MIND THE GAP
“Mind the gap” has always been one of my favorite expressions.
Although no one ever produced more from these three simple words than Dickens in “Great Expectations,” we all come to terms with the space between expectation and reality. Certainly all who pick up a golf club do.
(And by way of brief apology for the wide space between my first postings here and this one… well, let’s just say that certain realities in my life including this year’s stock market woes, some familiar family health matters, and one or two other things somehow got between me and my original intentions here when I began this blog in the Fall… )
But alas, I return to try and close this gap a bit… Once again through golf…
ONE could argue that all of golf is an inner contest to see who can best deal with this most persistent of gaps -- the one between reality and expectation.
And a quick summing up might argue that the pro’s find a way to close this gap to the smallest space, while the rest of us hope to limit it to something smaller than the size of the course we’re playing at any given time.
But then even among the pro’s, some seem able to close it tighter -- with the Hogan’s, Joneses, and Tiger’s seeming to find a way to make their gaps small enough that they’re barely visible to the human eye.
And yet there are other possibilities in this equation…
And the “greatest gemme” seems, at least for me, to always find surprising ways to point this out.
A couple of weeks ago, by the time the stock market had been pounded five days further into submission on a Friday afternoon, and the economy looked more like “the news” finally had TEOTWAWKI right “this time,” and my wife was on her back with yet another broken bone in the medical gauntlet she’s been forced to run in this life (with Tiger-like strength…), and even the hills around my City of Angels were literally on fire in Santa Ana winds, I ran my week-ending macro’s, squared my books, looked around my office, and… grabbed my golf clubs.
Within minutes, I was racing through the mountains north of Los Angeles in “the Batmobile” to my wonderfully named refuge, Lost Canyons, where two Pete Dye courses that Freddy Couples has worked on and also calls “home,” await me any afternoon I can magically drive through the gates.
When I stepped out of my car near the clubhouse, the wind knocked my hat off. Not like a Scottish gale that I’ve been privileged by my membership in this Society to have experienced first hand -- but more like the nasty slap you feel when jumping out of a plane with nothing but a silk parachute on your back.
Inside, the kid behind the starter’s desk smiled and muttered, “no wind or rain checks once you get out there, you know.”
“This is nothing,” I smiled back, “I just survived another week in this stock market without losing any money.”
AND there I was on the first tee of the Shadow course.
I loosened up, did my Vijay Vad yoga stretches, and pulled my sweater and hat tight. The wind was at my back -- at least for this hole -- but it was blowing so hard I couldn’t even hear myself let out a yelp of a laugh. Needless to say, I was alone on the course.
I decided on the spot that this was an opportunity for one of Fred Shoemaker’s “care-free” rounds, so I bent down with a smile and teed it up high.
The wind blew the ball off the tee. Twice.
But then with a grin on my face, I turned and let the R7 loose. And no one but me saw the new Bridgestone RX I’d picked up at Roger Dunn’s not only fly like a buzz bomb, but fly straight -- and clear the two Dye-abolical traps that greet you on No.1, Trail Head, at 227 and 248.
I’d never cleared both these traps in the five years I’ve been playing. In fact, I never even tried. I always played it safe and aimed left on No.1, hoping of course to even go left…
But there it was. My ball sat white and pretty between the last trap and the elevated green at 275. Wind at my back or not, the shot gave me goose bumps. And I felt like I was off into the canyons for an unusual round.
I guess “unusual” is as good a word as any. Fred calls such golf “out of the ordinary,” or “extraordinary.” Shivas Irons grins and says, “turn the wind around, make it your friend.”
All I know is I was aware more than anything of the sound of the ball cutting through the wind, and that’s what I looked forward to on each shot -- hearing that s-s-s-s-sound.
I don’t remember if golf balls made the same buzz bomb sound years ago when I first tried to play the game as a kid. Maybe it’s the technology, the sound of 330 computer engineered dimples on the outer core of a soft three piece gradational core modern golf ball. But I love that sound! And I’ve never heard it more clearly than that day, which I later learned was blowing flames all over the city with gusts of wind up to 70 MPH.
With the wind, against the wind, between canyons of wind -- it made no difference. Or the only difference was the slight change in pitch of the note the ball created flying through the yaw of a course I felt I’d never played before.
It wasn’t about score. There was nothing more absurd than thinking about score in the face of a day like that. So I didn’t. But I did notice a birdie on a par 5 that made me remember with fondness watching Bill Condaxis, a teaching pro who has meant a lot to me since coming back to the game, as he hit three straight drivers -- two off the deck -- on a ridiculously long par 5 at Cruden Bay with Scottish wind and rain smacking us in the face during the Kingdom Tour 2007. I’ve never forgotten the joy on his face as he played that hole laughing in ridiculous conditions that day in Scotland; but this day was the first time I think I may have experienced what I saw on his face.
There were drives that flew. And some that seemed to stop dead and drop straight to the earth. There were irons, strange irons that sometimes cut through the wind like knives, and at other times seemed as helpless against the gusts as a balloon in a hurricane. And even putts. You know the wind is strong when you have to take it into account when you’re putting.
But more than anything there was amazement that the ball still flew. You could still play. It was a different world. But the game was still the game.
TO bring a long -- and strikingly fast round -- full circle, the last hole I played was Scout, No.16, a 160-yard par 3 that I decided to try and hit a cut 6-iron into even though I’d never thought about that shot on that hole before.
It was simply not a day to think.
I just felt it, saw it, went up and hit it.
The ball ballooned a little, but came down on a bank, pin high just off the green to the left.
My cart felt like it might not make it up to the green; the battery was getting weak in the wind, and I noticed for the first time that it was getting dark out.
I stepped into the deep green grass, grabbed my copper 64, wiped a wind tear off my cheek, and lifted a sweet soft wedge onto the green. I remember I heard the nice soft sound of the wedge moving through the grass and a little thump.
Then the wind howled. A Lost Canyons road runner scampered off the hill behind me. And I watched, feeling almost completely outside myself as the ball rolled without so much as a hesitation across the green, down a Pete Dye swale, and broke three feet right to the cup, where it disappeared a good thirty feet away.
I didn’t move for a few seconds.
And then I did.
And all of a sudden I realized where I was -- standing on a golf course at dusk in November, YOL 2008, in the high desert outside Los Angeles, crazy wind blowing fire ash all over the hills around me, heat turning to cold, and maybe I was the only man on earth doing what I was doing -- and enjoying it.
And just like that, I knew I was done for the day.
I leaned with the cart into the wind and headed back toward the clubhouse. The wind on 17 and 18, Shotgun Ridge and Shadow Pass, was even beyond anything I had experienced up to that point, and by the time I pulled in near the starter all that was left to wonder was whether the cart was going to make it to the shack.
“Good time out there?” the kid who took the cart from me asked.
“Better than that, “ I smiled.
SITTING back in the Batmobile, I began to feel my face flush with heat. I saw myself in the rear view mirror, wild-haired, looking nuts with dirt and ash on my face, but as happy as I’ve ever been around a golf course.
I recalled some of the shots I’d hit out there. And I realized I was conscious there in my car, I was thinking for the first time in hours, I was suddenly back to “analytical.”
But there was one more smile left in the day.
I realized there was more to the expectation-reality gap than a straight line grid of measurement requiring unending effort to close.
There was also another possibility: that of letting the expectation end of the grid move.
If I can say anything about the day at this point, it’s that the ridiculous conditions just freed me of my expectations. My gut just said no one could have any expectations for what they’d do on a day like that.
And the result was inarguably some of the best shots I’ve ever hit on a golf course.
I’d found a different way to "close the gap" a little.
And it had nothing to do with the mind.
I finally understood something my buddy Bill Condaxis has been heard to say on a golf course: “you don’t want to be in your mind on a golf course, it’s not a nice neighborhood to play in.”
Mind the gap, yes.
Just not with your mind.
The game is still the game.
Maybe changing expectation is yet another way to play it.