COLUMN: Scoring in the 60s (for nine)

   I have had some terrific opportunities to play golf and spend time with my sons at the Monticello Golf Club this summer.

   These are priceless moments similar to those my late father once spent with me in my childhood, times that I hope my sons will cherish for years to come.

   I would fully embrace these myself, if it were not for one nagging fact:

   I’m terrible. No, I mean it. I would use a more common, vulgar term to describe my ineptitude, but I’ll stick with “terrible” for the purposes of this newspaper.

   I had one horrific outing that I chalked up to lack of playing time.

   How horrific? While many of the guys on the Monticello men’s team were posting scores in the 60s during last weekend’s Eastern Iowa Golf Association Tournament, I too was able to make a similar claim in my round.

   Except that my score in the 60s was for nine holes, not 18. Yeah, that bad. It should also be noted that, due to my advancing age, I managed to compile that score despite hitting from the white tees instead of the blue.

   The next time out, we used the same scorecard we had for the previous round, giving me the chance to compare my hole-by-hole scores. And for a while, I was cruising along. Two strokes better on this hole, three better on that one. I was looking forward to seeing how much I had improved from one round to the next.

   Then it fell apart. On one hole I kept chunking the ball forward, maybe 50 yards at a time, and earned a score I won’t mention here. A few times, I would hit a chip shot on the heel and watch helplessly as it zipped across the green, and off it by several yards.

   I can’t explain it. Maybe I grew tired toward the end. I know I’m not in great shape. Or maybe I was just getting tired of playing, and rushed my shots. I don’t know.

   Still, I was hopeful, until Levi added up the scores, and mine was two strokes worse than the last time.

   Which might have made it, you know, the last time. For this year.

Unsubscribing

   So I’m trying a thing at the office.

   Many of us who spend much of our work time in front of computers wind up with dozens of emails each day that are unsolicited (and usually soliciting).

   I have decided to start “unsubscribing” from each of them, just to see if that helps. In order to make the task less daunting, I’m unsubscribing to 10 of them each day, indefinitely.

   I haven’t noticed a big drop in my email totals after a few days of doing this, but I’ll let you know if that changes.