I had planned to do a version of “Ball Don’t Lie” this afternoon after my golf round. I figured since I can’t handicap it, lets leave it to the luck of the basketball. What I planned to do was have 4 quarters where I shoot 10 free throws and 5 three-pointers for each team. Except when I got home from my golf round (relatively exhausted already), I realized that I have no idea where the basketball is. I think it might have made the trip to Harrisonburg with Charlie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, I had thought there was a potential that I would not have time after the round to do the Ball Don’t Lie feature. So, as I drove to the Club at Viniterra, I came up with the following plan. My course handicap at the moment is 22 – but I have been really struggling this year, not breaking 100 in my last 4 rounds. If I gave myself 4 more shots – that would be what I needed to do to finally break 100. So, here is how I decided to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each nine would represent a match – I would predict the over\/under based on whether or not I broke 50. I would predict the winner based on whether or not match play would beat my handicap. So, the only question is who would benefit if I beat my handicap. I decided since I always want to break 100, and because the two favorites at the moment are the Big 10 teams, it made sense for the Boilermaker to take the favorites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have been struggling with making clean contact with my irons – and then of course, my chipping and putting. So, you can imagine my chagrin of how today went. The first hole is a par 5 – I hit a nice shot to the fairway, a nice shot to advance the ball, and hit a clean iron from 150 yards out, and it hooked a little left to land in the bunker. Then, my bunker shot flew the green, my chip barely got back onto the green, and three putted for my triple bogey. Illinois was already down 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I continued to make nice contact with my irons the whole day. And yet, instead of chunking the ball up the fairway and then watching my chipping game go awry, I would hit it cleanly and watch as it would slightly hook. Into a bunker on 2nd, into a bunker on 3rd, into a bunker on 4th, into a bunker on 6th. On the seventh, my tee-shot leaked into the fairway bunker, I surprisingly hit the 145 yard shot clean out of the bunker, and watched as it hit the edge of the green, took a bounce to the left and rolled into the greenside bunker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bunker to bunker on seven led to my 5th double bogey of the round, and despite a par on 8 and a bogey on 9 (on a hole I got an extra stroke), I was already too far behind. The two wins made it a respectable down 1, but still a loss. And the overall 52 means take the over. So, in the Illinois game, the golf ball says the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I move to the back nine, trying to figure out why I was striking the ball well and still ended up in 7 bunkers (of which many required multiple shots to get out of).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I started strong, with a drive up the middle of the fairway and another well hit iron. Despite three-putting the green, I got an extra stroke – so the bogey put me up 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That lead would be short-lived as on 11, I found – you guessed it – a bunker. Double bogey and I was all-square. Scrambled well on the par 3 to stay even, but the hardest hole on the back, my drive found the fairway bunker and never recovered. The next hole I hit a beautiful drive up the middle to chunk my gap wedge from 100 yards out. The first time I made that mistake with my iron, and then the second time I made that mistake, and the third – another triple bogey. Suddenly down 2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the Lunatic rallied. On the par 5 – 15th, he scrambled well for bogey when getting a shot to cut the lead to one. On the par 3 16th, he hit a pretty nine iron to 8 feet from the hole. His birdie putt just missed, but par still evened up the match. On 17, the Lunatic found another fairway bunker, and surprisingly hit a beautiful shot out of that bunker leading to another par. Up 1 heading to the final par 5, hit a good drive, a good 3 wood up the fairway, and struck my 6 iron well but it hooked. I ended up pin-high, but behind a bunker. Which then ended up with my next shot in the bunker, which then barely got out of the bunker – and two putts later, the double bogey meant I finished tied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well – I didn’t plan in my drive to the course for that scenario – although I guess I should have. I guess, if the golf ball is predicting a tie, it means that you have to take the underdog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, if the golf ball is correct, we will see the Big 10 flame out tonight just like the Lunatic did – leading to a final of UConn vs. Arizona. And the Lunatic will have to decide whether he will be happy that he was hitting his irons better, or if he will be sad because he still couldn’t break 100 this year after finding 11 bunkers on the course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lunatic certainly doesn’t know if a golf ball knows anything about college basketball. Considering how much time it spent in sand, I would feel more comfortable if it was predicting something like swimming or beach volleyball. But the Lunatic figures that the golf ball is still probably a better handicapper than anything he would come up through analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, we don’t need to wait much longer – Illinois and UConn will tip-off in just about an hour in Indianapolis. Good luck to all four teams tonight!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had planned to do a version of “Ball Don’t Lie” this afternoon after my golf round. I figured since I can’t handicap it, lets leave it to the luck of the basketball. What I planned to do was have 4 quarters where I shoot 10 free throws and 5 three-pointers for each team. Except […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3657,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions\/3657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}