My original -9 score and the many -9's that followed all had one thing in common; they featured a par. Which in my mind meant there was room for improvement. “I just gotta play for 9 birdies and the eagle will happen.” was my mental motivation for the next couple weeks. It turned out to be flawed and put extra unnecessary pressure on games but it just made sense to me at the time. Between the three par 5 holes it was almost a given I could pick up an eagle. Add in the ability to get lucky with wind and pin locations on just about all of the par 4's and hole-in-one opportunities a real possibility on two of the par 3's and I was going to pick up my eagle by the end of 9 holes. But to birdie the every other hole? It is a tall order with many uncontrollable factors working against you. Most notably the wind. The wind can absolutely ruin each par 3 hole, especially hole 4 and hole 8. Then a hole like 7 (a par 4) has all sorts of obstacles and wind conditions to consider and has a high chance of being a par as well. I was just as likely to get a par as I was to get that eagle I was sure of. But I thought that I could get all birdies so I began restarting games when I got my first par, and the torment snowballed against me. I was a teenager all over again, I was getting legit angry at a video game! I don't think an entire staff of sports psychologists could have helped me get back in the right mindset.

Then it happened. It wasn't “perfection, minus one”, it was just perfection. I birdied each of the nine holes in one game. All of them. A perfect -9. And it felt awesome, but it kept that wrong mindset going and I believed more than ever I could birdie every hole and pick up a eagle somewhere to put me over. I trudged through a week of despair as my daily session became a repetitive story; I would play through until I got a par and restart. That par usually happened on holes 1 through 4. So in my daily thirty minutes of play I could easily get myself frustrated to the point of walking away without ever getting past the first four holes. Thanks to this I wasn't getting my strokes in on the later holes since I was always restarting. So, when I actually carried a good score in to the later holes I would choke it away. A reset and some time off was needed. Even though I knew it was within grasp I was “Megaman'ing it up” as my brother and I refer to it. I was making mistakes I wouldn't normally make because I was trying too hard at the same level of a video game over and over to the point of frustration. Which is what the boy robot in blue, Megaman, did to us growing up. The game begins to taunt and beat you down. You no longer are playing a game, the game is playing you. Anybody who plays video games has been there. I needed to walk away from the game.

The time away was the cure. It was merely two or three days but it was enough. For awhile before this point I could take my swings without practice swings and games just flowed but the flow was easy to interrupt. I had let the game get to me when I just needed to play MY game and -10 would just happen. Feeling I just needed some warm-up games I was planning to play through to the end of games despite my score just to get the strokes in. It was in the afternoon on the 8th of May in the year 2015. Alone, unkempt and in the cloths I slept in I birdied my way through holes 1, 2, and 3. The wind howled in my face on hole 4, the ultimate middle finger the game can give you because you cannot use your iron to make the green comfortably. But despite my -3 I didn't feel the pressure and busted out my driver, which is even more ill advised on this, the shortest par 3's in the game. I had been trying to zero in on a sweet spot for it though. You always went long with it and sure enough this time was no different. I was well off and past the green. Subsequently I missed my chip and tapped in for par. RESET! The thought flew through my veins but I played on.

Favorable wind conditions and garden-variety play on my end found me with birdies on 5 and 6. I brought that -5 in to hole 7. Now hole 7 can be played a very many ways depending on wind conditions and boldness of the player. It is a wickedly sharp dog leg that can be circumvented with a threading of a drive through the woods if the wind allows. A par 4 green that can be reached on a drive, a golfer's dream (even if that dream involves getting through trees that would put Charlie Brown's kite eater to shame). I knew the sweet spot and the winds happened to be calm so most of the guesswork was eliminated, I just had to hit the ball. I threaded the needle, caught the rough on a single bounce to slow the ball, skipped the edge of a well placed bunker and rolled to the stop on the green. I sank the good length eagle putt with relative ease as my putting game had been on point for weeks and still was that day.

I was back on a -9 pace headed in to hole 8, the most likely par of the course. The eagle on 7 didn't elevate the pressure oddly enough, it was just a pleasant surprise. But, seeing my preferred wind and pin conditions for hole 8 sure did! I actually took a practice swing for the first time in as long as I could remember. Usually the practice swings just make me over think it and break my momentum, but I needed a moment then. Practice swing was a little light, but the real swing was on point. A nine foot putt later and I was -8 with one hole to play.

Hole 9 is scary on the surface. It is a series of islands with sheer cliffs that seems more than daunting at first glance. You'd have to have a freakin' helicopter or jet-pack to play a golf hole like this in real life. Add in 22mph winds cutting diagonally across and you'll be beating yourself mentally and begging for mercy in no time. I was familiar with lady 9 though, she may not have been a looker but she was fun to play with when you knew what you were doing. Given the harsh winds the direct route was out of the question so I shot to the island to the right. The winds in my face favored me keeping it close to the left edge of the fairway where I wanted it but I had to avoid the rough and did. I made my decisions fast and had my momentum going mach five speeds after my practice swing on hole 8. My second shot would barely make the final island where the green was according to the distance gauge bar thing-a-ma-bob doo-hickey but that's actually where you want to hit the island. Just barely so you get that rough on the edge to slow the ball down so there's a chance you come to a stop on the green. Quickly adjusting for the heavy wind that would move my ball right to left I let loose with my swing. The ball floated through the air in what seemed like slow motion, the camera switched angles to the view where I've witnessed a great many balls come up short and take a plunge in the the great Wii ocean, but then the ball reached it's destination. The soft rough cradled the ball onto the island and released it towards the hole at a steadily declining speed. The hole 9 pinhole is always in the same spot on the top of a hill on the green and my ball came to a stop right at the top of this hill which put it within five feet of the hole. No hesitation allowed I immediately took the putt as fast as possible.

I got my -10. My perfection, minus one. A week earlier I might have spiked the Wii-mote onto the floor satisfying my teenager like levels of frustration with celebratory destruction but I resisted and kept the celebration to a Tiger fist pump. Cool calm and collected I ejected the game never to be played without human competition again. It's purpose had been served filling my lack of purpose. Sure -11 or even -12 is probably plausible within my abilities, sure it wasn't eight birdies and an eagle, but I got what I wanted. I conquered the beast how ever silly and stupid that beast was. That silly stupid beast may have just been me too, after all, golf and video games are known to be just a competition with yourself. There's probably some psychological message there about setting goals and achieving them but I'm just killing time and enjoying the killing of it. I GOT -10, BOW BEFORE ME. Or don't, that's okay, just dream big! Or something. Either way there's been an extra pep in my step and coolness in my stride for days.