My golf turns 35 and the signature gesture of a big winner | Weekend 9

Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I call this Weekend 9. Think of it as a place to warm up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We will have thoughts. We will have tips. We’ll have tweets. But only nine in all, though sometimes perhaps more and sometimes perhaps less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell part of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

My golf game turns 35 on Sunday.

For my first round of the year, my brother-in-law and I are playing a muni in Hawaii, which on the website has a reef, beach, and water in the background, which is a long, long way from a course in northern Illinois where I played my very first round in 1991. My father and I played with another father and son, and it was also my father’s very first golf. He was a butcher, and the butcher’s days went like this: twelve hours a day, eating, drinking an obscene amount of joe, smoking a pack of Marb Red and then off to bed; and no golfing. It showed. Our combined score was 300, give or take.

We also committed a no-no on the first hole.

We rode in a cart and the instructions were as follows: Drive it next to your ball, hit, drive again. And we did that.

All the way until we parked on top of the green.

That’s memory No. 1 – and lesson No. 1 – from 35 years of golf.

Here are eight more.

Memory No. 2: The random playing partners, plural. I’m bending my own rules a bit here and making more than one, because I’m sure I could make a list of just nine people I’ve been randomly paired with and not forgotten. Let’s see. There are two middle-aged guys who first saw me break nine holes 50 times in the summer of ’93 and then offered to buy me a beer. There’s the Austrian guy my friend and I played with in Vegas who told us how he only flew privately, only smoked Cuban cigars and knew where the real fun was in Sin City, and we’ll leave it at that. There’s the PGA Tour Champions player who shot an easy par round while his wife sat in the cart and read a book. And on and on. Honestly, this is one of my favorite parts of playing: the people you meet. Except …

Memory No. 3: The farthest I’ve ever holed from was 175 yards, but which stroke it was is up for debate. On the 10th hole at Greenfield Park, just outside Milwaukee, I hit my tee shot into the trees on the right, moved it slightly away from one and then fired it towards the bunker opposite the green, after which it popped out and rolled into the hole. Eagle! And eagles from that era would be featured in the newspaper if your group was willing to do so. My friend would do that. But the man we were paired with? “I saw you take a drop there,” he said, “so no.”

Memory No. 4: I got into the ‘zone’ once. Beforehand, I had played four straight days during a friend’s trip, and I reached the point where I was purposefully swinging as hard as I could – and still finding fairways and greens. The 76 — with a penalty shot that I did count that day – remains my lowest score. But I never returned to the zone. In the years since, I’ve tried to duplicate the run-up—and once tore a muscle in my lower back from the combination of overuse and a lack of stretching.

Memory No. 5: I almost got into a fight. I wrote about it here, but the short version goes like this: I hit a tee shot further than normal, and the group in front of me was already hot. (The reason for the latter is understandable: a person in the group behind us had accidentally fired a shot from the fairway directly into the group in front of us. However, these things happen at Van Cortlandt in the Bronx, where the congestion is similar to what you’d find crossing the GW.) Anyway, the near-fight started after someone walked back to my tee shot – and hit it into the woods. I shouted. He shouted. We got closer. But that was it. Stupid. Very stupid. (But all of this led to readers being asked to send me similar outbursts a few years ago—and I still get occasional emails about them today.)

Memory No. 6: During a high school game, my opponent once asked me if I played baseball. I said I did and I kept playing – and it took me a few holes to realize that he didn’t care about my other hobbies as much as he cared about commenting on my swing. That stuck with me for the rest of the round – and for the next 30 years. Good.

Memory No. 7: I’ve been working on a golf website for just over six years now and one of the questions I get is how that has helped my own game. It has to, right? To start with the answer, an editor here had warned me of what was to come: all those tips and tricks you read and write will be harder to escape than the rough US Open. My scores show it. Last year I shot another 76. And 110. That round I just read something about the takeaway, and here you go.

Memory No. 8: Somewhere in a bird’s nest at the Spring Lake Golf Course in Omaha, Neb., rests a wedding ring. Or at least that’s the theory. During a round there about ten years ago, my wife took off the ring, placed it in the cart and we never saw it again. The guy at the clubhouse told us this wasn’t the first time he’d heard of something like this happening.

Memory No. 9: Over the past few months I have read a few books by Dr. Rereading Bob Rotella in advance of an upcoming story, and this line in ‘Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect’ has stuck with me lately: Whatever happens with a shot that hits you, accept it. Acceptance is the last step in a good routine. I like that. I think about the golf balls that land in the divots and still play. But I also wonder what it says about me that I can honestly say I’ve never hit a ball out of a divot, and I think you know why.

Extra! Best memory? My cousin Mason is told he is going to play college golf. Best course I’ve ever played? Considering all that a course has to offer, it is Lawsonia Links. Most beautiful trail at sunset? Chambers Bay. Most scenic trail in the fall? Green Mountain National in Vermont. Of course I played most of it? I think it’s a tie between a pair of munis: Whitnall Park just outside Milwaukee and Elmwood Park in Omaha. Most interesting course I’ve played? Augusta wind in Nebraska. I was the only player on the court – on Saturday.

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for weekend 9.

2. Do you also have a memory to share? Send me an email at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

One takeaway from the week that was

3. In a few weeks, during the Players Championship, the thinking is that we’ll learn something definitive about the PGA Tour’s future schedule, and I’ve been thinking about a quote from Tiger Woods from last week at the Genesis Invitational. Woods, the head of the Tour’s new Future Competition Committee, said this about the work being done:

“I think it’s literally trying to serve everyone, from the player side, from our media partners, from all our title sponsors, from the local communities or even changing locations and going into bigger markets.”

However, it will be interesting to see if anyone is best served. To that end, one of the country’s leading sports economists recently told me that changes shouldn’t necessarily be made for the golf fan, as they will keep coming back anyway. It’s the non-fans where you grow, and non-fans have already decided that they don’t necessarily care about the shape of the current product.

One takeaway for the coming weeks

4. This story herewritten by Money in sportsshould tell you something about the direction of LIV Golf. It says the league recently received a $266.6 million capital injection.

An instructional tip for your weekend

5. I thought the video below was good. Bryson DeChambeau was asked for his best tip for amateurs playing a practice round.

His answer? Mix where you make shots.

“If an amateur golfer is preparing for their club championship,” DeChambeau said, “I would say it’s best not to always play from the fairway. Go hit shots from the rough areas. Go hit shots from bunkers. Go hit shots around the greens. You see that all the time with pros.”

“One thing amateurs don’t do is hit out of the rough on the golf course during practice rounds.”

Five things (!) that interest me

6. I thought the video below was interesting. Produced by the PGA Tour, it features Ben Griffin and Ryan Gerard attempting to name the top 100 players from last year’s points race.

7. I thought this story too herewritten by the Palm Beach Post James Coleman, was interesting. Coleman has a handicap of 12 and he talked about playing against PGA National, host of the Cognizant Classic, this week’s PGA Tour stop.

8. And I thought this story herewritten by Today’s golfer Ben Parsons, was interesting. It describes how an 18-hole course is reduced to nine holes to make way for a football team’s practice area.

9. I thought this story here was also interesting. Written by Adam Stanley for pga.com, it describes how a PGA member coached the Norwegian Olympic curling team.

10. Let’s do 10 items! I thought this story too here was interesting. Written by Matt de Neef for escapecollective.com, it describes how professional cyclists are turning to golf.

What wave is on TV this weekend?

11. Let’s do 11 items! Here’s a look at golf on TV this weekend:

– Friday

9:30 PM (Thursday) – 2:30 AM ET: HSBC Women’s World Championship Second Round, Golf Channel

5:30am – 10:30am ET: Investec South African Open Championship second round, Golf Channel

2:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET: Cognizant Classic Second Round, Golf Channel

– Saturday

9:30 PM (Friday) – 2:30 AM ET: HSBC Women’s World Championship Third Round, Golf Channel

5:30am – 10am ET: Investec South African Open Championship third round, Golf Channel

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET: Cognizant Classic Third Round, Golf Channel

3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET: Cognizant Classic Third Round, NBC

– Sunday

9:30 PM (Friday) – 2:30 AM ET: Final Round of the HSBC Women’s World Championship, Golf Channel

4:30am – 9:30am ET: Final round of the Investec South African Open Championship, Golf Channel

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET: Cognizant Classic Final Round, Golf Channel

3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET: Cognizant Classic Final Round, NBC

Good news for your weekend

12. Let’s do a dozen items!

The video belowwith Lucas Glover, should make your weekend.