The Kokopelli Golf Stance

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02281/drought-golf_2281138k.jpg

The seventh hole of a golf course in Lafayette, IN. Looking for their ball.

Gee, I tho’t the courses in AZ got dry sometimes . . .

British Open courses have never been pretty, at least in the eyes of Americans watching on television. U.S. viewers are spoiled by the green, manicured fairways of Augusta National and the like, as environmentally troublesome as such courses can be.

Links courses, by contrast, tilt toward the brown and yellow hues of the spectrum. Royal Lytham & St. Annes, the site of this week's British Open, doesn't even have the ocean as a backdrop. It lies a mile inland, separated from the Irish Sea, if not from the wind.

Thanks to record rainfall this spring and summer, however, Royal Lytham is lush, but not in a good way as far as players are concerned. Its rough, usually wispy this time of year, is bursting with heather, bramble and high, tussocky fescues. Tiger Woods has called it "almost unplayable." "I've never seen rough this high or thick or dense," he said. You could lose a child in the thicker patches.

I spotted crews Sunday frantically pulling up handful after handful of the thickest stuff near the greens. Without such thinning, balls bounding barely over a green might never be found less than 30 feet from a hole, or if found rendered unplayable, forcing a drop and a penalty stroke.

Even under normal circumstances, Lytham is one of the toughest and tightest British Open courses. Tournaments here are basically chess matches between the players and the bunkers—206 of them, deep and steep-faced and cleverly scattered in all of the places balls most like to roll. Despite the rains, the sand-based fairways have not slowed down much at all.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304388004577531000798573824.html?google_editors_picks=true

Michelle Wie Wins Fans at U.S. Women's Open with Form-Fitting Purple Dress (Photo) by Jonathan Gault on Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 3:08PM Comments () inShare Michelle Wie may only have finished in a tie for 35th at last weekend's U.S. Women's Open, but she still managed to make headlines for her clothing choice during Sunday's final round. Wie, 22, wore a tight purple dress for the final round at Blackwolf Run in Kohler, Wis., ensuring that she remained in the spotlight. Wie -- who is already one of the LPGA Tour's most visible figures despite never having won a major -- shot a final-round 80, which dropped her to 10-over par and left her 17 strokes behind champion Na Yeon Choi of South Korea. Check out the photo below to see what all the fuss was about.

Read more at: http://www.nesn.com/2012/07/michelle-wie-wins-fans-at-us-womens-open-with-form-fitting-purple-dress.html

As you can see, I finished 4^th . . . tied 2^nd & 3^rd in Stableford points, lost on a scorecard playoff . . .

I believe it was my failure on the 18^th that cost me 2^nd . . . sort of a Jean Van de Veld moment . . . drive was on the edge of the trees, and instead of chipping a safety out, I tried to hit a miracle shot to avoid double-bogey –twice, totally @#$@%@% Whiffed TWICE – before I just chipped out safely, afterall . . . bottomline, I got a 9, instead of a 7 . . . . that 1 point would have put me in 2^nd . . .

That hit me hard enough . . . I’d played brilliantly most of the day, several missed birdies (I view as a positive, not a negative . . . 8^) . . . ), up till that last hole . . . I didn’t realize the cost until they’d announced the winners . . . it was horribly windy, 3 club wind at times . . . but apparently my competitive colleagues have gotten better in the wind . . . the last tournament I won at GCP last year was like this. . .  

I had 38 stableford by my rough count 6 pars, 9 bogeys, 2 doubles, and the one Other, and that should ordinarily be good enough to place . . . but then the internal recriminations started, what-if, what-if, what-if . . .

Then I tho’t about the other holes . . .I’d parred the par 5s 3 out of 4 . . . but I was 8 over on the par 3s . . . including fat foozles on the short downhiller # 3 . . . I mean . . . even just being 4 over on those would have tied me for 1^st . . . I putted well in streaks, still had 4 or 5 3putts . . . just dang, dang, dang . . . .