Libous

If Libous will pose for this picture at the Deposit Lumberjack Festival Parade ...



... he's gotta find 30 seconds for us.

Saturday plan

10 a.m., Pheasant Hill in Owego.

I am feeling supremely confident.

Agreed on all counts

That course was miserable. We kept trying to give it a chance, and it just kept getting worse. I mean seriously, I thought the paint on the garbage cans at Dimmock Hill was bad until I saw this:



Behind the chicken wire with 'H G C' scratched into it is the cart path heading to the No. 8 tee, but it might as well be a sample of many of the fairways.

Today wasn't an accurate representation of our golf skills, that's for sure. Add the dry conditions to an already dreadful course and this is one round I won't fondly remember.

Quickly, though, the employees of this golf course were really great, one of the nicest staffs we've seen. The woman tending bar was extremely friendly and kind, and when we stopped for hot dogs at the turn, a gentleman was waiting with a gas can to check to make sure we'd make it all the way around the course again. Classy employees.

And as for how we played, well, a tie at this point is, in my eyes, a victory. I was up 3 heading to No. 18, and threw the individual win away with a triple-bogey 6, but I drove the ball the best I have in months, and had the first eagle putt of my life after an exceptional (and ballsy) hybrid over a water hazard.

My lead stays at 7, which I am comfortable with. I think I can outplay Alex at Traditions, because I've played there at least a dozen times. His window to make up the difference here is quickly closing.

I'm this much closer to proving, definitively, that I am the better golfer.

Hancock

Whereas some of the courses we played were cow pastures, Hancock was instead an abandoned logging project. Fairways were basically just dead grass, and you essentially were hitting off berber. Easily the crappiest course we played, but home to maybe the best moment of the year. Some guy in a stained polo shirt (later determined to be brother of the club pro) walks behind the bar, mumbles something about 5 o'clock somewhere, takes out a styrofoam cup, fills it with ice, and then fills that with just vodka, and walks out. It was almost, but not quite, noon.

Two words

Score board.

HA

Chris Strub is the only guy I know that complains when he doesn't get 11 hours of sleep. Guess what buddy: we all know you work late, but that doesn't mean we are all gonna feel sorry for you because you have to have short nights like a regular person. You can get out of work at midnight and wind down for 2 hours and be in bed by 2. That gives you 6 hours before you have to get up at 8, and if you're gonna complain about only getting 6 hours of sleep, screw you. Maybe the real problem here is that you choose not to get up until 3 pm on Fridays and you have only been up for 9 hours when you try to go to bed. You make the choice about being awake before work or after work, and you have chosen after. Everyone take note of what time he wakes up and sees this post as evidence.

Also, don't try and lay down that bs about not being prepared last weekend. I was in much worse shape than you and I still whooped you up and down the fairways. Get better at golf if you want to win.

Preparation

More so than any one technical aspect, I've learned this summer that succeeding at golf is all about preparation.

I'm not making excuses here. On Friday, I knew all day long that I would have to wake up very early (by my standards) to play golf very far away on Saturday. I knew when I came home, I should just crawl into bed and go to sleep.

The nature of my job makes it difficult to do that. This time right now, 1:11 a.m., is like the start of the evening for me. I won't be surprised if I don't fall asleep until 4:30 a.m.; that's just the nature of being a copy editor. You need to be at the top of your game at midnight, which makes it very difficult to try and drive home and be asleep by 1, 1:30. Golfing on Saturday on 3 1/2 hours of sleep, after staying up just sitting here on my laptop for several hours doing nothing, was a perfect example of not being prepared: I burst out to an early lead on adrenaline, and then when the lack of sleep hit me, I tanked. Hard.

As the scoreboard shows, I think I'm a marginally better golfer than Alex is. The key is in the preparation. I always wear sunscreen, bring tons of water, Gatorade, sometimes a soda ... my fashionable argyle socks are often a point of discussion, but when you're looking through the deep, high rough for a ball, I bet any guy I play with wishes he had high socks on. Everything I do, I do for a reason.

Alex sometimes fails to prepare properly, and it comes back to haunt him.

The issue going forward is going to be, with the title still very much up for grabs, I think both of us will realize the crucial nature of solid preparation. Friday night, I'm coming home and going to sleep. Period.

And on Saturday evening, when I'm driving to work, I'll have extended my lead after a solid round at our fifth-to-last course of the summer: Hancock.

I know this, because I'll have been prepared.