The ultimate craigslist find

Within the last year or so, I’ve started keeping tabs on golf clubs on craigslist.  Not surprisingly, I mostly see worthless Costco sets and/or overpriced brand name gear.  Every now and again, though, I find an underpriced gem.  It started last summer, when I snagged a mint condition Odyssey White Hot Tour #9 putter with an upgraded grip for a mere $35.  I followed that up the next week with a Nike VR wedge with an upgraded grip for $30.  Both are currently in the bag and have saved me a stroke or two a round- not a bad return on a $65 investment.  

Having filled the need for a different putter and a more versatile lob wedge, I’ve been looking for a decent set of irons to serve as my back-ups and to offer up to out-of-town guests.  While I do still have my old set of blades that I used in college, I don’t think it would be good for my psyche to try to play them again.  So I’ve been looking for some sort of game improvement set that still appeals to lower handicappers.  In other words, I was hoping for some sort of “tour” cavity back- ie a set of Taylormade R7 TPs or a set of forged cavity backs.  My spending limit was $100, which isn’t much when it comes to a set of irons.  I figured I don’t really need another set of irons and that it would have to be an out-of-this-world deal for me to spend money on a set of clubs I would rarely use.  Honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever find a decent set for less than $100.  

Then came a rather innocent post about a set of “player’s game improvement” irons for $60.  I clicked on the link and was shocked to see a picture of a set of Ben Hogan Apex Plus irons.  I was lucky enough to hit one of these on a driving range once back in high school.  I remembered hitting a 5-iron and being floored by how soft it felt.  This was exactly what I was looking for.  The picture in the ad, however, only showed the cavity side of the irons- there were no shots of the faces, grips, or shafts.  I called and left a message with the seller.  He called back several hours later and a couple hours after that, I was in his garage with an iron in one hand and my baby boy in the other.  The seller lived in the wealthy town of Lake Oswego.  He said I would find his house if I looked for the red BMW convertible in the garage.  His car was sparkling, the clubs were not.  They were caked in dirt, but there were no visible dings or gouges or scratches.  Beyond that, he had just had them regripped last year with Golf Pride Tour Wraps.  The shafts were the original Apex 3s.  I picked up the 6-iron.  The clubhead looked bigger than I remembered, which was a good thing since my bogey-golfer father would likely be using this set in a month.  It also felt a touch shorter than my set, again, not a bad thing considering my father and I are both 5’6”.  I gladly handed over the $60 and hoped that when I scrubbed the dirt off, I’d have a set of forged cavity backs in pretty good condition.  

That evening, I gave those irons a thorough cleaning.  The clubs were in even better shape than I thought- they were in nearly mint condition.  As I had suspected, they were a quarter inch shorter than my set, and the clubheads were larger (specifically, the clubfaces are much taller in the area between the middle of the face and the hosel).  The next day I took them to my buddy, who is an assistant pro at the country club where we worked together.  He adjusted the lie angles one degree flatter and refused to accept any money for his work.  What a deal!

The power of positive thinking

“The mind messes up more shots than the body.” -Tommy Bolt

Once you learn how to hit the ball well enough to keep it in play and have a decent short game, playing a round of golf becomes an almost entirely mental affair.  Having recently taken an entire month off, I’ve been slowly getting the physical part back (i.e. keeping the ball in play), but my mental game has been awful.  I find that I really have to work on my focus and concentration when I return from a long layoff.  I’ve noticed that it’s nearly impossible for me to hit a decent shot when my thought over the ball starts with “don’t,” as in don’t hit it right, don’t go over the green, or don’t leave it short.  While that might seem like the first lesson in Mental Golf 101, it’s one that I tend to slide back into when I’m rusty, mostly because I tend to play from a place of fear when I’m not sure where the ball is going.  As I’ve discussed before, my only swing thought when I’m playing well is to hit it hard.  When I’m chipping and putting well, I don’t feel like I’m thinking about anything except, “I can make this.”  I’d go so far as to say that having a positive thought helps me more than being focused on a very specific feel, target, or shot shape.  

A few days back I finally played on the course having devoted my golf time to practicing instead of playing in the days leading up to the round.  I didn’t warm up at all, not even a putt.  When I got to the first tee, a very slow group had just teed off and I was playing as a single so the starter gave me a ride to the second tee.  I was grateful, but at the same time I was now going to have to start my round on one of the more difficult holes on the front 9.  I decided to try an old trick I occasionally use to calm first tee jitters- pretend as if you’ve been bombing your driver with a high power draw all day long.  Sure enough, shooting off the clubface came a high draw down the left half of the fairway.  I decided to keep using that thought process over the ball.  From 170 out I told myself that I’ve been hitting this knock-down 6-iron so well all day.  Off came a low bullet that I hit so solidly it bounced clear over the green.  Next came a long pitch shot, as the pin was at the very front of the green.  For whatever reason, I didn’t use that same mental trick and blasted the pitch over the other side of the green.  Here I was chipping for par.  This time I remembered to think to myself about how I’d been chipping it so well all day, and wouldn’t you know I nearly holed out that par.  I used that pre-shot thought on most shots throughout the round, which led to a bunch of easy pars and a birdie.  I found that by convincing myself that I had been playing well all day, I was bombing tee shots, flushing approach shots, and getting up and down when I missed the green.  The thought also helped me commit to a specific shot.  The thought wasn’t just, “I’ve been hitting this 5-iron well today.” I had to be more specific: “I’ve been hitting a lovely baby draw with this 5-iron today,” or “I’ve been hitting a powerful low sweeping draw with this 3-wood today.”  

I think this worked for me because I’ve successfully executed all of the shots that I was telling myself I had been hitting all day.  If I came across a shot that I rarely pull off (i.e. a sky high fade with a long iron), I knew I wasn’t going to able to convince myself that I had been hitting that shot well all day, so I changed my shot selection to something I knew I could hit.  This helped me play smarter and kept me from having that one bad hole that I always seem to have when I haven’t been playing on the course much.  Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.  

I'm back!

I recently returned from a family vacation which resulted in a full month without picking up a golf club.  I didn’t want to jump back in too quickly, especially since I had injured my right elbow playing volleyball just before the vacation.  I started on the chipping green and left a rather large pile of rust behind.  A few days later, I worked up the courage to hit a bucket of balls.  It was probably too soon for that.  My elbow was still tender and I could barely get the ball off the ground.  Stubbornly, I returned to the driving range a few days later and hit another bucket of balls and was talked into playing 9 holes.  Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.  I hit the ball all over the place and my short game was too rusty to bail me out.  That said, it felt good to be back on the course so a handful of days later, I went right back out and played a round of twilight golf.  I teed off on the tenth hole and promptly made triple bogey.  I noticed the single in front of me waiting on the next tee box even though no one was ahead of him.  As I approached the 11th tee, the single’s golf bag had a high school logo on it.  Sure enough, sauntering back to his bag was a 6-foot athletic 18 year-old.  He asked me to join him and I obliged.  That’s when the competitive juices switched on.  I hit three perfect shots and lipped out the birdie putt.  When I told him that I played college golf, he seemed relieved to know that he was paired with someone who knew how to play.  We ended up chatting about all things golf and school for the nine holes that we played together.  I feel like I really got to know the kid, and I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him.  He had just moved to Portland from Texas, where he was born and raised and where he left behind all of his friends and family.  The transition to Portland hadn’t been a smooth one- he had already changed schools once and was almost certain that he’d be changing schools again for his upcoming senior year.  He wants so badly to go back to Texas for his senior year, but seemed to know that it not going to happen that way.  So there he was by himself on a rainy Thursday afternoon.  His plans for the summer- golf all day and all night.  It reminded me a bit of myself when I was in high school.  I struggled with the transition from a tiny middle school to a rather large high school.  I ended up devoting all of my free time to sports.  Eventually, I got to college and was able to sort of hit the reset button and re-establish a social life.  After we putted out on the last green, he peeled off the rain jacket I lent him when it started pouring.  He seemed sad.  I told him I’d see him around and that I’d look forward to reading about his successes on the golf course in the newspaper.  He invited me to come watch him play in an upcoming tournament.  Part of me wanted to let him know that he was going to be fine and that he was going to absolutely love college, but I got the feeling that he would figure that out soon enough.