I Took Down Tiger, As Well

Forget “Par.”  Golf for value!  I shot 22 cents per stroke  

As long as you're happy and getting your money's worth, I think that's just great.  

Exactly!  It's all about making sure you get your money's worth for your hard-earned entertainment dollar.  You end up paying the same amount of money for a round of golf if you're a scratch golfer, or if you're an incompetent duffer.  So, if you look at it from a financial point of view, if you're a "good" golfer, you spend less time out on the course, you take fewer strokes, and you hate yourself more when you make a mistake.  It's like the old saying goes, golf is the only sport where the better you are, the worse you get.  Or something like that.  

Which is why I like to measure my golf in value.  

Simply changing your perspective on the game makes all the difference.  If you miss a shot, you don't have to think, "oh man, I suck."  You get to think, "Yay!  I get another shot!  Value!"  It makes things so much more enjoyable when you're on the lip of a bunker and instead of chipping over it, you hit the club into the ground directly in front of the ball and end up slowly rolling your ball directly into the sand.  I can neither confirm nor deny that this actually happened.  You've probably already made up your minds anyway, so it's a pretty moot point.  

So, there are a couple different things that go into my recent round of golf.  First of all, it's a 9-hole course.  So, if you're playing 9 holes, they charge $10 (weekday rates and whatnot), and if you play 18, you pay $19 and just go through the course twice.  If you're like me and only plan on playing 9, then decide to make the turn and go for 18, they only charge you the extra $9 the second time around.  They're good like that...and that really saved my value bacon, since I had many fewer strokes the second time.  

So, on the front 9, I shot a reasonably lousy (by traditional golfing metrics) 46.  The back 9 saw a marked improvement (at least partially by not rolling my ball into the sand trap on 3....I mean....hypothetically, of course) of 6 strokes for a tidy 40.  For a guy like Phil Mickelson, an 86 on this course would be grounds for retirement and public shaming.  But that's because he uses the wrong standards.  Par for 18 holes here would be 68, so given Phil's career average of 2 shots below par, let's say he would score a 66 (almost assuredly NOT a valid assumption, but we'll go with it).  He would be paying almost 29 cents per stroke to play this course.  For the exact same experience, I just payed 7 cents less per stroke.  Now that's value!  

On a somewhat related note...did you see that?  I actually shot an 86!  New personal best!  If only I hadn't blown up the 3rd hole with that sand shot...I mean...hypothetically, of course.