How Many Pars

Walking out the desire of your heart is more than simply going out and doing what you love. There is that undeniable growth catalyst -- the process. It's almost two years that I began playing tournaments towards my goal of entering into the PGA Champions Tour, and over the last 20 months I have set personal goals, reached these goals and discovered that some of my goals were galactic in nature.

I remember my first tournament in January of 2008. It was a pre-qualifier in SoCal near LA (that would be Southern California near Los Angeles not South Carolina near Louisiana). I was sure that I had everything in me to be the winner. I hadn't played a serious round of golf in thirty five years but did that make a difference? Definitely inter-galactic goal setting.

From this point I uncovered the process and have set, each year, a new goal that is bigger than what I believe I can accomplish yet reachable by God's grace. I set a goal in 2008, after the first couple events, to find out if I had enough game to play with these guys out here. Could I hit good shots, play the greens, and have the right attitude.

This year, 2009, I set a goal to discover how I play tournament golf. What's my game? The first lesson is that this is a highly mental game and the physical game (swing) is obviously affected by the mental game. This summer I was listening to a commentator on the Golf Channel. He was discussing the ways that different players approach their game from a scoring perspective. I had never heard anyone comment on this before. It immediately caught my attention and has been a fantastic exercise.

His comment was that some players find that they make a lot of birdies but often follow these with bogey's or double bogey's, while other players score many pars with only a few birdies. And of course he mentioned those players that score a lot of birdies -- and we all want to be that guy.

I know a man at our course, here in Vacaville, that always surprises me. I've seen it out there on tour as well. These guys are birdie machines. They make five birdies on one of the nines but on the other nine they can't find a birdie or a par. I marvel at this. In fact for two years, I've tried to be this! I figured I had to be a birdie machine to make the cut.

This comment by Nick Faldo was eye opening for me. In my practice rounds I tend to make a lot of pars and a few birdies yet when I go out to tournaments I'm trying to be this birdie machine and go low, low, low. This doesn't fit my game at this point in life.

Remember my goal for 2009? What is my game? I began with a goal and with that goal answers can be formed. With out it I would have little direction to my game. At the beginning of the year, I figured if I learn my game and applied it in tournament my scores would begin to lower I'm reaching my goal

Next week Sam and I head to the first of four tournaments to end my year. This will be our first mutli-day tournament of working together. I'm looking forward to tournaments, being on the course and building with Sam out there.

Whatever you do...Go early, Stay late and enjoy God's beauty on the earth.