The same casual golf observers who watched Rory McIlroy tear up the U.S. Open for three consecutive days also had it in the backs of their minds that the youngster could give all eight shots of his lead back on Sunday. (He didn't.)
Part of this had to do with McIlroy, who hasn't been through the wringer very often yet -- and when he did at the Masters earlier this year, he started spraying shots like a rotating water sprinkler. But it also has to do with what we all know about golf: It is a brutal mental and physical game. What's working at one moment can fall apart fast -- not without reason, but without warning.
It's why so many of us are alternately frustrated by and lured back to playing golf. For the average hacker, it's a series of shots that fall somewhere between abject failure and advance-the-ball-passable, interrupted by glorious brief stretches when the 87 flaws in our swing cancel each other out and allow us to hit long and straight, just as we planned.
All of this leads us to the concept of the scramble format. Perhaps it's simply a matter of age or opportunity, but it seems like the only golf I play these days is in scramble-style events -- in which you go out in groups of two to four players, everyone hits, you take the best shot from the group, everyone hits from that spot, and you repeat until the ball is in the hole.
Three times this spring, I've played in a scramble -- including a soggy one Saturday. That might not seem like a lot, but it's out of four entire outings this year. (You might think the lack of practice has something to do with the aforementioned lack of consistency. At this point, it really doesn't. I could play 50 times and shoot a 97 in my last round of the year, or I could play twice more and shoot a 97.)
I've determined, though, that the scramble might be the perfect format for a duffer in 2011 -- to soothe our fragile golf psyches and to enable us in this era of avoiding accountability.
In a scramble, it's never truly your fault. You might play poorly, but your worst shots are often erased by someone else's good shot. Nobody will remember the putt you ran 10 feet past the hole, but they will surely remember the 25-footer you sank. Want to try a 3-wood from 230 yards out, over water, from the rough? Go ahead, because your teammate has already laid up with a safe iron. And give yourself a perfect lie while you're at it.
The scorecard at the end tells us we did way better than if we were playing alone. Our memory banks contain our contributions, not our failures. It's all of the glory of golf without the guts.
Get enough of us together, and maybe we could even take on Rory.
MICHAEL RAND
