HL O65 League # 16 (26-06-25) 3 Birdies

 

I shoulda hadda birdie on #1, but got double bogey instead. Big Drive over the creek, and boldly tried to hit a 72 yard shot with my 75-yard-club to the pin on the upper tier that landed hard with a circus bounce just into the deep rough past the collar. Boldly again (I practice this shot, the chip out of the rough to a short pin, all the time), and if this one had hit the pin instead of burning the edge of the hole maybe it would have been ok but it trickled to the downslope and rolled on down. Took 3 to get down from there. Even with the solid shots, not an auspicious beginning.

On # 2 my drive faded right of the mouth of the green between the bunkers, to the slope on the right edge of the bunkers. A testy shot that has given me grief over the last year, but this day I successfully lazy-lobbed the ball over the traps so that it rolled down tap-in distance. I used to birdie # 2 all the time, but it has been a while.

On # 3 my high drive plugged below the right front corner of the green. This is where-from I holed out for an eagle a while back, and then for a par, equally astonishing, after hitting a tree, missing the green, chunking a pitch – so confidence was high, but I missed the 6 foot birdie putt. Green is still very stubby after aeration.

On # 4 I gave my t-shot an easy skyrocket up the hill, down the right side, so that I couldn’t go at the green, for the trees on this 90 degree dogleg, so I just dumped an 8 iron down to the middle of the fairway, 100 yds from the green, where I hit a 1/3^rd 9 iron high-ish that landed on the collar at the front of the green and rolled up 6 feet from the pin, hole high . . . almost a straight putt uphill . . . but the last missed birdie made me anxious & irate so I moved my feet 3 times before I settled in for that nasty little side-hill knee knocker.

On # 9 I hit a power-launch that flew over the sand trap, even tho’ the tees had been moved back. Because the ball had gone right instead of left, I have to hit a 7 wood, instead of a 7 iron, but this does not trouble me, my 7 wood has become so well behaved. And indeed this attempt was a high rope line drive straight at the left pin. I couldn’t tell where it ended up till we walked up to the green.

 20 feet past the pin, it was an uphill putt with a known break that I might easily make. But that’s not what happened. I played it too defensively on speed, aggravating because the line looked really good, so no eagle, but I did have a back-hand-tap-in birdie.