Joey's Golf Bag

This morning, I played a two-man best ball tournament in the Grapevine Golf Association at the Grapevine Golf Club. We had a scheduled tee time of 9:33AM, but the first tee was backed up and we didn’t get off until about 10AM and finished up about 4-1/2 hours later. The weather was warm and breezy, with about a 2-club wind throughout the day. My 2-ball partner didn’t show up, so I’ll be assigned a random partner out of the mix. We played Mockingbird, followed by Pecan from the blue tees. The course was in very good condition, firm and fast, greens were not as fast as they were during the winter.

My score:

* Hit green in regulation.

Themes:

• Off the tee. I hit seven fairways and one-par 3 hole in regulation. That sounds pretty good, but that’s deceiving, as I had a stretch of four holes on Mockingbird where I had a penalty off the tee on each of the holes. Once I gave up on hitting the driver, I did much better, hitting the 5-wood on most holes.
• Approach shots. I hit only two greens in regulation, so pretty darn poor. I left a lot of shots short due to the wind, and fought a hook on many holes.
• Wedges. I did pretty well with short wedge and pitch shots. I can only remember one or two bad shots, the rest were pretty solid. I got up and down 4 times on the day, though not always for par.
• Chipping. My chipping was pretty good, my best chip being on the 5th hole of Mockingbird, where I hit a chip from about 10 yds off the green to tap-in distance.
• Sand shots. I hit into four greenside bunkers (no fairway bunkers) and got out cleanly three times. I got up and down once out of the sand.
• Putting. My putting was not good today, as I had four 3-putts and failed to take advantage of good chips and pitches. I only hit one putt longer than 3 ft all day. I had a total of 36 putts.

My best hole of the day was the par-5 5th hole on Mockingbird. I hit a draw with the 5-wood just around the corner of the dogleg left, then hit a worm-burner 3-wood about 10 yds short of the green. I hit a really nice chip to 3 ft and made the putt for birdie.

While I didn’t play particularly well today, I was happy that I was able to overcome muscle spasms in my back and play pretty well. Today was my best tournament score, and with luck I will get a net-skin on the 5th hole (a two-pop hole for me, net double-eagle). I also had my first tournament sand save on the 9th hole of Mockingbird, though it was for bogey.

Update: I won a skin on the 5th hole on Mockingbird! My team didn’t place, and I was 5 shots out of the money (top 3) on gross and 6 shots out of the money net.