This has got to be the worst time of the year for Michigan Golfers.

As the landscape outside has been turned into a frozen tundra, we now are far enough away from autumn that the last drive and putt are but a faded memory. Spring, on the other hand, seems no more near that it did when the first snowflake flew.

To compound the misery, it’s currently five degrees outside. I went out to shovel the snow off the driveway and in fifteen minutes darn near got a case of frostbite. So much for global warming.

I’ve been consoling myself by studying the latest GolfWorks and Golfsmith club component catalogs. My sticks don’t need new grips, but I may change them anyway. And although I can’t really justify it, I’ve considered building a new set of irons—or at least a new driver. There’s a neat new 460cc titanium scoop back model in the GolfWorks catalog that’s caught my eye.

The Buick Invitational and Pebble Beach tournaments these last two weeks have helped. When everything I see outside is frozen and white, a glimpse of green—however remote—is a welcome change. But at some level it just compounds the misery. I envy Californians—that is, until they have a wildfire that burns down half the state, or an earthquake, or mudslides, or smog alerts or a drought.

Ok. So I don’t envy Californians.

In years past, I’ve eased the midwinter blues by reading a good golf book or three. Reading about golf is, after all, the next best thing to playing it. But that too has fallen by the wayside. To renew my teaching certificate, I have to take earn six new college credits, and right now all my reading time is focused on the history of medieval England. Right now, I can’t tell you who’s leading in FedEx Cup points, but I can tell you the names of every Saxon, Norman and English king from Aethelraed the Unready to Richard III.

I’m a mess. It’s a wonder Mrs. GolfBlogger can stand to live with me.

A crazy plan is forming in the back of my mind. I’ve got a week off at the end of February—what the school district calls midwinter break. In my golfing fantasies, I just hop in the car and drive south on I-75 until I find a place where the grass is green—probably Tennessee. I stay overnight at a cheap motel, and play 36 holes the next day. One more night in a hotel, and I head back home. Three days. 36 holes. There’s even a website called Golf-I75 that encourages such madness.

Anyone want to meet me in Knoxville?

Tragedy struck the GolfBlogger’s shirt closet this weekend.

As anyone who owns one knows, boys’ pockets are depositories of treasures that are recognizable to others only as debris: rocks, bolts, pieces of plastic, smashed Hot Wheels, bits of wire and occasionally some live critter. And, thanks to the design of modern pants which—in addition to the usual hip pockets— feature cargo pockets on the sides, the little pack rats now are able to tote more than ever.

The challenge of doing boy laundry is to try to get all of the pockets emptied before you toss them in the machine. Of course, with so many pockets, this often is difficult, if not impossible to accomplish. Mrs. Golfblogger is meticulous about this, but occasionally something slips through (before the feminists out there get their panties in a knot, I’ll point out that while Mrs.Golfblogger does the wash, I do the cooking—a simple division of labor).

So it came to pass this past weekend that a bit of red crayon passed through homeland security and snuck into the wash. It didn’t cause any trouble there; crayons are, after all, non-soluble. But when the little terrorist got into the dryer, disaster struck. The crayon melted and spotted everything with red blotches. It looked like the clothes had a case of the chicken pox.

Among the casualties were the oldest boy’s scout uniform, Mrs. Golfblogger’s Air Force fatigues (worn by one of the boys for Halloween), and a pile of golf shirts. Most of those are replaceable, but losing the one I bought at Torrey Pines in San Diego this past summer was a tragedy. It was—other than memories—my one souvenir of the course.

And the shirt was WAY too expensive to begin with. I generally won’t pay more than $20 for a shirt; I paid at least $60 —maybe even $80—for that one.

Neither of the boys would confess to being the crayon smuggler; indeed, they really have no idea what’s in their pockets at any given moment. So while I read them the riot act about emptying their pockets before throwing them in the hamper, it was a useless gesture. And while Mrs. GolfBlogger feels bad about the whole thing, she really shouldn’t—any more than I feel bad about cooking the occasional dud of a dinner.

Triple Bogeys happen.

I played with an angry golfer yesterday.

Carl recently had been taken in an Arizona real estate scam in which he had lost $250,000. As he told the story, the hustle involved half-a-dozen guys, one of whom was his “best friend.” The first guy had purchased some worthless desert for $30,000. The next bought the land from the first for $50,000. The third bought out the second for $100,000 and so on. Each man, when he sold out, shared the difference in profit with the ones who came before.

Carl, on the end of the deal, was left holding the bag for $250,000. He hadn’t realized that the previous six were in on it. He was convinced by his “best friend” that the rapid rise in price was the result of a hot real estate market.

So now he owns a dozen acres of sand, cacti and gila monsters.

“I couldn’t even build a golf course there,” he said.

But that wasn’t why Carl was angry.

It seems that on the trip to Arizona to complete the land purchase, the same “best friend” had given him a swing tip.

“You need to hit a cut shot,” the friend had told him, and then demonstrated how. Carl tried it, and started spraying his shots. He then tried to go back to his old swing, but couldn’t.

Now, a month later, Carl still was shanking the ball. In the nine holes I played with him, I could tell that he once had been a good player. He was a lights out putter, and had a stellar short game. He hit drives that went nearly 300 yards, and nine irons that went 150.

But his shots were flying in random directions.

“I can make more money,” he said. “But that (insert twelve letter word here) ruined my swing.”

It’s nice that he has the whole thing in perspective.

There’s a hole on one of my favorite local courses where success has eluded me for years. For me, it’s the hole from hell.

On paper, it’s not particularly difficult. A par 3, it has two sets of tee boxes; one to the left of the green and the other to the right. From the tips on the right, it measures 180 and change, while from the other, it’s around 160. The large green is shaped like a ski slope, falling steeply from a height in the rear down to a pond on the front edge. The pond is probably forty yards from front to back and extends well to the left and right. The far edges of the pond are surrounded by trees, so any shot must pass over the pond and through the gap.

Neither of those two distances represents a problem for me. The previous hole— the par 4 sixth – has a green which is guarded by a front greenside bunker. On that hole, following a decent drive, I generally find myself in the fairway a hundred sixty yards out. And on nearly every occasion, a seven iron is sufficient to fly the bunker and land deep on the green. I’m also quite proficient with a five iron or a hybrid from 180.

But on the par three seventh,  my usually reliable clubs never deliver predictable distance. From 160, a seven iron invariably falls short, landing in the pond. So does the six. And the five. My hybrid-four always has the distance, but on that hole for some reason slices the ball into the weeping willows (a quite appropriate tree for that hole). And Old Man Willow, of course, dumps the ball unceremoniously into the pond.

When I’m not dumping the ball into the pond, I’m hitting a ballooning shot that lands on the near shore. Or, knowing that my tendency is to fall short, overswing and top the ball fifty yards down the fairway.

The hole had gotten so frustrating that at one point, I adopted the strategy of hitting a three wood off the tee, driving the ball past the green into a stand of trees. From there, I could chip it back and try for a one putt – assuming that I hadn’t parked the ball adjacent to a tree trunk.

It’s the water, I suppose, that is the source of my grief. While I know – intellectually – that the pond should have no effect, the fact that I’ve lost so many balls there weighs on my mind. When I get up to the tee, I immediately start thinking that I shouldn’t’ start thinking about losing my ball.

The good news, though, is that I birdied the hole last week. I hit a pure seven iron off the tee (with a junk ball I had found under a leaf on the previous hole). It landed above the hole, and rolled down to within two feet. After a short tap, the ball was in.

So maybe the jinx is broken. Or maybe it’s just that the ball I found was a lucky one.

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’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.