Sand Saves 2000  |  Proudest Monkeys

What Happened to Spring?

WASHINGTON, DC - This past weekend's Cinco de Mayo Invitational was not a battle of skill - it was a battle for survival. Local hero Lone Star, once described as a golf teacher's worst nightmare, overcame heat, exhaustion, and a lack of water of the front nine to win the season's first official tournament. While Lone Star's winning score of 97 was nothing extraordinary, his front nine 43 did represent his best round in over six months, one stroke off his own course record. That score was not the story, though, as all golfers struggled on the back nine, thanks to rocky fairways and temperatures in the mid-nineties.

Teeing off just prior to 9 AM, Virginia's amateur threesome knew the odds of completing the 18-hole round in cooler weather were slim. After each golfer recorded a six on the opening par 4, the match's tone was set. Lone Star's chipper, Goldfinger, once again proved to be the most dangerous club in anyone's bag. A close second was Puff Daddy's putter, though it wrecked an altogether different kind of havoc. As Lone Star was salvaging errant approach shots with a deft touch around the green, Puff Daddy was watching pin-point approaches perish in the face of an erratic putter. As Lone Star began nailing his approach shots and Puff Daddy's became slightly less predictable, this disparity only grew more pronounced.

While Lone Star and Puff Daddy were tinkering with their short games, Godking found himself dealing with the subtle nuances of his retooled woods. Just returned from the pro shop, Godking's woods proved that they were still capable of the same wild inconsistency as before. While Godking's drive on the second hole left him a short eighty-yard approach shot, it followed on the heels of a drive that trickled less than a hundred yards. Driving was not the only key item in Godking's game, however, as his putting continued to show signs of life, racking up a respectable nineteen putts on the front. This allowed the converted football star to match his low score of the year with a 50.

Whatever promise may have been exhibited on the front nine vanished by the end of the tenth hole, however. None of the golfers present found the fairway, with two golfers losing their balls in the dense shrubs to the right. A missed par putt on the next hole doomed Godking, just as a chip shot into the sand devastated Lone Star. This left the trio staggering home, comforted only by the gracious presence of water coolers on the 13th and 15th holes. Being as this early-season event took place at the beginning of May, the prospects for cooler weather ahead are quite slim. Rather, these once-brave golfers must prepare themselves to deal with the adverse conditions common to championship level golf. Only then will their dreams of the Senior PGA Tour be realized...