Sunday, February 04, 2007

85 degrees in Thousand Oaks on Super Bowl Sunday - Feb. 4, 2007

We had an 11:13AM tee time this morning at Sunset Hills Country Club, and when we pulled up into the parking lot, our hearts sank...

The place was CRAWLING with people...they were everywhere!!! Carts were strewn all over the parking lot, people were pushing or dragging carts everywhere, we had to do the body-slalom to find a parking spot, and when we DID, it was in the "dent zone", which is the front row of parking spaces facing the right side of the 9th green.

Fortunately, we learned that the crowd was actually LEAVING, not showing up, and we jetted around all 18 holes in 3 hours 45 mins...that's right, we were on our way home to watch the Super Bowl by 3:05!

Today's round was characterized by drives that were either long and laser-straight, or shortish, snap-hooky topspins, punctuated by some mutant awfulness on #4 where I basically popped up a drive into someones backyard EXTREMELY short right...the last time I did THAT was four years ago on the first tee at Pebble Beach, where I put THREE consecutive 7 woods onto the tile roofs on the condos immediately adjacent to #1, and immediately began praying that aliens would come down from the sky in their spaceship and spirit me away, never to be seen again...

I also had the opportunity to hit my new Callaway 4H "Heavenwood" in a real-round situation...ME LIKEY!!! The little darlin' has a solid feel to it, the (stock) grip feels great, and the ball just rockets off the face - it's become my new best friend from 170 yards out...I botched my tee-shot off #10 (another corkscrewed/"handsy" drive) and had a 160 yard shot into the green, into a stiff headwind...grabbed the ol' 4H and caught it right on the sweet spot....the ball arced ever so gracefully into the crystal blue sky, and floated gently back to Earth....20 yards past the GREEN!!! So much for the 4H being a direct replacement for the 4 iron...oh well, the shot FELT great, at least...I then proceeded to chunk three wedge shots because I chickened out and didn't commit to the shot because the green slopes severely away from where the ball came to rest. (I didn't want to hit it too hard, so I backed off of it, made it WORSE by lifting my friggin' head on the FIRST pathetic attempt, and proceeded to chuck three quick ones in a row, resulting in a total elapsed advancement of the ball of approximately twelve feet....nice....) Needless to say, I took a bloody snowman for the hole, once the madness stopped and I celebrated my SHORT game prowess by matching it with three PUTTS just for good measure...GAAK!

Still smarting from dancing with Mr. Frosty on the first hole of the back nine, I went to the 11th, a long, downhill par 5 of about 450 yards with a renewed sense of purpose...OK, I went with a case of the f-it's, truth be told...

Drew my trusty Callaway ERC Fusion 10degree driver, and proceeded to swing slowly, smoothly and just KNOCKED the cover off the ball...DEAD straight down the middle of the fairway, over the lip of the fairway, and down DEEP into the run-out valley down below, leaving me with ANOTHER 170 yard shot into the green. Grabbed the 4H again, and proceeded to hit ANOTHER nice shot into the green that hit the green, and hopped into the rough behind the green. Took out the 58deg. attack wedge and KEPT MY HEAD down and took a quarter swing at a Big Bertha golf ball that landed on the green, checked up and stopped about 2 feet from the pin. Lined it up and dropped it dead-center for a BIRDIE...MAN, that felt GOOD!!!

Unfortunately, there were a couple more episodes of head-lifting and chunked short wedges that caused the score today to balloon to a 96, or 24 over par...ugh

BUT - did I tell you that it was 85 degrees out on the course today???? WHO GIVES a rats-hooey what the score was - it was BEEYOOOTIFUL out there today!!! Everyone was wearing shorts out on the course, and the first sunburns of 2007 were duly recorded today - comments were flying about early Spring Fever cases, and it was just a phenomenal day on the course...

I came back home to watch the Super Bowl, and during Prince's halftime extravaganza (how PERFECT was his rendition of "Purple Rain" during a driving rain - you can't SCRIPT that any better!), I ran upstairs to get the Check-Go, and run the test that Rich at EatGolf.com
proposed. I managed to salvage two balls from the sleeve of Callaway Big Bertha golf balls, and dropped 'em into the Check-Go...what do you know, they aligned the SAME way (after trees, cart paths, etc) that they did before (maybe off by an eighth of an inch, but basically the same!).

By the way, same as before, I noticed that the balls that ended up in the fairway frequently ended up with the alignment line being on the top of the ball, leading me to hypothesize that there IS something to the Check-Go, and I plan to keep on using it.

Oh, by the way, congratulations to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts who basically dominated today's Super Bowl. After a slow start, and a scare from that kick-return specialist guy on the Bears, Peyton and the Boys basically manhandled the Bears for most of the game, and if you blink twice, you'll miss the Rex Grossman highlight reel...Ol' Rex DIDN'T have the best game of his life tonight, but then again, the persistent rain wasn't the greatest for a passing game anyways....who woulda thought that this would turn into 'The Rain-X Super Bowl'?

The Super Bowl commercials were pretty tame compared to recent years, and I thought the Coke commercial that was a turnaround on the videogame was pretty clever, and was one of the few commercials that actually sent a POSITIVE message - good show, Coke!

Also, there weren't as many "gross-out" commercials, and even the GoDaddy ads were relatively tame...but you can tell that the ones at the GoDaddy.com website will be a bit more, um, SPICY....OK, I just checked it out after grabbing that link, and I gotta tell ya - Candice Michelle just DOES NOT do it for me; Danica Patrick - yep, the blonde in the high heels sitting down and crossing her legs, CHECK....Candice - BLECHHH, but that's just me...

Snark sighting...


Here's my top five commercials, in reverse order:
5) The Bud Light "Hitcher" ad where the guy with the axe gets nervous about the next hitcher carrying a chain saw...
4) The GM machine dream-sequence ad, where the forlorn little welder machine has an "It's a Wonderful Life" experience after he messes up on the line, and considers his options...
3) The Coke ad that parodied the videogame (GTA San Andreas??? I dunno - I don't play those things) but instead of killing/hurting everyone, he does his good deed for the day for each instead...inspirational without being smarmy, and shocking because it cuts against the popular culture of being negative and edgy for edginess' sake....
2) The Budweiser ad where the white dog turns his series of misfortunes into glory as part of the Budweiser Clydesdale team....subtly inspirational....
1) The Nationwide ad featuring Kevin Federline, where he dreams about his recent success as a glitzy rapper at his fast-food job...clever, and the only commercial that made me laugh out loud, probably because it cuts so close to reality...the quick-cut to their tagline "Life comes at you fast" was the perfect punchline to the setup that took place during the rap sequences...witty, and subtly funny. (Probably an element of TRUTH, too!!!)

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