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THE LAW OF AVERAGES - Why Can't I Remember The Good Shots?
The "Law of Averages" should indicate that for every bad bounce there would be a good bounce. Yet when we finish a round of golf the bad bounces will stick out in your mind, but that lucky bounce off of that tree will be forgotten.
A really good golfer will picture the shot he is about to take in his mind. He will visualize the shot, the ball flight, and the end result. There are many times you will watch a golfer on TV hit a shot and look disgusted, but the ball will end up next to the flag. It is because it was not the type of shot he had planned. I was playing with Gardner Dickinson in Florida during the period of his life when he was trying to pattern his game after Ben Hogan. Gardner had been a right to left player, and was now trying to go left to right. We were playing a par three hole and he almost made a hole in one. He threw his club down in anger. At first I thought it was because the ball did not go in, but it was because the shot went from right to left and not left to right as he had planned.
In the many years I have been in the golf business, I know I have had to hit more good shots than bad, but the bad ones are engraved in my mind forever.
In my early days as a professional I was playing in a tournament and shot a thirty- two on the front nine. I had never shot a thirty- two in my life, and I was a nervous wreck. I managed to get on the tenth green in two, but was a mile away from the hole. A spastic reaction took place on that first putt and it would have gone ten feet past the hole, but the caddie froze on the flagstick. Back then we had wooden flagsticks. I yelled for him to pull it out. He did, cup and all. My ball hit the cup and bounced about six feet away, and from there I three putted. The remainder of that round was a nightmare.
One time I was playing in a practice round behind Sam Snead. His gallery was all over the place and our threesome was not having a good time. On the last hole I hit my best drive of the day. Snead was putting out, and I stood proudly in the middle of the fairway in order to impress anyone who might be watching. When he finished putting out and leaving the green, the gallery also started to leave. My wife was in the gallery, and she called out, "Wait, Here comes my husband." I shanked it completely off of the golf course. Someone asked her who her husband was, and she replied, "I can't think of his name right now." It was after that incident I started introducing her as "My first wife."
Nearly all golf professionals are good players, but a club pro does not make his living playing golf, and cannot play at the level of the Tour players. I used to play in some events between seasons as a Club pro. When you were an unknown, but managed to qualify to ply that week, you did not get the best starting times. You were either in front or in back of gallery favorites, or swept the greens in the morning, or brought the flags in with you when you were finishing. My experiences seemed to be before, or behind a gallery favorite.
My most embarrassing moments were usually on the first tee, or the eighteenth hole. The day I shot the thirty- two on the front nine started out with a hooked shot out of bounds. I teed up my second ball and pooped up in the air and then knocked a long iron into the hole for a four. I had practiced several days off of that first tee, knowing that the first tee shot was going to be so important. That lucky shot took me from a low to a high instantly.
The day I was voted into the PGA I had to play in a tournament right after the annual meeting. I was a nervous wreck waiting for my time to tee off. My hands were sweating and I was so poor that I could not afford a glove, but I had found an old half finger glove that year and had put it in my golf bag. When I took it out of my bag it had dried out and broke into pieces. When I got on the tee, with all of those old pros watching, I felt as if I would faint. If I had stood on that tee for a week, I could not have hit a better tee shot. They all applauded, but when I got to my drive, the reaction set in. The shot was great, except it was seventy feet in the air when it went over the green. I didn't care, I had gotten off of the first tee.
Naturally, when I first got into the business it was for playing golf. As in the
case of so many young professionals in my age bracket, our careers were put on hold with World War Two. All of us had lost approximately four years of our golfing lives, and also four years of not making any money. I, for one, forgot about the playing part but made making a living my number one priority. Golf is a game, and it is meant to be a form of recreation. The proper handicap system makes everyone an equal. Playing golf for a living is hard work. Don't be misled by the players who are making millions on the PGA Tour. They are just a tiny minority. There thousands and thousands of professional golfers out here scraping along like punch drunk fighters thinking they have one good fight left in them.
"Life may not be fair, but golf is downright malicious."