So this week has been the virtual tale of two nines, a story probably nearly as old as golf itself. You go out on the front and shoot a great score only to completely collapse on the back. Or the reverse – horrible front and you think you forgot how to hit the golf ball and suddenly you find your game. The second version is my story for this week.
On Monday, I played my 18th course this year, Lake Presidential, and shot a 51 on the front with a 9 and two 7s, then shot a relatively good (several not so good first putts) 47 on the back to stay below 100. At my level of play, which after this week stands at a 19.3 handicap, this was only a couple of strokes off.
We then went to my “home” course at Bowie on Wednesday and shot a 46 on the par 34 front nine, courtesy of one par, five bogeys, two double bogeys and one triple bogey. Just three fairways and three greens in regulation. Whew, that’s a lot of strokes. So the turn was a combination of figuring the entire round was a failure and just forgetting about it and an article that I recently read about a pro golfer (name unrecalled) that characterized each hole as it’s own tournament – you had to forget the last one and decide how to tackle the next one based upon the game you brought with you today.
With those two thoughts in mind, I shot a 39 on the par 36 back nine thanks to six pars and three bogeys. Still only three fairways but most of the misses weren’t far off, but managed to hit six greens and only three putt once.
Final score of 85 with a handicap of 18.2 (prior to this round) gives me 12 strokes from the gold tees for a 73 on the par 70 course. Terrible front, great back. Go figure. Oh, and I spell my name “Clayt.” Those other three names are easy.
And one more thing. The green on hole #9 still isn’t open yet.
Leave a Reply