Early Morning 18

Last night, prior to seeing the weather report, I was determined to play golf this morning no matter what Mother Nature could throw at me. The Weather Channel (and their corresponding website) said that we had a 60% chance of precipitation all day today, and said that rain would most likely fall around noon. I woke up at 7am, and managed to tee-off around 8:10am.

It was 38F outside, and with the morning dew and moisture still stuck to every piece of flora that surrounded me, every step I took made my feet wetter and wetter. Just picking up the ball to clean it off was a frozen chore — my hands instantenously numb from the sharp 15 mph wind that seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Every area of the golf course was a disaster waiting to happen, and I could just picture myself slipping down a muddy slope with my full-on golf gear landing on top of me at the saturated bottom. The entire course was like natural Slip-N-Slide.

In short, this round was a golf masochist's dream.

I have been hitting the ball unusually well for the past week or two, playing better than my app. 10 handicap would lead you to believe. My swing is becoming much less lower-body oriented and more armsy, which flattens out my swing plane and lets me hit a ripping high draw whenever I feel the need. I felt the need all day today.

The first hole is a 500 yard dogleg left, with OB in its corner, and a lake just outside the elbow. My drive was 275 yards to the apex of the dogleg — dead into the wind — which left me a big long iron into the heavily bunkered and elevated green. My ball was sitting up in the first cut so I decided to swing to take out the 4 iron: the shot was 240 yards, uphill, into the wind, to a back pin position from a downhill/sidehill lie. I tried letting my hands drop into the slot a little quicker than normal to promote a high draw, and ended up sitting on my right side just long enough to catch the ball cleanly. I ended up pin-high right on the fringe, made a bad chip, and ended up with a par.

The rest of the round went pretty smoothly — I joined a guy on the back nine who ended up being the golf coach for a local highschool. He was a very good golfer, having a mediocre day. I was a good golfer having an above-average day, so I ended up shooting a 36 on the back (+1) which beat his score by a few shots.

Some mental mistakes early made breaking 80 almost impossible, but I gave it a good go on the back and ended up shooting 81.