Sports

In Alaska golf, a sense of humor helps salve the torture

Randy Dooley is a neophyte golfer – he only began playing this summer – and yet he already shows great potential in peripheral qualities necessary to endure the emotional tortures the game inflicts: Namely, an ability to absorb humiliation and be self-deprecating about it.

While playing No. 18 at Moose Run's Creek Course in the Alaska State Amateur early Thursday afternoon, Dooley was asked to detail his most troublesome hole.

He perused his scorecard to identify top contenders.

"They're all blending in,'' Dooley noted wryly.

He settled upon No. 9, a 466-yard (from the white tees) par-5 that doglegs slightly to the left. The hole includes a hazard that runs fully across the fairway. It also requires an approach shot over Ship Creek to the green. And, like most holes on the course, No. 9 is lined heavily on both sides by trees and bushes. All of these features have prompted no shortage of players to call for the head of the course designer.

In any event, our man needed to take a drop and also mixed in two penalty strokes before staggering off the green with a 10.

"You just want to give up the game,'' Dooley said with a laugh. "Then I hit a good drive, and it's like, 'I'm back!' ''

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That's golf, especially for a newbie. Sometimes, a single crisply struck, accurate shot is enough to salve several shanks and lost balls, and one splendid lag putt or sunken eight-footer is enough to remedy the anguish of multiple three-putts.

The guys in the championship flight at the State Am no doubt know pain and frustration, presumably even stalwart Greg Sanders and Jordan Miller, who each fired a 1-over 73 Thursday to share the lead after 18 holes. They're ahead of four players who shot 74.

Demetrius Johnson shot 88, and he wasn't psyched about it because his best score on the Creek Course is a 75.

"It wasn't a fun day,'' he said, shaking his head in the clubhouse.

Johnson, who is headed to Division II Fairmont State in West Virginia next week and will play golf there, said his best hole was a par on the par-4 16th. Even that was tough work – he found a fairway bunker.

"That sums up my round,'' Johnson said.

Still, let's be real – the best stories come from the higher handicappers, players exceedingly capable of a snowman – an 8 – or higher.

Take Torgeir Robertson. First, we bow to his par on the par-3 No. 3 – a 6-iron to 20 feet and a two-putt. And now to his most, uh, challenging hole Thursday.

"There's a few candidates,'' Robertson said, giving it some thought.

He settled upon the par-4 10th hole. Couple of drops, couple of flubbed shots, and hello snowman.

Of course, that's nothing like a round Robertson played in junior golf back in the day at Eagleglen Golf Course. That round is branded into his brain. He took a 22 on the first hole and a 12 on the second hole, and shot 72 on the front side.

"The kid who won shot 72 – for the whole round,'' Robertson recalled. "They took a picture of us together.''

[Miller, Sanders share first-day lead in state golf]

Back to Dooley, the guy who took up golf this summer.

Back in the spring, he was in Cincinnati, where friends invited him to play golf. He had fun, and he was hooked, hooked bad. On the plane home, he cadged an issue of Golf Digest another passenger had finished reading. When he got home, he ordered a set of clubs. And he took a lesson, which was enlightening.

"Put it this way – I didn't even know there was a special grip, besides a baseball grip,'' Dooley said.

Dooley said he's "consumed'' by the game. Exhibit A: He played golf Wednesday, and that round qualified him for a handicap, which he needed to play in the State Am starting Thursday.

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And he's getting sharp with both self-deprecation and the notion of revising statements to reflect the fluid state of a golf game.

After a couple of flubbed shots on No. 18, Dooley allowed to his partners that his game had faltered somewhat "since my interview.'' He also mused about his inexperience – "I'm coming straight off the couch with this game.''

And although multiple golfers, including Dooley, reported a short bout of light rain Thursday morning before conditions dried, Dooley amended that report as he walked off the 18th green after shooting a round of 117.

"Actually, it was thundering and really raining this morning,'' he said.

Doyle Woody

Doyle Woody covered hockey and other sports for the Anchorage Daily News for 34 years.

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