Robert Crais & Golf

I seem to be stuck in a holding pattern, sort of up there waiting for landing instructions, and sort of running out of fuel. I guess I’ll get down one way or the other, either safe and smooth, or headfirst. I haven't written any blogs for almost a week now. I haven’t seen any movies for a while, and we’re going to the Arizona Broadway Theatre tomorrow. I’ve slowed down on the reading, my last one the latest by Robert Crais called Suspect. It was good but not nearly as good as his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series. This one was about a severely wounded cop who lost his female partner, with whom he was in love, in a shootout in a late-night back alley. He’s a mess physically and mentally, blaming himself for the death of his partner. He recovers enough to be assigned to the K9 unit, where he’s teamed with Maggie, a police dog severely wounded, both physically and mentally, in a shootout in Afghanistan where she loses her beloved pack brother. Talk about two of a kind. The plot focuses on their bonding, these two wounded creatures, and their search for the people who killed his partner as well as a carload of victims of the night assault. Good but not great. But especially good for anyone who’s a dog lover. I’d bring Maggie home to live with us in a heartbeat. Charlie and Squeakie might complain, but they’d learn to live with her.

My golf is getting better (but then I don’t see how it could have gotten any worse). Today I came within one stroke of shooting my age. I got my first age-shoot at 70. Then, when I got to be 74, I thought I’d be doing it every third or fourth time out. Whoa! Was I ever wrong. I managed it about a dozen times after the first time, but then the health problems set in and I couldn’t get even close. See, the Catch-22 in golf is that as you get older and older, it should get easier and easier to shoot one’s age, but instead the scores keep getting higher and higher. I enjoyed watching Stacy Lewis win the LPGA tournament last weekend in Phoenix. What an extraordinary story hers is, eleven years in a back brace, multiple surgeries on her spine, lots of pins and rods holding her together. It was a courageous win and one she justly deserved. I did feel sorry for poor Ai Miyazato, though. One bad swing with her pitching wedge and she came undone on the sixteenth hole. And next weekend, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, we get to see if this Tiger is for real or is just a pussy cat. I’m hoping he’s for real. I’m betting he is.