantly amazed at the ability of golf to turn complete strangers into friends—at least for the length of a round.

During a twilight round this past week, on the tenth hole I caught up to a couple of good looking young people who were out on a date. I heard them talking about classes, and assumed that they were University graduate students. The group ahead was very slow, and they asked if I’d like to play with them. Sam explained that if I didn’t mind, he and Kristen were playing a “scramble.” Both would hit and then they’d both hit again from the better ball.

I didn’t mind; I thought it cute.

A few minutes later, we were joined by a Korean gentleman more near my own age. The couple also asked him to play with us. He introduced himself as Jhoon.

So there we were, four strangers on the tee. When the group ahead was near the green, we took our swings and then headed out.

I knew immediately it was going to be a fun night. Sam and Kristen were carrying their bags, wearing flip flops, and having a grand time. Sam was a good player, and I could tell that Kristen was a beginner, but was giving a good account of herself. It was also pretty quickly clear that Jhoon (also a walker) was an accomplished player as he chipped in for a birdie from ten yards out. My game was—well, it was what it was.

By the second hole together (the eleventh), we were playing like a regular foursome, applauding good shots, and rooting for putts to fall. By the third, we were chatting as we walked to our balls.

It was on the fourteenth that I found out that Sam and Kristen weren’t students, but young elementary school teachers. The classes they had been talking about were ones they had to take for teaching certificate recertification.

We had quite a bit to talk about after that. Jhoon, an engineer, asked our opinions about some difficulties his daughter was having in high school, and we offered some advice.

We also talked quite a bit about courses we had played around the state,  the PGA Tour, my golf GPS unit, and other fun things.

After the eighteenth, we smiled, shook hands and all said we hoped we’d meet again—and meant it.

Of all the dangers that lurk on a golf course, I would never have numbered chipmunks among them

Until yesterday.

As we were standing on the first tee, waiting for the group ahead of us to clear out, two chipmunks came dashing out from a stand of pine trees to our left, heading straight for our little group.

“That’s cute,” I thought for a fleeting moment. “They’re not afraid of us.”

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Those two cute little rodents ran straight at Dave, up his leg like it was a tree and into his shorts. Dave began shaking frantically, trying to dislodge them. The chipmunks got out of his shorts almost immediately, but then began to circumnavigate his thigh like it was the trunk of a hairy sapling. Dave then began swatting at them with his hand, and only then did they scurry back to the trees.

It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen (not so funny to Dave, though and I’m extraordinarily glad that I wasn’t the victim of the attack.). If I had a camera, the video would have been the grand prize winner on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Dave suffered a few scratches, but most of the damage was done to his pride. There now will be no end to the chipmunk jokes told at the friday night golf league.

In spite of snowfall earlier in the week, temperatures in the forties and twenty-mile-an-hour winds. I’ve managed to play each of the last two days. For your friendly neighborhood golf blogger, any sunny spring day in Michigan is an excuse to get out on the course.

There were just four cars in the lot Wednesday, and the only other player I saw was on his way out.

“It’s only us crazies out here,” he quipped.

I quickly discovered why the sane had stayed home. I had to put my earmuffs on before leaving the lot, and after stopping at the pro shop, returned to the car for another layer of clothing. The air temperature wasn’t that bad; the wind was cutting.

My first tee shot was into the breeze, and what initially seemed like a good shot rose into the sky like a shuttle launch, then fell like a meteor. My second, a three wood, went just 170 yards, hit a hard spot and bounced right into a patch of snow under a large tree.

Fortunately, it came to rest on some “grass”, rather than in the snow itself. I pitched to the green, and three putted for a triple.

Two holes later, I wasn’t so lucky. Standing in the fairway, I could see a large patch of snow behind the green in the shade of a pine. I could have mistaken it for a sand trap if I was unfamiliar with the course. But the traps are a shade of municipal course brown. The snow is white as the sand at Augusta.

Just don’t hit it long, I thought.

So of course I did. My ball headed straight for the white stuff and made a visible plop as it landed.

I was unsure of what to do as I approached the green. Does a patch of snow constitute “standing water” under USGA rules? Did I have to play the ball as it lies? Or, under some obscure ruling, does a patch of snow constitute a “hazard,” preventing me from even grounding my club?

It would be just like the USGA to have some sort of ruling on snow that works against the mid handicapper.

Erring on the side of caution, I decided to play out of the “snow trap.” With my wedge, I splashed the ball out, spraing my front with wet slush. It plopped onto the edge of the green and made a few rotations toward the hole. Not a good effort.

Legend has it that the Eskimo have dozens of words for snow. I believe at that moment that I added a few of my own.

It was cool and windy as I began my round, but I was not alone on the course. Any hint of spring brings Michigan’s dedicated golfers out in force. There were a couple dozen cars in the lot, two pair on the first tee and several others in the shop. Since I was only walking nine, the pro sent me out back where I would be ahead of the afternoon groups crowding the front.

In spite of yesterday’s snow,  fairways and greens today were for the first time showing signs of a color other than brown. All of the ice had fled the ponds, and I swear I saw the first signs of buds on the willows. It was all so hopeful.

Unfortunately, I still can’t say the same about my game. Short and left was my mantra today. Following a solid first hole bird, I reeled off a string of bogeys and doubles that made me thankful there was no one watching.

But I really wasn’t keeping score. Instead,  I worked on a tip I saw in a golf magazine recently that I thought might help cure my tendency toward a “chicken wing.” I concentrated on keeping my left arm soft, while making a full body rotation. Without video, I can’t be sure that it worked, but I did manage to produce some very nice full behind-the-ear finishes—a sign that things are on the right track.