The 20th hole

We’re all familiar with the 19th hole, where we celebrate or commiserate our round of golf with a hearty dose of alcohol with our playing partners and other similarly afflicted players of the day.  The 19th hole is where the bets of the day are settled commingled with a series of sad excuses as to what went awry.  These excuses tend to be repetitive for each event and blame can be assigned to the weather or the bad bounce that resulted in the day’s catastrophic or euphoric result.

However, there is another place that is the repository of golf performance.  It is the place where all strokes are recorded, good,  bad and indifferent.  It is the fulcrum of all truth of every action ever taken in a round of golf.  Golf professionals will tell you that they only hit perhaps five or six shots per round that they are happy with.  This information is indelibly stored in the vault of The 20th hole.  Players will always brag and, in some cases, spread questionable information regarding their skills and achievements, but the recorded information in the vault of the 20th hole is undisputed and always correct.  The 20th hole would reveal some interesting statistics about published player handicaps, that if revealed, would make any scramble tournaments an affair with the winning team no more than 10 under par instead of the usual 20-25 under par..

You are continually visiting the 20th hole and time is not a factor.  The 20th hole is the St. Peter of Golf Heaven.  It’s 1997 and your drive on the 4th hole at Spyglass Hill has just gone through the fairway into the ice plant.  You take 6 swings before the ball squiggles out of the plant about 10 yards.  After a visit to the bunker in the back of the green, you 4 putt for a 13 on the hole.  Six months later, a drive in the fairway and a nine iron to 2 feet yields a birdie on the same hole.  A two-iron on the 5th hole at Royal Birkdale in 1993,  misses a hole-in-hole by a 1/2 inch–your visit to the 20th hole never fails to report the event.  The 20th hole has encrypted every golf shot that has been taken and is completely accurate irrespective of the interpretation of the player that hit that shot.  In the depths of introspective evaluation, the player always has to confront the truth but perhaps embellish it outside of the 20th.

The 20th hole is not just a place for recording the history of performance.  It is also the place to evaluate technique and what is working and what needs to be worked on.  In this phase, the 20th hole introduces variables into the approach to the game and the golf swing in particular.  Should I be adjusting grip pressure, evaluating club selection, weight in your right foot in the bunker and on and on.  This is a difficult compartment of the 20th hole and should be repressed as much as possible.

The 20th hole exists for all of us that play this wonderful game and is unique in its finality as the source of all actions and facts about the game that has been played and experienced.