I played a practice round yesterday with my brother who hasn’t picked up a club in months and who only plays a couple of times per year.

At the end of our round, we were trash talking about golf (like we do about everything) and somehow we ended up with a closest to the pin bet. The bet was to flop the ball to the pin on the 9th hole just off the cart path from the rough. It was about 20 yards, with the green about five or six feet below the ball and the hole cut on the near side.

Knowing that I had this one in the bag, I boldly laughed him off and told him to go first.

And he proceeded to sink it.

You’d be amazed what that does to your mental state. It’s like a fog of despair envelops you. I could hear C3PO in my mind telling me, “The odds of successfully making that shot are 3,720 to 1!” (sorry, but I’m a Star Wars geek).

After stopping my string of four letter words I got up there and tried to hole it in the wrong frame of mind and just flat-out chili-dipped my 64-degree wedge, so the four-letter words started again.

The lesson there is…well, I don’t know. I guess it’s that sometimes luck beats skill. OK, that was a cheap jab, but he knew it was coming. It was actually a well-executed shot. That’s no excuse for letting my mental game wilt, though.

I’m going to go throw out some more four-letter words. Have a great weekend.

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