THE SWING REPORT

It rained essentially the entire round. There was real talk of not playing at all. You post a net 36 and win the week.

There was more than talk. We stood in the lot for a while looking at the sky and looking at each other, and I want to be honest that if one person had said out loud "let's go home," we all would have gone home. Nobody said it. That's the only reason this round exists.

Once you're wet you're wet. That's the whole strategy. The first three holes you're trying to stay dry, you're fussing with the towel, you're putting the glove in your pocket and taking it back out. Somewhere around the fourth you accept it, and after that it's the easiest golf you'll ever play, because there is nothing left to protect.

A 46 gross is not a good score. I'd like that noted before anyone gets excited on my behalf. It was a good score today, which is a completely different statement, and today is what they hand out the point for.

Did the conditions change how you played it?

Everything was one more club and one less idea. No spin, no roll, no chance of anything clever working. You aim at the middle of the green and you accept a forty-foot putt as a reasonable outcome, and then you two-putt it because the greens were slow enough that a forty-footer was basically a lag drill.

Guys who hit it high and pretty had a miserable afternoon. Guys who hit it low and ugly had a chance. I've spent eleven years being the second kind and it finally paid.

You were talking about your ball out there. Repeatedly, according to your group.

I was, and I'll do it again right now. I played a Noodle. Soft, cheap, low compression, sold in a sleeve next to the beef jerky. And in cold rain it was the best decision anybody in this league made today.

Everybody out here plays a ball built for a swing they don't have. Tour ball, high compression, designed for a man who generates speed I have never generated in my life. Wet fifty-eight degrees, that ball feels like putting a rock. The Noodle came off the face soft and went where I looked, and I don't care what it costs or who makes it.

I'm aware of how this sounds. I've made peace with it. If liking a two-dollar golf ball is the worst thing said about me this season I'll consider that a good year.

Any downside?

You lose one and you genuinely don't care, which sounds like a benefit and is actually a discipline problem. I took a couple of swings today I wouldn't have taken with a ball I respected.

An 8 on the 2nd, a par 4, in the middle of the worst of the rain.

The rain is going to get blamed and the rain deserves maybe two of those shots. I'll own the other two. The tee shot was wet-weather bad luck. What followed was me, personally, trying to make something happen from a place where nothing was available.

There is standing water out there right now on the right side of that hole that I would describe as a water feature. It is not marked as a water feature. I played from it twice and I'd like the committee to look into it.

Eight holes of perfectly acceptable golf in genuinely bad conditions, and the one number everybody has is the 8. I understand it. It's the biggest number on the page.

You didn’t finish. Lightning?

Lightning. And I want to be clear that I did not quit — I was removed from the golf course by weather, which is a completely different entry in the record book and I'd ask that it be recorded correctly.

There was a flash off to the west that lit up the whole sky and then a count of about four before the sound got to us. That's close enough that you stop being a golfer and start being a tall man holding a metal stick in an open field.

Somebody in the group wanted to finish out. I want that man's name in the report. He was standing in a downpour arguing for two more holes with his hand on a 7-iron.

Any regret about the scorecard?

None. I was not having a good day and the sky did me a favor. I'll be telling people for years that I was on pace before the storm and there is no way to disprove that.

You watched a preseason game on your phone. During a league round. In the rain.

Steelers, preseason Week 1. It's the first football of the year. I'd been waiting seven months for it and it happened to land on a Thursday, which is not my scheduling error, it's the league's.

And I'd argue it improved my golf. It's preseason — nothing matters, nobody good is playing past the first quarter, so it's exactly the right amount of distraction. You glance down between shots and you stop thinking about your swing, which for me is the entire objective.

The phone was in a plastic bag. I'm not an amateur. I've been doing this since September.

The rest of your group had opinions.

They had opinions until about the fourth hole and then they were all standing around the cart in the rain watching a third-string quarterback. Every one of them. I'd like that in the report next to their complaints.

You withdrew before the round. How are you doing?

Bronchitis. The kind where you sound worse than you feel, and I feel bad, so you can do that math. I made it as far as the parking lot, which in hindsight was ambitious.

Standing there in fifty-eight degrees and steady rain with a chest full of gravel, I had a rare moment of clarity about whether nine holes of Thursday golf was worth a week in bed. First good decision I've made all season.

I'm told the round was miserable, which is the only thing keeping me warm.