I picked a nice day and headed out to Bushwood, where I've played quite a bit, but mostly in my early days of golf. I continued the trend of driving the ball well, as I managed to hit 9 of 15 fairways during the round. I focused primarily on keeping the back swing short. I've tried to shorten my back swing in the past, but even then, I could afford to go a lot shorter. I really don't need such a big windup to generate sufficient swing speed. The benefit is a much more controlled swing plane.
Even when the driver is working well, a hole or two will come along where I just miss badly. Fresh off two laser drives on the first two holes, I approached the third tee. Hole #3 is a medium length par-4, but it's OB along the entire right side. The fairway is not especially wide and there is a carry of about 200 yards required to get over a creek. Left of the fairway puts you on another hole, which isn't bad, except that your next shot toward the green will be towards OB. The fear of OB caused me to hit one off the heel, which found the creek. The penalty stroke, along with an uncalled for 3-putt, bumped my score on the hole up to triple-bogey.
Of the fairways missed, two were on holes where I teed off with an iron. The first of these was hole #11, where a 5-iron hooked slightly into the fescue. I actually thought the ball was safe, but no such luck. Double-bogey was the result. On hole #15, I caught the ball with the heel of the 4-iron, sending it dribbling ahead and to the left. On a wide open hole, this left me in the only place where there was tree trouble. My punch out failed and I needed a heroic 5-wood just to get near the green with my third. Chalk up another double-bogey.
And irons were really the story of the day. I only hit three greens in regulation and they weren't exactly convincing ones either. More often than not, I just failed to hit the greens. I missed approach shots from 150, 110, 130, and 100 yards on the front nine alone. I missed a few more shorties on the back nine. Usually, I had the perfect distance, but pulled the ball five yards left. Otherwise, I flared the ball five yards right and somewhat short. The scoring clubs were not helping me score, that's for sure.
The worst iron shot was a ball sculled over the green from 80 yards out on hole #12. The drive on this short par-4 can be tricky because of a forced carry and thick woods on the right. I nailed the centre of the fairway, but wasted it with the second shot. Not only did I miss the green, but I lost the ball in a lateral hazard, leading to a penalty stroke. It was one of six penalty strokes on the day, which is just way too much. The whole round featured a lot of very good shots, but when things went poorly, they led to penalty strokes and that killed my score.
Overall, I feel positive about the round. This will be my last before Round 1 of the Deepwoods championship. I feel like I'm ready to compete. If I can just minimize the costly errors, I have a chance to do well.
Score: 95
Putts: 34
Fairways: 9
Greens: 3
Penalties: 6
No comments:
Post a Comment