"I was going to play golf my way -- and love every minute of it."
/As part of Golf Digest's "Fun" issue Ron Kapriske has dared to go forward at the expense of his manhood and guess what? He had a blast.
I started at the forward tees (5,301 yards) for the first round and shot an 81. The next day I moved up to flat spots about 20 yards in front of the forward tees, created my own teeing ground, and shot a 78 from 4,941 yards. I learned from those two rounds that, because I'm fairly long off the tee but my short game is suspect, my best chance to score would be if I played from a spot that allowed me to reach nearly every par 4 with my tee shot and every par 5 in two. That way, I could still two-putt for birdie or save par with a chip and a two-putt.
My strategy worked. I reconfigured my course to 4,792 yards and shot one-under-par 70. I won't bore you with all the details, but I did drive the first hole from 260 yards and two-putted for birdie, then drove the second hole from 240 yards and made a curling, 30-footer for eagle. I'm here to say, being three under after two is exhilarating. So was dropping birdies on 16 and 17 to all but clinch my sub-par round. What it came down to was putting. Most of my birdie putts come with a side order of terror. I can backhand a six-footer into the cup for triple bogey, but I wouldn't give myself a birdie putt outside of five inches. But that was the old Ron. Not Mr. Scoring Machine. With 12 birdie putts in a round, they become routine. I finished the round with 29 putts and only one three-putt.
Stats aside, this was the first time I felt a round of golf was truly fun from start to finish.