It's another.  A lesson reconfirmed during today's golf outing with Renee' Dobyns.  We're trying to get in a weekly 9-holes of golf at Lake Forest Golf and Practice Center, a par 29 course.  The good news is that I posted 1 stroke lower than last time (and my lowest so far on the course): a 7 over par 36. 

Woohoo!  I was striking the ball well--hitting six greens in regulation.  And wouldn't you know it?  I hit 5 more putts than I did on my prior best round.  Arghh!

Now, I could blame it on the fact that they were aerating the greens.  On five of the six greens I hit in regulation, I landed on the half of the green that had been poked full of holes and sanded earlier in the week.  So the sand and the bumps were, perhaps, a mitigating factor.  But it wasn't until the 8th hole that I figured out to take a longer club and hit to the back of the greens.

This is mostly because I'm usually just so thrilled to be ON the green that I don't spend a whole lot of time strategizing about the front, the back, the left or the right.  Hey, I'm not Tiger (or Annika)!  So I can be taught, but it's usually a slow process.

So, irons and 3-wood were smokin' today.  Putter?  Not so much.  Have you notice that about golf?  It's so rare for amateurs to put all aspects of the game together into one stellar round.  If it's not your irons, it's the yips.  If it's not the yips, you're yanking 'em or pushing 'em, or committing all manner of set up errors (too far forward in your stance, too athletic a stance, not athletic enough...the list goes on...and on...an on...often between the time you set up to the ball and the time you swing the club).

It got me to thinking about life, as golf often does.  How often is it that we experience life's equivalent of a perfect round?  Rarely, indeed.  A lot of my friends are enduring various trials at this moment.  Dan and I have our share as well.  Struggles, challenges, obstacles...the yips of life.

Blessedly, it's also not often that we have the life equivalent of a round of golf that makes one say, "That's it--these clubs have a home at the bottom of the lake and I'm gonna launch them there, right now." 

Thus today's observation about life, and golf, is this: the yips keep us connected with our humanity and fallibility.  The sweet putt?  That reminds us that life can be a beautiful thing...at least beautiful enough to keep us coming back.

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