Joey's Golf Bag

Yesterday, I played Indian Creek on the Lakes course. The course was in very good condition, firm and fast, although the greens had been sanded sometime in the last week. I’m a resident, so I get a small discount. Since I usually walk this course, I didn’t notice that there’s a $5 charge for GPS in addition to the cart fee. The cart fee and GPS charge ended up larger than the green fee!

OK, two rants. We were behind a group of golfers that were playing from the tips. At least some of these guys should not have been playing from the tips, because most of them were hitting their second from about where I would hit a 5-iron from the white tees. (I always play from the whites because that’s where my handicap index puts me.) And they were very slow, as our foursome easily kept up with them even though we had a 15-year-old in our group who sprayed balls all over the course. We had to wait on these guys on every hole.

Enough ranting.

Unfortunately, I didn’t keep the scorecard because John turned in the card for his handicap. So I’ll summarize my crappy round (54 on the front, 48 on the back for 102 score).

• Tee shots. I hit about 5 or 6 fairways and two of the par-3 holes in regulation. I had two penalties off the tee into the water. I was really unhappy with my long game on this day. For some reason, I kept chunking shots with my 5-wood, which meant I was effectively hitting a lob wedge off the tee.
• Approach shots. I hit only one green in regulation all day, other than the two par-3 holes I hit off the tee. Because my driving was bad, I was usually short of the green as I didn’t trust my 5-wood into the green, so I often had a wedge for a third shot on the longer par-4 holes. I had one penalty on an approach shot, a badly pushed iron into the water.
• Wedges. I had a couple of good wedge shots into greens (typically for third or fourth shots). On the other hand, when I was using a wedge for a recovery shot, I hit them very poorly. If I ever figure this game out, I’ll let you know…
• Chipping. I only got up and down three times all day. My problem today was if I hit the ball solidly, it was usually short, and if I didn’t, then I chipped it thin way past the hole. This was especially annoying given the amount of practice time I’ve devoted to chipping.
• Sand shots. I didn’t hit into any bunkers, something of a miracle.
• Putting. I very narrowly missed all three of my birdie putts. I had two 3-putts, and got up-and-down three times, so that means I had 37 putts. Terrible.

Well, there you have it. A very poorly played round. I can’t say that anything I did all day was good.