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It’s been more than a month than we’ve left Alaska and it’s been a whirlwind tour of towns and cities in the Northwest that we hope to land in.

Also, for some reason, all this moving around and uncertainty has been good for my golf game. I’ve played twice since moving south and had relatively good rounds both times out.

On an easier old city course in Portland, I shot an 82 that could have easily been lower. And then at the Oregon coast on a tougher course that I had never played, I shot an 86, even with a triple and two double bogeys.

The first round in Portland I hit the first five greens in regulation despite not swinging a club in more than a month, but couldn’t put. I hit nearly every fairway and only three putted once on each nine. I had two bad holes - I hit a drive out of bounds on the front and hit it in the water on the second nine - but other than that played solidly.

In fact, going into the 17th hole, I had about a 15 footer for birdie. And if I would have made that and a par on 18 I would have broken 80!

Instead, I hit the birdie putt too far past and lipped out the return shot, then chunked my second shot on 18 to finish bogey, bogey.

I played Gearhart in Seaside, Oregon a few days later and played a completely different game. I hit the ball poorly off the tee, but putted really well and chipped close to the hole all day. Most of my poor shots had a lot to do with lack of local knowledge. I hit a lot of pure irons, for instance, that found a hidden bunker, or flew throught the fairway. On 18, I hit a perfect nine-iron into the green only to see it hit a mound and bounce out of bounds.

I didn’t three putt all day, which was a first for the year and really scrambled well.

Breaking 80 is just around the corner. I can feel it.

I played in a scramble tournament and then stayed for another 18 on Saturday in Kenai, just to give the tough old course a final farewell - since I’m moving to the lower 48 in two weeks and likely won’t be back with my clubs any time soon.

It was a good time for the most part, despite horrible course conditions and pathetic putting - still - on my part all day long. Here is what the course looked like…. And that’s the middle of the fairway on 18!

Anyway, the fairways were plugged and the greens were inconsistent at best, but that really can’t explain why I scored as poorly as I did. As a team, we finished just 1-under (the winning team was 8-under) and then I went to shoot a 54-54, 108 on my next 18, the worst score I’ve had all year long, and 15 strokes worse than I scored in a round in July. The course certainly played tough on Saturday, it has a 72.7 rating with a 139 slope to begin with. But there’s really no excuse for some of the scores I put up, especially with how well I actually hit the ball. I hit about 4 really bad shots all day, and they just happened to end up trickling OB or getting lost in the dense vegetation just off the fairway, so there’s about eight strokes. Putting killed me though. Again, I didn’t hit a put in that was longer than 5 feet. I’d either read too much break and hit it where I was aiming or aim at the cup and pull it.

It got so frustrating at about the 12th hole, that I decided to try a little technique I read about somewhere to keep my mind off of the results and focus on the process. From hole 13 on, all I worried about was my pre-shot routine - two full practice swings, visualize the shot, and fire - while paying attention or observing  how close my real shot matched up with my practice shots.

It took a while to find the groove with this method, and it didn’t help on the greens at all (I think I have some mechanical hitch) but by the end of the round, I started playing decent golf again.

On the 16th - a 500 yard par-5, I hit a straight drive and a mediocre 3-wood just left of the green, pitched up and two-putted for a routine par.

On the 17th - a longish uphill par 4 - I hit a great drive about 285, a nine-iron to 20 feet and three putted for a bogey.

On the 18th - a goofy sharp dogleg right par four - I hit a pair of six irons to 25 feet, then two-putted for par.

I played the final three holes in one over with a three putt, and the goofy thing about it was I didn’t actually realize I had played them so well until the next morning when I looked at my scorecard. All I remembered after the round was that I had stuck with my routine pretty well at the end, but there was no recollection of how I actually scored. Weird.

Anyway, I think it was easier to forget about the score when it was a forgettable score to begin with. I can’t wait to see how that method works when I’m scoring well.

In about two weeks I’ll be in Portland, Ore playing golf on some non-Alaskan golf courses. I can’t wait.

Most golfers, when asked, say they are pretty good putters. They say they need to work on their irons more or need to hit the ball farther to improve. Maybe some will say they need to work on pitching and chipping. But most will tell you, and believe themselves, that they have a decent game on the greens.

After yesterday’s round, I don’t carry any such illusions.

I played in the weekly men’s league at the local par-3 in town after not playing for a couple of weeks while working on our move. From the first tee on I knew it was going to be a special day. My swing felt great, smooth and compact, and the ball was flying straight. It was one of those days when you feel like you are swinging in slow motion, where you aren’t thinking about anything, when you are in some sort of zone. It felt great.

I hit seven of the first nine greens on the front and five on the back, which is pretty decent there since the greens are about the size of a table top and none of them are flat. It was probably my best ball-striking round there of the year.

So did I shoot a good score? Hell no!

I missed every putt longer than three feet. Every single putt. It was the worst putting round of the year by far. I three-putted three or four times. I missed birdie putt after birdie putt. In a word, my putting was atrocious.

If my day on the links yesterday was a mathematical equation it would look like this:

(GIR + 3Putt) X 18 = maddening golf.

That, my friends, is the power of preposterously poor putting.

At a break between piling up our goods for the moving sale and packing up boxes with stuff we’ll keep, my wife and I watched Phelps’ interview with Costas last night. To say it was inspirational is an understatement. All the work, all the time commitment. And to see someone sit on a couch and look and sound completely satisfied (or at least mostly) was refreshing.

He seems like a good kid.

So what does this have to do with golf, you ask?

Quite a bit, really. I think humans are attracted to the game because they are, well, human. That’s also why we can’t get enough of watching amazing athletic feats on TV. During the same night of Olympic coverage,  we watched a Brazilian gymnast nearly break down and cry after sitting down during his final run in the floor competition. That day we watched a marathoner wince in pain and favoring a bad leg while rounding the last corner to finish a race.

For every story of overcoming great odds and competing at the highest level, there are stories of struggle and heartache. Perhaps the olympics simply brings out the best and worst of the human condition. So does a golf course.

As I continue my quest to get into a qualifier for the 2010 U.S. Open, I’m reminded why we love sports and why I love golf. It’s the fallibility of our species lurking just around the corner combined with the ability and potential to accomplish amazing feats.

Congratulations to Micheal and to all of us striving to do something spectacular.

I’ve been busy the past few days getting the house organized for the upcoming move and transferring the old wordpress blog into this new site.

We’ve been selling all our earthly possessions as much as we can and cleaning up the joint in preperation of the BIG move. When we moved up to Alaska from Oregon in 1999, we had a few clothes, some cd’s and a few odds and ends packed into an old Toyota Corolla affectionately named “Sally.”

The goal is to return to the lower 48 with about as much.

Times have changed for sure as this little kid and big black dog keep following us around no matter where we go. The CD’s have all been converted to Itunes and “Sally” has morphed into a Toyota Tacoma with about 100K fewer miles on it.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the sense of adventure that we had back then as we drove off into the unknown. I was joking with my former boss the other day about the decision to pack up and high-tail it out of here.

“Well,” I said. “The economy is bad and gas prices are through the roof.”

“I just figured it was a perfect time to quit my job and go on a road trip.”

There is some clarity of thought in all this madness, however. We have a little money in the bank after selling a house and really don’t have to find that perfect place to live until our son gets a couple years older.

Then, of course, there is golf.

It became pretty apparent early on in this venture that I wouldn’t be able to reach my goal of entering a U.S. Open qualifier in a couple years by playing the game only three months a year. Alaska is a great state full of amazing views and undless outdoor opportunities - except for golf.

The game here is limited by climate, weather, proximity to courses and so on. What I need if I am going to cut my 16.2 handicap down to 1.4 (or lower) is steady, even improvement over a long period of time.

It looks like I could enter a qualifier if I cut about one stroke off my handicap each month over the next 15 months. From bogey golfer in August ‘08 to scratch golfer in November 2010? Sound crazy? Well it’s been done. And it’s been done in less time. Check out Scratch to Scratch over in the blogroll section. John, you are (one of) my inspirations.

It’s been a while, but we’ve been busy selling all of our earthly possesions and preparing for the move. So I haven’t had much time for golf. But that’s going to change today - I’m playing for the first time in weeks.

The weather here in Alaska has been absolutely MISERABLE for golf this summer. We’ve had more rain and cold so far in June and July than in the last 20 years. Even old-timers are bitching about our lack of summer. To give you an idea about how bad it is, according to weather.com the temperature in Homer in July topped 60 degrees just four times - including today, with the high for the month, a balmy 63.

Even more reason to get out of Dodge. The plan in August is to get everything sold, and I do mean everything, and then head down south in early September. It’s going to be amazing to be able to take some time off, although I can’t seem to find a way to do NOTHING, like I probably should be doing.

To that end, I’m starting another blog, primitivegolf.wordpress.com, which will lead itself to a book I’m working on. Expect to see it soon.

Back to golf - I’m playing an 18-hole event at our little par-3 course in town, and I’m going to try an experiment. First nine holes, try my absolute hardest to concentrate on every shot. Really grind it out. On the back, just let it flow and not worry about outcome.

Let’s see what happens.

A new chapter in this golf quest of mine has begun over the last couple of weeks - although very little of it has had anything to do with golf.

The decision to leave Alaska after this summer has been made official, meaning I will be gainfully unemployed in about three days and my wife’s last day is sometime in late August. It has been a long-time in the works as we’ve batted the idea around for about three years. But we’re finally in a place financially to be able to do it now, and with our son as young as he is, we figured it was a perfect time to make a change.

Also, with the economy the way it is and gas prices as high as they are, we thought it was the perfect time to quit our jobs and go on a road trip! We plan on heading south sometime in late August to move closer to our pacific northwest relatives and start looking for the next best place to land.

It’s an exciting, and scary, time for us on many levels as we’ll have the opportunity to take an extended vacation this fall and visit some friends we haven’t seen in quite a while.

As far as golf goes, it’s obviously taking a bit of a backseat right now as we sort out new jobs, a new place to live and find a new community. Thankfully the places we are most interested in have great golf courses nearby, so in the long-term it’s going to be great for my game. I’ve been given the green light to play a bit during our road trip as well. I’ll keep this blog updated with the courses I play.

Speaking of golf, my family was in town last week and I took my father up the road to the nearest 18-hole course in Kenai for a fun round with a buddy.

Tee to green, I had my best game of the year. Putting was an entirely different story.

Here are some crazy stats from the front nine. I hit six of seven fairways. Five of nine greens and had no penalty strokes. I also had 20 putts and shot a 45!

It’s hard to paint a picture with words about what the greens were like. For starters, they were not made of grass. Some of the tee boxes looked better than the greens. They were impossibly slow because they had so much sand on them that your ball got covered in sand on its way to the hole. It was also raining, which didn’t help and the ball was hoping four inches sideways on some putts due to grass patches here or there.  I only three-putted twice, but anything outside of three feet was impossible to hole. It goes to show how important putting is to scoring.

There is an old article on Golf Digest about breaking 80 that makes the case that GIR and putts are the two biggest factors for scoring. I have to say I agree, and according to the chart, if I would have had a normal putting round and repeated my front nine performance tee-to-green, I could (and should) have shot in the mid-70s! Instead, I ended up shooting a 93. Hit only one green on the back and finished with 37 putts.

I was actually scoring better on holes where I slightly missed the green, chipped up within three feet and hit my puts. I did that twice on the back.

All that being said, it was a good day. We saw some brown bear tracks in one of the bunkers, something I don’t know if I’ll see again. And my dad and I got to play likely our last Alaska golf round.

And who knows, the next time we play, maybe it’ll be on a course with grass on the greens.

About 50 of us diehards played in a solstice tournament Saturday to celebrate the official start of summer. The great thing about golf in Alaska is that you can play at all hours. We didn’t start the 18-hole scramble until 7 p.m. and didn’t get done until about 12:30 a.m.

Our team finished tied for fourth at even par, just one shot out of the money, but I played one of my better rounds in a while and had a great time.

It’s hard to determine what your actual score would be in a scramble format, but I know I contributed three solo birdies and chipped in for a fourth on a partners tee shot. If I would have been playing a stroke play event at that course, those three birdies would have set a personal record!

The first birdie was the most dramatic. I hit my 7-iron tee shot a little fat, right in the front of the green just beyond the fringe. The chip shot was fairly easy, uphill, 30 feet, with a slight break. All I did was pick a spot about halfway to the cup and try to hit it. The ball came out perfect, took one bounce and then started tracking right at the pin. It had a little too much speed though and hit the pin and bounced out on the lip. It hung there for a while - kinda like Tiger’s famous shot at the 16th at the Masters - then dropped. The cheers from my group were classic - It’s got a chance…. oh no… oh yes! Fun and High-5s all around. I hadn’t holed a chip in about a year, I told them.

The next birdie came about five holes later on a super-short short hole. I hit a perfect flop wedge to four feet and drained the slight left-to-righter.

I contributed to a birdie on the next hole, playing my partner’s shot, I chipped it in again from about 20 feet out. Shaking my head, I told my partners I hadn’t holed a chip in at least six holes. They thought that was pretty funny, albeit a cocky golf statement. But if you can’t enjoy the good shots….

My final birdie of the night came on another short hole. I hit another perfect wedge to about 5 feet and hit the putt. Nothing special, just a good, solid 2.

Now granted, it seems easier to score when you are playing in a scramble, as you have backup on almost all of your shots. But on the three birdies, I made it a point to hit my second shots first so as not to get a read by watching the other player’s shots. I really wanted those birdies and got them. More and more, it seems, aspects of my game are getting better relatively quickly. I feel I’m making small break-throughs and getting glimpses of a solid game sometime in the near future. All it takes is time.

On another note, I think I learned something about my swing by watching Stewart Cink win the tournament yesterday. They did one of those swing vision slo-mo cameras of his swing and I noted some similarities with my move. For starters, we’re both about the same height and weight. Also, I’ve noticed in my natural swing that my clubshaft angle is steeper coming into the ball than it is at address. I’ve wondered if it was a problem that would need attention. But watching Cink, I noticed he did the same thing, in fact it was pointed out by the commentator. He also said his bad misses we’re big hooks (just like me) and when he is playing well he hits nice high fades with just about all of his clubs (again, just like me).

Of course, he is an incredible pga player that can hit the ball a mile on a string and I’m a weekend hacker. But, if anything, it shows me, I think that my swing, with a little tweaking here or there, is sound enough to get my handicap down where I want it to be. It’s all positive news, I think. And it will allow me to focus more on my short game, which seems to be getting better quickly.

I got into contention at yesterday’s par-3 men’s club, missing the top spot by one stroke, for the first time in two years. And I really owe it all to  two things.

First off - I’ve begun to learn about MY swing, instead of trying to match it with those I see in magazines or on tv. The more I’ve learned, the more repeatable it has become. As a fairly tall golfer, 6′3″, my natural ball flight has tended to be a slight fade, which I’ve started to realize can be a great go-to shot under pressure. I can still hit a draw when I need to, but it’s harder for me to control how much it draws on any given shot. All day yesterday I aimed left of the pin and faded it back to the middle. On my misses, it finished in the right fringe. The main problem I had yesterday was hitting my wedges with too much spin. I spun the ball off the small green four times in 18 holes.

Second - I chipped the ball well for the first time this year. Once I figured out how much my ball was going to roll on the still furry and bumby greens at our local course, I started hitting my chips and pitches stiff. I got up and down more than half the time, which on the course we play IS the difference in score.

I still had two three-putts - one from a mental lapse in concentration and the other from a horrible bounce on an insanely tricky green.

All in all I was happy with how I played. I shot a 31 on the front and 33 on the back of the par 27 course for a 64. That just one week after shooting 68.

One of the first questions Fred Shoemaker asks his readers in his book Extraordinary Golf is why they play golf. It seems like an easy question to answer, until you honestly look at yourself and your game.

Saturday, I think I figured out exactly why I play. I went up the road to Kenai to play 18 with a golfing buddy, hoping to shoot better than I did last month when we played together. That day, I shot 101 on the tight and tough course. It’s rated 72.7 from the whites with a slope of 139 despite being only 6413 yards long.

On Saturday, I shot 94.

But the seven shot difference in my score isn’t the reason I play golf, I’ve decided. In fact, score doesn’t have much to do with it at all.

Sure, lower scores are better than higher scores. But I know I don’t play enough right now to shoot low, especially on a tough course that has had a rough winter and has greens that are in pretty miserable shape.

No. I play golf for those times during a round where you hit shots just like you planned them in your head. Where you imagine the future, and then make it a reality, in the present. It happened a couple of time on Saturday. I hit a 285 yard drive uphill on number 6, for instance, that split the fairway, leaving me a wedge in, and followed it up with a 250 hybrid on the next hole.

But it was a cut iron earlier in the day that I’ll always remember.

I had driven the ball in the right rough about 165 yard to the green on the uphill 425 yard par 4. And when I got to the ball, realized that I had a tree between me and the hole. The idea in my head was to cut the shot left of the tree and chase it up, and I pictured the shot flying high and stopping quickly at the pin.

I opened my clubface, pointing it to the target, and opened my stance left of the tree, then just swung along my feet line. The ball started right on line, left of the green and then slowly curved right just like it did in my mind. I sat there watching the ball, then looked at the green, then looked at the ball again knowing I hit the perfect shot.

The ball hit, I thought,  on the front of the green and then started tracking right toward the pin. Then, when it got to the hole. IT DISAPPEARED.

I looked at my buddy and he looked back at me. Did I just hole out that shot?

That walk up to the green, and the shot that created it, is why I play golf. It’s the feeling of hope, of anticipation of doing something that seems superhuman in a sport that reminds you how human you really are.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hole the shot. The green sloped away on the back and it ran to the back edge out of view from the fairway. And, of course, I three putted for a bogey on the tricky and bumpy greens.

But that shot, and a few others on Saturday are like a window to me of a game I could have with more play and more practice. It’s why I started this trek and why I play the game.