Photo Week 22: Career Change?

It was two or three years ago when I made off like a bandit in Jordan's Chess tournament. At the time I considered myself a professional chess player, because it was 100% of my income. Silly, but true.

My Dad and I played a round of golf last Saturday afternoon at the Greenlake par 3 course. It was raining and only seven scores under 32 had been made all week (and the top ten got prizes). I ended up shooting a one-over 28 to make it to 4th on the leaderboard. I had to pay a dollar to enter my name on the tourney list, and I kind of felt like that was the last I would see of dollar #9100856655...

Imagine the shock on my face when I found this postcard in the mail from the Greenlake Golf Course this Thursday, informing me of my two free greens fees and entrance into the end of the year tournament!

Photo Week 21: Rocky Golf

Played a round at Nile Country Club this afternoon. $23 for a "twilight" start at 3pm with Erin, Breanna and Jared. My round was as rocky as this docky, with lots of triple bogeys and a quintuple bogey (hit my 8ft putt to save 9!). I sunk a handful of 8-10ft putts today, but couldn't hit my driver or irons for nothin'.

The degenerate gambler in me won a beer bet with Jared, and a "who sets up the next round" with Erin. Both bets were up and down bets, where are balls were an equal distance from the hole and I bet the other person I could get it in the hole in less strokes. They both choked.

Photo Week 20: Playing Hookie

Wednesday I took advantage of Wayne G.C.'s stellar $14 deal again. I got incredibly lucky with the weather, as there were DARK clouds within sight for my entire round, but I was in the sun for the majority of the round. As soon as I finished the 18th hole, the rain started and didn't stop until after dinner. The round was a lot of fun, and I treated it as another practice round, playing best-ball style. This time I shot even par--a nine-stroke drop from three weeks ago playing the same style. Next step is to actually keep a real score, forcing myself to hit balls from the rough and count all my putts (that is going to suck).





Almost felt a little guilty being out there playing on a Wednesday at noon.

Almost.

Photo Week 19: Tall Chief Golf Course

Could not have asked for better weather on Saturday for golf with Erin. We ventured out to the Tall Chief Golf Course, near Snoqualmie, because of the $16 for 12 holes greens fee (we ended up playing 12 more holes for $4 after our first 12!). This course is one of the first 18-hole courses I played growing up, but in the last 15 years the owners apparently had to sell off six holes to keep the golf course going. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from a 12-hole golf course, but from what I remembered about the course, it seemed like a pretty nice one--especially for the price. Sure, there were a few muddy spots (the ball is white...):



And a few of the greens had rough patches in them, which reminded me of lava or water in video game putt-putt. But for the most part, the course was kept up decently. Erin and I each grabbed a beer after a lackluster (re: terrible) first nine holes, and finished them by the end of the next hole. We broke for lunch after 12 holes and had hot dogs and some more beer, and decided that we needed redemption for our shitty first 12 holes. I shot a 73 and she shot a 69 on the front 12. Respectable scores for 18 holes... not 12!

We tipsily walked back up to the 1st tee box after lunch and she hammered a drive down the right side of the fairway, getting ooohs and aaaahs from onlookers. I stepped up to the tee and topped my first ball into the tall grass below, then teed up a second ball and did the exact same. Damn. I salvaged a six on the first hole this time around, and she parred it.

Our second round (or back 12?) was amazing. One of us shot bogey or better on every hole except for the 10th, and we both double-bogeyed that one (she three-putted and I hit two trees). We rarely duffed shots, we were both consistently hitting our drivers 200+ yards, and all felt right in the world. A complete 180 from the first 12.

I tallied up our scores on the drive back to Seattle and she ended up shooting 10 strokes better on the final 12, for a 69+59=128. I shot 18 strokes better for a 73+55=128. Dead even. There were two reasons for me being anywhere close to her score. The first is that the ladies tees and mens tees were always about five yards apart (go gender equality!), and I birdied the 9th hole on the second go around, chipping it within a foot, and I actually parred that same hole on the first go, pitching the ball from about 40 yards away within a foot--my two best shots of the day.

Looking forward to more golf!

Photo Week 17: Fore!

Saturday saw me and a few friends outside playing 18 holes of golf on a windy and sporadically wet Seattle May Day.



For the past week, I've been looking forward to golfing with this group. All I knew about the other three players is that Jared hasn't played much golf and did not have his own set of clubs... here's how the lineup turned out:

Jared: Beginner. No clubs, had to borrow my dad's old set of clubs.

Your hero: Beginner-intermediate. I've played forever, but usually only a few times a year. I'm a duffer. Sub-100 and I'm happy.

Erin: Her birthday was last week, and I saw that she "likes" golf on her Facebook, so that is what got this foursome started.

Breanna: One of Jared's new girlfriends? ???

So, that's my lineup going in, not really sure what to expect, but knowing that I'll have a fun day with Jared and the ladies.

It turns out Erin's dad is the golf pro at the country club in the town in Montana she grew up in. Her form is perfect, and probably can shoot in the 80s if she played more. Breanna played competitive golf growing up and says she had a 10 handicap when she was 16. Holy Jesus girls with good golf strokes are hot, I don't know what it is, but wow.

The ladies weren't playing great, as it was their first round of the season, but it was also easy to tell that they knew what they were doing and are way, way better at golf than yours truly. They set up their putts and put a little ball marker down, which is way more professional than anything I do on the golf course.

I filled up my golf bag with eight PBRs, and Jared stuffed his bag with a 6-pack of tall boys. Here is the score card:



This is the first time... maybe ever, that I didn't keep score. We were having a great time, and Breanna said it was the first time she has ever drank on a golf course--she had always taken golf so seriously growing up, and I guess she hasn't played a ton of golf since she turned 21 (and I have no idea how long ago that was). I set a skins-handicap system in place: if you won a hole outright, you had to drink a beer. Breanna started out hot, but the beer didn't loosen up her game like it did mine!

Erin and her friend Sarah left us after the front nine (Sarah just tagged along, as she surprised Erin with a visit for the weekend). The backside was pretty chill, and my favorite hole was the 11th. Big fairway to drive the ball down, and of course I drive it into the 10th fairway with my natural slice. My second shot I hit my 4-iron about 180 yards between two trees and around a third, landing presumably close to or on the green. I have trouble finding my ball, and finally find it about 20 yards from the pin... on the cart path. I decide to play it from the cart path instead of kicking it off, and the good karma got rewarded with a chip-in birdie!

Golf and Poker (hand analysis at end)

I'm on both golf and poker kicks as of late. I've got a tee time Saturday at one of the nicest public golf courses in Seattle with a few friends from college who I've never played with, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not very good at golf, but much like poker, I have some ability, just no consistency or willpower to stick with it and become "good".

Today I didn't take any substitute assignments and spent the middle of the day out on a golf course by my house. The forecast called for 50 degrees and a 50% chance of rain, but I ended up having sun and what felt like 60 degrees from hole 5 on to the end. I was solo, with nobody in front of me, so I decided to try something a little different and play a solo "best ball" style round. I played today for practice, not for a score, so if I felt like I could hit a better shot I'd drop another ball and give it a whack. In some instances this meant hitting four tee shots, but with no one else around it was all gravy. Today's round really was exactly what I was looking for, with lots of practice and even hitting the dreaded driver a few times!

My sexy score (pre-mulligans) was 8 over for the entire round, and a cool one-under on the backside. I started off really slow, and think I should be able to shoot around par on the front side, too, if I hit close to my best shot each time. I parred a few of the par 3's without taking any mulligans, but only birdied one hole WITH mulligans, which seems a bit sad. The birdie hole was the second hardest hole on the course, a dog leg left with a creek about 150 yards out at the dog leg. I hit a straight drive (amazing for me!) which curled a tad left and cleared the creek, leaving me about 120 yards to the pin. I landed a 9-iron about 10ft from the pin and sunk my longest putt of the day for bird!

I tried to count mulligans, but I'm not sure how exactly to count them fairly. Fair and mulligans don't really go together, do they? If I hit a second ball and use the second ball, I count a mulligan stroke. If I hit a second ball, but use the first ball, I did not count a mulligan. If I hit a second and third and fourth ball, and use the fourth ball, I only count one mulligan stroke. By this system, it seems like each mulligan stroke should really count for more than one stroke to adjust accurately, especially when I hit the first two balls into the water and take the third shot, and only count it as one mulligan stroke (which would normally have me shooting 5 or 6 instead of... 2). But when I putt, if I have a six-foot putt and miss it, but make the same putt on my second try, it makes sense to count that mulligan as just one extra shot (because even I can make the remaining 1-foot putt from my original shot).

I had 26 mulligans, which balloons my score up to a much more recognizable score around 100. And that is each mulligan at one stroke, if I push each mulligan up to 1.5 strokes, I didn't have as good a round as I thought! The round did feel good today, and just the confidence of making shots was great for me today, even if it took me three or four attempts.

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On the poker front, I played in a $1 tournament last night on Full Tilt and six hours later I finished in 64th out of 8,656, good for $11. It is a lot of fun having hundreds of thousands of chips to play with, especially when you start with 3,000! I hit a 9-hi straight flush within the first orbit of the night, got paid, then knocked the same guy out a few orbits later with AA. Now that I think about it, I don't think I gave any bad beats (outside of knocking out shorties) all night, and only took a few myself, which is odd for a $1 tournament.

One hand from the tourney stands out, and it happened with about 125 people left.

Blinds are 10k/20k, with an ante of... let's say 1k. I've got 375,000, and one of the chip leaders is at our table with around 700,000.

I find JJ UTG+1 and raise it 70,000 or 3.5BB.

Folds to big stack, who calls in MP.

Folds around to the BB who pushes for 170,000 total.

I clicked for more time...

What do you do here? What hand ranges do you put MP and the BB on? Outcome tomorrow!

Channeling My Inner Schaubs

I went golfing this week. Twice. The only other time I went golfing this year was over in Central Washington, which is usually the only time I go golfing each year. To call me a "hack" golfer would be an understatement. The only other time I've been golfing in the last few years is out at the coast with Andrew, Marc and Tyler. Andrew was in town this weekend for his brother's wedding, so I tried to get the foursome together for a round of golf today.

Marc and Tyler bowed out early, but Andrew sounded interested, so I got a tee time for 9:30am down at Tyee. In preparation for the full 18 holes at Tyee (I haven't played 18 holes in a good five years), I went out to the par 3 short course at Greenlake with my parents Friday afternoon. The longest hole at Greenlake is 115 yards, and the shortest is about 50 yards--it is tiny. The weather was gorgeous, my golf game was on fire, and my dad provided plenty of entertainment.

For playing once in the past year I was amazed at going bogey, par, par, par, bogey, par, par, par, bogey for a 30. I think the lowest I have ever shot at Greenlake was a 29, so being one off my record was amazing. My tee shots were going well and my putting was true, the only part of my game struggling was my chipping, but thankfully I didn't have too many chip shots to make. So I was pleasantly surprised with my practice run, ready for Sunday.

As planned, we drink a bit too much at the reception Saturday night and stumble onto the golf course three minutes before our tee time. The front nine went alright, I shot a 44, Andrew was at 43 and Chris shot a 41. For lunch we grabbed hot dogs at the clubhouse and I couldn't resist the call of a tall, frosty Rainier. I should have though. The back nine ate me up. I must have 3-putted every hole, it was ugly.

Breaking 100 is usually my goal, but I thought I was ready to try for 90. I ended up shooting a 99, but the course was only a par 70 instead of the regular 72. According to my fuzzy math, my 100 goal should be closer to 96 on a par 70 course. I'm not sure what it was, maybe it was the beer, maybe not playing 18 holes for five years, but I left the course thinking playing 3 times in one year was one too many for me... lol.