Paper Tiger by Tom Coyne

Author:Tom Coyne [Coyne, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2006-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

“Jesus, you shoulda seen him. Strangers in the pub were coming up to him, asking if he was all right. He looked like somebody stole all his Christmas presents.”

It is unusual to see someone so pleased at telling a story about someone being so depressed. Paddy relays the events of the previous day to his wife as I drive him to the airport, happy for the visitor but not crazy about this morning’s headache.

“You’ve improved, Coinage. No doubt about that,” Paddy tells me with a pat on the back as I pull his golf bag out of the trunk. “You’re a lot more serious about your game, I can tell. You are on the right track. But just remember, no matter how good you get, you can’t beat old Paddy boy.”

The weekend was a step back. But maybe it was also a necessary break, perhaps a little bit of a wake-up call. If I can’t beat my old golf pro from home who hadn’t picked up a club in four months, how was I going to fare come October? But I can’t control next October, all I can control is today. All I can do is go out and earn my .036.

Up until our Saturday fun, I had been well outpacing 1/28th of a stroke a day. I keep every stat from every round of golf on my computer. Doc gave me a program called Aviary Golf Software, and may I wholeheartedly recommend it for the golfhead in your life—the program tracks your scores, hole by hole, and spits out your stats like you’re a real tour pro. Putts, saves, driving distance—but most valuably, it shows you which holes you score best on, which clubs off the tee yield the most birdies, which clubs are most likely to hit the fairway and, if they don’t, what are the percentages that they will miss right or miss left. It takes some time to input your data, but I’ve gotten pretty slick with it—and as most golfers can recall the four-iron they hit seven years ago on the sixth tee of their home course, recalling club selection and results after a round is easier than it sounds. If a computer can help me get better, if it can help me pick the right club off the tee, if it can help me put the driver back when I don’t need it, or tell me which club has the best chance of ending up on the other side of those white stakes—it’s nerdy and a little neurotic, but you can’t build confidence if you don’t trust your numbers.

Judging by Aviary, my fairways, greens, putts/round, birdies/ round have all improved, some quite dramatically—my fairways and greens are only one or two below the tour average. And on the course, it has shown. I’ve gotten it to three-under on more than one occasion, I’ve made four birdies on one side (capped off with a quadruple bogey eight). My birdies and stats and yardages are all up, but I can’t take a spreadsheet to the golf course and ask it to hit the ball.

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