Three way match play
This afternoon, after work, I played nine holes of match play with Jarvis and Nikhil at the North Texas Golf Center. The afternoon was breezy and warm.
We hit a few balls to warm up, practiced chipping and then hit the course. We scored match play by awarding 2 points if the hole was won outright, one point to each player on a tied hole with the lower score, and no point on a loss. Jarvis won three holes outright (on two of those holes, he hit long par putts to win) and I won two holes outright (both by getting up and down from off the green for par). We were tied at the end, so we putted on the ninth green to break the tie. Nikhil chose a 15 ft putt with a nasty break; both Jarvis and I missed the putt, and tapped in. Next, we decided to chip from a tricky spot below the green in the rough. Jarvis hit his chip well long, I chipped to 3 ft. Jarvis missed his long return putt and I tapped in my 3 footer for victory.
My score:
| Hole | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Total |
| Par | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 27 |
| Score | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4* | 36 |
* Hit green in regulation.
Themes:
- Tee shots. I hit only one green in regulation, but I struck the ball pretty solidly, just did a poor job of compensating for the wind. I really had only one bad tee shot. My tee shot on the ninth, a pitching wedge, was right over the pin, but way long; I hit the club about 10 yds longer than normal.
- Wedges. I hit only one wedge shot, and it was bladed over the 2nd green into casual water behind the green (the ball was outside the red hazard sticks).
- Chipping. My chipping was decent today; I got up and down twice due to excellent chipping within tap-in distance on the fourth and fifth holes.
- Sand shots. None, didn’t hit the ball in the traps today.
- Putting. Putting was good until the eighth and ninth holes, which I three-putted. I had a total of 18 putts, and that included two 1-putt greens.
A pretty good day of golf. My chipping is improving, and my putting, at least, isn’t getting worse. My full swing continues to improve as I work on correcting the reverse pivot, and that has the nice side-effect of giving me more length. As a flew a couple of greens today, I’m going to need to recalibrate my lengths.