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Stats So Far

Well, February has concluded and it’s probably a good time to see how things are going in the golf game.

Overall, I’ve been reasonably OK – my drives has returned, but my iron shots are still crappy (partly due to my inherent retardation and also the change of clubs). But my chipping and pitching has just been AWFUL. If not for my drives, I would probably average around 98 or 99 per game.

Instead here is the overall stats:

overallstatsfeb2

It has not been terrible. 92.5 after 6 games with a 93-95-90-97-94-86 needs to be looked at from a more optimistic perspective. The first three games were in tough conditions in KRTU and KRPM, while the 97-94 were quite bad scores even for Seri Selangor and KGNS mickey mouse course. If I wanted to break 90 on average, I better start playing more in friendly courses like Bangi.

In more details, the breakdown as follows:detailstatsfeb2

Averaging over 4 pars per round is pretty normal, a bulk of it really coming from the par 3s. Bad performance overall on par 4s really show that I can’t hit my approaches properly. I can hit it from the tee well enough, but really struggle from the fairway/rough.  Another weakness is the low GIRs, which obviously puts a whole lot of pressure on my chips and short game which, well, usually comes up short.

Here’s hoping for a better March.

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Hacker Guide To Breaking 90

bangicard

 

It seems easy for some golfers, but somehow after hacking this game for what seemed like an eternity (it has only been 11 years), I am still struggling to break 90 regularly. Of all the games I’ve played this year, I finally managed to get that done on the (admittedly) easy going course called Bangi, by scoring 86. Here’s a hackers guide to get it done.

1) Go for everything

This might sound counter-intuitive as Butch Harmon and Leadbetter and all these losers will say, “You gotta manage the course, don’t go for it if you think you can’t.” That’s horse$hit. As Master Yoda would say, “Do or do not. There is no try.”. Every Par 5 in this game I went for 2. On the front 9 3rd, I whacked a 3 wood to the green and the toughest green on earth to putt. 3 putting for par was the best I could do. Admittedly, Hole 8 was almost impossible to go for 2. Hole 13, went for 2 and ended up greenside and just bladed my chip too far for birdie. Hole 17, also went for 2 and ended up greenside again but again, chipping was retarded. The point is, forget about course management – GO FOR IT!

2) Drive like a machine

Due to retarded short game inherent in all hackers, our only hope of survival, we need to drive like a king. Which was precisely what happened. I was blasting the ball like a machine, and only had one bad drive the whole round, the par 4 six, where my drive skittered right, ricochet off the 150m marker and into the bunker.

3) Luck, luck, luck

Again, par 4 six hole, if my drive did not ricochet off the 150 marker, it would have ended up dead in the woods and survivability would have gone from 20% to – 50%. Sometimes, luck is all you need to keep the round going.

4) Go for 1 on if you have a chance

Related to point 1), this is a more extreme case. In Bangi, there are plenty of holes where you can actually blast one on if you are feeling it. Hole 10, I launched it around 20 meters from the green, so near that I had to apologise to the group in front, who just said, “Good shot!”. However, after they saw me chunk my chip and blade my third to a bogey, they just shook their heads and left. Ahhh – the delusions hackers have. Hole 16 is another drivable par 4. I missed mine right, but a friend of mine was left with only 30 meters to the green. Hole 18 is definitely drivable, it’s an elevated teebox and if you had the balls to challenge the bunkers you can go for one on. I was around again, 20 meters from the green.

Hole 1, challenge the trees on the right and you can also one on. And if you are great, even hole 9, you can put it to around 40 meters to the green, which was precisely what my partner did.

But the one hole you MUST go for one on in Bangi is Hole 4 in Putrajaya Nine. This is an elevated tee off to around 270 meters to the green but challenging a large pond fronting the green. Usually people will play safe and play to the fairway to the left, but it didn’t make sense since the drop zone is only around 80 meters from the green. I did go for it and the ball stayed in the air for an eternity before splashing down around 1 meter short of the green. In fact, it hit the stone wall fronting the green and bounded back.

5) Momentum counts

We had a partnership going on, and we played the back nine first. We were 4 – 1 down in the first five holes and the other team was just gloating around us. The sixth hole, I stuck my second on the green around 10 feet but tricky downhill. The other guy, putted around 25 feet from the fringe and dunked in his birdie. They were so confident of winning his partner did not putt out and they were saying 5 – 1 down is too big a hole to dig from. My partner was going for par. I putted, and ridiculously went in for a birdie to tie the first ball and we won the second ball. From there, we went on a tear, from 4 – 1 down, to win 4 straight and won 5 – 4 on front nine, and carried over to the back nine and won 11 – 7 overall, outscoring them 10 – 3 after that unlikely birdie. Play for something, and get the momentum.

In all likelihood, if you are a hacker, you have a retarded short game, like me, so don’t bother about it. Avoid bunkers like the plague. I only hit one bunker (the lucky shot) and the rest was either fairway or rough. We just don’t have the capability of hitting chips, bunkershots or flops that other low handicapers can do. But if you drive like a demi-god, it will cover your flaws. This is the only route to breaking 90, if you continue to suck at short game and putting – like me.

Obviously, the lower handicapers will shake their heads and say, we need to improve the short game, but where do we have time or the discipline to do so? If we had short game, we won’t be hackers!!

Frankly, it’s a lot more satisfying blasting the ball to smithereens and watch it dissolve into the horizon and sunset, isn’t it?

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The End of Golf Entertainment

Over the years, we’ve been graced with the presence of amazing golf from not just Tiger Woods, but a host of other golf celebrities coming down the funnel that has been opened up by the man himself.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the closing of the funnel, as Tiger struggles to cobble together a game resembling golf, and along with him, the relevance of PGA. Make no mistake – PGA needs a top player in US. There is where the market is. Rory is a good golfer, but he’s all there is. He plays well, but frankly, I don’t even bother watching him. He lacks the inherent charisma. To be honest, I would prefer to watch Sergio Garcia or even Bubba Watson compared to him. Sure, they are a-holes but so was Tiger in his prime.

The problem with PGA is that it is becoming irrelevant. It always has been, actually. Golf is a game better played than watched. The problem is always that non-golfers won’t watch golf. It’s like cricket. Nobody watches cricket except players. Whereas for football it’s different. There is a sense of attachment to the team, to the position and travails of the team. You see oversized, fat, obese flers walking around the mamak at midnight gobbling 2 maggie goreng and wearing the jersey for Wayne Rooney. That’s why universally, 98% of the people who watch football, can’t actually play football. In fact, they can’t play anything at all, except maybe PS2 and computer games. But that’s fine, because football is simple and watchable and more importantly, there is a time limit of 90 minutes to it so at least we can confirm with our wives we’ll be back home to clean our son’s crap from the toilet.

Golf is too variable and we have 100s of golfers all around the golf course. TV can’t just follow one person, so most of the time, we spend watching players we don’t give a crap about. Only Tiger had managed to transcend that and create an attachment with worldwide viewers. With him gone, the entertainment disappears. Tiger is bigger than golf, and nobody will be able to carry the game as well as he did for a good part of two decades. I mean, some may not say it, but 5 years from now, golf will return to oblivion in which it was dragged out by a black-thai-chinese-malaysian-spanish mixed guy who wears red every Sunday and pummels his competitors mercilessly into the ground. Post-woods, the game will need to identify his successor. What sort of successor?

1) Anti-establishment – Woods was a misnomer. As someone said, the world became upside down when the best golfer was a black and the best rapper was a white (Eminem). At a time when every player in golf was white, Tiger came and just drove the white supremacy down the toilet where it should have always been. Fuzzy Zoeller, unaware that his racism would cause so much of a stir is best remembered by making a joke about collards and fried chicken when it came to Woods.

2) He was damn good – Woods was an extremely good golfer. Augusta chip. Driving the greens. Hitting it further than any human being at that time. Recovery shots. Amazing putts. He was golf’s first and only mega-celebrity.

3) He was honest to God, arrogant – Woods was more than proud. He was arrogant. We needed people to step on others. Golf was filled with nice guys who were a-holes in the private lives. Woods made it known that he was an a-hole and proud of it. His fist pumps and celebrations wasn’t designed to just look good for TV, it was driving into your heart, and saying, “God, you suck so bad, why do you even bother to show up?”. I mean, how often have we emulated his pointing to his putt as it goes in, or him slamming down his driver in disgust?

4) He was raw – his emotions, his life, even his caddie for the most part – they were raw. He didn’t have the upbringing of uppity class jackasses like David Love the Third. He ‘seemed’ from the ghetto (he wasn’t, but seeming is good enough). Golf had too long been inaccessible to the public – the old guard liked that, but obviously it does not sell.

That’s why when he is struggling now, everyone has a type of schadenfreude. Yet, everyone knows that if he doesn’t recover, the game ends with him. There is no one else to carry the 4 things that drive up golf and make people who don’t play golf, watch.

The end of Tiger Woods means the End of Golf. It might sound prefunctory to say that when we have a bunch of young studs coming out – but the truth is, golf as a game was elevated due to Woods. Without him, it’s just a game not even worthy of mention in the Olympics. Golfers are fine with that of course, because our addiction in the game comes from playing, not from watching. But for the game to be globally accepted? It needs someone like Tiger. Without him, golf is consigned back to obscurity the way Cricket or lawn bowl is.

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The Big Miss

Since I’ve resolved to add a post every week, there will be times I have absolutely nothing to write about except nonsense.

A few weeks back I played in KGNS – a note: they have closed down one of the championship 9…not for good, but for maintenance. They are revamping the greens and bunkers. So the schedule is that it will be closed till maybe June, and then the next championship 9 will be revamped. This leaves us to play 1 championship 9 before hopping over to play one of the mickey mouse course.

We opted to play the 1st and 3rd, because there were more par 5s. I am a pretty decent driver of the ball, but we have one guy who is closing on to 60 years old and he hits it an absolute mile. He’s a former national cager, hockey trainee, badminton…basically his hand eye coordination is perfect. The par 5 7th on the back nine, he absolutely murdered the ball. For our sixer match, he and I were partnered and we played like absolute buffoons, going down dormie 3. For a sixer, you understand, we got whipped in the first 3 holes.

So there he was around 230 meters to the green, and I was in the jungle on the left for my second shot. He absolutely gunned his 3 wood to about 10 feet from the hole to set up an eagle putt downhill. For me, I hit an absolute perfect 9 iron for my 3rd shot, in the trees that dunked to about 4 feet from the hole, uphill putt.

We were already down 3 and you know what we were thinking:

1) I sink a birdie = 1 fringe

2) He sinks his eagle = 6 fringes

3) Both of us par or better = 1 fringe

We could literally turn from zeros to heros and save the game and win everything even if we lost the game.

He putts, and was too cautious, to about 4 feet. He yells out in frustration and in recognition of his stupidity.

He is still away. He misses his birdie putt. 3 putt from 10 feet. He is probably feeling like the biggest moron alive.

I hit my putt too hard, didn’t catch the break and remained stunned as my birdie went away.

From 8 fringes, we just got 1, i.e both of us made par.

You can bet, we never heard the end of this from the other team all the way through lunch.

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So…what the heck are glutes?

OK, I can bet my final dollar that this week, the word ‘glutes’ have been searched on google more times than the combination at all points of history since the internet began. Because, Tiger withdrew from Torrey Pines tournament, saying, he couldn’t activate his glutes.

It gave me a thought, well, actually two:

1) Tiger Woods is really, actually a robot. I’ve suspected as much. When you need to activate something, you are generally lumped as a machine. In this case, a machine that cannot activate its glutes.

2) Glutes. This generally means Ass. It sounds better than saying, I can’t activate my ass. Which is sure to generate a heck more ridicule and laughter than it is now. I don’t care what some of the health experts say, who support Tiger’s activating glutes statement: It’s just bollocks.

And I mean it in a serious way. This is the joker that went through the same course on a broken kneecap (I think) and couldn’t swing his club properly and still won the major. Of course, he was paired in the final round with Rocco Mediate, who, as much as he sounds like a pornstar, he’s actually not. He resembles a little chihuahua who happens to play lucky and reasonable golf. By any stretch of imagination, probably like a trishaw next to Tiger’s ferarri.

But he won it. And now you’re saying he’s quiting because he has pain in the ass? Come on, Tiger, let not your legacy be remembered for you quiting your final tournament because you could not activate your ass. It’s a horrifyingly humiliating end to the greatest golfer of all time. Whatever you need to do to activate your glutes, do so.

At least now I can make a new excuse for my common first hole screw ups: “Ai ya, sure hook one, because I cannot activate my glutes lah.”, and sure to be met by a stunned response of my flightmates at my amazing knowledge of golf gluteness.

I mean what does an activated ass look like anyway?

Are these activated glutes?

    

Now, I don’t know about Tiger, I think these are seriously activated glutes. I mean – sheesh. Definitely activated.

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Weighing in on Tiger

You know that this is coming.

Of all the biggest fan of Tiger’s, Gilagolf is the biggest. I mean if it wasn’t for this guy, I wouldn’t even have picked up the club 12 years ago and started my lifelong spiral into this mega time-wasting, money-hogging, life-destroying game called golf. It’s because of this black guy in the red shirt on Sunday, killing everyone who dared to challenge him. He was Michael Jordan of golf and after years on top, the game unfortunately still needs him badly. Badly.

You would think by now, someone would have stepped up to the plate. But has anyone replaced Michael Jordan? Nope. Likewise, I hate to say it and sound like the biased fanboy I obviously am – noone has replaced Tiger. Sure, you got a slew of jokers exchanging number 1 ranking, the latest being this Irish boywonder with a beautiful swing – but he has a personality of a cardboard.

Tiger? Boy, he sucked at the Phoenix open. He hit like seriously crap shots. I mean these are shots, I am hitting. At the risk of being ridiculed, I know what he’s going through. There was once that the thought of chipping completely sent me into an epilepsy. I was retarded at chipping. To a point I would putt from 30 meters in. To a point where if I had a go for a Par 5 in two, I would rather lay up to a 100 meters for a full sand wedge as opposed to anything resembling a pitch or a chip. I don’t know. It was just a time when my neurons refused to work, and my chip would be a duff, shank, skull, or anything.

I have somewhat recovered (this was late last year), but I am still struggling with bad chips. It’s not so much of technique but a mental retardation. I just know what I am supposed to do but cannot execute. Then I will second guess myself and turn into a baboon trying to hump an iguana. While getting tasered at the same time. I think Tiger is pretty close to a tasered baboon humping an iguana, so I gotta say this, he’s really got to get his act together for next week.

My wife has her take on this. She hardly has any opinions on this game of golf except that the sunblock I use, according to her, stink up my wardrobe. And that I am stupid to always forget I have tees and coins in my pocket before I dump my pants into the washing machine. Anyway, her take is simple: Tiger needs to sleep with other women. With many women. Because the women drove his game, gave him the alpha male confidence that he can take on anyone and be entitled to be a bad-ass. Once he lost all those pornstars, he’s just like all of us. One woman man. And often, the woman will berate us for spending too much time on the golf course. To be honest, his current girlfriend is pretty hot herself but I guess Tiger would prefer a few rather than one. So, according to my wife, for Tiger to get back his game, he needs to get back his pornstars. Go Porn!