A half-decent golfer does a full-on review of his latest season

It’s like Spotify wrapped, but instead of your phone telling you about your music tastes, it’s a guy you don’t know telling you about the state of his golf game.

Swing looks money. Butt looks weird.

I have a Word document saved on my desktop called, “Golf notes/thoughts/etc.” It’s 41 pages, 13,190 words and 79,856 characters (spaces included) long. And it’s essentially my golf diary. The only thing it’s missing is a little lock on it. Maybe I should start shoving it under my pillow so my siblings won’t find it.

I started the document last year when, after realizing my golf game had plateaued more than I was comfortable admitting, I realized something else: I could do more if I did more. Ain’t that deep? I’m not delusional — it’s not like I think I can be a special player. But I started seriously playing in my early 20s, I’m now in my late 20s and I should have a lot more swings in me. So why not do what I can to ensure at least some of those swings are legit?

So I began logging all my golf activity — the date, what I did, how I felt doing it, what I wanted to do next time, etc. I figured doing so would instill both a little more accountability and confidence. I’d have very clear evidence of whether I was doing enough to improve and, in turn, all that evidence would build internal trust that I was in fact capable of succeeding with a club in my hands.

Here’s a sample of an entry from over the summer (I’m really baring my soul here, good thing no one reads these damn blogs):

I still remember that drive. It had real “You should quit now, you idiot” energy to it.

There ya have it. Anyways. The point of revealing that I am the author of this nerdy doc is to say that I have a ton of info to sort through at the end of a golf season, so why not do that right here, right now, on the Internet, where — again — maybe 17 actual people, 6 AI bots and me hitting refresh to try and generate bonus page views can read over how my 2023 went? That’s what’s gonna happen, starting off with the numbers and then some additional reflection sorted into categories of “Shit I’m proud of” and “Shit I still suck at.”

The numbers

• 62 rounds played since Jan. 13 (58 where a serious score was kept)
• 0 rounds in the 70s :(… 35 rounds in the 80s… 22 rounds in the 90s…1 round in the 100s… (I tried multiple times to calculate my average score but I kept screwing up and getting impatient. Maybe next year I’ll put this onto an Excel sheet so it’s easier).
• Best round: 80 at Falls Road in Maryland on July 11 (8 pars, 9 bogeys, 1 double)… Worst round: 104 at Congressional C.C. on August 2 (thanks for getting me on regardless of the score, JP Finlay).
• Birdies: 33 (including my first-ever 3-birdie round let’s gooooooooooo)
• Eagles: 1 (first one of my life… more below, don’t worry)
• Quads: 16 (including two in one round at University of Maryland’s course in March)
• Handicap progress: 12.4 to start the year… Got as high as a 13.1 in late April… Got as low as an 11 in mid-July… Presently at an 11.3.
• Number of rounds where I putted 45 times and wanted to douse my putter in gasoline and then set it ablaze and then have the authorities come and arrest me for arson: 1

Shit I’m proud of

• Not to get all self-congratulatory, but I’m proud of a lot this year. I guess I’ll start with the fact that I all but eliminated the triple-digit rounds (one over-the-century-mark scorecard out of 58 is a ratio that I love). There are a lot of reasons why, but the three primary ones are: 1) My short game, specifically my chipping, has become pretty reliable and can bail me out in a lot of instances 2) I largely erased this AWFUL case of the yips I used to have with my driver, which has allowed me to put the ball in play a lot more often and 3) Simply being more comfortable on the course. Point 1 will be discussed more in the next bullet, point 2 won’t be discussed because I don’t wanna relive those days even for a second and point 3 can’t be underestimated enough. The first-tee nerves are gone, the embarrassment I used to feel after mistakes is gone and I don’t rage out like a weirdo with no temper control when things aren’t going well. It’s golf, dude — enjoy it.
• While the practicing and playing and lessons I got certainly helped my full swing, it’s really showed up on and around the greens. I bought a Garmin launch monitor early in the spring to track my distances and now know exactly how far I need to take a wedge back to hit it 80 yards, 55 yards or 30 yards after repping those numbers out on the range over and over. That’s hot. Sorry, it just is. I also love the challenge of getting up-and-down from greenside rough or a tight area below the green. Then there’s the putter, which — after a lesson with my guy Brendan at Olney Golf Park — has locked in nicely. My ball striking can get dicey or disappear entirely, but I’ve reached a place where I believe I can at least bring a B-level short game to the course at all times. Some are even suggesting that I work with Scottie Scheffler to get him out of his funk.
• I made an eagle, mofos!!!!!!! For someone who golfs as much as I do, not having an eagle was shameful. That shame is gone, thankfully, after I rolled in a 3 on the par-5 6th at Sleepy Hollow Country Club (a.k.a. the hole I’d like my ashes to be spread on when my ticker stops ticking)

Shit I still suck at

• I still can’t go low. I can score for a few holes here or there, but doing it over an entire 18 simply isn’t in my repertoire. I broke 80 twice about six summers ago and I continue to tell people about it, which makes me sound like a Dallas Cowboys fan who’s hanging onto a past that is 30 years old. Shut up old fart! It’s not relevant! As pointed out above, I now own one career eagle and one career round of three birdies despite golfing, practicing golf and thinking about golf constantly. That, plus my ability to conjure up a quad out of thin air no matter how smoothly I’m playing, has prevented me from posting in the 70s and significantly lowering my handicap.

Tales from my first, and extremely rewarding, taste of quasi-competitive golf

• Me bragging about my short game notwithstanding, I routinely doody in my pants when it comes to tiny putts. It’s ridiculous. I amazingly have yet to choose how I want to handle them: Do I mark them, step back, really think about them and then go, or do I casually walk up, aim for the back of the cup and get it over with? This lack of execution is such an easy way to mess up my final number by blowing it on one or two shorties a round, and boy, do I like repeating it time and time again.

Maybe this was intriguing for you to read. Maybe you found it annoyingly self-serving. Either way, thanks for looking at it. We’ll do it again next December, when my handicap is in the singles and I’ve got birdies falling out of my pockets.