Familiar Story at The Highlands

My latest round at The Highlands had the same rotten stench of previous visits gone bad.

Every time I play this course, I have three or four disastrous holes that ruin my score. Aside from those holes however, I seem to play quite well. It was no different this time. I played fourteen holes in a score of thirteen over par. Better than bogey golf is fantastic, if only I could do it over all eighteen holes. On this occasion, the remaining four holes resulted in two triple-bogeys, a quadruple-bogey, and one hole where I was an embarassing six over par.

Three of the bad holes came on the front nine. On one hole, my tee shot with the 3-iron was lost in the fescue right of the fairway. On another, my bunker shot from beside the green sailed twenty yards over the putting surface. On the last of the terrible holes, a mis-hit tee shot with the driver rolled into a pond. On the same hole, I also duffed a couple of pitch shots from in front of the green. As you can see, trouble came in all forms.

I didn't hit a single green in regulation on the front nine. On the back nine, I suddenly got hot, hitting five of the first six greens in regulation. The only problem was that I finished with a 3-putt on four of those greens. It was frustrating to remedy one part of my game, only to have another break down at precisely the same time.

In the end, I felt good about my game despite the score. I felt like I corrected a flaw that had plagued my driver for a number of rounds, and I'm confident that my putting will get better again.

Score: 101
Putts: 38
Fairways: 4
Greens: 5
Penalties: 4