An older man, maybe 65, asked us how our rounds were going, and collectively down a dozen golf balls or so, we replied in kind saying that we'd had better rounds.
"Well," the old hacker said, "a bad day at the golf course beats a good day at the office."
Words to live by surely, but what happens when your office is a golf course?
Tiger Woods, no stranger anymore to rock bottom, may have dug a little bit deeper on Thursday with an awful first round at the PGA Championship down in Georgia.
Woods' first round in what the PGA calls the "last chance for glory," started innocently. In fact, it started pretty darn well. Woods started on 10 and birdied his first hole. He was 3-under after his first five, and seemed to be ready to put everything behind him.
Then, the treacherous 15th hole led to a double-bogey, and things flew downhill for him. Woods finished with a 7-over 77, meaning that he played the final 11 holes at 10-over.
He's seen his share of lows in the past few years. There was the Thanksgiving night accident that set everything in motion. There was sex scandal after sex scandal. A trip to rehab. Injuries struck. There was the recent falling out with caddie Steve Williams.
And perhaps most importantly, through it all, Woods has just been plain bad on the golf course. He's never looked worse in his career, and that is perhaps the biggest takeaway from Thursday's round. Woods just looked like he was lost out there in what could be called the worst round of his entire career.
It's so bad that you could actually have the debate as to which part of his life has been destroyed the most — his personal life or his golf game?
In just the last week or so, Tiger has sent mixed signals about what he's trying to do to fix both of those. On one hand, he fired Williams, which was a head-scratching move. It's not head-scratching in the fact that Tiger is a better golfer with Williams on his bag (Woods at his best could win with Robin Williams lugging his clubs and calculating his yardage), but it's perplexing because of the attention it brought. It was another distraction for a man who, simply put, can't afford distractions from the links at this point.
Some have questioned Woods' work ethic in the past couple of weeks, and have pondered aloud whether or not Woods is fully committed to resurrecting his golf game. Nike Golf tweeted a photo of Woods on the range on Wednesday at 6:30 a.m., which would seem to prove he is working at it, but you have to consider the source as well.
At times, his swing shows signs of coming around. But even then, it can sometimes be a mirage, as pointed out quite poignantly by Golf Digest on Thursday afternoon.
It's been said for years that Woods should play more, but it's been a sentiment rooted in personal interests of the fans and media saying so. At this point, however, it may really be in his best interest. You can only spend so many hours on the range with swing coach Sean Foley. It needs to translate onto the course and in turn, better scoring. That's obviously the biggest key to getting away from shouldering burdens of shame and disappointment to hoisting trophies. In case you haven't heard, he hasn't done the latter since 2009.
Maybe, though, the biggest thing Woods needs to do is to find some sort of entertainment — any sort — in the game of golf again. It sounds cliche and childish, but seriously, at this rate, why not? Embrace the fact that you get to do something that common folk like us pay (and pay handsomely I might add) to do when we can find any sort of free time (which is usually far too sporadically). Obviously doing it for a living takes some of the romance away from it, but it's golf. As maddening as it can be, there aren't many things that beat it.
It's been his quest since he was a toddler to excel at golf, but somewhere along the line, the game had to have been fun. When expectations are as high as they have been for Woods in the past, anything short of dominance is disappointment. Maybe lowering expectations, focusing on the process versus the product will help make things enjoyable again. Something's got to change, because Woods is so far from dominant right now, it's scary.
But hey, who am I to give a golfing legend advice? And it's not exactly life-changing advice coming from someone who thinks a cold beer is just as essential to a round of golf as a bag of clubs is. But at the same time, hasn't Tiger tried everything else?
Make it fun, Tiger. Take advantage of the fact that you get to play golf for a living, and enjoy it. It beats the alternative. Trust me.
Now, how can I get out of this office and out to the golf course?
