My golf turns 35 and a signature gesture of a big winner

Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this weekend 9. Think of it as a place to warm up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We will have thoughts. We will have advice. We will have tweets. But only nine in all, though sometimes perhaps more and sometimes perhaps less. But who am I? The following paragraphs tell some of the story. It can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

My golf game turns 35 on Sunday.

For my first round of the year, my brother-in-law and I are playing a muni in Hawaii, which on its website has a reef, beach and water in the background, which is a far, far cry from a course in northern Illinois where, in 1991, I played my first round. My father and I played with another father and son, and it was also my father’s first round of golf. He was a butcher, and a butcher’s days went like this: 12 hours a day, eat, drink an obscene amount of Joe, smoke a pack of Marb red, then lay down; and not golf. It was shown. Our combined score was 300, give or take.

We also bogeyed the first hole.

We rode in a cart, and the instruction was as follows: Drive by your ball, hit, drive again. And we did it.

All the way until we parked in the green lot.

This is memory no. 1 — and lesson no. 1 — out of 35 years of golf.

Here are eight more.

Memory no. 2: Casual playing partners, plural. I’m bending my rules a bit here and making more than one, because I’m sure I could make a list of just nine people I’ve randomly paired up with and not forgotten. Let’s see. It’s the two college-aged guys who, in the summer of ’93, watched me break 50 for nine holes for the first time, then offered to buy me a beer. There’s an Aussie that my friend and I played with in Vegas who told us how he only flew private, smoked only Cuban cigars, and knew where the real fun was in Sin City, and we’ll leave it at that. There’s the PGA Tour champion golfer who scored an easy round while his wife sat in the cart and read a book. And so on. Honestly, that’s one of my favorite parts of the game – the people you meet. Except…

Memory no. 3: The furthest I ever hit was 175 yards, though what it hit is open to debate. On the 10th hole at Greenfield Park just outside of Milwaukee, I hit my drive into the tree on the right, moved it a little out of bounds, then rocketed it toward the bunker in front of the green, only for it to miss and roll into the hole. Eagle! And the eagles of that time would be reported in the paper if your group vouched for it. My friend would. But the guy we were dating? “I saw you drop a point there,” he said, “so no.”

Memory no. 4: Once I got to “the zone”. Beforehand, I had played four straight days on a friend’s ride and got to the point where I was purposefully swinging as hard as I could – and still found fairways and greens. 76 – with a free kick that I He did count that day – it remains my lowest score. But I’ve never been back to the area. In the years since, I’ve tried to duplicate the lead—and once tore a muscle in my lower back due to a combination of overuse and lack of stretching.

Memory no. 5: I almost got into a fight. I wrote about it herebut the short version goes like this: I hit a shot farther than usual, and the group in front of me was already hot. (The reason for the latter is understandable – a person in the group behind us had accidentally shot from a street directly into the group in front of us. However, these things happen on Van Cortlandt in the Bronx, where the congestion is equal to what you’d find walking past GW.) Anyway, the fight almost started after a person shot me in the wood and shot me back. I screamed. He screamed. We got closer. But that was about it. Stupid. Very, very stupid. (But all of this led to asking readers a few years ago to message me outbursts of a similar kind—and I still occasionally get emails about it today.)

Memory no. 6: While playing in a high school game, my opponent once asked me if I played baseball too. I said I did and continued to play – and it took me a few holes to realize that he didn’t care about my other hobbies so much as he was commenting on my swing. That stuck with me for the rest of the round – and for the next 30 years. A good one.

Memory no. 7: For a little over six years now, I’ve been working on a golf website, and one of the questions I get is how it has helped my game. Shouldn’t it? To begin the answer, an editor here had warned me of what was to come: All those tips and tricks you read and write about will be harder to escape than at the US Open. My results bear this out. Last year, I shot another 76. And 110. That round, I was just about to read something about food delivery, and there you go.

Memory no. 8: Somewhere in a bird’s nest at Spring Lake Golf Course in Omaha, Neb., sits a wedding ring. Or at least that’s the theory. During a round there about a decade ago, my wife took the ring off, put it in the cart and we never saw it again. The club guy told us it wasn’t the first time he heard something like this happen.

Memory no. 9: Over the past couple of months, I’ve been re-reading some of them Dr. Bob Rotella books ahead of an upcoming story, and this line in “Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect” has been resonating with me lately: No matter what happens with each shot you hit, accept it. Acceptance is the last step in a healthy routine. I like this. I think of golf balls that end up in the divot and still play. But I also wonder what it says about me that I can honestly say I’ve never hit a ball out of a divot, and I think you know why.

Extra! Best memory? My grandson, Mason, was told he will be playing golf in college. Best course I’ve ever played? Considering all that a course has to offer, it’s Lawsonia Links. The most scenic course at sunset? Chambers Bay. The most scenic course in the fall? Green Mountain National in Vermont. Of course I played more? I think it’s a tie between a pair of munis: Whitnall Park outside of Milwaukee and Elmwood Park in Omaha. Most interesting course I’ve played? Augusta Wind in Nebraska. I was the only player on the pitch – on Saturday.

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the 9th weekend.

2. Have a memory to share too? Please email me at nick.piastowski@golf.com.

A throwback to the week that was

3. In a few weeks, at The Players Championship, it’s thought we’ll learn something clearer about the upcoming PGA Tour schedule, and I’ve been thinking a bit about a Tiger Woods quote from last week at the Genesis Invitational. Woods, head of the Tour’s new Future of Competition Committee, had this to say about the work being done:

“I think it’s trying to serve literally everybody, from the player side, from our media partners, from all of our title sponsors, from local communities or even changing locations and going to bigger markets.”

However, it will be interesting to see if one is best served. To this end, one of the country’s leading sports economists he told me recently that the changes don’t necessarily have to be made for the golf fan, as they will keep coming back regardless. It’s the non-fans you grow up with, and the non-fans have already decided they don’t necessarily care about the shape of the actual product.

A submission for the coming weeks

4. This story herewritten by Money in sportsshould tell you something about the direction of LIV Golf. He says the league recently received a $266.6 million capital injection.

A guide tip for your weekend

5. I thought of the video below it was good. In it, Bryson DeChambeau was asked for his best advice for amateurs playing a practice round.

His response? Shuffle where you hit.

“If an amateur golfer is preparing for their club championship,” DeChambeau said, “I would say the best thing to do is not always play from the fairway. Go hit from the dirt. Go hit from the bunkers. Go hit around the green. You see that all the time with the pros.

“One thing amateurs don’t do is hit the rough on the golf course in their practice rounds.”

Five things (!) that interest me

6. I thought of the video below it was interesting. Produced by the PGA Tour, it features Ben Griffin and Ryan Gerard trying to name the top 100 players from last year’s points race.

7. I have thought of this story too herewritten by Palm Beach Post’s James Coleman, that was interesting. Coleman is a 12-handicap, and he showed how he played at PGA National, host of the Cognizant Classic, this week’s PGA Tour stop.

8. And I thought of this story herewritten by Today’s player Ben Parsons, that was interesting. It describes how an 18-hole course will be cut down to nine holes to make way for a football team’s practice field.

9. I thought of this story here it was also interesting. Written by Adam Stanley for pga.com, he describes how a PGA member coached Norway’s Olympic curling team.

10. Let’s make 10 items! I have thought of this story too here it was interesting. Written by Matt de Neef for escapecollective.com, he describes how pro cyclists are turning to golf.

What golf is on TV this weekend?

11. Let’s make 11 articles! Here’s a roundup of golf on TV this weekend:

– Friday

9:30 p.m. (Thursday) – 2:30 a.m. ET: HSBC Women’s World Championship second round, Golf Channel

5:30-10:30 ET: Investec South African Open Second Round, Golf Channel

14:00-18:00 ET: Second Round Cognizant Classic, Golf Channel

– Saturday

9:30pm (Friday) – 2:30am ET: HSBC Women’s World Championship third round, Golf Channel

5:30 a.m. – 10 a.m. ET: Investec South African Open Third Round, Golf Channel

13:00-15:00 ET: Cognizant Classic Third Round, Golf Channel

3pm-6pm ET: Cognizant Classic Third Round, NBC

– Sunday

9:30 p.m. (Friday) – 2:30 a.m. ET: HSBC Women’s World Championship Final Round, Golf Channel

4:30-9:30 ET: Investec South African Open Final Round, Golf Channel

1:00 PM-3:00 PM ET: Final Round of the Cognizant Classic, Golf Channel

3:00-6:00 PM ET: Cognizant Classic Final Round, NBC

Good news for your weekend

12. Let’s make a dozen articles!

The video belowfeaturing Lucas Glover, should make your weekend.