I’ll never play for real money, but I do keep score, every round, and I know what my partners shoot, even if we’re not head-to-head. For me, The Old Dog Project is not about winning more, though it’s hard not to believe Staskus can help a guy be tougher in a competitive setting.
Staskus, an accomplished playing pro as well as teacher, carefully reserves a niche in his crowded schedule for his regular Thursday game at Capitol City with Steve McNelly, GM at Capitol City Golf Club, and Jon McCaslin, a talented local amateur. It’s just a game with his buds, but Staskus keeps the date – because it keeps him in a competitive frame of mind.
“Do I have the time to do this? No,” he says. “Do I make the time? Yes.”
I’d like to get to a place where I can get out of my head in this most inward of games, to think the right thoughts by effectively thinking no thoughts at all.
If that sounds a little woo-woo, we do have concrete goals for The Old Dog Project. The short-term target, once I set out to play actual rounds of golf, is to break 90 for the first time. It’s a threshold I get damnably close to, on a good day, and if that was all I was after I wouldn’t bother with bothering Staskus.
A better, more lasting goal is to make steady incremental reductions in my USGA handicap index. Staskus says I’m selling myself short by setting 18 (bogey golf) as a rough goal: he says he can get me well below that.
If we get there, I’ll say, Tom, you’re a better teacher than I could have imagined.
Staskus is in for the long haul on this – four or five lessons won’t make a dent. We might do 40 or 50.
“You can’t do anything in life that doesn’t take work,” he says.
The story of a flaky old dog, unwilling to settle for bad golf for the rest of his life, might resonate with somebody out there.
There’s nothing I can do about being flaky and old. What I do about the golf over the next few months promises to be fun, at the very least, and fun is not a word much associated with my golf game for a very long time.
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