Last week Gus and I committed golf suicide. As Wednesday is my only guaranteed golf day I pretty much play any Wednesday there are courses open and this time of year the only real threats are torrential rain, lightning or, worst of all, my babysitter getting sick. Only two of the three happened last week so we were off to Sable Oaks in the morning with Spring Meadows in the afternoon.

Sable Oaks is the course that pretty much kick-started the whole golf boom in Southern Maine back in 1988. Its opening paved the way for other public access courses with private club conditions and many of us cut our teeth there. There's no need for the big dog but you need a couple extra sleeves of balls there and the mentality of a closer. You simply can't let getting shelled get to you because it's inevitable. I would put holes 12-15 (The Gauntlet) against any four hole stretch in the state and the other holes aren't much easier. The fact that they're on the back looms in your mind during the front when there are legitimate birdie holes so you have to dig in and grind from the opening tee shot. Even though the course is missing about 3000 trees from when it opened it's tight off the tees and brutal if you miss greens. I can't blame the conditions as they were as good as I've seen there in years and the greens were even slightly slower. It didn't much matter and I failed to break 90 for the first time this year. It's not a good thing when you have as many penalty strokes as fairways hit or greens in regulation. I'm already planning a return. Sucker!

The afternoon round was good and bad. It poured. But, the course was pretty open (actually, we were the only ones on it). A couple days before I decided to dig through my 70 plus rounds at Spring Meadows going back three years to find out which holes were hurting me and where. I figured if I knew which holes I was three-jacking and which holes I was missing fairways and greens would be a good thing. I figured wrong. It was just depressing. One of the only bright spots was that I had never three-putted #3. Surprise - I did just that last week. Maybe it was the rain or maybe it was walking 36 holes but more likely it was knowing there was only one good stat that did me in. Just a real kick in the teeth and I guess deep down that's what I wanted. The golf gods never want you to figure things out so maybe it's better not to know.

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