Orange Street Loop/First Tee

It's perfect out, cloudless, windless, 55°F, and dry as Melba toast. They say it'll get to 80. I walked the Orange Street Loop this morning in 44:22.

One-putts on the first two greens this morning caused me, literally, to imagine Bill Seale, the fictional publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Them people ain't gonna believe this, Payt.* They gonna think you bullshittin' 'em six ways to goddang Sundy." That was enough, so I settled into playing like a first-timer, at least for a while. I played First Tee this morning and afternoon in 101, with nines of 57 and 44. My irons worked great Tuesday, but today, for some unknown reason, I began the round as if someone met me at the first tee and said, "Hey, try these out. They're called 'irons.' " I couldn't hit them until—don't ask me—I got to No. 13 (4 the second time around). And another thing: someone treated the greens with bikini wax. They were the fastest I have ever experienced. I four-putted No. 4, but finally figured out the speed. And, please don't misunderstand me, they're beautiful, without a blemish, just twice as fast today as they were Tuesday. OK, with excuses out of the way, I had 4 pars, 6 bogies, 4 doubles, 2 triples, 1 quadruple, and 1 pentagonal. I used 32 putts. I lost three balls—for penalty strokes; they weren't pplbs—on the front nine, and used 18 putts. I played one ball throughout the second nine, and used 14 putts.

I did too much today. Maybe an hour after I returned from First Tee, I drove out to the River Trail, where I put in about 4.2 miles on the trail and the Big Dam Bridge. It took me 1:12:04. I'm hungry, and tired.

*country fucks pronounce my first name Payt, or Payter