As it has been a really busy summer with almost no let up, our schedule in the golf shop has allowed little time for anything but the work we have to do to make a golf course run.

But it has been fun playing more golf than in years past. This week saw the professionals from the Central New York Section play our championship and Club Professional Championship qualifier at Turning Stone. The weather was nice on Monday when we played Kaluhyat, but overnight rains made Shenendoah play very long on Tuesday, with conditions even tougher Wednesday with the heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Katrina.

It was just plain fun to play tournament golf. I played in the Senior Championship, the Stroke Play Championship, The Emmett Kelly Masters and the already mentioned CPC, etc.

All the course set ups were difficult at best, and the conditions brought about by the summer drought of sorts made things even tougher. The Turning Stone courses are long under dry conditions, but when it is wet and the tees are pushed all the way back, there is a lot of real estate to cover.

I guess it is just an honor of sorts to be able to compete under championship conditions against other professionals. The rules of golf are followed strictly and to the letter. It is the way golf is meant to be played. Of course score is the only thing we are judged by in the final analysis.

I am the first to admit that my scores have been less than adequate this year, at least in my tournament play. But I shoot, and we all shoot, what we shoot.

Golf is a difficult game, and an even harder game to learn to play well, no matter when you play.

But score is not all that matters. Personal victories are just as important, no matter what the final outcome of the numbers.

In the end, the numbers are just numbers and nobody remembers what anybody shoots the next day anyway. It is the learning process that stays you, the small victories and successes that come about under stringent conditions when you are trying to learn and hone a skill. Golf is so much more than just swinging the golf club.

We each play within ourselves against the golf course and against, in a certain sense, the things we do not do well. Then you go away at the end of the day and practice what you need to work on, and come back again and try to improve on what you didn't do well the last time out. There is nothing more satisfying than practicing a type of shot, then getting out there and actually doing it when the outcome really means something; and in championship type golf, every swing is important no matter where you are playing or at what level.

In golf as in any sport we are playing against ourselves as much as the rest of the competition. Maybe even more so in golf, since it is a solitary game to begin with. You hit it where you hit it, and then you go on from there. You make the decisions and you make the ball go where it goes. Stay the course and give it all you've got.

See you on the links!

Lombardo, a PGA professional, is The Citizen's golf columnist