The weather is pretty grim this week, so I picked the nicest day for a round of golf. It was sunny, with clear skies and temperature in the low twenties (Celsius). It rained the day before, but there had been plenty of time for any water to drain away. Unfortunately, I chose to play the Battlefield course at Legends on the Niagara. It's an excellent course, but it has absolutely dreadful drainage.
Not surprisingly, it was cart path only. I hit just two shots to the cart path side all day. Every other shot was to the side opposite the cart path. I often had to take my whole bag off the cart and traverse the fairway in order to select a club. After hitting my shot, it was another sideways trek to the cart before I could move forward. It would have been more efficient to leave the cart behind entirely.
Much worse than the cart situation was hitting balls off the water logged ground. It didn't matter if you were in the fairway or rough; it was like hitting off a bed of Jello. If you brush the ball off the surface, it was bad enough. If you hit down on the ball and take divots, as I do, it was absolutely horrible. The club had no difficulty slicing through the turf, but it was very easy to end up 30 yards short.
And then there were the bunkers. Many were full of standing water. Where there was no water, the sand was still moist and tightly compressed. It was obvious that the vast majority of bunkers had not been tended to following the previous day's rainfall. My trouble with bunkers has been well documented. Considering how I struggle with bunkers even when they're properly maintained, the last thing I need is to play from crappy ones.
I started well despite the poor conditions, going bogey, par, bogey over the first three holes. I hit the first two fairways off the tee, before falling victim to the wet ground. My approach shots were well short, but I got up and down a couple of times. The bogey on hole #3, a 172-yard par-3, was actually a bad one. I hit my tee shot to within 15 feet, but played way too little break on the birdie attempt and then burned the edge on the par putt.
Another 3-putt contributed to a triple-bogey on hole #4. It was one of a pair that I registered on the front nine. The other came on hole #7. A duffed second shot off the wet turf was a large contributor to that one. My third shot hooked to the edge of a water hazard, leaving a poor lie. Aside from these blowups, I managed pretty well on the remaining holes, collecting three bogeys and a double. The double was on hole #9, a par-4. My second shot landed in one of those terrible bunkers, so there was not much I could do. I was shooting 49 at the turn.
My worst stretch of golf came on holes #10 through #12, as I took a triple, double, and quadruple-bogey. I had a technical thought about my driver swing which hadn't been working, so on #10 I decided to just swing without any thought at all. It was my worst drive of the day, a smother pull that went about 100 yards. I had a poor lie in the stalks of some fescue that had been cut down. Further up the hole, I was beside the tree line and had to hit left handed with the back of my putter. Basically, everything went wrong.
Hole #12 was particularly infuriating. I split the fairway with a perfect drive, leaving 150 yards to the green. I pushed the approach shot ever so slightly, finishing flag high in a greenside bunker. Oh geez! My first attempt out of the muck didn't get out. My second only got out to the rough. My fifth shot was a chip that I sculled over the green to a collection area. From there, I rolled one to the green and then 2-putt for the quad. All of this because my approach shot was off line by one degree!
At this point, I was in real danger of shooting 100 and I knew it. I buckled down and went par, bogey, bogey over the next three holes. The first of these bogeys was a bad one – another 3-putt on a par-3 after hitting the green in regulation. Still, if I could make bogey on the remaining three holes, I would sneak in with a score of 99. Well, it was putting that ruined that plan. Two consecutive 3-putts on holes #16 and #17 produced a pair of double-bogeys. A bogey on the final hole pushed my score to a disgusting 101.
I've now played Battlefield 5 times and my scores look like this: 101, 97, 101, 99, 101. There's nothing worse than shooting an even 100 or thereabouts. At least three of those results had a lot to do with the course's terrible drainage. If I can avoid it at all, I will not go back to the course the day after any rainfall whatsoever.
Score: 101
Putts: 35
Fairways: 7
Greens: 2
Penalties: 1
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