Hitting to the par-4, 14th hole on a scorching hot Sunday in 2005.I've been playing in the Ann Arbor City Golf Championship nearly as long as I've been in Ann Arbor. Some years have been good - some not so good. This year I'm going to chronicle what it's like to play in this popular event from inside the ropes (you know, assuming they had ropes) from a player's perspective.
Day 1: Friday morning arrives. Before I left home I went through my pre-round checklist.
1) Eat breakfast - check
2) Go to the bathroom - check
3) Take vitamin, aspirin, and roughly half a bottle of ibuprofen - check
4) Be confident and take good swing thoughts to the course - ????
Well, three out of four ain't bad.
Oddly, I think new course director Doug Kelly has a soft spot for us over-40 golfers because my tee time is a somewhat palatable 8:10 a.m. In year's past I never teed off any later than 7:30 on the first day. This always caused much anxiety the night before; not because I was nervous about playing...I was nervous about not playing - as in oversleeping and being DQ'd for missing my tee time. (Hey this tourney costs $150, might as well get your money's worth even if you play like $#@t).
The weather was strangely palatable as well for mid-July. Gone was the normal blistering heat that accompanies the three-day tournament. In its place were temperatures in the low to mid- 60's with strong winds out of the northwest. In fact, I wore long pants for only the second time in the 13-years I've been playing in the tournament.
Gone too, seemed to be the first round jitters that usually had me swinging like a 20-handicapper. This year I arrived at the course a mere 15 minutes before my tee time to replicate my normal routine. No range time (why waste the swings?) very little putting on the putting green (what good would that do?) and just a little bit of stretching (my swing's too long anyhow).
Instead I just shook hands with my playing partners Jerry Wood and Yuan Song, stepped up to the 10th hole tee box (we started on the back nine today) and calmly striped a drive down the middle of the fairway. One shot down, a crap-load to go, but at least the first one was good.
So as not to put my second shot in the drink, I safely yanked my 144-yard approach roughly a mile left of the green. From there I chopped the ball on the green (well prepared to take my usual starting round bogey) when low and behold, I dropped an 18-footer for par.
"What the hell is going on here?" I think to myself. "First I'm not nervous, and now I actually make a putt longer than a foot on a Leslie Park green."
On No. 11, I did what I normally do, eliminate the temptation to go for the long par-5 in two shots by putting my drive in the woods. From there I punched out, then hit a wedge to about 12 feet for birdie. That's when things got really interesting. After tapping down my ball mark with my putter, I walked to the far edge of the green to wait for Jerry and Yuan to hit their approach putts. When it was my turn to putt, I walked back to where I thought my ball was and found nothing.
"Where the hell is my mark?" I ask.
Jerry couldn't find it. Yuan couldn't find it. I couldn't find it.
I had marked the ball with a foreign coin I found on the floor at my bank a few days ago. I knew I couldn't spend it, so I thought it would make a cool ball marker. But now it was gone!
Soon I was doing 360's looking for the damn ruble, or mark, or peso, or whatever it was. I wasn't panicked, just puzzled. Finally I found the coin at the far edge of the green where I had been standing. Apparently it had stuck to the bottom of my putter when I tapped it down. I've been playing golf for 31-years, but this was the first time I'd ever had a coin stick to the bottom of my putter.
"Now what?"
Jerry, Yuan, and I, decided we'd better call over a rules official. I actually knew where my ball had been because it had come to rest right next to the recently fixed ball mark from the approach shot. But my coin was now 40-feet away.
Amazingly, the rules of golf have a rule that actually addressed my exact situation. I was allowed to replace my mark with no penalty, then proceed. Despite all the hoopla, I drained the putt for birdie.
For the rest of the round I felt like Paul McCartney - a little here, there and everywhere, but somehow I managed to scrape out a 75 - good enough to be tied for fourth going into round #2.
At least this year I'm playing with contemporaries. Yuan is 44, same as me. Jerry, I suspect is quite a bit younger, but last year I was older than both my playing partners combined all three days of the tourney - and they took carts!
As most of you know, I walk when I play. It can be tough in a tournament when you're walking and your partners are riding. Both Jerry and Yuan were riding today, but I never felt like I had to run to keep up, which was nice. On the second hole Yuan jokingly told me he was riding because he was too old to walk the golf course. I jokingly told Yuan I was too old not to walk.
If the cool weather continues, I suspect I should stay somewhat fresh. Last year I ran out of gas on about the 12th hole during Sunday's final round. Three days of 4-5 hour rounds in the extreme heat had sapped me dry. I faded from fourth place at the start of the day, to ninth place by days end.
This year? Who knows.
I made a promise to myself several years and many close calls ago, that if I ever win a trophy in this tournament - any trophy, then it would be the last time I ever play.
Stay tuned - round two starts on the first tee, 1:40 p.m. Saturday.
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