What are my options?

A story about four min. on a golf course

Author

Sean Melia
January 19, 2024

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for opening this email. Plenty of ways to kill time on a Friday morning on the Internet, and this is where you ended up.

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Let’s get to it.

What are my options?

Things begin to move very fast in a golfer’s mind when hunting for a golf ball during competition.

Will I find it?

If I do find it, will I be able to hit it?

If I don’t find it, what happens next?

As I wandered the chain-linked perimeter fence of the 16th hole at Presidents GC in Quincy last July, those thoughts were rifling through my mind. Cars buzzed past on Granite Avenue, but they weren’t moving as fast as my brain.

I had been, as the kids say, “Cooking” on the back nine of my Mass. Mid-Am qualifier. I had made three birdies; just a few minutes before this scene, I had a 7-iron into the par 5 16th.

Unfortunately, my 7-iron shot started moving left and with the help of gravity bounced even harder left on a steep slope and leaped into a set of trees and shrubs along a fence. My playing partner hit the same shot and his ball bounced off the tree and back into play. Mine nuzzled its way into trouble like a rabbit into a hole. It turned out that it was trouble I could not free my ball from with a club.

So I took an unplayable lie, which meant I incurred a one-shot penalty.

Like I said, things were moving fast.

I was greenside, but also "fence-side” as I found a spot to drop the ball.

After taking two lashes at the ball and moving the ball about a foot, I had played five shots and still wasn’t on the green.

This scene is one I’ve replayed in my mind plenty of times over the last seven months. It pops into my head anytime I hit a ropey hook that dives hard to the left like it’s avoiding a sniper stationed in a nearby tree.

However, it isn’t really the shot that bothers me. We all hit bad shots, and sometimes they come at really bad times. I could have hit that 7-iron on a number of holes and been just fine. I just hit it on the hole where I had the entire planet to the right to hit one hard left.

It happens.

But what I think about the most is that I didn’t game out the entirety of the situation after I hit the bad shot. My primitive mind wanted to flee. And the fastest way to do that was to put the ball down near the green and try to make a bogey.

The smart, methodical thing to do would have been to pick up my ball and go allllll the way back to the scene of the crime, and hit that 7-iron again without a fence hindering my backswing. That was an option. And it’s one I forgot about in the heat of the moment.

That’s what I think about the most.

I finished the hole with a snowman on the scorecard. I went from 2-over par to 5-over par.

Obviously, it’s impossible to say what would have happened if I went back to the original spot and hit another 7-iron. I could have hit the same shot and ended up against the fence again. I could have knocked it on the green and two-putted for a bogey.

Golf is about limiting mistakes. Most of us tend to compound our mistakes and the best rounds of our lives tend to have the least amount of mistakes, which eliminates the opportunity of compound interest on our scorecard.

The best golfers can make a mistake like I made and ask themselves, What are my options?

I think about Jordan Spieth at Royal Birkdale in 2015 taking a drop onto the driving range. He managed to make an insane bogey, and, in hindsight, it won him the Open Championship.

As the brain races through the consequences, it’s so important to take a step back and also know the options. Sure, some people know the rules so they can bend, or break, them.

I just wish I had taken a moment and looked at my playing partners and asked what my options were. Just saying it out loud would have helped me realize I didn’t have just one choice.

In the end, I made two steady pars to close out the round. I take a lot of pride in that because, golly, my heart rate was high standing on the 17th tee box. It would have been easy to do something dumb and chase a couple of birdies and make a few more big numbers and then finish the round kicking myself because I shot myself out of the qualifier on the last two holes, not on the 16th hole.

I signed for my 75 and watched the low scores roll in. 73 ended up as the number I needed. Those two blows with a wedge on the 16th green were more of the problem than the 7-iron that got me into the mess in the first place.

Sometimes you have to burn to learn.

Picture of the week: Myopia Hunt Club

13th Hole at MHC in South Hamilton, Mass.

News and Notes

  • LIV golf is back in the news for a few reasons.

    • First, Yasir Al Rumayyan is part of a rather large lawsuit that alleges he’s done some pretty bad things to a guy who also did some very bad things. It all looks very bad.

    • Second, rumors are swirling that Jon Rahm is filling out his LIV squad, which is called Legion XIII (A nod to the Roman Empire… which means we’ll be thinking even more about the Roman Empire in 2024…). U.S. Open champ Wyndham Clark, Kieran Vincent, and U. of Tennessee sophomore Caleb Surratt. I’ve heard through the grapevine that Surratt is getting $25 million. Some perspective….The first pick in the NFL draft gets a $26 million signing bonus. Surratt is a very good player, and it’s not a good sign for the PGA Tour that a top-ten amateur in the world is leaving college for LIV.

    • Wellesley, Mass. native Michael Thorbjornsen hasn’t played golf since August. The Stanford senior is playing in the Dubai Desert Classic. He’s going to make the cut. He’s going to win a major in his career.

Merch Table

I have a few items on my website for sale. Let’s be honest, you’re gonna want something to keep your head warm. Be one of the cool kids and rock a Bay State Golf winter hat. Or check out the other items here.

When I’m not golfing…

I’m gambling….(Every week, because it's now legal in Mass. I'm going to make five NFL picks and keep track of them here.)

  • Last Week: 3-3

    • Ravens (-9.5) over Texans

      • Cold weather. Texans had their fun last week at home.

    • Niners (-9.5) over Packers

      • The narrative at the end of this weekend might be that the best teams in the league are way better than the rest.

    • Lions (-6.5) over Bucs

      • See above

    • Chiefs (+2.5) over Bills

      • The Bills beat the Chiefs earlier this year. It’s really hard to beat a good team twice in a season. I would know, I watched the Pats go 18-1. I also can’t imagine Josh Allen having two clean games in a row.

      • With all that being said, I am kinda riding for the Bills as a neutral fan. Those fans deserve something good.

I’m reading…

  • This was an interesting article about the guy who runs the “Flushing it” Twitter account. He broke the news about Jon Rahm leaving for LIV. He’s a club pro who is well-connected, and now he grappling with what it means to be thrust into the world of the media when he didn’t want to be.

  • I am not a Barstool fan. However, I found this email from the CEO, Erika Ayers Badan, announcing her departure from the company pretty great. She was a big part of their growth in the last seven years.

  • Started a new book this week. All the Pretty Horses is part of the The Border Trilogy. The series has been sitting on my bookshelf for 15 years. When I cracked it open the front cover, it was signed, “Merry Christmas, Love Dad. 2008.” One of the coolest things my dad did was buy each of us a book and sign it. Always nice to come across them out of the blue.

I’m eating… 

  • Please make this Harissa and White Bean Chili. It’s super easy and really good.

  • I made an awesome peppers, onions, and sausage Caprese dish.

  • I wander down the cereal aisle every time I’m in the grocery store. Usually window shopping, but every now and then (when I’m shopping hungry), I grab something. This week I grabbed Strawberry Pop Tarts.

I’m drinking…  

  • Halfway through Dry January. It’s been water, coffee, tea, and a soda every now and then. Root beer was the choice this week.

PLUGS

New stuff:

  1. I had Nick Eliopoulos on the podcast this week. He’s caddied at Myopia and Essex. We talk about that experience, how he got into golf, qualifying for events, and he gives us his five rounds in Massachusetts. Go follow him at GimmeThat_Golf.

  2. I wrote a feature about Omar Morales, a UCLA junior, who is one of the favorites in the Latin America Amateur Championship. He’s leading after the first round. Winner gets into The Masters, U.S. Open, and Open Championship. Not bad.

Other Stuff:

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