No practice swings

Well, it was just me out for Wednesday golf today. It was an overcast day, so rain was threatening - and the course was pretty wet. However, I got my 9 holes in without any precipitation falling on me.

When I was out a couple of weeks ago, I hit my last tee shot without taking a practice swing, and it went fine. So, I experimented with hitting the ball without any practice swings this week.

It went well. The ball went pretty straight, although not always that long. I think the heavy humidity might have had something to do with that. On 9, I hit my usually club (7 wood), and came up short of the green, so I took another shot - there was almost no one else on the course with me - with a different club (3 wood), and it landed right on the green.

Thus, I learned that if it's a humid day, I should be adding a club to compensate.

Overall, I shot a 51, which is higher than I'd like; want to be in the 40s this year, but that included a 2 stroke penalty for an OB ball. I think going out of bounds is a 2 stroke penalty, although I haven't memorized the phone book sized rules of golf book, so I could be wrong on that.

The OB wasn't a bad shot either. I was about 50-60 yards away from the green on the 2nd hole, and hit my 9 iron about twice as far as it needed to go. I couldn't see my ball on the other side of the green, so just took another shot.

Oh, and I didn't hit any of the greens. Well, not on my first shot anyway.

Quote of the day

To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.

Ronald Wright, in A Short History of Progress.

TO FC

For those of you outside of Canada, and perhaps several of you in Canada, Toronto now has a team in the MLS - Major League Soccer: Toronto FC. The league is run like other North American sports leagues in that people have to buy in rather be promoted from a lower league, so there's no relegation and a draft rewarding the bad teams for being bad. So, it's not perfect.

But it is nice that a relatively high level soccer team now exists in Canada. However, in their first four games, TFC had not scored a goal. Thus, I think it's fair to say that they wanted to get one today when they played Chicago in Toronto.

And the sun was shining on the club, as they won 3-1. The goals were good ones. All crosses into the box that were well handled, although I thought Goldthwaite who scored the second one, which broke a 1-1 deadlock and was the winner, was taking too long to get a shot off, but when he did fire it, the ball went under legs of a defender who'd come across to try and block the attempt at goal.

So, TFC has their first goals in club history, and their first win. Hopefully, it will be the first of many.

Birdie boy

Well I got on the board in my second time out on the Canoe Club links. I birdied number 8, drove it within three feet, which was good as Shy and Ron also drove on.

We all missed number 5, and Shy got a really favourable bounce to get on the 6th green; indeed, he had a good chance for a bird there, but missed and made par.

We all missed number 9 too.

So, the season standings are : Ron 3, Shy 2, Evan 1, and Gus 1, although the money standings are : Ron $3, Evan $2, Shy $2, and Gus $1.

My score for the day was 47. Hit a couple of trees solidly, and off one I bounced into the fairway bunker of the previous hole. Oops. Putted pretty well.

Good day out all 'round, and the temperature was 31 and sunny. My arms are definitely redder tonight than they were this morning.

Surprising results

I won the consolation side at racquetball provincials this past weekend. I'm surprised by how well I played, actually. I haven't been playing so much the last few months to a year, so my form has been off some. Thus, I wasn't that hopeful about how it would go in provincials.

I played Kurt first, who beat me out in Brandon a couple of months back. He got leads in both game one and two. I managed to come back in both to level the scores at 11 and 12, respectively, but couldn't finish either game, so lost two straight.

In my first consolation side match, I played Sean, who's an up and coming young whipper snapper. I wasn't very hopeful about how it was going to go, especially as it was a 9 AM Saturday start time. Early in game one it was going as expected, as he jumped out to a lead. But I managed to come back, got in a bit of a groove, and won the first game.

The second game I just came out on fire. I was drive serving well, and got some easy points with drive serves to the right side. I got up 11-1, and won going away.

In Sunday's consolation final, I played Gus, who I used to play regularly - about once a week - when Courts Sports was still open (it closed last year), but I haven't played him recently. When we played regularly, our games were close, so I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

But again to my surprise, I started out well, and won the first game going away. In game two, he got a lead at 8-3. I felt a bit tired, and my glove was a bit damp, so I took a timeout, changed gloves, and came back to win it, 15-8.

There was a bit of controversy late in game two as some of Gus's serves were called short. That might not have been a big deal, but as it was Open division we were playing one serve, so a short serve was a loss of serve. I thought one call was certainly right, although wasn't sure of the second. I offered to replay the second one, but Gus - though annoyed by the call - refused.

All in all, it gives me some confidence and hope going in to nationals later this month in Regina. My fellow A division competitors - including Kurt and Sean - better watch out!

Sad about, but Happy for

So, I was sad to see the Canucks go out of this year's NHL playoffs. But such is the state of my sports interest these days that I'm more happy about NBA's Golden State Warriors beating the Dallas Mavericks.

Not that I feel any particular way about either the Warriors or the Mavs, but the Mavs were the top seed in the playoffs, having the best record in the NBA this season. They were perhaps the biggest obstacle between the Phoenix Suns and an NBA championship.

Now, I want to go on record as not being a mere Suns bandwagon jumper-oner in the couple of years since they signed Steve Nash, and his career went MVP. I first liked the Suns back in the days of Paul Westphal, which is like 30-ish years ago.

Then I liked them during the Barkley years. Who doesn't like Charles? OK, OK, he's said some silly things about Golden State, but all that's a bunch of puffery - you know, tongue in cheek I'm-a-TV-commentator-so-I-must-be-outrageous kind of talk.

And I wasn't a Jordan fan, so I dearly wanted the Suns to beat the Bulls in their playoff battles.

Now, without the Mavs on the scene and eastern teams relatively weaker than those out west, it may be the Suns year. But gotta get by those Spurs first, who are no slouches. Then it'll be either the Warriors or the winner of the Rockets-Jazz game 7.

Looking forward to it.

First day on the links

Hit the links for the first time this year yesterday. Took a snowman (an 8) on the first hole, but finished up with a 45, which is below my average of last year, so a good start to the season.

Of course, the main reason for Wednesday golf is to win loonies on the par 3s. I played them pretty well, driving two of the four on the 9 hole Canoe Club course. Sadly, other guys were inside of me, so they had the chance to putt for the dough, which they made.

But it was a nice day to be out walking about, even got a bit burned on my head and neck. And it's even nicer here today, which I took advantage of by doing a bit of raking and cutting a few branches off of a tree.