What a week

Or should I say weak?

To make a long story short, the week was made up of a small birthday celebration, a few days of under-the-weather health and a relatively poor golf game. Yep, that pretty much sums it all up.

You know, as you get older, birthdays don't mean as much as they used to. There are fewer friends around to celebrate it with and there are a lot of things to get done, work wise, on the day itself. So by the time you are home, you are dog tired and it really does not feel any different from other days.

But all credit to my beautiful darling to make the evening worthwhile. She had cooked a really eaborate dinner of some of my favorite things and my daughter made me a cute little birthday card. They made my exhaustion just disappear. After we had dinner and put our daughter to sleep, we sat around and chatted for a while. And then it was peaceful slumber. A deep sleep after a tiring, but good day.

On saturday, we were invited for dinner at my golf buddy's place. All of us, part of the four ball, were there with our wives (and me with my daughter) to enjoy "Dum Biryani" made specially for the occasion by my pal. A lot of Heineken accompanied the conversation, which largely circulated around the topic of Golf. What else can you expect from a bunch of golf fanatics.

What eventually transpired was a set of outrageous statements by the host, who also happens to be a single handicapper, suggesting that we should bet on birdies and that we didn't have the guts. Now I always play to make par or birdie, it's just that sometimes (well, most of the times) the ball does not want to go in the direction I want it to go. My last birdie was almost a year ago, so there's fat chance I am going to be on the recieving end of the Birdie bet.

So we suggested we up the stakes. $100 for every eagle made on the course. And then we went completely psychological warfare on this guy. We put on so much pressure on him that when we started the round, this guy was nowhere in the shape that he usually is. He couldn't take it.

And after a round of golf in the worst weather I have played in, I can up trumps with a round of 90...beating a single handicapper by a single stroke (he shot 91!). 6 pars, 6 bogeys and 6 doubles. Another symmetrical assessment on the putting performance as well. 3 single putts, 3 two putts and 3 three putts for a total of 36. My GIR and three putt saga continued for a bit, but not as bad as the last time.

So I made 4 less putts as compared to the last round and shot a score 4 strokes lower. What I found astonishing was the fact that I took only a single penaly last time while I took 4 this time. So I actually managed to play a lot better than last time to shoot 90.

What felt fabulous was my full swing. It felt completely effortless and smooth. Unhurried, yet powerful. I was consistently hitting beyond the 260yrd mark and was mostly on the fairway. This time, I hit 9 out of 14 fairways and had only 4 GIRs, but even then, I managed to hit a better score than last time. So all in all, a better game than last time and this time, I was confident that I could get back to the game I had when I consistently broke 90.

And I went back to my old Adams putter. I dumped my Odeyssey White Hot because I could just not get the distance judgement with it. The Adams mallet, I felt was a lot better. Only the next round will confirm if my opinion is correct.

So that's the week in perspective. Sorry for not writing often enough, but I have been feeling so sc***ed the last few days, I just didn't feel like writing.