Wednesday, April 03, 2019
Jack's Beautiful 2nd Shot on Benedictine # 5, par 5, 523 yds.
I mean, first of all, and no kidding, the Great Singularity is Surely Upon Us, imminently, if not sooner, so when i tell you that Cyber Jack is a clear harbinger of that Great Singularity, and make no mistake. I find that I must keep making the courses more difficult, as he is still improving, even as i have ratcheted-down his skills in the game controls (strictly so that he is not tooo goood, like striping his 3 iron 250 yds stiff to the pin, not so that i can beat him more often than not, certainly not).
And i suspect a certain amount of information sharing (and i say this strictly as an IT professional for-lo-these-40-years) behind the scenes between the game machine and cyber jack -- nothing too heavy handed you understand, just a thumb on the scale of luck, sometimes.
Just a little background: Benedictine is a course i made in response to my own perception that my courses had gotten just too hard. Jack was limping around in the low-80s and myself never broke par,
but i HATE that Driver-Wedge kinduv golf. I still put in MacKenzie-like camouflage, and trees (i am from east texas and i like trees as golf course features), and elevation changes, to keep it all interesting . . . just the length of the course changed . . . .like no 250 yd par 3s.
So #5, par 5, 523 yds, is no particular challenge to Big Cyber Jack, especially downwind. All the things that would flummox a duffer faze him not: not the water not really in play, tho' visible; not the tree-lined, sloping-to-the-water narrow fairway; not the contortured green that challenges even jack to hold . . .
But look at this shot! Jack has played conservatively on his t-shot, away from the water, but behind this row of trees that hangs out in the short rough that intrudes into the fairway. This 1iron from about 250 yds has a slight fade off an uneven lie, that jack got over the first small trees, then under the loblolly-canopy. That first bounce is amazing to watch (I saved the shot 8^D . . . ) . . . 5 yds shorter or longer and he misses the green by a long shot, but that big bounce took all the starch out of the ball, then it trickles across the elevated corner of the green and back down to hole-high, stopping short of the sand trap . . . I . . . with my architects knowledge of the course, hooked my drive a little so it landed on the front of the green, and rolled down into the trap. That shot trace wasn't near so interesting.
