The official name is the U.S. Mens National Team, or MNT. If we were Canadians, we could easily play on that acronym and call ourselves the Mounties. But we’re not Canadians. Nevertheless, we can still use that inspiration and call ourselves …

The Purple Mountains.

I think that moniker has a lot going for it:

• It’s an obvious reference to “America, the Beautiful”
• Mountains are solid, strong, and tall – all good qualities for athletes
• Many national teams have colorful nicknames, such as the Black Stars (Ghana), the Azzuri, Les Bleus, the Oranje, and several others.
• Although there’s no purple in the American flag, we all know what you get when you mix red and blue.

How about it, U.S. Soccer?

1st: Solid drive into the fairway. On in regulation. Two putts. Par.

2nd: Pulled the drive into the trees on the left, but had a clear shot back to the fairway if I could keep it below the branches. Took out a 7-iron and held the finish low. Perfect – landed right at the 150 marker in the fairway. Knowing that long is death, hit a pitching wedge about 10 yards short of the green. Chipped to 2 feet. Par.

3rd: Tee shot was pin-high but way right. Lobbed it up to a very tricky, very elevated green. Two-putt from 27 feet. Bogey.

4th: Tee shot was OK but a bit left, into the rough. Smashed a 7-iron 180 yards down the fairway (good roll). Intentionally played the approach safe and short again. Chipped to 8 feet and two-putted. Bogey.

5th: Tee shot straight but a bit short. Had to chip uphill with not much green between me and the pin. Something told me exactly how much loft to use. Made the four-foot putt. Par.

6th: Tee shot went left again but luckily bounced right over the fairway bunker. Pulled the approach shot, too, and landed in the fringe. Chip onto the green was OK, not great – left myself a 17-footer uphill and hit a 16.5-foot putt. Bogey.

7th: Used an iron off the tee and put it in the fairway with 135 left. Put a pitching wedge 30 feet below the hole on a severely sloping green. Lagged it to two feet. Par.

9th: Went left on this short par-4 but had only 50 yards to the green. Nice lob wedge to about 10 feet. Two putt. Par.

How about that? A 30-something handicap goes three over par for nine holes and … what? I did what? I didn’t tell you about the 8th hole? Oh, I guess you’re right. Well, if you insist …

8th: On the tee I had one thought: Don’t put it in the trees to the right. So I proceeded to put it in the trees to the right. On my way to the ball I was thinking “just take a bogey and get out of here.” Fortunately, I found the ball, sitting on a pile of leaves even with the 150 marker. I took my 7-iron, hoping to punch it out just like I had on the 2nd hole. I held my club behind the ball, taking aim, and … it moved. I had brushed the club against a leaf and the damned ball moved an eighth of an inch. I thought for a few seconds about the round I was having and about the fact that no one would ever know or really care. But I would know. I counted it as my second stroke. Now I don’t know if the next shot was spoiled by the tree root hidden under the leaves or by my irritation, but in any case I didn’t advance it far enough. I was now sitting only 100 yards out, but still in the rough and with overhanging branches interfering with my shot. I tried to keep it low with a gap wedge, but I struck it almost too well. It hit a branch and popped down – fortunately, this time it was in the fairway. Now I was lying four, though, and praying for double-bogey. I choked way down on a sand wedge and skulled it thirty yards past the green. Now I was tentative and just barely got my pitch back to the fringe. I finally got it on the green with a putter, but not very close. Two-putted. Nine. Quintuple bogey.

Now I can’t be too unhappy with a 44. It’s one of my best 9-hole scores ever. And I’m glad I was able to rebound from that terrible 8th to have a decent 9th. But oh, what could have been.

Whatever mojo was working for me today, I hope it stays with me for a while.

Shake it off, David.

Next up: a charity tournament on Saturday.

Great: Combined score for 7 holes (1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, and 15): One under par!

Good: Combined score for 5 holes (5, 8, 10, 12, and 17): six over par.

Disastrous: Combined score for 6 holes (4, 7, 13, 14, 16, and 18): twenty-seven over par.

Total: Thirty-two over par (104).

What the hell happened?

4th hole, par 5 – (1) Tee shot went straight but left, landed on a side-slope in the rough. (2) Tried to advance the ball down the fairway with a seven-iron but pushed it across the fairway and under/between trees. (3) Tried to chip the ball back to the fairway by hitting it hard with the putter. I’d practiced that shot several times before the round. Didn’t work. Left without a clear shot to the green. (4) Little sand wedge to the middle of the fairway, maybe 110 out. (5) Terrible approach shot, short and way right, almost to the tee box on the second hole. (6) Decent pitch shot onto the fringe. (7) Lag putt, left myself about four feet. (8) Missed a makeable putt. (9) Finally home.

7th hole, par 4 – (1) It’s a short dogleg right, so I used 5-wood off the tee, but I pulled it badly. (2) Took an unplayable lie from under the bushes. (3) Kept hitting a tree branch on my practice backswings. Got all out of rhythm and chunked it. Had about 135 left. (4) Hit a pitching wedge pure, way too pure. Sailed over the green and landed near a fence near a tree and in all kinds of nasty stuff. (5) Hard-putted out of there, successfully this time. (6) Muffed what should have been an easy pitch onto the green. (7) Knocked it onto the green but not close. (8) and (9) Two-putted.

13th hole, par 4 – (1) Blocked my drive to the right and landed beneath some trees. (2) With the ball just inches from a tree trunk, my only option was to hit lefty. I decided to use the hard-putt option again. As I took a practice stroke, my putter got tangled in a vine which then yanked on the ball and moved it six inches. It counts as a stroke. (3) I took another lefty whack at the ball and actually hit a great recovery into the middle of the fairway. But I was still 125 out and had a nasty side-hill lie. (4) With the ball much higher than my feet, I choked down on the club but still hit it quite fat, only about 25 yards. (5) I hit a sand wedge onto the green but it rolled off the back edge onto the fringe. (6) A nice chip with a 9-iron to five or six feet. (7) Missed a makeable putt. (8) Tapped in.

14th hole, par 4 – (1) Drove too far right again, right along the tree line. (2) Pitched out into the fairway. (3) Mental mistake – hit a 5-wood instead of an iron. Got good contact but landed in deep rough with a downhill lie, about 70 yards out. (4) Went for the green with a lob wedge, but as a result of either the peculiar lie or just a very bad swing, I shanked it pin-high but 15 yards into the woods where, unfortunately, it was found. (5) Had to swing lefty again. Whiffed. (6) Still swinging lefty, got terrible contact and advanced it only a few feet. (7) Tried to pitch out of the woods but caught thick foliage. Ball dropped into the rough just barely past the bushes. (8) Had no backswing available and chunked it just a few inches. (9) and (10) Everyone else was done with the hole and I wasn’t on the green yet, so I picked up and called it a 10.

16th hole, par 5 – (1) Yet another drive lost to the right, but not in too much trouble this time. Did land in the rough, though. (2) Turned the club-face over with a 4-hybrid and went across the fairway into the rough. (3) Facing a 225-yard shot from the rough, decided to lay up with a gap wedge hoping to have about 100 left. Hit it fat and had 155 left instead. (4) Hit a very poor 8-iron and still had 60 yards to the center of the green. (5) Landed on the center of the green with a lob wedge but it rolled all the way to the back edge. (6) Had a pretty good lag putt to four or five feet. (7) Missed a makeable putt. (8) Tapped in.

18th hole, par 5 – (1) Hit a 3-wood solidly but too straight on this severe dogleg right. Ended up with a very tall tree between me and the fairway. (2) Tried to go right over the tree with a lob wedge but hit the uppermost branches. Ball ended up at the base of the tree. (3) From a tricky lie with the ball above my feet, hit a nice 6-iron to the middle of the fairway, about 155 out. (4) Hit a poor approach shot, short and left of the green. (5) Pitched onto the green but way too hard, and ended up in the rough on an up-slope behind the green. (6) Tried to pop the ball up onto the green but chunked it only a couple of feet. (7) Got it on the green, still quite far from the hole. (8) Put a decent lag putt within 6 feet. (9) Missed a makeable putt. (10) Almost missed the tap-in, but didn’t.

If I’d only been able to limit each of those six disaster holes to double-bogeys, I would have broken 90 for the first time ever. Even with six triple-bogeys I would have broken 100. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

Nevertheless, I feel pretty good about the round. I know that I am physically capable of really good scores, and I’m happy with the 47 I scored on the front 9 (two disasters notwithstanding). So now if I can just stay out of the trees …

I lost four strokes to wildness right off the bat. My tee shot on one was lost in the woods and my approach on two (after a great tee shot) went out of bounds – both right. And then my putter went on strike. I had two three-putts, a four-putt, and a five-putt, making only 9 of 17 makeable putts for the round. (Two of the missed putts were impatient jabs from about two feet.)

If I make all the makeable putts and keep those two balls in play I’m looking at a 42. If, if, if …

Next outing is Saturday morning. I will be spending a lot of time on the practice green before that round!

Tee shots: 6 decent ones out of 18 tries. Misses were all of the place – a worm burner, a high slice, a pull, a pop-up. Six missed the fairway right, six missed left, and three ended short of target (be it fairway or green).

First approach: 5 greens hit out of 14 attempts. Misses were everywhere – short, long, right, and left.

Shots inside 100 yards: 72 total for an average of 4 per hole. My goal is 3 per hole.

Makeable putts: Made 18 of 26 where I had a realistic shot. I only had 2 or 3 misses on really short ones.

Three-putts: 5 total (including one 4-putt).

Out of play: 4 – 3 in water hazards and 1 into an unplayable lie.

Recoveries: 3 balls put back on the fairway or green out of 15 chances. (This stat is harder for me to track. I’m not sure this one is accurate, and I may need to redefine the stat. I shouldn’t count every shot from the rough as a recovery chance, should I?)

Flubs: 18. Yes, I had 18 shots I’d consider God-awful. Most of them were drives or little chip/pitch shots.

Total score: 114. And it’s not like I needed time to warm up – I shot 54 out and 60 in.

Unfortunately for me, the parts of the game that I screwed up today are not easily worked out on the average driving range. Hitting from a plastic mat to a wide open field is not going to tell me anything. I need to learn how to eliminate mis-hits, including shots from thick rough and bunkers. I need to learn how to put every chip and pitch on the green, whether I’m starting two feet above or four feet below the putting surface. And for heaven’s sake, I need to learn how to hit a decent tee shot on the par-3s. I only hit one green today, and one tee shot was so bad I ended up with a 7.

So it looks like I need to spend some time on the chipping and pitching greens at the Natick Golf Learning Center and at the par-3 Stony Brook golf course. That and $50,000 worth of lessons ought to do it. 8^)

Tee shots: Not bad. The only one where I really screwed myself with the tee shot was #5 – an 8-iron off the toe. I wasn’t getting much length today but at least I was keeping it in play.

Approach shots: Took a while to find the groove, but I had it going on the last three holes. (On #9 I hit the flagstick from about 125 yards.)

Shots from less than 100 yards: Other than #3, which was a disaster, my chipping/pitching was OK today.

Makeable putts: I missed a lot of opportunities here. None of the putts I missed were under three feet, but I could have saved a bunch of strokes if I’d made some mid-range putts.

Three-putts: Three three-putts in a row. That hurt, although they were all from a good distance away. I have to make sure I’m leaving myself no more than 2-3 feet after the first putt. (I just saw on TV that Anthony Kim has gone about 150 holes without a three-putt. That’s why he’s playing for money and I’m writing about him.)

Out of play: None today. Excellent!

Recovery shots: Four times I failed to get from the rough into the fairway or from a bunker onto the green. They didn’t all hurt, though.

Flubs: Hole #3 was a real problem. I was smart off the tee and played it intentionally short. (Put it over the green there and you’re likely to lose your ball.) But I pitched my second shot right into the bunker. I got out of the bunker in one stroke but left it short of the green, and then had a real chunk of less than a foot. (I was angry about the bunker shot and didn’t prepare properly.) Finally I got it onto the green and then two-putted for quadruple bogey. I also had a very poor tee shot on #5 but I recovered with a nice pitch and had a makeable par putt (but missed it).

Lessons from the new stats: Breaking 90 is going to be very hard. There’s really not much room for error, so if you are going to make mistakes you have to make up for them by sinking some long putts. I do think that keeping these stats today actually helped my game a bit. I was more conservative off the tee and thought a lot more about keeping it in play. I gave up 20-30 yards with the driver but it was worth it. (Of course, this course doesn’t have any really long par-4’s.)

Weather permitting, I’ll tee it up again Sunday morning. My goals: fewer flubs and no three-putts.

Many golf instruction books and magazines advise you to keep statistics other than your raw scores to track the progress of your game improvement. The idea is that by looking at your stats you’ll be able to identify the parts of your game that need the most work. Here are a couple of examples:

• NetHandicap, which is what tells me I’m a 29.4 handicap, lets me record for each hole …
• Drive distance
• Fairway hit (yes/no)
• Green in regulation (yes/no, meaning did I reach the green in par minus two strokes)
• Putts (total number)
• Bunker shots (yes/no – assumes no more than one bunker hit per hole!)
• Penalty strokes (total number)
• Intelligolf, which I use on my Smartphone during the round to keep score, allows me to track the same basic stats plus …
• Number of shots or putts missed long, short, left, or right
• Distance of putts made and missed
• Ups and downs (essentially, the number of one-putts)

I’ve decided, though, that many of those statistics are misleading or unhelpful.

• Drive distance is meaningless without consideration of accuracy. I’ll take a 175-yard drive in the fairway over a 225-yard drive in the woods any day.
• Number of putts is meaningless without consideration of putt lengths and how you came to be putting in the first place. I rarely make more than 36 putts a round, but because the accuracy of my approaches is so poor, I often find myself chipping on to a short putt rather than hitting a long approach to a two-putt. Which would you rather have, a 5 with 2 putts or an 8 with one putt?
• Greens in regulation are so rare for me that they don’t tell me much about my overall game.
• Greens are overrated. Being in the first cut of fringe is perfectly acceptable, as you can usually putt or have a well-controlled chip from there.
• Intelligolf’s shot-by-shot tracking can be helpful but it takes too much time and concentration during the play of each hole. Whatever stats I’m going to keep, I need to be able to remember and record them between the time I pick the ball out of the cup and the time I’m ready for my next tee shot.

As a result, I’ve come up with a new set of statistics that I hope will help me narrow in on the weakest parts of my game. For each hole, I’m going to track:

• Tee shot decency. Have I given myself a chance for a decent score with my tee shot? For par-3 holes, this means whether or not I hit the green or fringe. For par-4’s and par-5’s, it means whether or not I hit the fairway or first cut of rough. I’m not looking for perfection, just disaster avoidance.
• First reasonable approach. It’s heartbreaking to nail your drive into the fairway with 140 yards left to the flag and then put the next one into a hazard or deep rough. But I do that kind of thing all the time. On the other hand, I don’t really expect to hit the green with a 5-wood or even a 5-iron or to be very accurate from bad lies. So the question I’m asking here is: On my first attempt with a 7-iron or less from the fairway or first cut and a clear shot at the green, am I able to hit the green or fringe? If I’m failing at this, I’m squandering shots for no good reason. I’ll track of this stat on all par-4’s and 5’s and on par-3’s shorter than 175 yards.
• Total shots under 100 yards. Really this number should never be more than three per hole, from all but the absolute worst lies. If I’m averaging much more than that, then it will be clear that I need to find a range where I can practice my short game.
• Makeable putts made. I’m not talking about gimmes here, I’m talking about those 3-10 footers. The ones that you stand over and think “I should be able to make this.” I have no specific distance in mind here, as it all depends on the slope and condition of the green. A missed makeable putt is a wasted shot.
• Three-putts. A two-putt can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how long the first putt was. But a three-putt is almost always a bad thing. And I’m going to include putts from the fringe as well as on the green.
• Balls out of play. This stat will include balls in hazards, out of bounds, lost, or hit into unplayable lies. Any of the above pretty much guarantees at least a double-bogey and must be avoided, and I think this will be more telling and easier to track than “penalty strokes.” The main thing here is to find out how much of my score is resulting from big mistakes as opposed to small ones.
• Successful recoveries. The ability to get from the woods, deep rough, or fairway bunker back into the fairway can be the difference between a 6 and a 9. This will be a measure of my intelligence as well as my accuracy.
• Flubs. I don’t really have a sense right now of how often I’m completely mis-hitting the ball as opposed to striking it well but not well enough. This will be my count of hitting it way fat, topping it, shanking it. chunking it, smothering it, flying it from the bunker way over the green, leaving it in the bunker, whiffing, stubbing, or otherwise making very poor contact. I’m not going to include bad pulls, slices, or alignment mistakes if I hit them cleanly. If this number stays high, I’ll probably need lessons rather than practice.

I’ll be recording these stats onto a paper grid that I print out on each round and carry with me on the course. Then I’ll enter the raw numbers into a yet-do-be determined database for totaling and analysis. If it’s not too embarrassing, I’ll track my progress here.

If there are any other high handicappers reading this, I’d love to hear about similar stats that you’ve come up with and that are helping you improve your game, so please comment.

So you see, Dan, over the last seven years the Yankees are 38 games over .500 in August, whereas the Red Sox are a mere 6 games over .500. I admit this year is looking a bit grim for the Bombers, but history is on our side.

I want to show you something about that collision, Jon, because Posada got caught in an awkward position. There was no place for Hinske to go. There’s no place for Hinske to go, so he had to hit him. There was no – there was no plate. You know, catchers usually give you some part of the plate to slide towards. There’s no plate. The plate’s back here. So what is Hinske gonna do other than try to bowl him over, you see what I mean? You know, he had no choice but to run into Posada. I don’t think it was a — it wasn’t a bad play, you know, there was no place for him to go. See where the plate is? Now how’s he gonna get to this plate? You can’t slide. There’s no place to slide. Posada’s got it blocked. The only place you can go is try to run over him. And that’s what he did, so I don’t want, you know,  the Yankee fans to think that was a dirty play because there was no place for him to slide, there was no place to go. Posada usually will give you — the catcher will give you someplace to slide, but he got caught in a bad position, and there was no place for Posada to go and no place for Hinske to go.

I’m sending this one off to the “Fire Joe Morgan” blogsters. It’s a classic.