LETTERS FROM HOME: DRIVING THROUGH MEDIOCRITY, HOPING TO FIND EXTRAORDINARY

Dear Ken,

Mediocrity, I have surmised, is a special kind of hell.

This, of course, refers to the current state of my golf game.

I won't bore you with the details but the essentials are that 10-15 strokes have adhered to my scores this year despite the best efforts of myself and a couple of teachers to unstick them.

I am refining a swing technique which has succeeded in eliminating most of my big scores, but the little scores have disappeared as well. The result is consistently mediocre golf.

I think it was more exciting to hit back-to-back shots into the lake, and I know it was more exciting to make an occasional birdie.

But we believe in good technique, don't we.

All kinds of comparisons have been made to give golfers a sense of the proper amount of tension in a good grip. Sam Snead said it was like holding a small bird. Harvey Penick advised handling the club like a surgical instrument.

One of my teachers likened it to holding hands with a girl. In my experience, the qualities of that bond depended on the girl.

And if the grip is wrong nothing else you do matters. The same is true for your posture. Then there's rhythm and tempo and swing plane to think about.

Some double-bogey days on the greens I think gardening sounds nice.

The pile of dirt promised to DC on Valentine's Day finally arrived, the tardiness due to the spring's intermittent rains and the dirt man's busy schedule. She's catching up gleefully.

The dump truck couldn't get up our driveway so the top soil sits on our front lawn. It looks as though we have a mass grave on Lorimier Street.

DC's notion of fun is to plant plants, artistically arrange borders between them and dirty her fingernails as much as possible. A psychologist might know why she must have borders. She doesn't let her applesauce touch her macaroni and cheese either.

DC may not be a master of the techniques of gardening -- a bonsai tree and a few geraniums recently paid the ultimate price -- but she loves living things and relishes disappearing into the acts of gardening.

This disappearance creates a vacuum that allows beauty to be created.

So maybe technique isn't so important after all.

"The golf swing is too complex to be controlled objectively, by what you've consciously learned," no less a golfer than Bobby Jones said.

A more experienced golfer than myself assures me that I am leaning hard into the learning curve. In a quest for more consistency, a golfer changes his swing and temporarily forfeits some of the meager aptitude he could count on. He also loses his ability to score badly, thus finding himself in a world of consistent mediocrity.

After awhile, a new trust in himself and in his abilities theoretically translates into better play.

Theoretically, like Dante, the golfer finds his way out of hell and discovers the meaning of this "Divine Comedy."

Right now, the predictability of playing mediocre golf has taken the excitement out of it.

As usual, golf is there to teach me something about life.

Expecting the experiences of the past to ordain the future robs golf and life of their art, turns unpredictable adventures into the predictable and ordinary.

Both were meant to be extraordinary.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.