Those good scores over the past few weeks have sent my golf handicap down to 14.1, my best ever. I still have the (really) stretch goal of getting out of the teens. I don’t know if 12.9 is realistic for me but this is my best chance since I recorded my first official score on August 5, 2002 (a 114 at Mt. Si).

I worked as a marshall on the 6th hole for the first three days of the U.S. Senior Open championship at Sahalee CC. The highlight for me came today while marking balls on the fairway landing area. Fred Couples hit one of the worst drives of the day and it came to rest right along the spectator rope line in the right side rough. I quickly marked the ball and asked the spectators to move back , then took down the ropes to give poor Fred room to chip out. As I knelt there some 10 feet away I was shocked when he took out an iron and tried to hit under the branches of the nearest tree and fade the ball around another huge tree fifty yards ahead. Thwap! He hit the ball right into the branches and it came to rest only about forty yards away, still in the rough. Then he hit another low iron that bounced into the deep green-side bunker. At that point Freddy was just one shot off the lead and I was sure he was going to drop another shot or two. But as I peered under the branches to watch the bunker shot, I saw the ball rise, take flight toward the flag stick and drop into the hole for a par save. Pretty impressive.

One week after shooting 80, I repeated that score again this morning at Mt. Si. Noteworthy in today’s round was a birdie on hole #13 (after a birdie on that same hole yesterday) and just 11 putts on the back nine. Given my recent putting woes, I was very pleased to sink eight of ten putts from 10 feet and closer today. And my scoring average for the year stands at 89.84, my lowest ever.

Playing with my golf-crazed neighbor, Darrold Baker, I shot my best score ever at the challenging (136 slope rating) Washington National course–90 from the blue tees. My previous low there was 93 in May of ’07. My short putting woes continued. Although I nearly holed four putts of over 45 feet I missed three inside five feet.

Three days after my pathetic performance at Gold Mountain, I shot an eight-over-par 80 at Mt. Si. It was a superbly steady round with 11 pars and just one double bogey. I’ve only shot better than 80 twice: a 78 in June 2007 and a 79 in October of 2009.

The weather was perfect but the golf was pathetic. With a couple of friends I spent the day at the beautiful Gold Mountain near Bremerton, playing both the Olympic and Cascade courses. The morning round on Olympic was just terrible: I shot 55-50 for a woeful 105, one of my worst scores ever. The afternoon on the Cascade course was slightly better with a 96 but I had just three pars all day. And that nice under 90 scoring average ballooned to 90.3 in one day.

With a 42 for nine holes this morning, my scoring average for the year dropped to 89.97 — under 90 for the first time ever!

A cool, misty morning provided perfect weather for me and my golf game was equally delightful. After topping my tee shot on hole number 6 at Mt. Si I pared eight of the next 12 holes to shoot an 82, including 39 on the back nine–my best on that stretch in a year.

Maybe all the playing and practice is having some effect; at least for a while. This morning I shot 39 over the front nine holes at Mt. Si and added a par on the 10th hole. So I was just three over par through ten holes. Unfortunately, I pulled my tee shot on the par three 11th hole into the woods then hit two poor chips to record a triple-bogey six. That broke my concentration and I had just one more par and three double bogey’s over the final seven holes to end up with a so-so 87. Still, that 39 on the front and seven pars over eight holes was really fun.

I ended June with 16 rounds of golf: 288 holes, 1,413 stokes, 487 putts. That’s a scoring averaging of 88.3. My handicap improved from 17.3 to 15.2. So my first month of concentration on golf has been a success. Now the challenge is to continue to improve in July.