When your body refuses to listen to your mind

I have to warn you upfront...this is a golf specific rant! Read on at your own peril!

Sunday promised to be a nice day for golf. The weather in Bangalore has been near perfect for a round of golf with temperatures in the low 20s and cloudy days to ensure that you don't burn your skin walking around the course. To make the most of the weather, my golfing buddies and I had planned to hit the Eagleton golf course very early in the morning to ensure that we finished quickly and had most of our Sunday to ourselves. Little did I know that this was going to be torture on a scale of comparison to Torquemada!

We started off from the back nine with me making three double bogeys in the first three holes. Now that's not so alarming as I could attribute some of it to bad luck. And I had always bounced back from a bad start. But that was not to be the case today. Today was only promising to go from bad to worse...only I did not know that then.

To avoid adding insult to serious injury, I will spare you the description of the front nine and will only say this. Seven double bogey, a bogey and a par made sure that I finished nine holes with a score higher than my handicap! My partner and I were already two down by then (thanx to some stellar play by my partner) and had already lost the front nine.

The back nine is when I tried really hard to focus and get my game right. And I was completely focussed. Only, this time around, my body refused to cooperate with what I was intending in my mind to do. Nothing worked. Absolutely nothing. Even a birdie on the 17th hole did not stop me from coming in with 8 over on the back nine to make it an infamous 23 over for the round. I don't remember playing this badly in a loooooooooooooooooong time! In fact, I don't remember posting such a bad score in a few years.

Usually when I play a bad round, there are a few good take aways from the round to make me want to go back. A good shot here, a good chip there, a nice putt to save the hole. This round was different. All the 95 strokes I played on the course were forgettable. Every single one of them.

I think I have lost my swing somewhere. If someone finds it, please let me know. In the absence of that, I am going to go back to my old coach Mr Vijay Divecha to see if he can track down my swing for me. Until then, it's a sabbatical from the golf game on the course and my attempts to not make a fool of myself swinging a golf club like a circus trained monkey.

The score does not tell the truth

Another round of golf. Another tale of woe. Another parameter to misjudge.

A very early morning tee off from the back nine saw me hit 6 pars, a bogey and two double bogeys to shoot 5 over for 9 holes. This was including two putts that lipped out that had no business not dropping in. Aah, to hell with it, says I. That's how the game goes. Some days they drop, some days they don't.

The front nine started very nicely. A great drive, a delicious 30 yard chip and then a 3 foot putt to make birdie. I should have known that it was going to be all downhill from there. Two magnificent double bogeys, four bogeys and two pars later, I had scrambled down to a fabulous 13 over round for the day :(

Problem is, the score does not show how badly I played. I played some exquisite shots to compensate for absolutely horrible shots elsewhere. A few absolutely beautiful chips and a few putts which either dropped or didn't made me feel better about myself and my game, but overall I was soooooooooo disappointed with myself and my game.

I need to do better. I know my game has the potential, but I am not playing up to it yet. Need to work harder.

40,000 and 13

What's the relationship between those two numbers, you ask?

My lovely Skoda Laura just crossed into the 40,000 km zone since I bought the car in September of 2007. That's a lot of comfy mileage that I have clocked in this super car. A few long drives to Pune and Goa, a few short trips in and around Bangalore and a LOT of drives to the golf courses around here. Which brings me to the second number.

Played 13 over at KGA on Saturday. An early tee off from the back nine saw me play bogey golf for 9 holes with 2 pars and 2 double bogeys with every other hole played to a bogey. In this time, my partner and I had already lost the nine hole matchplay by being a hole down. Then started the front nine where I made birdie to square the match and my partner and I quickly ran up a 3UP lead. Finally managed to play to 4 over on the back nine to make it 13 over (85) for the round.

Also, this was the first time I was playing with the adjustments made to my Scotty Cameron putter on thursday. Until then, I had to change my putting stance and grip to be able to square the putter. Now, the putter has 4˚ less lie and has 2˚ more loft on it which makes it easier for me to hold in a regular putting stance. Only problem now is that I am missing more putts to the right, something that I need to correct soon.

Food poisoning, top of the table and terrible strokes

So I dropped the ball the last couple of days. So sue me :)

Had an impromptu evening dinner with a friend. We were supposed to go to a photography exhibition by a friend and since it was close to another friend's house, his wife wanted to join us. So we went, looked at some fairly ordinary pictures (decided I could have an exhibition of my own after seeing this one) and then went back to my friend's place where the evening progressed along just fine.

As the time approached 8:45pm, I was getting queasy as the Manchester United game against Rovers was on and I was missing it. So the TV was switched on and I had the pleasure of watching United thump Rovers 7-1 with Berba hitting 5 goals! What a game! We were level with points against Chelsea, had recovered the entire goal difference we had with them and were temporarily sitting at the top of the table! Now the only thing needed was for Chelsea to draw or lose their match on Sunday to keep us on top and to make this a good weekend.

We had an early morning tee off at KGA on Sunday. I was having a disturbed tummy for a while, but that got aggravated more during the round and I had to go for a "download" after 9 holes. Was definitely off my stroke, was unhappy with the way I played but wasn't entirely unhappy with the score (13 over) for the round. It's a different story that my partner and I lost the match 5&4 and got quite convincingly thumped!

The saving grace was getting back home and watching Chelsea manage a weak draw against Newcastle and ensuring that we are sitting at the top of the table with a 2 point cushion!

All in all, a nice weekend. Could have been better, but then again, could have been a lot worse. So I will take it the way it was.

What a round, Sirji!

Oooh babe…

So we teed off this morning for a nice round at BGC. The weather was hot, but the breezy morning promised a good round. And good it was! Oh yeah, it was!

It all started with a horrible drive and a lost ball which put a triple bogey as the very first entry on the score card. A bogey followed soon after. And I was thinking that the round was going to hell in a golf cart (and that was the only golf cart on the course, so that should tell you something about the score card and it's affordability). At this time, I had to remind myself that the two holes had passed and that there was nothing I could do but to play the next 16 holes the best I could. I promptly put in a 20 footer for birdie on the very next hole :-)

On the old Index 1 (the current Index 3), I hit a pipper of a driver to the center of the fairway and was 90 yards to the pin. And then I hit one of the best shots of the round…to 6 inches from the pin. A tap in birdie.

The very next hole brought the best of the round. A good tee shot yet again and a decent approach left me 25 feet to the pin with a double break. And the putt rolled from right to left at first and then straightened and went left to right, all this while with just the right speed to plonk into the back of the cup. Back to back birdies.

The amazing part of the round was that I had a total of FIVE birdies. On the 18th, I was left with a 15 footer downhill putt. And my partner mentioned that I should put in one more, just for the sake of the round…and I DID.

Thro the entire round, I read the line and the speed myself and that made the 5 birdies even more special. And at the end of the round, I had a score of 8 over. A decent score. I would have called it a great round, but I missed at least 6 putts by a whisker (or bad luck) for birdies, so I could have been at a lot lower score. But like every round of golf, you take what you get and you get what you take.

But I had fun…and we won…and that rhymes :-)

Epitome of inconsistency

Ok, so I'm going to talk about golf again.

I'm sorry, but I can't help myself. It's the one sport I have played (and I have played a lot, believe me) that is at the same time gratifying and frustrating. It is unlike any other sport that I have ever played and challenges you to better yourself, even when things are not going well.

Let me illustrate.

So a few people from the office and I were playing golf at the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC from now on). I had come in on the back of a few good rounds in the last couple of weeks (a 7 over, 8 over and another 8 over at KGA, which is a tougher course), so I felt pretty confident about my game. The confidence showed as I hit my first tee shot which sailed gloriously away to the fairway 250 yards away. But as I walked up to the ball, I saw it sitting in a horrible lie in a bunker with the only option for me to blast it out and then try to make something with the 3rd shot (thank the force for the Par 5). I did manage to get it out, but the next shot and the one after that left a lot to be desired and just like that, I had double bogey.

OK, I say to myself. Shit happens. Move on to the next hole…which I parred. But after a lovely drive down the fairway, I screwed up again and had double bogey yet again. And that was the story for the rest of the front 9. I came into the club house with a horrible 11 over, more in just 9 holes than my entire 18 hole scores for the past 3 consecutive rounds. Needless to say, I was cursing myself.

What changed was all of that cursing to myself made me angrier about making stupid silly mistakes and to focus more on the game. And with that, I played one under for the next 7 holes. I had a couple of pieces of bad luck on the 17th and 18th making me drop a shot each, but I had played the back 9 to just 1 over, finishing the round with a respectable 12 over (something close to my handicap).

Now while recovering on the back 9 felt really good, I was left with the feeling that I have the game in me to shoot the 1 over on both nines, maybe even shoot under. What I lack thus far is the focus thro every shot in the round.

So for the next round, I am going to try something different. I am going to take 5 seconds and just try to shut my mind even before I get to the ball. Then, once I get to the ball, I will take 5 more seconds than I usually do to visualize the shot. I do this already, but I think I need to spend more time on this to will the shot rather than just swing the club.

Let's see how it works out. You will hear about it right here. Wish me luck!

I hit an Eagle…literally

I had a buddy of mine visiting me in Bangalore and by sheer coincidence, his friend - who happens to be an avid golfer - was also in Bangalore. Needless to say, we planned a round at KGA.

One word can describe the way I played. SHANK!

So obviously I was playing quite badly. But the thing that surprised me the most happened after I had teed off on the 7th hole. My drive landed in the fairway bunker and I had to play an aggressive 8 iron to the green from there from a tough lie. I thinned the ball a bit and it flew over the lip of the bunker and…went and hit an eagle who was beyond my line of sight. I didn't even know I had hit it till my caddies shouted out that I had hit an eagle. From where I was, there was no way I could have hit the green and sunk it.

It was only after I saw this poor bird lying on the ground did I realize what he meant!

I was feeling so shitty then, this poor defenseless bird getting hit with a really hard object traveling at quite some speed.

Luckily, I was there to see the eagle soar and fly off.

Aall is well! Thank the Force!

80

The title should tell you what the post is going to be about :)

Of course its Golf!

On the day that is Republic Day, four of us drove down a few hundred kilometers to play a round of golf at the Eagleton Golf Club. OK, so it's only 33km from Bangalore, but trust me, it feels a lot longer. Especially after a full round of golf. And even longer if you've refreshed yourself afterwards with a beer or two.

Anyways, I digress. So we landed there and found out that there were not enough caddies for all of us. So the inevitable and unenviable wait…these are the most hated moments on the golf course. So near and yet so far. You're there, but you can't start. Finally after the caddies consented to accompany us on our round, we landed up at the first tee.

For the company that we usually play in, it is more often than not the feeling that we are good players and so we prefer to play Eagleton from the Championship Black tees. After all, we need more challenges than the ones our own game would be throwing at us.

We started with an all par first hole, a rare occurrence. If you had a look at our tee shots, you would have never believed that we all got on (or near) the green in 3 and made our pars. And just like that, the round was underway. I was playing so-so for the first 6 holes and then made two back to back birdies on the 8th and the 9th to finish the front 9 at 4 over. The back nine started very similar to the front and I started feeling a little more comfortable with my swing, but not quite.

Funniest moment of the day was when my ball was on the edge of the water hazard on the 13th hole. I had to stand with my spiked shoes on the cemented lip of the water tank to hit the shot. Only problem was every movement I made would make my shoes slip and as I tried to hit the ball, my feet moved from under me as my club barely touched the ball to start its roll into the water. Penalty!

Ended up shooting 80 (8 over) which, considering that we played from the most difficult tees, is a pretty good score to shoot.

The thing different about this round is that I was carrying my camera with me all the time and shooting everyone's swing. I am planning to make a video on it, should be ready by tomorrow evening :-)

All in all, am happy with the way I played, despite not playing close to my best. After all, grinding it out when you are not at your best is a good sign that there are better things to come when you do hit that occasional and rare peak. And that's what golf does to me, keeps me in the hunt for the next round!

Thank you, Babu!

I know it's been a while since I last blogged (that is an understatement of such enormous magnitude that it's hard to compare it with anything else) and my last post was more than a year ago. But something happened very recently that has prompted me to rethink my blogging career(?!?!) and to become an active blogger again.

But before I do that, I want to tell you folks what happened.

Out of the blue, on Friday last week, I got a very pleasant surprise. A mail from my colleague and buddy from Mumbai was waiting in my inbox. Here's what it said:

From: Babu Ramaswamy

Subject: Hats off

Date: 22 January 2010 3:23:16 PM GMT+05:30

To: Malhar Anaokar

Hi Malhar,

I took some time out last evening and went through your dumping ground ( blogspot )

I started by reading one..then another..then another and in the end i could not leave your page before i finished reading them all... I am really really impressed by your writing...Why have you stopped???

While i was reading blogs under " PROUD FATHER ", i actually could visualize you with your daughter.....While " You are not the boss of the house " brought a smile, reading blogs like " How can i deny this request ", " It's been nine days ", " I am so so proud of her " made my eyes moist.

Admitting to have had " moist eyes " isn't the most macho thing, but i'd be lying if i said that i wasn't blinking back tears when i went through the blogs mentioned above.

You have great skills and i persuade you to continue writing. " The Tiger in town " also shows that your daughter too has the penchant for writing.

Looking forward to reading your short story.

And yes please convey my best wishes to your daughter..

Cheers

Babu"

WOW!

That one completely floored me! This was completely unexpected. I have never expected anyone to read the rubbish that I put up here, much less appreciate it. But more than that, I admired his patience to stay with the blog and to read all the posts. I must have done something right while I was writing them…which brings me to this post.

Dear Babu, this one is dedicated to you! Thank you once again for the very kind and encouraging words and for making me blog again. I will try to be a more sincere and regular blogger henceforth, mainly because you have set the bar so high with your praise that I fear I may not live up to it. But I will try nonetheless. So here goes…to you, my friend, for helping me get on the blogger's path again.

So what's been happening all this while that I have not posted? Quite a few things, actually. So let me see if I can get a few up here…

1. The company that I work for has been acquired. So we are all waiting for the legalities to get done and see what the future holds.

2. I entered in a short story writing competition last year, did not win, but was told that my story was one of the few in contention and that they would like to publish it as part of an anthology. And so, just like that, my second publishing opportunity! The first one you can read about here.

3. I have started going to a guitar class for the first time in my life. After scratching on the strings for all these years, I finally decided that I will learn it like every other sane person on the planet. And I realized I have the B and F chords! :-)

4. Golf has been one roller coaster ride. A few of us in the office started tracking our scores religiously and saw our handicaps drop significantly. Last I checked on our tracking system, I was down to 9.7! And then disaster struck…I could not understand what I was doing wrong. Until last week…when I shot 10 consecutive pars! A personal record!

5. Schumi is back to Formula 1 and my interest in the sport is back. What had become a really boring sport that I pretty much ignored will be my weekend attraction starting March. Go Schumi, Go!

6. Photography as a passion has grown manyfold over the last year, especially since the acquisition of the Nikon D90, a dream of a camera. Have clicked more than 8000 images so far with it, and many more with the iPhone camera and am seeing my passion growing as I start understanding the technicalities of photography. Let's see where this goes in the future.

That's what I can remember so far. And since I am planning to post regularly, as I remember, I will keep adding on.

Once again, thanx a lot for getting me started again, Babu.

Beer is on me the next time we meet! :-)

85,79,92

Before you think this is about some statistics, hold on. I am talking about something completely different.

The sabbatical is over!

I can play Golf again :-)

As some of you might remember, I had given up on the game a few months ago after a few fairly disasterous rounds. The biggest reason to do so was that I was not being able to give enough time to the game and as a direct result, the game was suffering. Well, that is no longer the case as I am in the middle of familiar company and back with my old golf buddies (all of whom have gotten a lot better since I left).

So to inaugurate the game again, my buddies and I went to the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC), my favorite course in Bangalore, for my first round in three and a half months. And the tee shot set it all up. All that practice on the driving range years ago paid off. The ball soared off the 5 iron and drew slightly (as it usually does for me) and landed squarely in the center of the fairway. A nice approach and I was on the green in regulation. And just like that, I had my par.

All in all, the round was about discovering which parts of my game worked and which I needed to work on. And so I was not entirely disappointed with the 85 I carded that day.

The very next round was a revelation. All parts of the game came together and I was hitting the ball as sweetly as I could imagine. Wherever I missed the green on my approach, I either made an up and down or put it in the hole. The whole round was almost blemish free save for two holes where, both times, I got really bad breaks. Once my ball came to rest right next to a tree and I missed two strokes trying to get it out. The other time, my tee shot found a fairway bunker and the ball was lying on the upp slope of the bunker, right next to the lip. A desperate 9 iron out of the bunker and then a excessively drawn 5 iron later, I found myself on the downslope of a greenside bunker. Needless to say, had these two holes not been that bad (the only double and triple bogeys of the round), I would have played lower than my current lowest score.

So there is still hope.

Or so I thought. Until I played on the last weekend. The highlight of the round was that I kept toeing the ball almost all through the round. Just could not figure it out. I rarely miss sweet spot on my clubs, one of the biggest reasons to buy the completely unforgiving Mizuno MP-32 set of irons that I am playing right now. This entire round was an education in how to play unforgiving irons when one is not hitting the sweet spot.

All in all, I have had a yo yo of a few rounds. But there are glimpses of the game that can be. So as a true golfer, and therefore an optimist, I look forward to the next round this weekend.

Until then...

So where have I been?

I know, it's been a while since my last post. But as I mentioned then, I was supposed to travel to India for my mother's surgical procedure. I'm happy to say that the surgery went as planned, that she had very little discomfort during the recovery and is now on the way to a full recovery. A session of physiotherapy everyday and she's going to be just fine. So I'm looking forward to her being able to travel so that she can come here to live with us in Singapore.

After I got back from India, I was in Singapore for a whole three days before I left for an offsite meeting to Batam, Indonesia. It was a lovely time there, meeting up with some great people who work in our partner environment, a few of them with whom I got on very well. Then the ferry back to Singapore, just in time to pick up my bags and leave for London.

I was scheduled to be in London mid last week for a business meeting. Since one of my golf buddies has moved there last year, I thought it would be a good idea to spend a couple of days playing golf with him and catching up with him at the same time. The two rounds of golf, needless to say, were a complete disaster. Like the two rounds of golf in India (91 and 96), I shot 97 and then a 90 (on a par 70 course) to shoot higher than +20 for four consecutive rounds. The 97 was an even more disasterous round as I was hitting great 300+ yard drives off the tee and then screwing the shots up after that. Both I and my golf buddy decided that if we played as terribly the day after as we did on that day, we both would hang up our clubs. And sure enough, another terrible round ensued.

So, officially, I have given up the game of golf. I realized (after quite a few years) that I have invested a fair amount of time, effort, money and mainly emotions in this game for the last five years and I came to the realization that I am not getting good returns on any of my investments. So instead of making a mistake of investing more in the hope that there is a turnaround, I am cutting my losses and giving up the game.

It will take a while for the game to get flushed out of my system. I still take practice swings whenever I see a reflective surface. Most of the quotes I know are either about golf or made by golf personalities. A lot of my book collection, including books that I reach for most of the time, are golf books. But I am sure it will pass.

So long, golf.

Coming back to the London trip...my golf buddy took me to this bar in the city where I was slapped with a strange realization. The story goes thus.

We landed up at this place quite late in the night as we had to drop everyone (his family) home and then abscond for a boy's night out. After we stepped in, we decided to check out the lounge which, for some reason, appeared to be roped out. Since the music was playing there, we decided to ignore the ropes and walk in anyways. Only after a while did the fact sink in that most (read all) men were there wearing tuxedos and the women wearing cocktail dresses...we had crashed a private party. So without making it too obvious, we slinked out to the main club.

As the floor was quite packed (and since we were feeling so thirsty for Stella), we chose to stick close to the bar. Here's where the story gets crooked.

There was this girl who was being quite boistrous and dancing quite wildly around the place where we were. When we landed at the bar, she seemed to be with someone (since he was buying all her drinks). She however did not seem shy to grind away as she danced away with her back to mine. Being the gentleman that I am (stop booing, you ingrates), I did not take too much of notice.

After a while of dancing (and quite a bit of drinking on this lady's part...she was really drunk), she started dancing even wilder than before. She caught hold of my pal and had a few swings with her. And then she pulled him closer to ask him something. I chose to ignore what was happening and was instead checking out the other pretty attractions in the bar. My pal comes back as tells me that she was asking if I was gay!!!

I was sending out a gay vibe? Naah! Not possible, right? But then, how would I know? I attributed it to too many drinks on her part and let it go. And then the double whammy hit. A guy came over to me (seeing my ManU t-shirt) and asked me if I was going to Athens for the Champions League final. I politely told him that since ManU were not in the finals, there was no point in going to Athens.

But the gay vibe statement had been underscored. With red lettering in size 72 font. I had to do something and quick to get rid of that. Otherwise it would haunt me for a while.

So I turned my attention to the lady at the bar.

She was dancing as wildly as before, only this time, she was dancing with me. So we jived for a long time with me mostly trying very hard to stop her from falling. Which I succeeded in doing except for once...when she kept stepping back and did not notice the stairs behind her.

CRASH!

I'm sure she would feel the fall the next day, but that night she was on her feet again and wanted to continue dancing. The guy she was with kept trying to get her to dance with him, but I don't think she had any intentions of dancing with him. Cause we were having a great time dancing by ourselves. So instead, the gay kept buying her drinks, all in the hope of getting her completely drunk so that she would have no clue who she was with and where she was going. And we continued to dance.

We left that bar quite late, completely drunk out of our wits, knowing that we would get to hear a mouthful from my buddy's wife once we got home, but also knowing that there was no more gay vibe being sent out.

I think people just assume that if don't mess around, you must be gay. I don't think anyone pauses to think that you might be married and that the whole thing does not agree with you. But then, I guess putting up a show is as important.

Oh well...that was the London trip. Or at least the juicy part of the trip. The rest of it is the business meeting and a short walk I took to see Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Picadilly and the London Eye.

Oh, and I also met with my Grandfather who's lived in the UK since...forever. Met my first cousin and her son for the first time and had a lovely dinner at their house...which was a pleasant change from the night before.

Then it was back to Singapore to be in time for my daughter's birthday. Yep...my little girl turned 7 last week. And I got her a Nintendo Wii as her birthday gift. She, and surprisingly my wife as well, loved the game console so much, I got another Wii remote (Wiimote) so that two people could play at the same time. The Wii is such an engaing game console which I think gets the fun back into gaming. Instead of just using your thumbs to press buttons, you now actually play tennis, do bowling and boxing. The first time we played bowling, my daughter beat both my wife and me with the highest score. In fact, my wife and I actually go exhausted boxing against each other. She complained of her arms aching even the day after. I guess it's good excercise!

We're now customizing a Mii (a personalized profile) for each of us. It's a fun console. I would very strongly recommend it.

So now you know...the reasons for not being able to post all these days. Hope this was a long enough (and juicy enough post to sate your appetites). I hope to be more prompt with my blogging henceforth. I still have to figure out how to purge all that beer from my systems :-)

What's balls got to do with it?

I'm not trying to make a cover version of Tina Turner's Grammy winning song, but am actually trying to make a golf (what else?) point here.

Last year, my golf buddy suggested that I try using the Titliest ProV1x balls instead of the regular any-ball-will-do situation. He was quite emphatic about the fact that the ball is far superior and that it has helped his game quite a bit.

So I switched to the ProV1x balls and found that my game improved as well. I was able to control the spin I was putting on the ball and found that the ball was far easier to shape my shot around. It also helped that the ball went longer off the tee.

How does this change in equipment make such a difference?

If you looked at the Titliest site recently, you would notice that they have launched the new ProV1 and ProV1x series balls. And in the description, I found the answer. See the pictures below (all taken from the Titliest web site, they own the pictures - I'm just showing them to make a point)...



<- ProV1

ProV1x ->

Look at the layout of the dimples. The ProV1 has 392 dimples while the ProV1x has 332. We all know (?) that the dimples are there on a golf ball to reduce drag as the ball flies through the air. The layout will determine how the ball flight is, how much spin is put on the ball and how much drag is reduced to give a more penetrating ball flight.

And that is what it all comes down to.

Unfortunately, the new series of balls is not yet available with the guy who I usually buy them from. And as you know (?), the ProV1 and ProV1x series are a fairly expensive set to buy. A box of 12 balls used to cost me $80 (which is the best rate I have found in Singapore...other retailers charging upwards of $110). Not sure what the price is now.

Waiting for the new ProV1 series to arrive so that I can test drive them. Hopefully I will get my hands on them before my next round.

A stroke of luck

As I had posted some time back, my Mumma needs to be operated on to replace her right side hip joint. I will be flying in to India on Sunday as the operation is scheduled for the 25th. I was originally scheduled to leave on Monday morning, but my reservations gave me an idea.

When I looked at the possible options for flights, I had Indian Airlines flying via Bangalore to Mumbai for a fare that was cheaper than a direct flight. In the same price that I would otherwise go straight to Mumbai, I can now stop over at Bangalore and have a round of golf with my dear friend there!

So that's how it will be. I will leave on Sunday morning, land in Bangalore at around 9:30am, leave straight for the Bangalore Golf Club with my buddy (who will be picking me up) and have the first serious game of golf with him in a long time.

Then I leave for the airport and take a flight to Mumbai which lands at 9:30pm, around the same time another pal of mine will be checking in for his flight to Durban (he's moving there). So I will be able to catch up with him and actually see him off as he leaves for a new job in a new country. And interestingly, this guy was supposed to leave on the 17th (today), but his plans kept getting postponed. I was sure I would not be able to see him off as he would leave before I got back to India. But as luck would have it, I am going to get to see him off.

This is just wonderful. Now I only hope that the operation goes smoothly and my mom is fine and healthy again.

Fingers Crossed!

What about us?

Annika Sorenstam, the greatest woman golfer ever, on Monday opened the Annika Sorenstam Golf Academy in Reunion, Florida. The most important thing about this academy is "for anyone".

Great job, Annika. We need more people like you and bring the lovely game of golf to everyone who would like to play the game. But here's the problem I have with this academy.

It's in Florida! How many golf courses and academies are in Florida again? A few hundreds if not thousands. So if your intentions are so noble, why not open a golf academy "for anyone" in a place like India, for example. Every year there is evidence that Indian golfers are doing well (notably, Jeev Milkha Singh made the cut at his first appearance at the Augusta Masters tournament, finishing tied for 37th...Arjun Atwal being the first Indian to play on the US PGA tour). Why not invest in a golf academy in India?

For one, it would definately be a lot cheaper than in Florida. And it would have a huge turnout which would make the academy a success, both financial as well as based on satisfaction.

So I'm glad you've created an academy which has opened it's arms in welcome to people like me who find it difficult to afford this game, but continue to play it cause we love it. But please, I'm not impressed with the move.

After all, almost everyone has a golf academy in Florida. Its almost like these people think no one outside of Florida plays golf.

Best 9 hole score ever

I had gone, alone this time, to the Palm Springs Golf Course in Batam to play. It was my first round in a few weeks, after the last time I played to 84. As the time between my rounds gets bigger and bigger, I think I have started to value each round and therefore each shot, knowing that another round is not coming around the corner very soon.

I was planning to play alone, but bumped into the guys who I played with the last time. And since they were only two, they asked me if I would like to join them. I was of course delighted.

We started on the 4th hole on the Island course. 4th and 5th are fairly easy par-4s. Despite putting my tee shots with the driver in the right side rough (I usually fade with the driver, was not sure what I was doing this time, but blamed it squarely on my not playing for a while), I hit decent approaches to the greens (missing both of them) and then a couple of chips to within a foot of the pin and then single putts for two consecutive pars.

On the 6th, which is a difficult tee shot if you have a problem with hooking your driver, I did just that. I hooked my drive into water and then hit my 4 iron to the far left of the green. My putt lipped out and I made a double bogey.

From then on, I parred 7th, 8th and 9th. I was next to the green in two on the par 5 8th, but messed up my putt for birdie and so just made par.

On to the Resort course, and I bogeyed the first four holes. A couple of them because of bad breaks and bad bounces, the others with miserable putting. I made all three of my 3-putts on these nine holes. I signed off on these 9 holes with a 7-over 43. Not bad considering the fact that I could have been three strokes better had my putts not lipped out. Imagine, I had 21 putts for these 9 holes alone!

So back to the Island course to finish the last three holes and I was determined to make the most of the remaining holes.

The 1st is a par 5 which has the fairway going around a small water body. There is a way to get to the green across this, but that needs a decent tee shot to the edge of the right fairway and then a tight approach to a green which you cannot see from there. So instead of teeing up with my driver, I hit a 3 iron to that exact edge of the fairway, had a great lie to hit my second, hit a clean 4 iron (which turned out to be one club too many because of the wind choosing to pick up around that time) to the right rough over the green.

Then came a marvelous chip, something I will remember for a long time. It landed exactly where I wanted it to and then took the slope of the green to turn right and tracked it's way toward the flag, stopping two feet from the pin. A single putt later, I had my birdie!

I parred the next couple of holes to make it a 1-over 37 for nine holes, my lowest ever 9 hole score! And with that, I shot 8 over for the round, my third lowest score ever! All this after playing irregular golf for the last couple of months!

The last three rounds have been a revelation to me. I have shot an 82, an 84 and not an 80. Not bad for someone who has not had too many rounds in the last couple of months.

The one story common across all the rounds is this: I have got a lot more consistent with my iron play. I am very rarely hitting a bad shot with the irons. The driver has been tricky, fading during some rounds and then hooking during the next. I think I have solved the problem with the driver during the last few holes of the last round, but that I will only be sure when I play next. Chipping has improved dramatically. My decision to try and see, in my mind's eye, the ball running before each chip shot has paid huge dividents since I have made better chips and saved a lot more pars in the last couple of round. The sore point that remains is my putting.

I have made 34, 33 and 36 putts in the last three rounds. I am having at least three holes per round where I end up three putting, for a lot of reasons. And most of the time I am doing it because I have no feel for the distance of the putt.

So I have decided to focus a lot more on my putting. I want to get it down to around 30 putts per round. I also want to work on my chipping to be able to get closer to the pin. These two places alone will work towards saving at least four to five shots a round. And if I do that a lot better, who's to say? I could even play under par in a few rounds.

I know I am getting ahead of myself, but I am just so kicked at playing so well despite the long breaks in between rounds. If I can play this well despite not playing often, imagine how well I can play if I was playing with a lot more focus, practice and regularity.

Just imagine!

A Pro, a Major and a Quadruple Bogey

I watched with shock as Lorena Ochoa quadruple bogeyed a regulation par 3 while she was three under par and only one stroke off the lead in the Kraft Nabisco, the LPGA's first major of the year.

Ochoa hit a 6 iron off the tee, which puts the hole roughly a hundred and seventy to hundred and eighty yards away, as she pulled her tee shot to the right. Though not the most benevalent of lies, but not the most horiffic, she hit an attrocious pitch which overshot the green and landed in what looked like really deep rough and an unplayable lie.

Then she did something not expected of a tour player, much less the LPGA player of the year last year. She whiffed her third shot!!! Whiffed it! The club slig neatly under the ball and the ball was still there!

Her next shot got the ball out of the rough, but rolled more than 30 feet from the pin leaving a really tricky putt for double bogey. And from there, she three putted!

So right then and there, on that one hole, she went from being one shot from the lead with a fighting chance to win her first major to being five shots behind going into the final round. And with the course playing to more than 74 for a regulation par 72, it would be really tough for Ochoa to get her first major title in this event.

Interesting thing was in the way she made tha game played by these high profile tour players look very much like the game some of us mere mortals play. I don't even remember the last time I whiffed my chip shot. Sure I three putt a lot, but that's because I play once in a few weeks. Not like these people who practice the whole day and then some. But mostly, I was amazed at the errant tee shot she hit which got her into all this trouble.

We've all hit that dasterdly shot at least once in a round. In my last round, I hooked two consecutive tee shots out of bounds and that was the only sore quadruple of my round. But for heavens sake, this is the Kraft Nabisco on the LPGA tour!

But then again, I guess it just goes to show that these people are still human.

I know what he must have felt like

In fact, every single person who has three putted a golf hole knows what it feels like to make that unnecessary third putt to put the dasterdly ball into the bottom of the cup. The walk from the green, after a three putt, ranks as one of the worst feelings a person can have.

After having a lot of touble with putts dropping when they should have, Sergio Garcia spat into the cup on the 13th green at the WGC tournament at Doral after making another three putt.

He had this to say after the round:

"Don't worry, it did go in the middle, and it wasn't going to affect anyone else. If it did, I would have wiped it off."

While I understand the frustrations of three putting, I would not exactly spit into the cup (even if I overwhelmingly felt like it). But then, Sergio is Spanish...and I'm not. Also, I think he is getting tired of his inconsistencies despite having a lot of talent and skill on the golf course.

Relax, mate. It happens to the best of us.

On to the next tee!

I think Tiger has a game plan

Tiger Woods, in what would be his worst 9 holes in a professional tournament's last round, played an 8-over 43 to finish tied in 22nd place. At a point in time where he was a stroke off the lead held by Vijay Singh (who eventually won), his back nine left him 11 strokes off.

Now a lot of people are wondering what happened to Tiger. A lot of speculation going on. You know what I think?

Tiger intentionally played certain shots that he thought he would need for The Masters!

There, I said it. I am not saying that his miserable back nine had all to do with playing the wrong shot for that hole. He might have made a few mistakes. But I refuse to believe that someone like Tiger will play bogey golf and shoot a higher 9-hole score than someone like me (since I shot a 39 a couple of days back).

I think he is planning very carefully for The Masters and I am quite certain you will see some seemingly erratic shots at his next tournament, the CA Championship at Doral, but all those will help him in his effort to play the shots that he thinks he will need at The Masters.

He has done that before. At that time, he won. So this time he didn't.

Big Deal!

Put me down for Tiger winning this year's Masters. Cause I think I see the preparation happening already. And Tiger likes to peak at the major tournaments rather than win all and sundry. He is as much a clever tactician as he is a great player.

Mark my words.

What a surprising weekend for sport

First, I shot a round of 84 (despite playing after 2 months as mentioned in my last post) which had an Eagle, then I saw Manchester United thump Bolton Wanderers 4-1, saw Kimi Raikkonen win from start to finish in his new Ferrari at the first race of the 2007 F1 season and then found out this morning that both India and Pakistan lost their Cricket World Cup matches to relative minnows.

First to my golf round (of course!). As I mentioned in my last post, I was really scared of how much my game would have gone bad due to lack of play for 8 weeks. Surprisingly, the only thing rotten about my game on Saturday was my putting, which has always been on the bad side.

I, along with an ex-collegue and a couple of her current collegues, went over to the Palm Springs course in Batam. I completely suprised myself by hitting the green in regulation on the very first hole, and then got over the surprise as I three putted from inside of 10 feet for bogey. Well, at least the swing was working.

After a par and bogey, I had a string of three consecutive pars and then a bogey and a double. I stood with five over par in 8 holes.

And then came the 9th on the Island course.

The 9th is an elevated tee around 300 yards from the green. It has a driving range to it's left and out of bounds on the right. If I want to reach the green, I would have to aim for the bunkers that line the left side of the fairway and fade the ball in towards the green.

And that is exactly what I did. The ball left on the line I was aiming and moved just the right amount to land directly on the green and then roll towards the flag.

A few moments later, I had putt in for Eagle! The third eagle in my golfing experience!

That put my nine hole score to 39, just one short of my lowest 9 hole score ever. On the back nine, I had a few pars, a few bogeys and a massive quadruple bogey where I pulled two tee shots out of bounds. So that was pathetic.

All in all, I shot 84 (with the eagle compensating for the quadruple...not completely, but I'll take it). I was pleasantly surprised with how much my game has stayed with me despite my neglect of it.

And so if I can shoot 84 after such a long hiatus, I can definately shoot a lot lower if I practice a lot more, mainly on my putting. So that's exactly what I am going to do from today. Practice my putting.

Now to football and ManU. We're still comfortable at the top of the Premiership table with the 6 point cushion intact over Chelsea.

Kimi Raikonnen demonstrated Ferrari's prowess and ran away with the race in Melbourne to win the first GP of the season. Only sad point in all of the race was the pre-race problem that Felipe Massa had with his Ferrari which stopped him from qualifying higher and so, with an engine replacement penalty, had to start from the back of the grid from where he managed a 6th place finish. Not a great start for him, but I'm sure he will do a lot better. The surprise package for the race was Lewis Hamilton of the McLaren team, who on his F1 debut, brought his car home in 3rd place and a very deserved podium finish. He led his team-mate Alonso for most of the race, but was overtaken after a great pit stop by Alonso's pit crew.

And then came the news of both India and Pakistan losing their respective matches to the smaller teams in the cricket world cup. As you might be aware, I am not much of a cricket buff. So obviously, I did not stay up late to watch any of the matches. But it was really surprising to note that Pakistan lost both it's first two group matches (first against hosts West Indies and later to minnows Ireland) to crash out of the world cup. Pakistan becomes the first casualty of this world cup.

The sad news was the Pakistan team coach, Bob Woolmer, died on the night of Pakistan's ouster from the world cup. Woolmer, the Pakistan coach since 2004, was found unconscious in his hotel room and was pronounced dead after three hours. As if the team did not have enough bad news to contend with.

India, meanwhile, lived up to it's reputation of making the most easiest of opposition look tough by losing to a young Bangladesh side. With this loss, India needs to win both it's matches (against Bermuda and Sri Lanka) to have any hopes of going into the next round. In case they lose to Sri Lanka, they, along with Pakistan, will be the most high profile casualties of this world cup. And that means a lot of lost revenue in cricket crazy India.

Let's see (only in the news, I am not staying up to watch them) how they do in the next matches. Personally, I think Indians should start playing other sports with as much enthusiasm as they watch cricket.

But then, that's just me.

A game after 8 weeks

Two months! 8 weeks! That's how long it's been since I last played golf. Well, the wait ends tomorrow (hopefully) and I will be heading off to Batam with a few people to play what will be a round of shame.

What else can I expect after ignoring the noble game for so long? Not that it was intentional. But still, it is unforgivable to not have played for so long and so I feel I can no longer be called a "golfer". I can at best be termed as a "social golfer". It's the term I used to use for people who are not serious about their game and just play to either entertain themselves or to make business discussion ("What? In the middle of a round?").

Alas, I have become something like these people (though I haven't stooped so low as to make conversation when people are playing a serious sport).

Tomorrow, I will have no clue where the ball is going to go. No idea what to hit and how far it will go. Sigh! I feel so depressed.

Only I know the game will teach me to respect it even more so that I will make the effort and play more. Unless I do that, my hope of getting to single digit and eventually to scratch will remain a pipe dream.

Tomorrow will tell me whether I still have my swing or whether I have lost all that I made so much effort to get to.

You will know on monday.