Saturday, November 14, 2020

Masters Golf Tournament

They're playing the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia, this weekend, and I'm really enjoying having it on in the background on mute. I'm finding it harder to be all that interested in sports results (other than the Dolphins') since the pandemic started. But I am glad sports are around, and I particularly enjoy seeing everybody in sweaters, socially distanced for the most part, out on this golf course. 

Autumn is probably now my favorite season. It used to be winter, but now the cold really bothers me. I still love winter, but autumn has probably inched slightly ahead of it in my ranking of favorite seasons. Spring and summer have pulled tight, too. Winter, autumn, spring and summer ... Winter, Autumn, Spring and Summer ... 

If I was a golf tournament, I'd feel like I am approaching the turn of my third round. Of course, no one knows the day or the hour, and I'm thankful for however long my tournament gets to go. I'm just telling you how I feel. Anyway, Winter--with its Christmases, blizzard of 1978, playing in the snow, NFL playoffs and all--got off to a historically tremendous start in my first round:

  1. Winter 13 under par
  2. Autumn -8
  3. Summer -2
  4. Spring -1

Pretty much every happy story of my whole love life have transpired in the Winter and Autumn, and so those two just continued to blister the course in my second round:

  1. Winter -23
  2. Autumn -17
  3. Summer -6
  4. Spring -6

But here in the last few years, that cold is really starting to hurt me--hips, hands, shoulders, etc. I guess it's the start of arthritis. I mean, Winter is still owning the course, but now I'm starting to wonder if it can hold off the field on my Sunday. Over the course of writing this post, I've come to realize that Winter remains in the lead of my tournament. Autumn is so steady and relentless in its game that it just felt like it had inched ahead. Through 52 real years and about 44 feels-like holes, here's where things stand:

  1. Winter -26
  2. Autumn -22
  3. Spring -10
  4. Summer -9

You'll note that all of the seasons are going way low. That's accurate. All of the seasons are really great.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Tiger Woods just missed a six-or-so-foot birdie try by about a foot. He's 5-under late in the second round and four strokes and probably 15 or 20 golfers behind five guys tied for the lead at 9-under. I'm rooting for Eldrick Tont primarily, and then my second rooting favorite is a tie among all of the guys I've heard of who don't seem to act silly, who smile, who are polite with the reporters and who don't wear too tight of pants. Comments flow, maybe ...


8 comments:

  1. Was golf a spring or fall KHSAA sport when we were at Heath? Yesterday, the late-afternoon sun, the autumn greens and grays and the lack of galleries reminded me so much of playing at Rolling Hills Country Club in Lone Oak for the golfing Pirates of West Paducah. But this morning I'm starting to think golf was a spring sport for us. Maybe we at least "practiced" in the fall?

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    1. It was a spring sport when we were there. Practice used to start March 1st.

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  2. It's disappointing, too, that I can't recite the records of our golf teams at Heath. I've been an actual playing member of only four teams in my entire life: a Concord Elementary football team for one season, the Heath golf team for three or four years, a Bowling Green rec-league softball team in the early 1990s and then, in 2003, the last Raleigh (N.C.) Saint Paul's Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) softball team. I remember the record of only one--the first of the BG softball teams, which went 0-16.

    By the way, in tennis Monday night, I split with my opponent: 2-6, 6-3.

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    1. I'm pretty sure we only won one time, that counted, in all the years I played on the team. Which would have been the same amount of time you played. When we had the ringer on our team we won I believe another time, but since his paperwork was not completed properly they took that win away and he was no longer allowed to play for us. Anyhow I believe we won one time at Ballard. Lone Oak sent their second squad and somehow we managed a win. At least that is what I remember. Somewhere I believe I have all the scores clipped from the newspaper by my mom.

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  3. Dustin Johnson leads after three rounds.

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    1. Dustin Johnson, in fact, ended up winning the tournament.

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    2. Dustin Johnson of Columbia, South Carolina, ended up winning the tournament. Masters20 is his second major championship. He also won the U.S. Open in 2016. Johnson moves up to T47 on super Wikipedia's List of men's major championships winning golfers. Here are the top 11:

      1. Jack Nicklaus of Columbus, Ohio, 18
      2. Tiger Woods of Cypress, California, 15
      3. Walter Hagen of Rochester, New York, 11
      T4. Ben Hogan of Stephenville, Texas, 9
      T4. Gary Player of Johannesburg, South Africa, 9
      6. Tom Watson of Kansas City, Missouri, 8
      T7. Bobby Jones of Atlanta, 7
      T7. Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 7
      T7. Gene Sarazen of Harrison, New York, 7
      T7. Sam Snead of Ashwood, Virginia, 7
      T7. Harry Vardon of Grouville, Bailiwick of Jersey, 7

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